Good point.

In the 1940's in Memphis, Tennessee a black officer caught a white man raping a black woman. At that time since the officer was black he could not arrest a white man. The police captain came to the scene then drives the white man home with no charges.

This thread is just another Stormfront instructed attempt to promote their racist and hateful agendas. The "socialism" charge is aimed at the black man in the White House...nothing more.

Don't be fooled people....if we have socialism it's already here with Corporate Socialism. Look at the special interest in this election year: Big Corp is trying to buy our country outright...as if they don't already own most of it.

Screw them.

Of course, all those white women lied. Those rape stupid rape victims and their lying ways!

This is definitely worth the read people. If you really love this country you will read this.

http://www.nikitas3.com/10_ways_that_liberal_socialism_m.htm

As economic systems, capitalism and socialism are opposites and each claims to be superior. Capitalism adheres to the natural laws of economics, the center of which is supply and demand which says that when the supply drops or the demand rises, the cost of a product will rise; and when supply rises or demand falls, prices will fall.

Of course politicians may seek to ameliorate the effects of the natural laws of economics, but that does not make supply and demand any less real, just as you cannot contravene the law of gravity by making an apple float in the air.

Ultimately a free economy will right itself on its own while politicians, using government edicts, may make things better in the short run, but always make things worse in the long run. This was demonstrated in the late 1920s after the stock market crashed.

In a panic, the government, under enormous public pressure, cut off free trade under the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act by imposing heavy taxes (a socialist idea) on imports. This slowed down international trade and killed millions of jobs in America.

These taxes were ‘protectionist’ measures that liberals always use to ‘protect’ jobs,

when in fact the overall result was to kill jobs, as it is today. When foreign governments in the 1930s retaliated with tariffs of their own on American imports, the whole world economy slowed down.

Second, in the wake of the stock market crash, the government imposed big tax increases on business and on wealthy Americans in order to get more money for the government.

Yet any capitalist will tell you that taxing people is the quickest way to slow down an economy. And the great depression of the 1930s was the biggest slowdown in American history.

Third, the Federal Reserve shrank the money supply by one-third in the wake of the crash. The Federal Reserve is part of the government. So another stupid action by the government caused the great depression to happen.

*raising taxes on business and individuals (liberal idea), and

*allowing the Federal Reserve (the government acting stupidly) to act in a haphazard manner to shrink the money supply, these elements combined like a ‘perfect storm’ to cause the economic collapse of the 1930s.

Then FDR, elected in 1932, said he was going to make everything better by hiring people with government money for make-work jobs like building highways and bridges to nowhere. Yet unemployment was higher in 1938 than it was in 1932!

So socialism started it, then lengthened and deepened the depression. If the economy had been left alone, it would have righted itself and the depression never would have happened.

So much for socialism.

Socialists claim that capitalism is unfair and exploitative, while capitalism says that socialism taxes people unfairly and favors the transfer of wealth from productive people to unproductive ones, i.e., that socialism is unfair and exploitative.

At many places on this website, Nikitas3.com has pointed out the superiority of capitalism. And to look at world history, all of the prosperous and productive societies have had open-market capitalist economies with free trade within and without. And all the destitute societies that could have been prosperous - like the Soviet Union and communist China - have been operated on socialistic ideas. The capitalist island of Taiwan, a breakaway nation formed by fleeing Chinese when communism came to mainland China, has a living standard as high as anywhere in the world.

Capitalism, of course, needs to be regulated. Even George Washington said that. To have an economic system without some regulations would be the same as having a society without criminal laws. Chaos would reign because there always are people who will push the limit of what is allowed for their own benefit.

Socialism, on the other hand, it not a natural system at all, but is a contrived man-made system with all its rules and regulations set by politicians. And thus it is bound to fail because every time socialism finds an imbalance, it seeks to correct it with more laws and taxes and regulations. There is no natural system for regulating socialism. A contrived system can only be regulated by more contrivances. And when politicians seek to correct an economic shortcoming through socialist means, they always come up with a worse solution because they always put personal interests first.

So a good, regulated form of capitalism is far superior to any form of socialism for one reason only: Capitalism is the only economic system that actually creates wealth, while socialism is a system dedicated only to transferring wealth from one group to another. That is why liberals always favor taxation (it is their “wages”) and why socialism always leads to economic decline; because every aspect of socialism hinders, obstructs, or destroys wealth creation (taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, big government, corruption, patronage, environmental restrictions etc.)

This is not to say that taxation, regulation and environmentalism should be eliminated. Because they are part of the laws that must regulate capitalism. But those laws should be minimized, because by themselves those laws create zero wealth and thus the more they intervene in the economy the more they reduce jobs and opportunity for people to create their own destinies. Ultimately they destroy wealth.

Socialism encourages the wrong kind of “passive” people to succeed (welfare recipients, lazy government workers, overpaid public school teachers, corrupt urban political functionaries, slothful college professors who work 6 months a year etc.) and thus encourages entropy.

Capitalism, on the other hand, encourages “active” productive, creative and individualistic people to succeed, which leads to more prosperity. If each member of the society is strong and vibrant, the society will prosper. If each is slothful, the society will collapse.

In the big picture, socialism weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. This is the reason that socialism always fails and causes economic decline. If you visit a communist nation, where all the ideals of socialism are enforced at the point of a gun, you will find the population impoverished, starving and deprived of even the most basic material goods.

For instance Russia was a wheat exporter until the time of the communist takeover in 1917, and then the nation immediately suffered food shortages and starvation. This always happens under systems in which theoretically everyone is supposed to be taken care of and everyone is supposed to be equal. Ironically these socialist systems indeed are successful at that because most of the population ends up equal. Equally poor, that is.

