By the way people bandy the above words in their belief systems, it seems pretty obvious that most do not have a clue what those words really mean. Here is an unedited reproduction of the definition of socialism from the Merriam Webster Dictionary:
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Then there is the Bernie Sanders version, democratic socialism, “in which extensive state regulation, with limited state ownership, has been employed by democratically elected governments (as in Sweden and Denmark) in the belief that it produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth.” Merriam Webster. Communism is the violent imposition of socialism, often depicted as a class-struggle, in which the purists almost always become vicious and self-aggrandizing leaders, usually under brutally repressive regimes.
According to Wikipedia, social programs “are welfare programs designed to ensure that the basic needs of the American population are met. Federal and state welfare programs include cash assistance, healthcare and medical provisions, food assistance, housing subsidies, energy and utilities subsidies, education and childcare assistance, and subsidies and assistance for other basic services. Similar social welfare benefits are sometimes provided by the private sector either through policy mandates or on a voluntary basis. Employer-sponsored health insurance is an example of this.” This would include programs such as public education, Social Security and Medicare. Most of the main democracies today are heavily laced with social programs if not becoming actual social democracies. Doesn’t seem to be so terrible for those nations.
Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.” And if you understand all of the tax loopholes applicable to those with money, from the “carried interest rule” (where fund managers are treated to lower capital gains rates even when they invested no capital!) to accelerated depreciation and depletion allowances (generating big write off for government-incented investments), you know for a fact that the United States is anything but a truly capitalist economy.
It gets worse with farm subsidies or the Trump administration’s giving money to soybean farmers for lost business due to trade wars with China or bail outs “too big to fail” financial institutions and even two of the big three US automakers. That sounds a whole lot more like “corporate socialism” than capitalism!
When you look at the fundamental schism between Republican and Democratic visions of social economic structure, it actually does not come down to a battle between socialism and capitalism. A genuine examination simply places favoring big business at the expense of everyone else – by granting tax loopholes, providing subsidies and lucrative contracts, eliminating costly regulations that guarantee clean air and water or protect consumers from corporate manipulation and simply deploying that go-to, never works, mythological “supply-side/trickle down” economic theory that if you give the rich even more money, they will immediately hire more people and raise worker pay. It’s never happened, but it has a nice sound to it: a rising tide floats all boats. They forget that most of us don’t actually have boats!
Like that big Trump/GOP tax cut, which continues to generate a trillion-dollar annual hit to our growing deficit… when it was supposed to pay for itself. Here’s what I presented in my Benefits of the Great New Economy – Illusory or Selective? May 31, 2019 blog on that subject: Even a neutral Congressional research report suggests that Donald Trump’s much-“self”-touted 2017 massive tax cut legislation as having grown only our deficit. “You may remember all the glowing predictions made for the December 2017 tax cuts by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration: Wages would soar for the rank-and-file, corporate investments would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves.
“The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has just published a deep dive into the economic impact of the cuts in their first year, and emerges from the water with a different picture. The CRS finds that the cuts have had virtually no effect on wages, haven’t contributed to a surge in investment and haven’t come close to paying for themselves. Nor have they delivered a cut to the average taxpayer…
“Corporate shareholders, however, have made out great. The repatriated earnings mostly have been used for ‘a record-breaking amount of stock buybacks, with $1 trillion announced by the end of 2018.’ As the CRS notes tactlessly, the same phenomenon occurred in 2004, when a one-time tax holiday allowed companies to bring back earnings stashed abroad at a lower rate. That tax holiday had been promoted as a spur to investment and wage growth too. Never happened.
“Indeed, government statistics show that shareholder dividends fairly exploded in the first quarter of 2018, immediately following the tax cut enactment, while reinvestments of those repatriated funds cratered. (Both figures returned to levels close to their historical averages soon afterward.)” Michael Hiltzik writing for the May 30th Los Angeles Times.
It is frustrating to read what seems to have become the Republican manifesto: “socialism” is anything or any party we want to defeat. They never ever use the word correctly. And by misusing the word, they want to conflate their opponents with the communist brutes pictured above without the slightest genuine justification. If the push just a little harder, they might come to realize that the teachings of Jesus Christ were a whole lot more “socialist” than “capitalist.” Hmmm!
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is amazing what a little reading and use of a dictionary can produce!
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