10 Responses to “The Big 3: Money, Socialism, and Homelessness”

1. Comment by Brian

   August 26th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

   Why is socialism such a scary concept? It has nothing to do with communism or sacrificing freedoms or anything else Americans hold dear. In fact, the US does have strong aspects of socialism relative to other countries and a few states have more socialist tendencies than many countries that are founded on liberal socialism. If we adopted a few more “socialist” ideals, we could improve our standard of living in many impoverished states, improve medical coverage and delivery and probably become a more productive nation.

2. Comment by Zack

   August 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

   Brian, all socialism has shown us is failure. Specifically with medical coverage, when those who do pay bare the cost not only for themselves but for those who do not pay, the cost of medical care for everyone will go up. This is because whenever something is offered for free (as in socialism), as many people as can get away with it will try to take advantage of it resulting in a certain shortage of it and a skyrocketing price for those who play by the rules (in this case, those of us who have to pay for our health care). The situation is worsened by nonsensical regulations that differ state to state, bureaucratically ineffective government programs that cost in excess of $500 billion per year, and the high cost of litigation that hospitals, insurers, and doctors face. If we all had to pay for what we used, you would have smarter consumers, more competitive hospitals and insurers, and an overall better and less expensive product. Socialism simply takes all of the motivations you DON’T want to promote and promotes them.

3. Comment by liberty joe

   August 27th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

   Socialism does rob people of their liberty, Socialist Brian. Why shouldn’t I be free to spend the money that I earned in the way that I choose? I don’t need the government to take my money and give me a small percentage back through inferior services. The people that love socialism are the people that are either enormously rich or don’t pay taxes anyway. We should all be as compassionate as John McCain, 27% of his earnings to charity, and less like the selfish, stingy Barrack Obama, 1% of his earnings to charity, then we wouldn’t need government to extort money from hardworking taxpayers. The top 50% of all wage earners pay 97% of all taxes. Keep your greedy hands out of my pocket, socialist Brian, thanks.

4. Comment by Ross

   August 28th, 2008 at 8:16 am

   NEW POST PLEASE!

5. Comment by student in nebraska

   August 28th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

   I have to agree with Zack in that this ‘redistribution of wealth’ theory only encourages people not to help contribute into the fund. I personally know of a young woman the same age as I who is living in government subsidized Section 9 housing when she is making the same, if not more, money than I do. We do the same job, get paid the same amount, have access to the same benefits provided by our employer, and both attend college. Yet she gets to live basically rent free, get a free education, and free government health care. In the mean time, I work 7 days a week at two different jobs to get by and I can’t afford to live on my own. Oh, and I have to pay back my student loans. Explain to me how ’spreading the wealth’ will make the nation more productive? It hasn’t so far.

   I understand that taxes are necessary to pay for services and needs for all, and for those individuals who absolutely need the help. But the way so many of these governement programs are designed only enables people to not work and contribute. They turn into a drain on the system, seeking ways to manipulate it and get more free money and benefits. My fiance is a police officer here in the town where I live. Do you know how many Cadillac Escalade and Lexus vehicles he sees parked outside of government subsidized apartment buildings? And the people living in these apartments do not have jobs but yet somehow manage to afford these nice amenities. The rest of the working middle class cannot afford nice vehicles because we’re too busy paying the government to support the manipulative people. I believe that if you’re able-bodied you should be working and contributing to society, not taking advantage of the government’s assistance programs.

   So no, socialism is not the answer. Whenever the government gets involved in something, they completely botch it. Social Security has turned out so well, after all. So have the welfare programs. This country was not founded upon socialist principles and we as a nation did not rise to the glory of being the most powerful country in the world by supporting every person who asked for assistance. America has a history of working hard, against all odds, to achieve what many would say was impossible. If we as a nation want to continue to be the most powerful, I suggest that we depend ourselves more, not the government, to achieve our goals. There was a time when ‘I can’t’ was not an acceptable answer; only an ‘I will’ attitude will help our country and everyone must make the effort to do that.

6. Comment by Ralph

   August 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

   ” all socialism has shown us is failure. Specifically with medical coverage, when those who do pay bare the cost not only for themselves but for those who do not pay, the cost of medical care for everyone will go up”

   There’s a lot of other reasons why medical costs are going up besides charity care, such as medical malpractice claims and contractual adjustments because of greedy insurers. Lets just say its not a fair example. Most developed countries have socialized medicine and even in less developed countries like Cuba, the care is considered world class.

   The problem with socialism in America is execution - our programs arent efficient and its true we botch things. We need to make a change. In Western Europe it works, its not perfect, but at least they dont bankrupt families for illness.

7. Comment by dan

   August 31st, 2008 at 6:50 pm

   The history of the auto industry at home and foreign is filled with help from their governments. Need we talk about Japan, Germany or now India (which takes the land from the people and gives it to Tata). A world vision is needed when asking for a level playing field. Instead of Big 3 lets put in the words Financial Brokers and Banks and now we have Cody’s block homeless. It is always easier to wish onto other regions of the country what you do not want to see out your own window Cody.

8. Comment by Richard

   September 1st, 2008 at 2:28 am

   If Cuba’s socialized health care is so great why is it you hear of people from other countries coming here to use our hospitals instead of going there

9. Comment by Adam

   September 2nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm

   Socialism is bad math. How can people get more out of the government than they put in? The answer is that the government taxes businesses and the rich, launders the money through bureaucracy and the federal budget and viola we have Welfare, Medicare, subsidies, and bailouts. Socialism is about government enforced equality through monetary redistribution. Question: is it possible that people are happy being poor?

10. Comment by Mark

    September 3rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    In the end, the problem with government and thier taxing ways is that the people that vote for and decide the policies are not the people that pay for the policies.

    The bottom 51% of wage earners have the majority of the votes, but they don’t pay (hardly) anything, at least in income taxes.

    Mean while, the top 49% of earners don’t have a majority of the votes, but they pay almost everything.

    Hence why the bottom 51% always wants more from the government - the marginal benifit they see is greater than the marginal cost, because they don’t pay for it. If the guy working for minimun wage really had to pay for his universal health coverage, he wouldn’t do it.