At the same time, the leaders like Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela end up with vast fortunes tucked away in foreign accounts (while Republican George Bush’s assets in 2007 were a piddling $7.3 million) while their bureaucratic class – the government functionaries who run the everyday society – end up with all the highest and most secure privileges of the middle class, much like a public school superintendent profiled recently on CNN’s Black In America series was shown driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz and living in an elegant neighborhood while public school educrats always cry poverty.

It is important to note that people who advance in the bureaucratic, governmental society run by socialism lack all of the characteristics that are important to a growing and advancing society.

They are generally conformist, lazy, mediocre, willing to be led, thoroughly uncreative and are obsessed with money and with having an easy life.

They are not ambitious, creative, intelligent, motivated or individualistic.

That is why even the arts have spiraled downward into nothingness in the 20th and 21st century as socialism’s tentacles of mediocrity reach into every corner and crevice of society.

The people in socialism’s bureaucracy are attracted to that life because they are the type of people who are incapable of making anything of themselves in a competitive society. They are, by nature, colorless. It is a personality type that is attracted to, and thrives under, mediocre state socialism. Not all of them of course. There are some good people in the government.

But most are lesser, "passive" people. "Get a government job," they think from youth. "That way you will be taken care of. Take the civil service exam."

How many motivated, exciting, ambitious and interesting people do you know personally who thought to take the civil service exam?

Precious few, if any.

And they bring the whole society down because the society becomes like them because they hold the power. Under socialism, people advance only by two things -- by their conformity, and by their allegiance to the bureaucracy. And they can become relatively rich and powerful that way, like the school superintendent noted above.

The nation of India followed the path of the Soviet Union after its independence from Britain in 1947. India became extremely socialistic and was famous for two things – its giant, unwieldy and all-controlling government bureaucracy, and its poverty. The two go hand in hand.

After India in 1992 elected Mohandas Singh as its president with ideas to cut the bureaucracy and to let free-market capitalism reign, the country has since added 300 million people to its middle class. Easily.

Once-poor nations like Estonia, a former Soviet communist satellite, have become world-class success stories after they gutted their bureaucracies and instituted capitalist ideas that even America has not yet seen fit to adopt, like the flat tax.

Yet now it is America that is in economic decline as the Democrat party imprints its ideas on the nation. Taxation has risen steadily over the decades despite Republican presidents and efforts to lower them; endless regulations control every facet of life; poor people are increasingly dependent on government; hard-working people are taxed more and more; overzealous environmental regulations crush businesses and drive them abroad; and labor unions confront the companies that employ them day after day, and eventually kill millions of jobs and trillions in wealth. Just look at what unions are doing to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler today. In 10 years, they will be gone.

Capitalism, on the other hand, indeed is a system that favors ‘survival of the fittest’ for which it is roundly and routinely criticized. Liberals say that this is evil, that we must think about the poor and the weak among us. But a system that favors the strong really is superior because any system that consistently favors the weak will encourage weakness to thrive and ultimately will hurt everybody, including the poor, much more than capitalism. Go to a communist nation that could be wealthy under capitalism and everyone will be poor under socialism.

For instance if a liberal government gives single mothers money to support their children rather than encouraging families to stay together and fathers to support their children, it creates a weak, dependent society where girls grow up expecting that their children will be supported by the government. This creates chaos and a static bureaucratic society in which the colorless, odorless, tasteless government functionary who hands out checks is seen as the leader. Obviously not a very pretty picture.

Capitalism gives people from the bottom up the power to create their own destinies. In fact it is only a capitalist economy that creates a middle class at all. Go to a communist country and there is no middle class at all except for the small strata of government functionaries who work directly for the leader. Otherwise there is no middle class.

In communist countries, for example, there is no food for most of the population, even in the cities. Then go to any poor third-world nation with anything like a free-market, capitalist economy and you will see poor people in the market selling vegetables that they have grown. In other words, people have the power to control their own lives without government intervention, and this increases the potential of the whole society.

And while these poor people certainly do not lead glamorous lives, their occupation represents their freedom, just as a low-income person in America may wash windows or perform some other service like cutting grass. It is what he has in order to create wealth for himself. And thus it is good. He works, he has something to think about, he has something to care about, and he’s not hanging out on the corner all day doing nothing, an activity for which government-dependent people are famous.

Of course a socialist says that poor people must have dignity, and should not be dependent on demeaning jobs like cutting grass. And the question is why? Why must everyone work in an office and make $50,000 a year as the socialist ideal dictates? Because many poor people don’t even have the skills to earn money.

The fact is that much of poverty in America is due to socialism itself. The public schools – run lock, stock and barrel by the Democrats – often fail to teach even the basics. Democrats over-tax and over-regulate business. They spend far too much money on nonproductive government functions. Environmentalism restricts our energy supply and drives up the price of gasoline and electricity. Democrat labor unions run companies out of business. Seems like socialism really does destroy wealth, does it not?

See the Nikitas3.com essay below 10 Ways that Socialism Makes People Poor to see the many ways in which state socialism itself thwarts individual and societal economic improvement, and makes more and more people poor, while enriching the socialist elite like the Kennedys.

The goal of socialism is to get as much wealth as possible into the hands of people who believe in socialism, without regard for the cost to the overall society.

