Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Socialism. Show all posts

Sunday, June 14, 2015

American Free Market Capitalism In Action - 1960: Harvest of Shame

This is what a total unregulated free market dictates. Enjoy!

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Republicans Have The Same Misconceptions Of Reagan As They Do Jesus

What's wrong with republicans?

Today's republican party are politically the biggest and most stubborn babies perhaps in the history of the US; certainly since World War II. They're a bunch of anti-birth control, anti-middle class, anti-secularist, anti-evolution, anti-science, climate change denialists who have been completely bought and sold by their corporate fundraisers. They hate the President with a passion and are willing to disrupt government and jeopardize the welfare of the people just to prevent him from getting any serious bills passed because they don't want him to leave the White House with a positive legacy. Any time you hear a republican sound off on science, sexuality or economics you can almost guarantee that you're going to be hearing something profoundly idiotic.

Republicans have two dead heroes that they love to put up on a pedestal and idolize: Ronald Reagan and Jesus Christ. And what makes these two icons of the republican part so odd, is that if you really look at what each of them did and said, it is antithetical to their primary agenda. While the hypocrisy is astounding, it's what you'd expect from an anti-intellectual party.

Let's look at former President Ronald Reagan, the political icon of the republican party, who all party members must speak about with the utmost admiration. Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times when he was in office, he gave blanket amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, he traded arms with terrorists, he nearly tripled the federal deficit, and he increased the size of government. Reagan wouldn't even be able to win a primary in today's republican party because he'd be too far to the left. And yet, republicans have this image of Reagan as the ideal president - a model for every future republican with presidential aspirations. But his record clearly deviates from the modern script the party has devised today. Reagan was willing to compromise, he was sometimes willing to do the right thing and get government moving by finding a middle ground between his party's ideology and the left's. Compromise has become a dirty word today in the republican party and as a result we've got a congress that is the least productive in history.

Friday, January 31, 2014

I'd Be Scared To Be A Republican

The republicans are losing the American public on almost every front. They're clinging desperately to outdated morality from bygone eras in the wide-eyed hopes that they will one day become the cultural and political paradigms again. But here's a news flash: we are never going back to those "puritan" times that republicans fantasize about. Ever. The momentum of the culture is rapidly swinging against their favor and it's hopelessly naive to not recognize this. Younger Americans are even changing their mind on socialism, with almost half of 18-29 year olds viewing it favorably, according to a new Pew survey. So if you're a staunchly conservative republican who supports "traditional marriage," unfettered capitalism, and you're against contraception, abortion and secularism, your demographic is shriveling up like an old man with shrinkage.

If I were a conservative or a republican, I'd be really scared of these trends. The big money spent to brainwash the masses via the likes of Fox News and World Net Daily will only go so far. It seems that the only way the republican agenda will be able to survive this massive cultural paradigm shift away from their values will be through the support of a handful of wealthy donors like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson. But as the republican base of older, rural, white Americans begins to die off, all that big money spending will increasingly become less and less effective. And republicans know this. So what we've seen in response are increasingly unfair tactics employed by the republicans to try and win elections. Jerrymandering is a prime example, but eventually none of it will be enough. When generation Y and X are in power, liberal values will be the norm, and those who are in support of conservative values will be all but shut out. They will be left to certain rural districts of the country and could disappear from the radar altogether as this century marches onward. What we'd see would be the death of the far right, replaced by a moderate conservative wing, resembling something like today's libertarian party e.g. liberal social values coupled with conservative economic policies.

As a liberal, I of course see this all as something immensely positive, especially after surviving the hellish ordeal of the Bush years. But I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a republican today - that is to say, a republican who isn't insulated in the bubble and who thinks that the party is doing just fine and that any day now we'll just start repealing all the liberal advances society has made thus far. To be a republican who lives in reality must be a scary thing.

That said, the future looks good for liberalism, at least in the West, but we've still got plenty of struggle ahead.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Perhaps The Most Pressing Issue Of Our Day

Believe it or not, I don't think that the threat from religious fundamentalism is the most pressing issue of our day. Although it's an important issue that needs to be addressed, the destruction of the middle and working class by big business, Wall Street, and the politicians they've bribed to facilitate their agendas is the most pressing issue we face in America today. Millions are negatively impacted by the economic policies and the tax policies we have that are skewed in favor of almost exclusively benefiting the rich and the ultra rich, and making a decent living has never been harder.

The cost of everything is going up while middle class wages from the year 2000 has even gone down when adjusted for inflation. Almost all the new wealth that has been generated since the economic meltdown in 2008 has gone to the top 1 percent - to the very people who essentially screwed up the economy in the first place. And college tuition has been rising over three times the rate of inflation while job prospects for recent graduates are bleak.

