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Yeah yeah i'm not Bill Mayer but xxxx it, let's have our own new rules.

New rule: Taking the G out of Angus burger to make it "anus burger",  or redoing an Angus 1/4 pounder to read "anus pounder",  may have been funny 10 years ago,  but not now. 

Anyone who calls George Soros a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer should be sentenced to ten years in a re-education camp where they can learn the difference between fascism and communism!

People who say george soros in a communist should do a semester at college to learn that communism is not a synonym for socialism.

Technically that's true, socialism and communism aren't the same, but people can be excused for blurring the line when Soviets to the end maintained they lived in a "socialist motherland" when of course it was straight-up communism.

Socialism is not necessarily evil, just stifling and inefficient, while Communism is living death.

I used to have long conversations with someone who grew up in Leningrad and something he said was a big point stressed all the time in his school years sticks out in my mind, that in the USSR it was considered theft to hire someone to work for you, since to employ someone was to to steal that person's labor.

Just throwing that out there because that always stuck out in my mind.

I'd argue it was neither, but just another military dictatorship with Marxist leanings.

And you are correct.

You two don't consider the USSR Communist? I'd say it was a perversion of Marxism, perhaps, but I don't understand how it couldn't be Communist. The military-heavy dictatorship is certainly correct.

Because in the USSR people at the top of the party had more power and money than people at the bottom. The only redistribution of wealth that took place was taking it off the people who had it, and keeping it in the hands of other selected people. Under communism you end up with no requirement for a centralised government with everyone working for each others benefit. Everyone is treated the same. However in the Soviet Union high ranking party members had bigger houses, better holidays and so on and so on. Even if Lenin had lived I don't think it would have even been within touching distance of communism, certainly not as Marx wrote it. It was just another military dictatorship given some leftist imagery and titles and no real aspirations to the sort of perfect society that is supposed to be the final aim of that particular belief.

(Just as an aside I would say Communism, while a lovely dream (and much like Anarchy if you understand the precepts behind what that actually entails and not what the word has came to mean) is not possible. People just aren't built the way required for those systems to work).

I'd say at no point did the Communist Party pay more than lip service to this ideal. Under it, you have no oppression (yeah, when did the Soviet Union ever not oppress its citizens), no sexism, etc. You could put up an argument that the USSR was still in the first of the three stages of communism, but it was never going to move beyond that and even then I'd struggle to make that argument stick.

So yeah, for me the whole Soviet Union was a military dictatorship holding onto power by any means it could, except the one that it should have. The popular will of the people. It just gave itself a few of the trappings of Communism, but actions speak louder that words and imagery. I can take a potato and paint it red and green, but that doesn't make it an apple.

But then I find when you get to the extremes of politics in any direction, you end up with the same things going on. It just gets given different names.

Oh I'd also agree that socialism is inefficient and stifling. Without the promise of extra reward for additional labour you lose the incentive to work harder, and where there is a job for life there is less of a reason to work harder and make sure you do your job right. I know when I was working in the civilian world, if I worked a weekend as overtime, I want to be paid more for it and loyalty to the company be damned. A job is a transaction. People pay me for my time and skills, not out of the goodness of their hearts and unless they do something extra to earn it, they don't deserve my loyalty just for being part of that transaction.

Sometimes the Israel kibbutzim are praised as pure communalism, a sort of parallel Marxist ideal, devoid actual input from Marx or lip service paid to him, and Gorbechev praised the Israeli kibbutzim as "surely what the founders of my nation had in mind" so I looked into that system thinking it must be something great, and.... was appalled.

There are kibbutz models that cover the spectrum and most today are not as extreme as early-on in the Zionist movement but the early kibbutzim strike me as something out of a dystopian nightmare, with children communally raised without parental input and everyone eating at tables in a cafeteria at the same time, sleeping in bunkhouses, no one owning much of anything, and jobs assigned via committee with the fruits of labor equally divided according to membership, not actual output, and the more I have read about life on a traditional kibbutz the more I find even the purest strain of communalism frightening and murderous to individuality.

And I am all about personal freedom, seeking above all else to be left alone.

Hippies were most true to Marxist Communism.
I mean, dam! They lived in communes, they grew they're own food and shared it with each other-everybody was equal.

Of course you had folks who twist it-like Manson. He had a commune. And he exploited it. He was a Stalin.

I don't  think communism is at all f**king good. It won't work. People with talent deserve to make they're lives better.
Socialism-is -I don't know. Nazi's were the National Socialist Party.
I really don't know-and this is the honest truth-know wtf 'socialist' means. Because I have heard the word flung around like a dog with a dishrag.