Many of the ultra-rich in America today are card-carrying Democrats. The richest people in the United State Senate are all Democrats. And Democrats now represent in Congress much more than half of all “rich” districts and states. See the essays in the section Who “The Rich” Really Are in America Today, accessible from the Nikitas3.com home page. It shows step by step how the rich and super-rich often support socialism… and why.

What is important is that the wealth created by a growing capitalist society offers money to support the poor who cannot support themselves. Americans are famously generous to charity and to the poor nations of the world, while poor people in America often have relatively high standards of living, with access to food, clothing, housing and medical care that not even middle class people have had throughout most of history, and living vastly better lives than poor people in other nations today.

Many people in America who are statistically ‘poor’ in fact have air conditioning, cars, and even own their own homes! To read the actual facts about poor people in America see this great article from Robert E. Rector at The Heritage Foundation. It will amaze you! www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm

Yet what are the socialists saying today about America? They are saying, “Look, now the middle class is being squeezed out. There are no longer the opportunities there used to be. Capitalism is failing.”

And this is true; our middle class is shrinking. But several things can be said about this. First, when America was booming in the 1950s with all the best jobs and housing that man could ever hope for, the left-wing 1950s ‘beatniks’ and the 1960s ‘hippies’ said this was a terrible way to live, and that man was doomed to a boring, conformist life. Now those same ‘hippies’ are in positions of power and they are all wondering why we don’t have all the great jobs that we had in the 1950s!

And the reason we don’t have those jobs is simple: The destructive policies that those 1960s ‘hippies’ have imposed on our nation over many decades have irrevocably harmed our economy... taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, labor union demands (particularly among unionized government workers) zealous environmental restrictions etc. all have pushed jobs overseas. And enviro objection to domestic energy production has led to the biggest job ‘outsourcing’ of all, hundreds of billions in oil money flowing abroad that all could be being spent here at home.

No, the ‘hippies’ now are in the United States Congress, and in governorships and state legislatures all over. And every single time they get power, their policies cause economic decline. Here is an essay about the destructive effects of socialism on the American economy from the Thinking Points section of this website called About Those ‘Two Americas’:



The media report regularly on the status of the nation’s economy. One of the most watched figures is the unemployment number. Other figures include claims for food stamps and other indicators of economic woe.

When a Republican is president, the media attempt to portray the unemployment numbers in the most negative light possible. For instance, when the number is good they will talk about a period when the number was better. When the number is bad, they jump for joy and talk about the failing Republican president.

So you have to really think about what is happening with the economy to put unemployment figures in context. In June 2008, it was reported that the rate rose to 5.5% in May, which still is low by historical standards. But the media made it appear once more like Bush was failing.

Look closer, however, and you will see that we do live in “Two Americas”, as former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards liked to say. Only problem is the “Two Americas” are not the ones that Edwards or other liberals even would dare discuss if they were being honest.

First: Consider the black inner cities of America – New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc. -- that include tens of millions of citizens. Who controls these areas with an iron grip?

The Democrat party does, that’s who.

Why is the unemployment rate, dependence on food stamps and other government handouts, the poverty rate and the murder rate always much higher in these areas than elsewhere in the nation?

Because the Democrats have crafted policies that insure that they are going to be higher. The terrible public schools, run without any challenge by the Democrat bureaucracy and the teacher unions, are failing miserably. Democrat liberals, who run the entertainment industry, get rich while inundating these areas with defeatist and violent messages like hip-hop and rap music. Democrat party bureaucracies and corrupt urban governments make starting a business very difficult. Abysmal leftist social standards exonerate broken families, fatherlessness and single motherhood, all of which contribute greatly to poverty. So all in all, there is little economic opportunity, and people remain poor.

So when the dismal economic figures from these inner cities are rolled into the national figures, it makes America look bad. No distinction is made between poor inner-city America, controlled by Democrats, and the more prosperous parts of the nation that are more conservative.

So indeed, there are Two Americas. Only problem is, Democrats don’t want to talk about those Two Americas.

Now look at the nation as a whole.

The South is booming economically. The most vibrant economy in the nation is in… Texas! Yes, evil George Bush’s Texas offers opportunity, hope, jobs and prosperity. How could this be? Is not Bush the embodiment of rapacious capitalism?

What other states are booming? How about Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and other “redneck” states.

Why?

Because they have long histories of conservative policies – low taxes, low regulation, less bureaucracy, fewer business-busting unions. People from the North are flowing into the South for jobs and opportunity.

Meanwhile, across the whole Northern Tier of the United States from Oregon to Maine - a region that is declining economically - there is only one single state that stands out for its economic growth and that is New Hampshire.

Why?

Because New Hampshire has a long history of being a low-tax, conservative, pro-business state.

For decades, however, elite, liberal, Ivy League New Englanders laughed at New Hampshire as a nutty, right-wing enclave. Now thousands of those same snobs are moving out of places like failing Massachusetts and into New Hampshire for the jobs there.

And typically they are taking their politics with them and turning New Hampshire liberal. And they are starting the process of smothering the New Hampshire economy with the same ideas that have strangled the rest of the declining Northeast – more taxes, more regulations, more environmentalism, more encroachments on private property.

So looking at the nation as a whole, you have the declining North and inner cities, and the rising South.

Now look at the people who increasingly are controlling the declining Northern Tier.

Here are the states as of June 2008 with a Democrat governor and two Democrat US Senators: Washington State, Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York State, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Sounds pretty Democrat, does it not?

But aren’t Democrats the party of “compassion” who want prosperity for everyone?

No, they are the party of economic decline and wealth redistribution from the middle class to the ultra-rich like the Kennedy family, John Kerry, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Larry Ellison and other leftists who support Obama, and who want to stay rich. Obama will assure that they remain rich, and that is why they favor him. It's all about the money.