There has never been a time in recent memory when the gap between the wealthy and the middle class has been so wide, with such a callous disregard for those who are struggling.

And the rich simply don't seem to care. They're living it up while everyone else sees their take home pay eroded away by rising costs of living. The thing is, the rich today don't need the middle class as they once did. They don't need manufacturers making anything. Those jobs could either be outsourced to cheaper labor markets or done by machines. And they don't need the purchasing power of the middle class anymore. The rich can make their money in the financial services industry - a pseudo-economy that doesn't make or produce anything, and that mostly caters to and benefits those who are already wealthy. It essentially just cashes in on (often) risky investments and financial speculations often at the expense of worker's jobs and benefits. Should these investments go awry, as they did, tax payers will be standing by ready to bail them out because Wall Street's got most of our politicians in their back pockets. And banks are in the business of coming up with convoluted schemes to trick people out of their hard earned money. There are literally people in the financial services and banking industry who sit around in board rooms and think of elaborate schemes to fuck people over, and out of their money because we don't make or produce anything anymore and now our economy is propped up on the exploitation of unsuspecting workers.

It makes me sick.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Is Capitalism A Sin?

There was a scene in Michael Moore's 2009 documentary Capitalism: A Love Story when he sits down with a Catholic Priest and asks him if capitalism is a sin. The Priest responds saying the practice of capitalism as it is today, is a sin and is contrary to what is moral and what is for the common good. Was the Priest actually right? Is today's incarnation of capitalism immoral?

I've written about my views on capitalism before. I'm a compassionate capitalist as I say, because without the element of compassion, capitalism is unnecessarily cruel and immoral. There is new episode of Frontline on PBS about the financial crisis of 2008 when the mortgage bubble burst triggering the Great Recession and  it investigates how over four years later, there hasn't been a single prosecution and conviction of anyone involved. Many people feel that the banks involved with the mortgage crisis were fraudulently responsible for the fallout, and that top executives should have been criminally charged at the very least.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Wouldn't it have been great if those knowingly responsible for the mortgage crisis were convicted and sent to jail along with your common ordinary criminals?

Bankers don't particularly score very high for me on the sympathy scale. I've worked on Wall Street before so I know their general mentality. Most of them are not particularly religious although some may say that they believe in god at some level. Opportunistic theists will seize on the lack of moral and legal accountability on Wall Street and say it's another example of the problems that are the result of our secular culture. (Although conservatives who tend to be more religious seem to be against regulation as the very thought of it conjures up nightmares of socialism.) Perhaps there are many Wall Street execs who feel that they're above the law and that they're heading banks they think that are too big to fail and too big to jail.

Some people theorize that CEOs and execs tend to be charismatic sociopaths who care not at all for the millions of lives their decisions can sometimes ruin. I think at some level there is a culture of sociopathy in the corporate world. When profit is put up so high on a pedestal, the common good down below is out of view. I don't propose invoking the fear of god and all the baggage that comes along with it as a cure, but a culture where compassion is emphasized will help reduce the problems associated with the mindless narcissistic indulgences. Legal accountability and regulation will help also.

All we really need to do is once again have an economy primarily based on producing real tangible goods and real services to real human beings along with clean energy standards, where a getting-filthy-rich-as-soon-as-possible-by-any-means-necessary mentality is avoided because its harmfulness is recognized.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Why Secularism?

Debating with theists recently regarding opposing conceptions of government has lead me to ask the question: Why secularism? In other words, why do I believe in a secular government? Is secularism a religion unto itself? And is a secular government unfair to those who oppose it?

Secularism is defined as "the view that public education and other matters of civil policy should be conducted without the introduction of a religious element." Phrases like "the separation of church and state" are often evoked. Secularism is necessary in order to prevent laws from being passed that are based not on reason and science, but from a religious customs, traditions, rules and scripture. It it the absolutism of morality guided by revelation that I have such abhorrence for.

The idea is very simple: in a pluralistic society like the U.S., where many faiths are practiced, secularism becomes necessary to prevent laws from being passed and enforced onto people that are based on another person's religion. Most of us would not want to be forced to live under the rules of a religion that we do not hold, such as Islamic Sharia. Many people who are of a particular faith also do not want their religion's rules legislated onto them because they feel that many of their religion's obligations are a matter of personal observation. This is why secularism has been so successful in the West and continues to spread around the world.

