Does the fact that we are now COMMUNIST mean that the Russians won the Cold War?

[calmdude]

Russia lost the cold war. Completely unrelated to it, we are in the process of maiming ourselves. Our country's powerful help our country's rich and this cycle seems to be tough to break.

[KRAMERCAT]

We are not Communist, we are a Plutocracy. The super-wealthy pull the strings, and the common folk get jerked, to-and-fro, like mindless puppets.

[Ever Adrift]

As many other posters have already noted here, the notion that we are becoming communist is completely absurd and betrays a complete lack of understanding as to what communism as a political-economic system entails. Part of the problem being identified by posters here is that the rich seem to have better legal protection than the rest of us; this is more akin to plutocracy than anything else. If we were becoming more communist then income inequality would be decreasing, not increasing; communism implies that all citizens are members of the same economic class (in other words, all people have the same income, there are no poor people, there are no rich people). Unregulated capitalism, or a capitalist system in which policy is created by corporations and the rich, can lead to plutocratic systems in which the rich stay rich while the poor stay poor.

Ironically, while the original poster lamented this as a move towards communism, the solution for this problem is to... you guessed it, move towards communism! Or, more realistically some form of socialism. I consider myself to be a social democrat; I support social democracy as an ideal form of government and economic system. I believe that the government should provide all people with adequate healthcare, education, social security, etc. I also believe that the markets should be allowed to operate freely, within reason. Regulation is needed to 'cure' the excesses of unbridled capitalism. Regulation will keep anyone from becoming too rich or any corporation from becoming too powerful. I won't get into specifics, but I will say that the stigma placed on the concept of socialism in the USA has been part of the reason why plutocracy has become so entrenched. Anytime policies that would reduce income inequality and empower the lower and middle classes are proposed, the rich cry socialism and the policies fail to be implemented.