Just 30 years ago, places like New York State and Michigan were economic powerhouses with big middle classes.

Yet who would say that today these are places of jobs, growth and opportunity? Who would say that the national economy is migrating toward New York and Massachusetts?

Nobody would, because the people who actually live in these states know that the story is quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, in places like rural Montana and Oregon, Democrat environmentalist extremism is shutting down timber cutting, mining, ranching and other economic activities, impoverishing the people there.

Why are these states failing?

Because they are becoming more and more dominated by Democrat politicians and Democrat/environmentalist ideas.

In Michigan, the radical auto workers’ union in many cases drove the car companies out of town with confrontational tactics and unrealistic wage demands, and we can see this is still happening today. Ten years from now, the American auto industry will be hanging by a thread because it was threatened by the unions (or rather by organized crime, which ran the unions and which is an arm of the Democrat party) in the good times, and now is committed to paying unsustainable pay, benefit and retirement packages.

This is why more and more American workers, particularly in the South, are rejecting unions. Because unions oppose the interests of working people in favor of union bosses and organized crime. They destroy jobs by the millions and wealth by the trillions.

Why is even the huge California economy declining slowly but surely, when it once was one of the greatest economies in the world?

Because California today is utterly dominated by the Democrat party and its bureaucracy, that is why. Forget about “Republican” Schwarzenegger. He is a liberal.

Come up to wonderful Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the union, 85% Democrat legislature with virtually the worst business/economic climate in America, according to most objective economic analyses including Forbes magazine. Any honest economist will tell you that the two go hand in hand – liberalism and economic decay.

Wherever they come to power, Democrats slowly wreck economic prosperity. So today, when you see national stories about the suffering of Americans, high unemployment or rises in food stamp dependence, look for the link.

What is affecting the overall national statistics? Is it bad times in conservative Texas that are affecting the national statistics, or bad times in Michigan and Massachusetts and rural Oregon and in the inner cities?

Take a guess...

Is the decline in the New York State economy showing up in the national figures, and then being blamed on Bush?

Of course.

Did Hillary Clinton promise to help the people of rural New York State in her 2000 run for US Senate?

Yes.

Has anything changed since then?

Yes, things are much, much worse as New York State turns more and more Democrat.

Conclusion: Perhaps we can start having two measures of economic well-being.

We will measure it in Democrat strongholds (inner cities, liberal states), and then in places where conservative, capitalist ideas dominate, like the South.

And then we will start to see the real story about the “Two Americas”.



People who advocate socialism say they want to "help" people, that they "care about the poor". But this is nonsense. Socialists operate at all levels of society, from the ultra-rich (like Warren Buffett, who supports Obama) to the welfare poor. And the socialists who run the Democrat party from the ultra-rich to the middle class bureaucracy, want the three things that all liberals want:

A) Wealth for themselves;

B) Power over other people; and

C) A life of ease and pleasure.

Liberals love money more than any people in history. Just look at the zillionaires in Hollywood showing off their wealth like no group ever before in history. It is an obscene show of materialism. Just look at the liberal billionaires in New York and San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard in summer, loving their wealth more than anything. Just look at how increasing numbers of rich people in America – well over 50% - describe themselves as liberal Democrats, as the national economy flounders and millions of good jobs go overseas.

Liberals love money! From the rich to the middle class. Think of the functionaries who work for the state and federal government. They are the best-paid people in the middle class. They have the best pay, benefit and retirement packages of all. They love to have: Money; power over other people; and a life of ease and pleasure. They produce less and work less than any other people in the workforce… except for other liberals like college professors, welfare recipients and public school teachers. In fact is it liberals who substitute ‘materialism’ for ‘prosperity’.

Prosperity is a good thing. It lifts all people up. Conservatives always have favored policies that promote prosperity. And one of the byproducts of prosperity is materialism, which is the placing of material wealth above all other forms of human striving.

The good conservative person, however, strives to make himself/herself better; strives to make the world better through his/her contributions; and shuns excessive material wealth in favor of a higher spiritual level of living where one truly is making the world better not by “letting the government help people” (the socialist way), but by building homes and churches and powerplants and furniture and cars to give people a better life. It’s called productivity.

Then liberals complain at every step. Typical...

Liberals, on the other hand, are in love only with money and a life of ease and pleasure. It was best illustrated by the 1960s when all the lazy hippies did whatever they felt like doing – usually not working – then acted as if they knew what everybody else should be doing. In other words, a life of ease and pleasure while having power over other people.

By the way, thanks D24 and Msharmony for wishing me luck on my test today, I think built my confidence and I'm sure I did well.

Thanks

Good point.

In the 1940's in Memphis, Tennessee a black officer caught a white man raping a black woman. At that time since the officer was black he could not arrest a white man. The police captain came to the scene then drives the white man home with no charges.

This thread is just another Stormfront instructed attempt to promote their racist and hateful agendas. The "socialism" charge is aimed at the black man in the White House...nothing more.

Don't be fooled people....if we have socialism it's already here with Corporate Socialism. Look at the special interest in this election year: Big Corp is trying to buy our country outright...as if they don't already own most of it.

Screw them.

I'm just gonna go at the article.



Not necessarly. I don't have to read this to love this country.



That's a very poor explanation. Capitalism means, that the "capital" is maintained as the money making tool available for private use. Anything can be a capital, such as tools and factories, whatever that can be used to create profit.


