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| Re: Why Socialism Doesn't Work In America (not that it can't) (778398) | |||
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Re: Why Socialism Doesn't Work In America (not that it can't) |
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Posted by SMAZ on Wed May 11 21:17:19 2011, in response to Why Socialism Doesn't Work In America (not that it can't), posted by JayMan on Wed May 11 20:39:47 2011. Your analysis is faulty and misconceived.if the reason were the ones that you described, then why didn't we do the stuff the Europeans, Australians, Canadians and Japanese did at a time in the past when we were much more whiter and racially homogeneous? The reason race plays such a major role in US policies is that a substantial minority of Americans (including a majority in certain areas) will rather live in misery themselves than do anything that may even marginally help out blacks and other minorities even if it helps themselves in the process. this has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with fear of race mixing. I have lived in both US and European societies and the reason they've got the nice things that we don't is because when it comes to economic interests, they put aside whatever xenophobia and racism they may harbor (and they harbor a lot of it) and vote their economic interests. A corporatist party cannot play on racial fears and think that it will somehow translate into support for weakening health care, education, worker rights and advancing supply-side nonsense. They made a clear choice after the war that the kind of money that they were previously spending on militaristic dead-ends would be spent at home on themselves instead. There is a much higher class awareness there because of their history. They know damn well that the way to bring yourself up is through solid education, good health and a strong old age and safety net system for when times get tough and that the pursuit of happiness starts at home by spending quality time with their families and pursuing other pursuits and not by believing in the fairy tales pushed by self-serving and self-perpetuating monied interests. All these factors has made them surpass us in upward mobility quite a while ago even though studies show that the average American actually has a higher IQ than that of people in most European countries. They laugh at us and our priorities as they should. They laugh that we are still debating evolution here. They laugh that our military builds clinics in Iraq while our own children die for lack of health insurance. They laugh that a person is still paying off college loans at 40 while being forced into a job he/she hates just because it makes paying off those loans easier. They laugh that a person cannot start his own business because he/she or a family member cannot get health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. They laugh that someone is willing to forgo valuable vacation time thinking that there may be something in it for them at the end when the only result will be a quick layoff, family disintegration and a whole lot of "what ifs". Your fixation on trying to find IQ as a determining factor in every variable fails to take into consideration (often traumatic) centuries of historical and cultural differences between our country and theirs. OTOH, we've got something that they can only dream of having. We've got Barack Obama. We've got Hope. |
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