EDIT! OH!
I figured it out!
During the 20's and 30's in Germany, the Nazi's and the Communists were fighting in the streets. The country was that divided.
Way before WW2.
 Hitler and Stalin were major political figures going waaay back before the war. And they f**king hated each other.
Kinda like Democrats and Republicans!

The term does get thrown around, RC, you're right, and at its heart what it means is the government takes control of some but not all parts of the nation, usually industry, banking, medicine, education, social services, farming, but typically leaves other parts of the economic superstructure alone. Usually what's happened next is inflation skyrockets, bureaucracy and rules increase, productivity slows, taxes become stifling, and if they're lucky people vote themselves out from under it the way the French (and to an extent the British) did in the early 1980s.

Most societies have certain elements of socialism in them, in the US one obvious one is the public education system, a perfect example of the big-spending, wasteful, low results, spirit-crushing effects of letting the government manage something.

Socialism can in some cases provide a certain security blanket for some people but in getting those benefits people sacrifice a lot else.
 
Another problem with socialism is it tends to open the door to creating a totalitarian elite that exploits the majority as it gains greater and greater power over people's lives, though admittedly that's also the case in other forms of government, just more transparent under socialism. Again I don't think socialism is evil at heart, just not the best system under which to live, and history proves that. Eventually most socialist experiments run out of other people's money, to bring in a famous quote, and fail.

Also don't let the word "Socialist" in National Socialist Party fool you. Nazism started out as a leftist party with socialist roots but it went far right into the zone of reactionary politics, just (and I do not know why) held onto the original name.  Ironically Nazis weren't socialists.

I dunno...socialized health care, child care for the poor, and Social Security seems like good things to me.

I get Social Security. I also paid into it all my working life-and taxes.

I got news for you. No matter what governing idelogical belief you have- the guy at the bottom is gonna get f**ked.

Just like 'Democracy' turned into 'Monopoly', where whoever owns the most money and property wins.

Never a truer word spoken my friend.

Yes, true, but at least here the guy at the bottom can give the government the finger, which people can't in a lot of other places.

Oh, yeah, Democracy is something of a sham, I agree, money talks, money leads, the powers that be divide it all up behind closed doors, BUT a groundswell of public support put a man in the White House in 2016 that the insiders of both major parties did not want there, showing it's not entirely a closed shop. Sure, money fueled Trump but money alone did not get him elected, only made it possible for him to get his message out there and create enthusiasm among people who often felt marginalized. Every step of the way Trump had to battle against insider power, the establishment did not want him, and that shows by voting people do still have a big say in things.

Obama also took the approach in 2008 of connecting with people in ways that stirred up similar enthusiasm and he, this originally lesser-known figure, beat Hillary Clinton, the heir apparent, again showing people do collectively hold the final say over the power brokers of America.

We the people are stronger than you may think.

Now there's something I can do that will help me! Why didn't I think of that???  :question:
Or ask the 'powers that be' to use more Vasoline while it's f**king me in the ass!
And I can s**t in one hand and wish in another!
Do you know what weighs more?

These are the people we elect into office. THAT'S THEY'RE JOB- TO HELP US. We pay them. Out of our taxes.
NOT to line they're pockets .

Have you seen what happens when these things are run as a business? It does not go well either. Greed and profit end up coming before everything else.

I got a New Rule-
Rich people can't run for President.
Only homeless people. Like drunks, crazy shopping cart ladies, and people who talk to themselves while walking down sidewalks carrying plastic bags full of returnable bottles.
Cat ladies, geeks who live in Ma's basement, spinsters, the Frankenstein Monster, and people who are afraid to come out of they're room also are eligible.
 

Greed screws a lot of things up, I know. I think private schools get better results than public.

I also know that when my friend Mandy had her son in 2004 she was a broke soon to be single mother, so she applied for public assistance and had to sit for hours in government-run clinics to get pre-natal care, showing up early for appointments that may or may not be available before the day was out, only to see overworked care-providers who gave the impression they may not have finished high up in medical school.

When she had her daughter a couple years down the road she had private health insurance and her appointments were on time and the overall level of her care was much better. I think her experiences changed my mind when for a lot of my life I wanted socialized medicine here.

I've also, btw, experienced government-backed health care in Ireland and there's good and bad to that. Long waits, wards instead of private rooms, lots of paperwork, but, yes, everyone there did seem to get basic healthcare. (Did you know many Irish get sent to the UK for treatment?)