"Politicans" is not like a group of people who work on a sinister plot to undermine everyone..that would be the wrong idea to start out with. Let's just say there are corrupt ones and there are legit ones.


It had little to do with politicians and more had to do with lenders and banks doing the exact same thing like right now, consolidating and confiscating, preying on the people for more money, since unregulated lending and borrowing has led to such circumstances, that the money promised just wasn't there.


LOL! It's called protection of home made products against competing off shore companies. It's actually a very conservative idea, trying to save the home made products to loose the competitive edge. Funny how this whoever is this nikkita tries to make this sound like this played some sort of a giant role.



"always", "never", "forever" - anyone uses those words have a strong prejudice ..demonstrated even here on mingle2 on dating how always "all" women are such cheaters. Is that fair to say? Of course not. Neither this.

Who are these "liberals" anyway?



Let's not forget, that not only in USA was in a great depression, but the entire Europe just got out of WWI and the economies were pretty much destroyed world wide. It was hardly a "retaliation", most likely they just couldn't buy the products while their countries were suffering from unemployment and poverty.



Statement without proof = Speculation and propaganda. Just like today, the wealthiest Americans are 2% of USA and they have more wealth than the rest of the 99% combined. That's a fact.
What they have done in the past 3 years to ease the economic recession? = Nothing, but collected even more wealth. Actually 2008, 2009 were very profitable to the biggest and wealthiest of corporations, Exxon mobile had a record profit, like never before, while General Electrics avoided paying any taxes. Again, facts, google arond to find those.




Trying to suggest now, that because the top 2% had a tax increase (during the depression) caused the depression? LOL!



The Federal Reserver as much "Federal" as FedEx. It's a privately owned bank, and has nothing to do with the government, beside lending money on government treasury notes with an interest. Basically a giant loan shark.




[quote*imposing heavy taxes on imports (liberal idea)

*raising taxes on business and individuals (liberal idea), and

*allowing the Federal Reserve (the government acting stupidly) to act in a haphazard manner to shrink the money supply, these elements combined like a ‘perfect storm’ to cause the economic collapse of the 1930s.

Then FDR, elected in 1932, said he was going to make everything better by hiring people with government money for make-work jobs like building highways and bridges to nowhere. Yet unemployment was higher in 1938 than it was in 1932!

So socialism started it, then lengthened and deepened the depression. If the economy had been left alone, it would have righted itself and the depression never would have happened.

So much for socialism.

Socialists claim that capitalism is unfair and exploitative, while capitalism says that socialism taxes people unfairly and favors the transfer of wealth from productive people to unproductive ones, i.e., that socialism is unfair and exploitative.

At many places on this website, Nikitas3.com has pointed out the superiority of capitalism. And to look at world history, all of the prosperous and productive societies have had open-market capitalist economies with free trade within and without. And all the destitute societies that could have been prosperous - like the Soviet Union and communist China - have been operated on socialistic ideas. The capitalist island of Taiwan, a breakaway nation formed by fleeing Chinese when communism came to mainland China, has a living standard as high as anywhere in the world.

Capitalism, of course, needs to be regulated. Even George Washington said that. To have an economic system without some regulations would be the same as having a society without criminal laws. Chaos would reign because there always are people who will push the limit of what is allowed for their own benefit.

Socialism, on the other hand, it not a natural system at all, but is a contrived man-made system with all its rules and regulations set by politicians. And thus it is bound to fail because every time socialism finds an imbalance, it seeks to correct it with more laws and taxes and regulations. There is no natural system for regulating socialism. A contrived system can only be regulated by more contrivances. And when politicians seek to correct an economic shortcoming through socialist means, they always come up with a worse solution because they always put personal interests first.

So a good, regulated form of capitalism is far superior to any form of socialism for one reason only: Capitalism is the only economic system that actually creates wealth, while socialism is a system dedicated only to transferring wealth from one group to another. That is why liberals always favor taxation (it is their “wages”) and why socialism always leads to economic decline; because every aspect of socialism hinders, obstructs, or destroys wealth creation (taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, big government, corruption, patronage, environmental restrictions etc.)

This is not to say that taxation, regulation and environmentalism should be eliminated. Because they are part of the laws that must regulate capitalism. But those laws should be minimized, because by themselves those laws create zero wealth and thus the more they intervene in the economy the more they reduce jobs and opportunity for people to create their own destinies. Ultimately they destroy wealth.

Socialism encourages the wrong kind of “passive” people to succeed (welfare recipients, lazy government workers, overpaid public school teachers, corrupt urban political functionaries, slothful college professors who work 6 months a year etc.) and thus encourages entropy.

Capitalism, on the other hand, encourages “active” productive, creative and individualistic people to succeed, which leads to more prosperity. If each member of the society is strong and vibrant, the society will prosper. If each is slothful, the society will collapse.

In the big picture, socialism weakens the strong and strengthens the weak. This is the reason that socialism always fails and causes economic decline. If you visit a communist nation, where all the ideals of socialism are enforced at the point of a gun, you will find the population impoverished, starving and deprived of even the most basic material goods.

For instance Russia was a wheat exporter until the time of the communist takeover in 1917, and then the nation immediately suffered food shortages and starvation. This always happens under systems in which theoretically everyone is supposed to be taken care of and everyone is supposed to be equal. Ironically these socialist systems indeed are successful at that because most of the population ends up equal. Equally poor, that is.

