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A Thought about Socialism
Socialism doesn’t produce a lot of surplus. That’s predictable from human nature, and also borne out by experience.
So the United States does most of the medical research. Not the UK, not Denmark, not Sweden — however great their medical care. Likewise foreign aid, defense, inventing stuff, and supporting the UN: we keep the world’s shipping lanes open, provide primary disaster relief, protect small nations from powerful aggressors, stop genocide, and pour billions into poor countries.
No other nation comes close.
So consider that someone, somewhere, some big, economically strong country, is going to have to be the engine that generates the surplus that feeds the poor and polices the world and invents things. Because, absent that, we settle into a comfortable stagnation like Europe, the tyrants have a field day, nothing gets better, and the third world just sits there starving and in terror.
And the next time someone tells you that “we should have socialized medicine just like Denmark and the UK,” you can answer that, if America didn’t have a thriving for-profit medical industry, then no one could have socialized medicine like Denmark and the UK.
Published in Economics
Agreed 100%. Same goes with defending ourselves with guns. You’re welcome everyone..
Our left which now includes the Democratic Party is working to assure that no country plays this role. After all it’s only fair.
The Left has totally been bought into Marx’s lie that history only goes one direction.
We’ve been down this road before, when the global superpower shut up shop, and the result was the Dark Ages. Widespread plague, anyone?
You have to admit that socialism distributes poverty better than any other type of government or economic theory ever created.
Yes, I’ve thought the same thing for a while. Our capitalism enables the comfort of western socialism.
Magnificently succinct summation. I may borrow this from time to time.
I loved this insert into President Trump’s UN speech …..
@columbo You could hear the shocked gasps of the audience at that remark! Everything else was met with a poker face, but that hit home.
You cannot consume what has not first been produced. Without providing incentives to get people to produce a surplus of goods and services there will always be shortages.
ditto
The political slogan might be “Keep America Capitalist So That It May Continue Making The World A Better Place”.
#KACSTIMCMTWABP is not as catchy as #MAGA, though.
Socialism doesnt produce any surplus. They so carefully and jealously divide the pie, that nobody has a thought to multiply.
Without R&D, and capital goods spending to improve productivity, economic growth is strangled to a halt. This is ultimately why socialist economies collapse.
@columbo Trump said something very intelligent, a miracle in its own right.
But wouldn’t you rather live in Denmark (except for the weather) than have to put up with the dysfunctional American health care system?
No. I’d rather the government stopped making our health care system dysfunctional.
You could shorten it to Keep America Capitalist Always and put KAKA on hats. So long as you don’t try to pronounce it.