Neither way is perfect but at least in America if you possibly can you're doing yourself and family a favor to deal with a private insurer system.

In the UK you still have the option of private healthcare, but it is not widely taken up, although some companies do offer it as part of their T&C's. I've seen my little brother get a kidney transplant, my mother survive breast cancer and many other people go through the healthcare system without the waiting times I keep hearing about on the news. I am not saying they aren't happening, but my experience of the health system certainly hasn't included it. Plus, well lets face it news sources do like to exagerate these things leading me to the conclussion these things aren't as bad as things are made out to be (although I do accept I could be wrong there).

Yeah, I remember on Eastenders someone would brag about an upcoming operation, "I'm having it done off the National Health." I'd think, aww, they're cheating poor Dr. Legg! Lol

 And so my workday ends. May a good evening be with you all!

My experience of the US health care system was that we took Kristi in to hospital in quite some amount of pain. They ran some blood tests, couldn't find out what was wrong and charged us $1000 for the privillage.

When she went to see her own doctor back in the UK, he identified the problem just from the description of the symptoms and gave her the approrpiate medication.

This was two years ago. Our health insurance company has had to send yet another letter to the hospital concerned telling them to stop pursuing Kristi for the money and to send the bill to them and let them pay it. Ok, this is a one off incident, and hardly conclusive but so far I have to say I am not impressed. Kristi herself agrees that there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of providing care, however on balance she much prefers the social healthcare system.

Health care is complicated, all systems that deliver it are flawed in one way or another, and there are no easy solutions.

That ties into my basic philosophy that bumper stickers rarely make good policy.

But who pays for that? If the poor can't already afford it for themselves then obviously someone else is paying for it.

Who? Productive people who aren't poor. Instead of enjoying what they've worked for they're supporting someone else. Why should they continue to work hard then if the poor get free money?

They shouldn't, so they lose the motivation to work hard, become poor, get supported.

By whom? Who remains? "Rich people"? No, they were the first to get hit with high taxes, so their money drains first. The middle class? Absent opportunity and motive to be productive, the middle class is gone.

Now where's the money coming from if society has become progressively (pun intended) poorer? Nowhere.

Eventually money runs out and you have a mismanaged Venezuela, or the USSR, or etc. and guess what, social programs are bankrupt, poverty has increased and the original poor suffer most of all.

In a nutshell that's why it doesn't work.

You do knw that the majority of america voters voted against the thing in the wite house, and it has done nthng but serve the rich. When it got it's tax plan passed it told it's rich buddies "I jsut made you al;l a lot ricker". Now, of course, people on SS and medicare are going to be hit with cuts to pay for it.

I'm not talking about my judgment of either candidate I mentioned, just talking about the facts of what made their campaigns successful. My point was the people appear to hold more power over who visibly runs this country than the establishment does, and that makes me proud.

There is definitely a corollary between Nazism and Communism... Control.  

Here's a new rule-
If you run into a guy wearing a swastika- you should be able to punch him in the face.


(https://i.imgur.com/DrIbkD7.gif) (https://lunapic.com)

Oh hell yeah!

In the UK it is paid for out of a tax called National Insurance which everyone with a job pays into, and the healthcare is paid for out of that. The system down in England for the NHS has been under strain for several years, but this more comes down to political interference than an issue with the NHS itself. In Scotland we haven't had the same problems, although Brexit is now starting to cause staffing problems in more remote areas as medical staff who have moved here from other places have been deciding to move back home rather than face the uncertainties of the future and well, the wave of racism that Brexit seemed to unleash. I have had the privillage of seeing socialised healthcare work all my life and having seen the alternative (as well as hearing the critisisms of the system from people working in it), I am in no hurry to swap to any alternative. A lot of Kristi's relations are nurses, her best friend is a paramedic / firefighter (and her husband is some sort of surgeon). All of them have mentioned at different points how terrified they are of getting a serious illness and being left to the mercy's of the care system over there, especially if on the small print of your medical insurance it turns out you have a condition you are not covered for.

Not every socialist country ends up bankrupt. Hell, one of them is the wealthiest per captia head in the world.

It's also worth pointing out that many non socialist countries also end up with financial woes too.

Socialism seems to work best in the Scandinavian countries, which have a small, largely homogenous population and a pretty high per capita income to work with.

If you're a bookish teenager who reads all the time and the local library system won't let minors check out books rated as adult, and you want to read them, walking out with them is acceptable as long as you take good care of the books and return them within the stated checkout period. I made an institution of this and never got caught.

COOL!!! 

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