At the same time, the leaders like Castro in Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela end up with vast fortunes tucked away in foreign accounts (while Republican George Bush’s assets in 2007 were a piddling $7.3 million) while their bureaucratic class – the government functionaries who run the everyday society – end up with all the highest and most secure privileges of the middle class, much like a public school superintendent profiled recently on CNN’s Black In America series was shown driving a brand new Mercedes-Benz and living in an elegant neighborhood while public school educrats always cry poverty.

It is important to note that people who advance in the bureaucratic, governmental society run by socialism lack all of the characteristics that are important to a growing and advancing society.

They are generally conformist, lazy, mediocre, willing to be led, thoroughly uncreative and are obsessed with money and with having an easy life.

They are not ambitious, creative, intelligent, motivated or individualistic.

That is why even the arts have spiraled downward into nothingness in the 20th and 21st century as socialism’s tentacles of mediocrity reach into every corner and crevice of society.

The people in socialism’s bureaucracy are attracted to that life because they are the type of people who are incapable of making anything of themselves in a competitive society. They are, by nature, colorless. It is a personality type that is attracted to, and thrives under, mediocre state socialism. Not all of them of course. There are some good people in the government.

But most are lesser, "passive" people. "Get a government job," they think from youth. "That way you will be taken care of. Take the civil service exam."

How many motivated, exciting, ambitious and interesting people do you know personally who thought to take the civil service exam?

Precious few, if any.

And they bring the whole society down because the society becomes like them because they hold the power. Under socialism, people advance only by two things -- by their conformity, and by their allegiance to the bureaucracy. And they can become relatively rich and powerful that way, like the school superintendent noted above.

The nation of India followed the path of the Soviet Union after its independence from Britain in 1947. India became extremely socialistic and was famous for two things – its giant, unwieldy and all-controlling government bureaucracy, and its poverty. The two go hand in hand.

After India in 1992 elected Mohandas Singh as its president with ideas to cut the bureaucracy and to let free-market capitalism reign, the country has since added 300 million people to its middle class. Easily.

Once-poor nations like Estonia, a former Soviet communist satellite, have become world-class success stories after they gutted their bureaucracies and instituted capitalist ideas that even America has not yet seen fit to adopt, like the flat tax.

Yet now it is America that is in economic decline as the Democrat party imprints its ideas on the nation. Taxation has risen steadily over the decades despite Republican presidents and efforts to lower them; endless regulations control every facet of life; poor people are increasingly dependent on government; hard-working people are taxed more and more; overzealous environmental regulations crush businesses and drive them abroad; and labor unions confront the companies that employ them day after day, and eventually kill millions of jobs and trillions in wealth. Just look at what unions are doing to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler today. In 10 years, they will be gone.

Capitalism, on the other hand, indeed is a system that favors ‘survival of the fittest’ for which it is roundly and routinely criticized. Liberals say that this is evil, that we must think about the poor and the weak among us. But a system that favors the strong really is superior because any system that consistently favors the weak will encourage weakness to thrive and ultimately will hurt everybody, including the poor, much more than capitalism. Go to a communist nation that could be wealthy under capitalism and everyone will be poor under socialism.

For instance if a liberal government gives single mothers money to support their children rather than encouraging families to stay together and fathers to support their children, it creates a weak, dependent society where girls grow up expecting that their children will be supported by the government. This creates chaos and a static bureaucratic society in which the colorless, odorless, tasteless government functionary who hands out checks is seen as the leader. Obviously not a very pretty picture.

Capitalism gives people from the bottom up the power to create their own destinies. In fact it is only a capitalist economy that creates a middle class at all. Go to a communist country and there is no middle class at all except for the small strata of government functionaries who work directly for the leader. Otherwise there is no middle class.

In communist countries, for example, there is no food for most of the population, even in the cities. Then go to any poor third-world nation with anything like a free-market, capitalist economy and you will see poor people in the market selling vegetables that they have grown. In other words, people have the power to control their own lives without government intervention, and this increases the potential of the whole society.

And while these poor people certainly do not lead glamorous lives, their occupation represents their freedom, just as a low-income person in America may wash windows or perform some other service like cutting grass. It is what he has in order to create wealth for himself. And thus it is good. He works, he has something to think about, he has something to care about, and he’s not hanging out on the corner all day doing nothing, an activity for which government-dependent people are famous.

Of course a socialist says that poor people must have dignity, and should not be dependent on demeaning jobs like cutting grass. And the question is why? Why must everyone work in an office and make $50,000 a year as the socialist ideal dictates? Because many poor people don’t even have the skills to earn money.

The fact is that much of poverty in America is due to socialism itself. The public schools – run lock, stock and barrel by the Democrats – often fail to teach even the basics. Democrats over-tax and over-regulate business. They spend far too much money on nonproductive government functions. Environmentalism restricts our energy supply and drives up the price of gasoline and electricity. Democrat labor unions run companies out of business. Seems like socialism really does destroy wealth, does it not?

See the Nikitas3.com essay below 10 Ways that Socialism Makes People Poor to see the many ways in which state socialism itself thwarts individual and societal economic improvement, and makes more and more people poor, while enriching the socialist elite like the Kennedys.

The goal of socialism is to get as much wealth as possible into the hands of people who believe in socialism, without regard for the cost to the overall society.

Many of the ultra-rich in America today are card-carrying Democrats. The richest people in the United State Senate are all Democrats. And Democrats now represent in Congress much more than half of all “rich” districts and states. See the essays in the section Who “The Rich” Really Are in America Today, accessible from the Nikitas3.com home page. It shows step by step how the rich and super-rich often support socialism… and why.

