Half of millennials would rather live under socialism and communism

[Vlad]

(11-03-2017, 05:25 PM)Dill Wrote: Not supposed to look at it that way.  Repeat this now 25 times: Mao killed 60 million of his own people.

That argument has been to counter lefties who claim that more atrocities have been committed in the name of religion.
Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Idi Amin murdered millions not in the name of religion.

[JustWinBaby]

(11-03-2017, 10:23 PM)Dill Wrote: ...since I don't think dictating margins is really effectively controlling a business still privately owned and reaping, for the most part, immense private profit.

Price controls are HORRIBLE (which is basically what you're arguing when you talk about dictating margins), far worse than excessive regulation.  Investors require a return on their capital - you can't just look at the dollars and say a company is making too much money.  People rail about insurance companies.  Those are GIANT companies with tens, hundreds of billions in revenues and tiny margins @3% (half of which comes from investment gains on reserves).

A strong economy is one where the govt is ensuring fair play/competition and NOT putting it's thumb on the scale to pick winners and losers.

If you want to kill innovation and growth at my business, then go ahead and dictate what my margins should be.  You may not be making day-to-day decisions at my business, but excessive regulations and price controls absolutely IS interfering with those decisions.  That IS modern socialism - you're putting your thumb on the scale to effect outcomes just the same as if you were calling those shots yourself.

[StLucieBengal]

(11-06-2017, 01:48 PM)GMDino Wrote: To each their own.  When my kids see people treating others badly I want them to speak up and "label" the dbag/racist/sexist/whatever.

My kids will look out for yours. 

Labeling people will do nothing. Only actions make a difference.

[BmorePat87]

https://victimsofcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/YouGov-VOC-2017-for-Media-Release-November-2-2017-final.pdf

The "heroes" question combined "personal hero", "hero to [the historical figure's] country", and "hero to the world". I would have to answer that Castro and Mao are seen as heroes in their home countries. They're not my heroes nor do I think they're heroes to the world, but they're heroes in the eyes of most in their home countries.

They also found that millennials are less favorable of communist leaders than they were last year.

Only 7% want to live in Communism. 44% want socialism while 42% want Capitalism. 70% can't correctly define socialism and 53% think the current system works against them. Considering everything Democrats do is called "socialism", it's not hard to believe people associate generic progressive policies as socialist in nature.

[Belsnickel]

(11-06-2017, 01:57 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: https://victimsofcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/YouGov-VOC-2017-for-Media-Release-November-2-2017-final.pdf

The "heroes" question combined "personal hero", "hero to [the historical figure's] country", and "hero to the world". I would have to answer that Castro and Mao are seen as heroes in their home countries. They're not my heroes nor do I think they're heroes to the world, but they're heroes in the eyes of most in their home countries.

They also found that millennials are less favorable of communist leaders than they were last year.

Only 7% want to live in Communism. 44% want socialism while 42% want Capitalism. 70% can't correctly define socialism and 53% think the current system works against them. Considering everything Democrats do is called "socialism", it's not hard to believe people associate generic progressive policies as socialist in nature.

Stop trying to read things critically and apply logic, Pat.

[StLucieBengal]

(11-06-2017, 01:57 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: https://victimsofcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/YouGov-VOC-2017-for-Media-Release-November-2-2017-final.pdf

The "heroes" question combined "personal hero", "hero to [the historical figure's] country", and "hero to the world". I would have to answer that Castro and Mao are seen as heroes in their home countries. They're not my heroes nor do I think they're heroes to the world, but they're heroes in the eyes of most in their home countries.

They also found that millennials are less favorable of communist leaders than they were last year.

Only 7% want to live in Communism. 44% want socialism while 42% want Capitalism. 70% can't correctly define socialism and 53% think the current system works against them. Considering everything Democrats do is called "socialism", it's not hard to believe people associate generic progressive policies as socialist in nature.

Aren’t progressive policies just steps down the path towards socialism.

The path goes like this .... progressivism to socialism to communism. The gov just keep centralizing power and control.

[Benton]

(11-06-2017, 02:24 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Aren’t progressive policies just steps down the path towards socialism.  

The path goes like this .... progressivism to socialism to communism.   The gov just keep centralizing power and control.

Which is exactly what it's done with 3 to 4 decades of American Conservative policies.

Maybe America's two major parties are just two sides of the same coin?

[StLucieBengal]

(11-06-2017, 02:38 PM)Benton Wrote: Which is exactly what it's done with 3 to 4 decades of American Conservative policies.

Maybe America's two major parties are just two sides of the same coin?

Which I have said repeatedly. The last conservative President we had was Calvin Coolidge. Reagan was as close as we have gotten and helped get taxes down but everyone else has been a progressive. Republicans and democrats.

When you elect progressives you get progressive policies. The uniparty is killing us all. Which is why I hope the establishment gop move toward he dems. which coincidently do not want them either.

[BmorePat87]

(11-06-2017, 02:24 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Aren’t progressive policies just steps down the path towards socialism.  

The path goes like this .... progressivism to socialism to communism.   The gov just keep centralizing power and control.

On the spectrum, yea it heads in that direction. In practice, it's just mixed market policies that lean left while most Conservative policies are mixed market that lean right. There's no free market capitalism in this country. 

[Dill]

(11-06-2017, 01:49 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Price controls are HORRIBLE (which is basically what you're arguing when you talk about dictating margins), far worse than excessive regulation.  Investors require a return on their capital - you can't just look at the dollars and say a company is making too much money.  People rail about insurance companies.  Those are GIANT companies with tens, hundreds of billions in revenues and tiny margins @3% (half of which comes from investment gains on reserves).

