Posted by
Patrick Henry on Monday, March 23, 2009 6:23:08 PM
During the recent presidential campaign, Barack Obama's opponents and critics
hammered away at his message, saying that it reeked of socialism. VP candidate Biden
repeatedly disavowed such a notion, realizing that it is politically toxic. But Barack
Obama never rejected it, and made many statements that sounded as though they came
straight from the playbook of the International Socialist Party. So what is socialism,
and what's so wrong with it?
Socialism is a collection of economic theories. First, socialism holds that the means
of production (money, land, buildings, machinery, etc.) should belong to all the people,
not the wealthy few, and since the government is supposed to represent all the people,
it only makes sense for the government to assume ownership of the means of production
on the people's behalf. Second, socialism holds that society's most desirable goal is an
equalization of wealth, to be accomplished in part by ensuring that wages and profits
are distributed entirely on the basis of work done, and not on the basis of ownership.
Third, just about every definition of socialism in all the dictionaries defines socialism
as a transitional stage between capitalism and communism.
Let's illustrate just how that would work. Let's say that I own an apartment building
and hire you to paint it. Considering the discrepancy between what it cost me to buy
and maintain the thing, and the going wage for painters, I'm not about to pay you a
percentage of my rentals for your work. Instead, I will agree to pay you an hourly wage
for your work, in exchange you will do the job. You will earn the agreed upon pay
for your work, but I will earn more from what the renters pay for my apartments.
Enter socialism. The government looks at our transaction and decides that you deserve
a bigger piece of the pie, since painting doesn't pay as well as ownership. So to make
things equal, the government takes my apartment building (on behalf of the people,
of course), and decides that since you worked more hours to paint the building than
I did to own or manage it, you, and other like you, deserve a relatively equal share
of whatever the building generates. Great deal, eh?
Norman Thomas, one of the most notable socialists in America, campaigned in
futility every four years to be president. Finally, he quit running, and an interviewer
asked him why, after all those elections, he had given up. His response was, "No,
I don't need to run anymore because the Democratic Party has adopted the entire
socialist agenda. Make no mistake, that's exactly what Barack Obama refers to when
he talks about "spreading the wealth around." And it's deeply personal with him. He
found his passion working with the poor, mostly black families in the projects on
Chicago's south side, and imbibed of their resentment against the wealthy, mostly
white families on Chicago's north shore. He means to level the field.
I have a friend named John who is in the process of being "bailed out" on his
bloated mortgage that he lied to get and now can't pay. So, as a taxpayer, I'm
about to pick up a share of John's mortgage payment. Julie, an acquaintance, got
laid off by the bank she worked for when it was taken over by another bank. Now
the new bank is getting a bail out so Julie got unvited back to work. I helped pay
her unemployment, and now I'll be helping to pay her salary. Jose, a guy that works
for the landscaping crew that does my yard, has been in the USA for nine years. He
still can't speak any English, hasn't gone to school or learned a trade, has had three
kids he can't afford to feed, and under Obama's plan I'll soon be helping to pay for
the healthcare Jose and his family have never had. Jose won't be contributing one
whit more to our society than he does right now, but we'll all be paying more -- a
lot more -- so that he can have for free what we have had to pay for all these years.
That's socialism.
The problem, however, is that socialism doesn't work. Look at the per capita
income of mostly socialist countries, versus the per capita income of mostly
capitalist countries and you'll quickly see that as nice a theory as socialism may
be, it ultimately only succeeds in bottoming out the economies of those who try
it. It exists today in its purest form only in countries with hideously repressive
governments and people living in gross poverty. The big question is WHY doesn't
socialism work, and why, in light of that fact, does the Democratic Party want to
impose it on the United States of America? Check this post tomorrow to find out
the ugly answers and what you can do to change our future.