What is important is that the wealth created by a growing capitalist society offers money to support the poor who cannot support themselves. Americans are famously generous to charity and to the poor nations of the world, while poor people in America often have relatively high standards of living, with access to food, clothing, housing and medical care that not even middle class people have had throughout most of history, and living vastly better lives than poor people in other nations today.

Many people in America who are statistically ‘poor’ in fact have air conditioning, cars, and even own their own homes! To read the actual facts about poor people in America see this great article from Robert E. Rector at The Heritage Foundation. It will amaze you! www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg2064.cfm

Yet what are the socialists saying today about America? They are saying, “Look, now the middle class is being squeezed out. There are no longer the opportunities there used to be. Capitalism is failing.”

And this is true; our middle class is shrinking. But several things can be said about this. First, when America was booming in the 1950s with all the best jobs and housing that man could ever hope for, the left-wing 1950s ‘beatniks’ and the 1960s ‘hippies’ said this was a terrible way to live, and that man was doomed to a boring, conformist life. Now those same ‘hippies’ are in positions of power and they are all wondering why we don’t have all the great jobs that we had in the 1950s!

And the reason we don’t have those jobs is simple: The destructive policies that those 1960s ‘hippies’ have imposed on our nation over many decades have irrevocably harmed our economy... taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, labor union demands (particularly among unionized government workers) zealous environmental restrictions etc. all have pushed jobs overseas. And enviro objection to domestic energy production has led to the biggest job ‘outsourcing’ of all, hundreds of billions in oil money flowing abroad that all could be being spent here at home.

No, the ‘hippies’ now are in the United States Congress, and in governorships and state legislatures all over. And every single time they get power, their policies cause economic decline. Here is an essay about the destructive effects of socialism on the American economy from the Thinking Points section of this website called About Those ‘Two Americas’:



The media report regularly on the status of the nation’s economy. One of the most watched figures is the unemployment number. Other figures include claims for food stamps and other indicators of economic woe.

When a Republican is president, the media attempt to portray the unemployment numbers in the most negative light possible. For instance, when the number is good they will talk about a period when the number was better. When the number is bad, they jump for joy and talk about the failing Republican president.

So you have to really think about what is happening with the economy to put unemployment figures in context. In June 2008, it was reported that the rate rose to 5.5% in May, which still is low by historical standards. But the media made it appear once more like Bush was failing.

Look closer, however, and you will see that we do live in “Two Americas”, as former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards liked to say. Only problem is the “Two Americas” are not the ones that Edwards or other liberals even would dare discuss if they were being honest.

First: Consider the black inner cities of America – New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc. -- that include tens of millions of citizens. Who controls these areas with an iron grip?

The Democrat party does, that’s who.

Why is the unemployment rate, dependence on food stamps and other government handouts, the poverty rate and the murder rate always much higher in these areas than elsewhere in the nation?

Because the Democrats have crafted policies that insure that they are going to be higher. The terrible public schools, run without any challenge by the Democrat bureaucracy and the teacher unions, are failing miserably. Democrat liberals, who run the entertainment industry, get rich while inundating these areas with defeatist and violent messages like hip-hop and rap music. Democrat party bureaucracies and corrupt urban governments make starting a business very difficult. Abysmal leftist social standards exonerate broken families, fatherlessness and single motherhood, all of which contribute greatly to poverty. So all in all, there is little economic opportunity, and people remain poor.

So when the dismal economic figures from these inner cities are rolled into the national figures, it makes America look bad. No distinction is made between poor inner-city America, controlled by Democrats, and the more prosperous parts of the nation that are more conservative.

So indeed, there are Two Americas. Only problem is, Democrats don’t want to talk about those Two Americas.

Now look at the nation as a whole.

The South is booming economically. The most vibrant economy in the nation is in… Texas! Yes, evil George Bush’s Texas offers opportunity, hope, jobs and prosperity. How could this be? Is not Bush the embodiment of rapacious capitalism?

What other states are booming? How about Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and other “redneck” states.

Why?

Because they have long histories of conservative policies – low taxes, low regulation, less bureaucracy, fewer business-busting unions. People from the North are flowing into the South for jobs and opportunity.

Meanwhile, across the whole Northern Tier of the United States from Oregon to Maine - a region that is declining economically - there is only one single state that stands out for its economic growth and that is New Hampshire.

Why?

Because New Hampshire has a long history of being a low-tax, conservative, pro-business state.

For decades, however, elite, liberal, Ivy League New Englanders laughed at New Hampshire as a nutty, right-wing enclave. Now thousands of those same snobs are moving out of places like failing Massachusetts and into New Hampshire for the jobs there.

And typically they are taking their politics with them and turning New Hampshire liberal. And they are starting the process of smothering the New Hampshire economy with the same ideas that have strangled the rest of the declining Northeast – more taxes, more regulations, more environmentalism, more encroachments on private property.

So looking at the nation as a whole, you have the declining North and inner cities, and the rising South.

Now look at the people who increasingly are controlling the declining Northern Tier.

Here are the states as of June 2008 with a Democrat governor and two Democrat US Senators: Washington State, Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York State, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Sounds pretty Democrat, does it not?

But aren’t Democrats the party of “compassion” who want prosperity for everyone?

No, they are the party of economic decline and wealth redistribution from the middle class to the ultra-rich like the Kennedy family, John Kerry, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Larry Ellison and other leftists who support Obama, and who want to stay rich. Obama will assure that they remain rich, and that is why they favor him. It's all about the money.

Just 30 years ago, places like New York State and Michigan were economic powerhouses with big middle classes.

Yet who would say that today these are places of jobs, growth and opportunity? Who would say that the national economy is migrating toward New York and Massachusetts?