A strong economy is one where the govt is ensuring fair play/competition and NOT putting it's thumb on the scale to pick winners and losers.

If you want to kill innovation and growth at my business, then go ahead and dictate what my margins should be.  You may not be making day-to-day decisions at my business, but excessive regulations and price controls absolutely IS interfering with those decisions.  That IS modern socialism - you're putting your thumb on the scale to effect outcomes just the same as if you were calling those shots yourself.

I wasn't thinking specifically of price controls, but of a range of government actions--taxes, minimum wages, evironmental and safety controls, subsidies, and the like. 

 People certainly do criticize corporations when they keep wages low and send ever higher percentages to CEOs.
But no one in North America or Europe looks at a company and just says "you are making to much money."

Business people constantly say regulations and price controls and taxes kill business, whether they are regulated or not. But which are the "strong economies" in the world today? Which have been for the last two or three decades? I wonder if any of those governments are "picking winners and losers"?

So you are defining socialism as "interfering" with business decisions--not public ownership of the means of production?  I just don't see any analytical advantage to defining socialism that way.  If the government forbids you from dumping chemicals into a local river they are certainly "calling the shots" in this one limited area that concerns public safety and interfering with your profit margins. But they still don't own your business. 

If a policeman tells me to park my car over there rather than over here at a Steelers game then he is interfering with my decision, but it doesn't mean he owns my car now just because he called the shots  in the name of the public in that one instance.

[StLucieBengal]

(11-06-2017, 03:30 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: On the spectrum, yea it heads in that direction. In practice, it's just mixed market policies that lean left while most Conservative policies are mixed market that lean right. There's no free market capitalism in this country. 

True conservatism is as close as we can get. What you are referring to as “conservative” is nothing more than progressivism under the GOP banner. Which has always been a problem.

[JustWinBaby]

(11-06-2017, 03:46 PM)Dill Wrote: So you are defining socialism as "interfering" with business decisions--not public ownership of the means of production?  I just don't see any analytical advantage to defining socialism that way.

No, I'm pointing out you don't have to actually call the shots to control how business is done.  I'm saying the far end of taxes and regulation is indistinguishable from socialism.  As you move further down that spectrum, you are moving toward socialism whether you intend to actually own the business or not.

Same way a Board doesn't have to call the day-to-day shots to largely determine the direction of a business.  Or alternatively you can call the shots yourself OR you can create incentives (or disincentives) to have the "right" decisions made.

Do you think single payer is not socialism just because the govt isn't telling a business how to operate day-to-day?  Do you honestly believe when the govt is both regulator and sole buyer that the industry is still effectively "private"?

[Dill]

(11-06-2017, 04:37 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: No, I'm pointing out you don't have to actually call the shots to control how business is done.  I'm saying the far end of taxes and regulation is indistinguishable from socialism.  As you move further down that spectrum, you are moving toward socialism whether you intend to actually own the business or not.

Same way a Board doesn't have to call the day-to-day shots to largely determine the direction of a business.  Or alternatively you can call the shots yourself OR you can create incentives (or disincentives) to have the "right" decisions made.

Do you think single payer is not socialism just because the govt isn't telling a business how to operate day-to-day?  Do you honestly believe when the govt is both regulator and sole buyer that the industry is still effectively "private"?

I agree with you about the "spectrum" of control, along which there is indeed a point at which private ownership becomes virtually null. And government policies may certainly move "towards" socialism--without yet being socialist.

In my view of that spectrum, public ownership is still the essential determining criterion for calling governments and policies "socialist." So far as I know, there are no examples of virtual public control still called "private ownership."  Even receivership won't qualify. 

Even Milton Friedman agreed there were some policy areas in which ONLY government could sensibly call the shots. Socializing the costs of the military armament, for example, did not, for him, push the US towards socialism.  But even that limited "socialism" was a far cry from how costs in East Germany or the Soviet Union were socialized--where governments not only socialized the costs of armament through taxation but ACTUALLY OWNED the factories which produced their arms. That all important structural feature of their (socialist) economies disappears when people start calling every little bit of US government oversight "socialism."

There can be reasonable arguments about what gets included in that category of "best left to government" or some hybrid of public and private. I guess where we disagree is whether it makes sense to call some government control--usually to prevent monopolies, fraud, or health costs to the general population--"ownership" and "dictating margins" to the point where the S-word makes sense as a descriptor. 

Not sure how single-payer popped into this.  One program, single payer healthcare, does not a socialist country make any more than a socialized military, especially when all the single payer "caring" is still done by private practitioners.
Also government is the regulator and (almost) sole buyer for the US military arms industry, which, yes, is still effectively "private." 

[Fan_in_Kettering]

The other half have jobs.

[Dill]

(11-06-2017, 12:58 PM)Vlad Wrote: That argument has been to counter lefties who claim that more atrocities have been committed in the name of religion.
Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Idi Amin murdered millions not in the name of religion.

Not many leftists think Mao and Stalin murdered millions.  

Leftists sometimes recall how religion has hindered the progress of science and of economic development in many countries, and they recall the religious wars which have wracked Europe and the Middle East to argue that religion is an insufficient answer to the problems of modernity.  But so far as I know they don't count bodies and then claim their side has fewer and is therefore better.  That is the stuff of US social media.