New rules:

[RCMerchant]

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

[Alex]

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

Oh hell yeah!

[Alex]

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

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.

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.

[indianasmith]

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.

[ER]

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.

[Allhallowsday]

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

COOL!!! 

[Svengoolie 3]