As an atheist, I want to live in a society whose laws are rational and just, and based on reason and science. Religious laws sometimes enforce conduct that when examined through the light of reason and science, make little to no sense. For example, Jews and Muslims are forbidden to eat pork. Why? Because god says so. Now imagine a law forbidding pork from being served, regardless of whether you are a Jew, Muslim or not. "Because god says so" is not a justifiable way for a law to be passed, for reasons rather obvious to the atheist and theist alike. This also gets you into the problem of just whose god will it be whose commandments get inscribed into law. You will either have to have a national religion or some sort of religious partitioning that will usually lead to prolonged conflict. To prevent all of this, separating religion from government seems to be the obvious solution.

But the argument is far from over. Let's look at some issues made by some of those critical of secularism. Some claim that secularism is itself a religion, and that a secular government is merely one that has secularism as its state religion. It is certainly possible to define religion many ways. If religion is defined as to not include a deity, but to simply represent a system of beliefs, such as a political ideology, then one could twist out an argument that makes secularism look like an imposing force like so many theocracies today and of years past. The problem here, is that if you dilute the definition of religion to include any set of beliefs, then every belief could be come a religion. In other words, being a democrat or a republican can be your religion. Being a socialist or a capitalist can be your religion. So then under this diluted definition of religion, wouldn't our capitalist economy actually be a religion being imposed on every American, regardless of whether they agreed with it or not? All governments have to impose some system of rules and beliefs onto their citizens. It is just simply impossible to have a system so free that no one has anything ever imposed on them. That would lead to anarchy.

Now what about the person who opposes secularism? Are they being treated in a similar manner to how an atheist would be treated in a theocracy? In a theocracy, the atheist will have to be subjected to religious laws, at home and within the workplace. What they eat, who they can have sex with, how they can dress, whether they can drive or not, might be affected. They might have part of their income taken and given to the state religion, they might face penalties for not observing religious duties that could include jail time. They might not be able to speak out and criticize the state religion or the religion's leaders, with penalties ranging from fines to death. It might also be illegal to influence others with another religion or political ideology with similar penalties. A theocracy can force the believer and non believer alike to live as close as possible to the religion's rules, and this may include violations of some of the most basic of human rights.

Under modern secularism, those who wish to observe their religions can do so freely, so long as it does not violate common sense laws based on reason and science. So for example, if your religion allows the forced marriage of underage girls to older men, if it allows honor killing, or if it prevents various justified civil liberties, then the secular government will have to step in to prevent this. This is no more of a violation of one's religious freedom as it is a protection of other's rights. If your religion does not recognize these civil rights, let me remind you that all Abrahamic religions condone various forms of human slavery. So the emancipation of slaves in the American south under this argument would technically qualify as a secular government limiting the "rights" of slave holders to continue their practice of slavery. The moral problem we see when faced with religion is that as the forces of modernity, precipitated by morality guided by a deeper scientific understanding of reality, clashes with Iron Age ideas, we are increasingly seeing hostility in a culture war where the battle lines are drawn in our classrooms and bedrooms.

Freedom gives you choice; it gives you options. If you don't like gay marriage, don't have one; if you don't like abortion, don't have one; if you don't like eating broccoli, don't eat it; but do not prevent others from doing so. And if you are against any morality based on reason and science because it violates your religion, then mount an argument based on science and reason against it without appeal to scripture. Revelation just doesn't cut it as a valid argument.

Finally, I want to add that it is certainly possible that a secularist can become so fundamental that they begin acting like the theocrats in various oppressive regimes. When secularists start acting like adamant communists in their treatment of religious freedom, I oppose them as I would the theocratist. Freedom of conscious is fundamental and must remain so. So I guess therefore what I am really against is any system that stifles freedom, whether it be theocratic or secular. Modern liberal secular democracies offer us the best hope for a free society, with the most justified laws, based not on Iron Age "revelations" when human knowledge of the world was in its infancy, but by using the powers of science and reason. It is because of this that I regard secularism as the best political system.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Socialism--That Dirty Four Syllable Word

Let's be frank, all capitalist systems have in place aspects of socialism in them. It comes in the form of public schools, public libraries, public roads and transportation, public health coverage for seniors and the disabled, and so on. When it comes to healthcare, the U.S. is sharply divided on the role government should play.

Now I am no expert on healthcare or the economy, but I just for a moment want to ramble on with my two cents in the argument. If you've read my previous blogs, you'll know that I'm a leftist when it comes to economics and that is true when it comes to healthcare too. I am for government offering healthcare to all its citizens and here's how I think healthcare should be run in America.

For those happily covered through their own private insurers, they can stay with their providers. I don't have a problem with that. For the forty or so million Americans lacking health insurance, either because they're unemployed, their employer doesn't provide it, they cannot afford it, or they are young and healthy enough and they feel they don't need it, government should provide an opt-in single payer medicare for all type option.

