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You are changing the goal post, before you spoke of "the left" which includes a large spectrum of political thinking which only a small part of which is anti-capitalist. Now, you are entirely focusing on socialism....
Furthermore, saying that something is "widely accept" doesn't actually establishment anything. That seems to be your only support here, namely, the belief that this is something "widely accepted".
Okay, I'm guilty of using generally accepted terminology and historical evaluations to make my point. I hope have also made clear that I recognize the difficulty in decisively labeling countries or economic systems.
The principles you are expounding are far to detrimental to be laughed at.
No, I'm saying that social programs that aren't funded properly and that don't acknowledge human nature are doomed to fail.
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Good Lord. If a social program is not funded properly, is that a fatal philosophical defect in the social program? A puppy is doomed to failure if not fed properly---that is not an argument that the organism cannot possibly prosper.
Since when is it a violation of human nature to feel empathy for the unfortunate and share some of the wealth with those who have little? I don't know a single human, besides you, who exhibits that nature.
Good Lord. If a social program is not funded properly, is that a fatal philosophical defect in the social program? A puppy is doomed to failure if not fed properly---that is not an argument that the organism cannot possibly prosper.
A social program that cannot be funded properly is philosophically defective. If you put a Chihuahua's mouth on a St. Bernard, the St. Bernard is going to die of starvation.
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Since when is it a violation of human nature to feel empathy for the unfortunate and share some of the wealth with those who have little? I don't know a single human, besides you, who exhibits that nature.
It is not a violation of human nature to feel empathy, but it is a violation of human nature to believe that an impersonal institution can feel empathy. Do you think that the machine that prints out government welfare checks every month feels empathy?
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Medicare is "far too detrimental"?
When it does not control costs and in fact contributes to high costs of health care, and when it is underfunded, and when people don't believe that that they will get out of it what they put into it, and when there is a great deal of mismanagement and corruption and lack of oversight, etc....yes, it is far too detrimental.
In my apartment complex, I know the following people:
- Engineers for Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Google, and other high tech firms
- Clerks working at a bank, the office workers who run the logistics and make sure that everything is working smoothly (for example, a tech runs a script I wrote for Excel to update metrics for the managers because managers love metrics but I can't be bothered to do it endlessly, I only have to make sure the output makes sense)
- Machinist who runs a CNC machine. He basically plugs in a CAD drawing made by an engineer into the machine, it plots out what it needs to cut and where automatically, he tests it on foam core first to make sure it is safe and effective, then he hits "go".
- I know a guy who writes apps for the iPhone and the Android phones, and sustains himself on that alone plus working an odd job at a supermarket because he "can't just write code all day"
- A couple other jobs ... one a massage therapist, the other a student, and one a martial arts instructor, and one retired guy.
In other words, our output of information and goods has increased while the physical output required for it has dropped. To keep up, we have to keep working at it.
Sweden? Norway? Oppressive lives that cater to the lowest common denominator. And higher suicide rates. Talk to some of the guys I know who moved here. They were tired of everything over there being so damn hard to do.
Someone really needs to update her knowledge base....
A social program that cannot be funded properly is philosophically defective. If you put a Chihuahua's mouth on a St. Bernard, the St. Bernard is going to die of starvation.
It is not a violation of human nature to feel empathy, but it is a violation of human nature to believe that an impersonal institution can feel empathy. Do you think that the machine that prints out government welfare checks every month feels empathy?
When it does not control costs and in fact contributes to high costs of health care, and when it is underfunded, and when people don't believe that that they will get out of it what they put into it, and when there is a great deal of mismanagement and corruption and lack of oversight, etc....yes, it is far too detrimental.
Your perception of everything is horribly misinformed, you need to start your thought process over again. "Once you've missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up." ---Goethe
First of all, you have not demonstrated that the programs cannot be funded properly. Only that they ARE not funded properly. There is plenty of wealth and assets in the American economy to fund whatever we choose to fund, we just choose to fund vandalistic and genocidal wars iand huge windfalls for profiteers, nstead of human wellbeing.
Welfare in America is not the machine that you imagine, printing checks. It is an organized body of people who possess training in the social sciences, who genuinely care about other human beings, and evaluate their need for social assistance, and make judgments about which applicants have a justifiable entitlement. Yes, they are empathetic, but also imperfect, not because they are incompetent and machinelike uncaring, but because they are overworked and short staffed, thanks to influential people who think money is better spent on looking under beds for terrorists and attacking the effects rather than the causes of social ills, rather than attacking the gruesome effects of poverty being multiplied generation after generation. Just because you have no empathy and regard sociology as a machine, don't attribute your personal shortcomings to everyone in the social system. There are governmental social workers who cry themselves to sleep at night, because bureaucrats force them to follow your mindless flow-chart bean-counting mentality in the performance of their duties. They are underpaid and overworked precisely because the system is not corrupt, and the intended benefits really do go to those in need, and not the fat opulent administrators, like in the private sector.
The real culprit in escalating the cost of health is PRIVATE insurance That is where there is no oversight, not Medicare or Medicaid. Where is the "good management" in the private sector of health care, where good management is defined as inflating costs in order to maximize the gains of its shareholders, without a care in the world for the good of the patients who get sucked along in the profiteering whirlpool? Please don't act surprised that the only non-socialized medical system in the western world is by far the most wasteful and the most expensive and whose users are the most unhealthy, with what would be laughably short life expectancies and comical obesity rates, if they weren't so tragic.
What you so quickly and glibly overlook is that every penny that is distributed by the government on medicare, welfare, food stamps, relief, is immediately turned around and spent on goods and services produced by the private sector, creating jobs and more importantly, profits for shareholders.
People like you love to throw the word "corruption" around and attribute it as a cause for everything that doesn't benefit your personal aspirations. Please define "corruption" and explain to me how it militates against effective American social services. This is a serious question, and if you continue to use the word, I want to know how it is being applied.
On the flip side of this my dad always wondered why there were so many people out on the road during the day. Shouldn't they be at work?
LOL, that was me. I commute to the city by train, and sometimes there are errands to be run that you just can't do on the weekends. When I'd take a day off, I'd expect that during weekdays there would be less traffic and fewer people at the DMV or the bank or whatever, but nooooo, there are apparently all these non-working people out there who just drive around aimlessly all day getting in my way.
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