The real debate is not whether the US economy has socialist attributes, but choosing which form of socialism to employ.
Republican Congressman Allen West said many congressional Democrats are members of the Communist Party
New Haven, CT - Two things happened to suggest the Republican Party had finally gone over the deep end. One was Republican Congressman Allen West's claim that around 80 Democrats are members of the Communist Party. The other was the GOP's indifference to his claim, as if West were pointing out the obvious. Water is wet, sky is blue, and the Dems are communists.
This inspired two long-time political observers, a liberal and a conservative, to write in the Washington Post that, since the 2008 crisis, many of our most pressing problems can be traced to one place: the radicalisation of the GOP. Both sides are not to blame for partisan gridlock, they wrote, and journalists should stop distorting reality with false equivalency.
I agree: Republicans are the new radicals. I agree, too, that journalistic balance can be problematic when one side is extremist. But I'd go one step further and suggest the importance of perspective outside the presumed rhetorical framework. It would help if journalists actually knew what "socialism" was and could challenge radical Republicans with the fact that "socialism" is already here. The real debate, therefore, isn't about "socialism" but rather the kind of "socialism" we want.
Different socialisms
Let's start with "socialism", as understood by libertarians like Allen West, who has views so far to the right he can see no difference between liberals, progressives, Marxists, socialists and communists. These can overlap a lot, of course, but you can't say they are the same. But to West, they are.
"There is a very thin line . It's about nationalising production, it's about creating and expanding the welfare state. It's about this idea of social and economic justice," he told Reuters, expounding on his earlier remarks.
That's a narrow view of the political left but a typical one for a libertarian. Whenever the government gets involved in a free-market economy, a little bit more individual liberty is lost.
By this standard, the US is a socialist country, because to some degree or another, the government has always got involved in the economy: the railroads, the Homestead Act, the power grid, the interstate highway system, and the internet. These are products of the government creating markets or meeting demand, and then getting out of the way to allow capitalism to work. Most in the US wouldn't call this socialism, however. They would call it good governance.
That the US has shepherded the economy in one way or another exemplifies its economy's mixed nature. It's mostly capitalist, but partly socialist when the profit-motive is detrimental to human need. The best example is Medicare. The older you are, the less insurable you are. In a free market, in which government coercion is completely absent from the exchange of commodities and securities, the elderly would die sooner. That's how markets work, and that's why Lyndon Johnson didn't want the elderly to be at the mercy of the markets.
So far, we’ve talked about a faux socialism and a real socialism. One is defined as socialism by those to the right of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. The other serves human needs, not the potentially dehumanising demands of shareholders. But there is yet another kind of socialism that libertarian Republicans approve of. Socialism for corporations and the rich.
The real debate
This is where the real debate is. Knowing that this is the real debate is exactly what Republicans don't want (most Democrats, such as the very Wall Street-friendly Chuck Schumer, would also rather avoid the subject). They talk about socialists and communists with the intent of scaring people away from the debate, but the fact is that state and federal governments spend billions on corporate welfare.
No matter what they say about closeted communists in Congress or in the White House, Republicans - even the libertarians - heartily approve of socialism. The question in their view is about which way the money is flowing, up or down. If it's agribusiness or oil corporations getting bucks from federal subsidies, then money is going to the top. Hoorah for socialism. If it's single working mothers getting food stamps and housing credits, then money is going to the bottom. That's a damn government handout - we can't have that.
On the state level, corporate welfare is often wrapped in the rhetoric of job creation. Let's make the state attractive to businesses, because businesses create jobs, workers spend money and the economy gets better. Voila. Except that taxpayers end up giving more to corporations than they end up receiving. Perhaps the most egregious example is the practice among 16 states to let companies keep some or all of the income tax that the state would normally levy. These programmes, in effect, allow corporations to tax their own workers.
Of the top five states doing this, four have Republican governors. Chris Christie's New Jersey gives away the most, with $178m compared with the next state's $89m. When David Cay Johnston asked General Electric about taxing its workers in Ohio, a spokesman said that GE was investing around $300m in Ohio and "the resulting taxes the state will receive will far exceed the tax credits provided to GE". To which the Pulitzer Prize-winning Johnston said, in his best libertarian impersonation: "That response, I think, misses the point - GE should pay its own bills without taking welfare."
Once you accept the fact that some kind of socialism is part of the US economy, we no longer have to suffer silly debates over whether it is or it not partly socialist. It is. End of story. This would be a good place for journalists to be, because then it begs the real question {no it doesn't -LB, pedant extraordinaire}: What kind of socialism do we want?
John Stoehr is a lecturer in political science at Yale and a frequent contributor to the American Prospect, theNew Statesman, Reuters Opinion and the New York Daily News.
Follow him on Twitter: @johnastoehr
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/2012568342122448.html
Also if you were tell me to guess the year of a news article lambasting "radical Republicans" i would definitely guess 1872
John Stoehr is the editor of the Advocate, New Haven's alternative source of investigative news, political commentary and cultural criticism. He is an associate fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative. He has more than a decade of experience in journalism at daily and weekly newspapers around the country. During that time, he had the honor of being selected three times as a fellow of the Arts Journalism Institutes of the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a recipient of the Lilly Scholarships in Religion for Journalists. His writing has appeared in The American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Dissent, National Memo, Religion Dispatches and The Forward, among others. He has taught writing, journalism and media studies at Quinnipiac University, the College of Charleston (S.C.) and Georgia Southern University. He is a co-founder of Flyover: Art in the American Outback and he blogs about politics for The Huffington Post and the New Deal 2.0.
Imagine you have gotten yourself so deep in debt that you can't make the minimum payment on your loans. The bank won't lend you the money you need to make your mortgage payments unless you cut back on expenses and start making regular payments. You tell your family that there will be no more vactions, cell phones, shopping sprees or gourmet dining. They protest and smash the windows, burn your car and blame the banks for causing all this pain. That's the situation in today's Europe.
Edited by shennong ()
Jerthebear posted:its not a matter of it being reasonable or not. privately owned news media gives people exactly that they want. if people stopped wanting partisan sensationalist broadcasting then the media would stop shitting it into their mouths.
Its existence creates its own demand for it you infant baby neonate
swampman posted:Jerthebear posted:its not a matter of it being reasonable or not. privately owned news media gives people exactly that they want. if people stopped wanting partisan sensationalist broadcasting then the media would stop shitting it into their mouths.
Its existence creates its own demand for it you infant baby neonate
reaganomics
swampman posted:Its existence creates its own demand for it you infant baby neonate
way to be ageist. mods????
tpaine posted:Chill, bro. They're all just being funny, but it's cool, I guess. If you want to go to YouTube and call a bunch of people pussies just so you can feel better about yourself, feel free to do so. Meanwhile, all of us other people are going to lean back, maybe smoke a bowl, and enjoy some music. You can always join us if you want.
can i borrow your youtube account i don't have one
swampman posted:Jerthebear posted:its not a matter of it being reasonable or not. privately owned news media gives people exactly that they want. if people stopped wanting partisan sensationalist broadcasting then the media would stop shitting it into their mouths.
Its existence creates its own demand for it you infant baby neonate
id phrase it slightly differently, there is no existence to it beyond its demand-creation
mistersix posted:swampman posted:Jerthebear posted:its not a matter of it being reasonable or not. privately owned news media gives people exactly that they want. if people stopped wanting partisan sensationalist broadcasting then the media would stop shitting it into their mouths.
Its existence creates its own demand for it you infant baby neonate
id phrase it slightly differently, there is no existence to it beyond its demand-creation
Thats true, its below even the threshold of a Snickers bar