It will go like this: If I'm employed and my employer doesn't provide health insurance, and buying private insurance is not affordable, the government will offer me a cheaper option and the premiums will be taken out as a slight tax increase. The overall increase in money that I will be paying through my taxes, will not be as much as even the cheapest private healthcare, and of course there would be no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions. Imagine a 2 or 3% increase in taxes, to pay for government provided health insurance. It could be far less cheaper than private insurance.

Now let's say I'm unemployed and lack healthcare and cannot afford to purchase private insurance. In this case government will provide it for free. The money will come from those employed paying into the system like I just mentioned above, along with (1) an increase on taxes for the wealthiest Americans by letting the Bush Tax cuts expire, (2) raising taxes on capital gains to 25%,  and (3) aggressively closing tax loopholes that the wealthy often exploit. The costs would also be balanced by cutting government subsidies to large corporations, having either cuts or a budget stabilization of the defense budget and new tax revenue gained from the purchase and sales of legalized marijuana. Other budget cuts on frivolous or bad performing government programs to save money will certainly also be considered. 

The payoff is that when people are covered, and are provided free preventative screenings, it will offset the more expensive costs when people show up in the emergency room with extensively progressed diseases. There will also be an incentive program where if people attend annual screenings they can get deductions on their premiums that are paid through taxes.

Now what if a person is gainfully employed and decides not to buy private health insurance or opt into the government option? Well they can be forced to pay the premiums they would have paid if they had opted into the program, with perhaps a penalty added to discourage those who think they'll just take their chances and not buy any insurance while thinking the government will just pick up the tab when they get sick.

One argument against government run healthcare is that it will put private healthcare out of business because they won't be able to compete with the government's subsidized costs. Well, I think a little competition will be great for recipients if their healthcare providers had to compete. First, the government will be insuring those that private insurers will already not be covering. Second if the program is run well enough that it makes people leave their private insurers for what the government provides, then they will simply have to lower their prices and/or offer better services to compete. I am not crazy about for-profit healthcare in the first place. Capitalism is the reason why we have such a broken healthcare system in this country, not socialism.

Do I believe in the mandates that other public options such as Romneycare and Obamacare speak about? To be honest, government mandates scare me a little. I don't like the idea of government forcing anyone to buy anything. But government forces drivers to buy car insurance. Why? Because every driver is in a system in which an accident is always possible. No driver can be absolutely sure an accident will not happen. Likewise, every person by virtue or their existence is in a system whereby they cannot be guarantee that they will never become sick or develop a disease. So much like how every driver must be forced to buy car insurance, because if there is not mandate, many will simply opt to take the risk, in theory, all people should be forced into having some kind of healthcare coverage.

With healthcare it is a little different though. If I am not able to afford car insurance, I could in some areas of this country, choose not to drive and therefore exempt myself from the pool of potential car accidents creators. With healthcare, I have no choice to opt out of any potential pool since my very existence makes me a candidate. I therefore do not believe in a government mandate because we have millions of people out of work who simply cannot afford healthcare and have no choice to exist in a pool of those who might need medical care. I really do believe that healthcare is a right, and that it should not depend on whether your employer provides it, or whether you can afford it. Thus, above I propose that everyone not covered be placed into a collective pool so that if they do get sick or would simply like a doctors visit, that will be provided free of charge, so long as they cannot afford it.

The individualist's opposition to this, who doesn't want a single penny of his taxes taken from him to go toward's anyone else's healthcare, must stop taking all aide that government provides, including public roads, schools, grants, mail, and defense. They must hire their own private military, police force, build and maintain their own private roads, schools, colleges, and programs that regulate everything from food to disease to air safety. Or else, they should shut the fuck up. If you're already willing to have tax dollars cover programs designed for the greater good, why wouldn't universal healthcare be one of them? We spend 16% of our GDP on healthcare, more than any other industrialized nation that provides universal coverage, and we get some of the worst results from it back.

It is actually a very Christian thing to do if you take the words of Jesus Christ. Jesus healed the sick, even those with preexisting conditions, and championed the poor. I cannot imagine that the philosophy of Jesus, whether he existed or not, would be compatible with the hard right individualism of Republicans and Libertarians. It completely goes against Jesus' world views on the care for the poor, which is clearly in line with collectivism, and is actually socialist.

So there you have it. I'm no expert on healthcare or economics but I know that the status quo is not sustainable. We need healthcare reform and we need aspects of socialism to provide what private industry is not willing to do because it is not profitable. That's my two cents on healthcare reform and it is subject to change at any time if and when new facts are discovered.


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