Nobody would, because the people who actually live in these states know that the story is quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, in places like rural Montana and Oregon, Democrat environmentalist extremism is shutting down timber cutting, mining, ranching and other economic activities, impoverishing the people there.

Why are these states failing?

Because they are becoming more and more dominated by Democrat politicians and Democrat/environmentalist ideas.

In Michigan, the radical auto workers’ union in many cases drove the car companies out of town with confrontational tactics and unrealistic wage demands, and we can see this is still happening today. Ten years from now, the American auto industry will be hanging by a thread because it was threatened by the unions (or rather by organized crime, which ran the unions and which is an arm of the Democrat party) in the good times, and now is committed to paying unsustainable pay, benefit and retirement packages.

This is why more and more American workers, particularly in the South, are rejecting unions. Because unions oppose the interests of working people in favor of union bosses and organized crime. They destroy jobs by the millions and wealth by the trillions.

Why is even the huge California economy declining slowly but surely, when it once was one of the greatest economies in the world?

Because California today is utterly dominated by the Democrat party and its bureaucracy, that is why. Forget about “Republican” Schwarzenegger. He is a liberal.

Come up to wonderful Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the union, 85% Democrat legislature with virtually the worst business/economic climate in America, according to most objective economic analyses including Forbes magazine. Any honest economist will tell you that the two go hand in hand – liberalism and economic decay.

Wherever they come to power, Democrats slowly wreck economic prosperity. So today, when you see national stories about the suffering of Americans, high unemployment or rises in food stamp dependence, look for the link.

What is affecting the overall national statistics? Is it bad times in conservative Texas that are affecting the national statistics, or bad times in Michigan and Massachusetts and rural Oregon and in the inner cities?

Take a guess...

Is the decline in the New York State economy showing up in the national figures, and then being blamed on Bush?

Of course.

Did Hillary Clinton promise to help the people of rural New York State in her 2000 run for US Senate?

Yes.

Has anything changed since then?

Yes, things are much, much worse as New York State turns more and more Democrat.

Conclusion: Perhaps we can start having two measures of economic well-being.

We will measure it in Democrat strongholds (inner cities, liberal states), and then in places where conservative, capitalist ideas dominate, like the South.

And then we will start to see the real story about the “Two Americas”.



People who advocate socialism say they want to "help" people, that they "care about the poor". But this is nonsense. Socialists operate at all levels of society, from the ultra-rich (like Warren Buffett, who supports Obama) to the welfare poor. And the socialists who run the Democrat party from the ultra-rich to the middle class bureaucracy, want the three things that all liberals want:

A) Wealth for themselves;

B) Power over other people; and

C) A life of ease and pleasure.

Liberals love money more than any people in history. Just look at the zillionaires in Hollywood showing off their wealth like no group ever before in history. It is an obscene show of materialism. Just look at the liberal billionaires in New York and San Francisco and Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard in summer, loving their wealth more than anything. Just look at how increasing numbers of rich people in America – well over 50% - describe themselves as liberal Democrats, as the national economy flounders and millions of good jobs go overseas.

Liberals love money! From the rich to the middle class. Think of the functionaries who work for the state and federal government. They are the best-paid people in the middle class. They have the best pay, benefit and retirement packages of all. They love to have: Money; power over other people; and a life of ease and pleasure. They produce less and work less than any other people in the workforce… except for other liberals like college professors, welfare recipients and public school teachers. In fact is it liberals who substitute ‘materialism’ for ‘prosperity’.

Prosperity is a good thing. It lifts all people up. Conservatives always have favored policies that promote prosperity. And one of the byproducts of prosperity is materialism, which is the placing of material wealth above all other forms of human striving.

The good conservative person, however, strives to make himself/herself better; strives to make the world better through his/her contributions; and shuns excessive material wealth in favor of a higher spiritual level of living where one truly is making the world better not by “letting the government help people” (the socialist way), but by building homes and churches and powerplants and furniture and cars to give people a better life. It’s called productivity.

Then liberals complain at every step. Typical...

Liberals, on the other hand, are in love only with money and a life of ease and pleasure. It was best illustrated by the 1960s when all the lazy hippies did whatever they felt like doing – usually not working – then acted as if they knew what everybody else should be doing. In other words, a life of ease and pleasure while having power over other people.

I have seen you state your opinion of everything but offer no facts to debate your opinion. If you don't mind showing me some facts or proof I would appreciate it. You see when I read this I see the connections that he comments on. I don't agree with everything but I felt that the information was valuable. All you have done is disagree but where are your statistics or studies to support your ideas? I can show you mine.

Honey..anyone who reads that first article in the starting post can tell you that , it's nothing but an opinion of someone who has little or no research in the historical event of the Great Depression and what has lead to it in the first place.

For facts, visit these sites with unbaised views:

(and why these? Because it's called "peer previewed" and accepted by many educational boards)

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/about.htm

http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/great-depression.htm

here is detailed a .pdf document from the Berkeley College of California.
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~cromer/great_depression.pdf

Don't turn to facts to political figures and questionable internet personas in incognito., turn to educational portals.

Hm.

Well, all righty then.

Socialism: left-wing politics, high taxation, organised labor, free public services (such as healthcare and education). Ultimate expression: communism.

Capitalism: right-wing politics, low taxation, privatised education and healthcare, active suppression of labor. Ultimate expression: fascism.

Sometimes I wonder if the people arguing about these things know what these words mean. It seems odd, to me, that anyone would insist on having a strong opinion about something he doesn't understand.