[cmikes]

I understand that not everyone will agree with my premise that Obama has the US on the road to Socialism, of course, but I believe that when the President is firing CEOs and taking over the car industry, as well as the coming nationalization of the health industry, we are well on our way. For me, however, the question is why? Everywhere from the Soviet Union, to the Soviet satellite states, to America in the '30s, to Nazi Germany, to Great Britain of the '70s, to France, to Japan in the '90s, to Cuba today, government controlled economies have always failed.

One school of thought is that President Obama is simply stupid, or more precisely, extremely naive, and just doesn't know or understand that Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Collectivism, i.e., government control of private industry doesn't and has never worked. I don't subscribe to this theory, I believe that the President, while undoubtedly not as smart as the hacks in the media portray him, is a very intelligent man.

The second theory is that the President knows that government controlled economies don't work, but doesn't care because it's all about a power grab. As long as power is accruing to the federal government, he doesn't care about the long term consequences. After all, he's only going to be president for a maximum of eight years, and to hell with anything after that. The knock against Socialism has always been that 'eventually you run out of other people's money', and maybe he just believes we won't run out of other people's money during his term of office. I don't believe this, either. I don't see the President as simply a power hungry bureaucrat just out to increase his own personal power and to hell with the consequences. If it were the Clintons, yeah, I could see it, but that's another post. I think President Obama honestly believes in what he's doing.

I think that it's a matter of arrogance. I believe that President Obama thinks he can succeed where no one else ever has. In my opinion, he has started to believe his own press, i.e., "We are the ones we've been waiting for". He believes that with everyone following his lead, that for the first time ever, a government controlled economy can and will work. The question is, can he do it? I don't think so. I don't think Socialism would ever work unless you can completely change human nature.

The country's in for a rough ride, and it's going to take us decades to extricate ourselves from this mess. Just my opinion.

[Paradigm]

This is what socialism looks like in America:

[bconngemini]

Eurosocialist Obama threatens to destroy our core values by importing the effete notion of government owning your assets and telling YOU what to do with them. Its all just a plan to return to monarchy like states of Europe, where the government dominates and controls the lives of everyone and reduces consumption for everyone in the guise of "global warming". Life is about consuming as much as possible and working to increase your resources so you can consume more than your neighbor. Nobody wants to have the government tell us how much to consume, and come up with lame environmental reasons.

[Wolfman]

This is what socialism looks like in America:

That didn't show at first on my computer. I got a kick out of seeing 'nothing' under that statement. The pie chart was pretty funny also.

Also, whenever someone tells me "He's fired CEO's, that the first step of that socialist fascist destroying our economy and raping our women!" I always respond with the following statement: Bitch please! When I worked at IHOP the first thing the new owner did was fire the 2 of the three 3 managers! When a company is taken over by another because the first company sucked at what they do, the management always gets replaced. Name two times when a company has been taken over where the old management stayed in place. Even when not taken over, when a company goes downhill, shareholders will fire off the crappy management. You get rid of the people that suck at there job and the whole company does better.

[cmikes]

Wolfman: When I worked at IHOP the first thing the new owner did was fire the 2 of the three 3 managers! When a company is taken over by another because the first company sucked at what they do, the management always gets replaced.

Exactly my point. President Obama is now the owner of Government Motors and so he can fire and hire anyone he pleases. He gave a speech the other day, either Monday or Tuesday, about how he didn't want to run the auto industry and then proceeded to give an hour speech about how he was going to run the auto industry. Now the latest news is that Senator John Kerry wants to buy into (via bailouts) the newspaper and broadcast industry, as if the media wasn't pro-Obama enough yet.

And Paradigm, you can add at least 20% to your graph once the health industry is socialized. As the President said in LA last week "You ain't seen anything yet".

[Paradigm]

And Paradigm, you can add at least 20% to your graph once the health industry is socialized.

Nope. Universal healthcare would actually lower the public cost of health care.

[Okonkwo]

Is it so difficult to realise?

Socialism


Liberalism


Deliberate historical ignorance isn't exactly helping to make the American right appear any more credible. I know that most people in academia are left-wing, but that doesn't mean that rightists have to be uneducated.

[Noelnada]

Life is about consuming as much as possible and working to increase your resources so you can consume more than your neighbor.

No, life is life :

[youtube]JbB1s7TZUQk[/youtube]

Deliberate historical ignorance isn't exactly helping to make the American right appear any more credible.

Ignorance isnt helping no matter what.

[RonPaulalways]

I honestly don't know how people like Paradox and Okonkowo can continue supporting socialism after seeing all the facts showing economy liberty leading to more rapid economic development and improvement in standard of living.

[Okonkwo]

The above post must be the epitome of what I refer to when I am speaking of deliberate ignorance.

[Dave]

Nope. Universal healthcare would actually lower the public cost of health care.

It would almost certainly increase the cost given how incompetent bureaucracy is in America.

I know that most people in academia are left-wing, but that doesn't mean that rightists have to be uneducated.

Due to leftish ideologies being more fashionable most on the right tend to be uneducated, dumb, erratic, or have some sort of character flaw. Leftist ideologies are the path to both respectability and power in today's world, therefore those on the left tend to be more intelligent (I mean thinkers and activists now, not voters) despite believing in many things that are wrong and absurd. It's not unlike how the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages had all the most intelligent thinkers.

[Dr House]

Nope. Universal healthcare would actually lower the public cost of health care.

Besides what Dave said, the fact remains that the healthcare infrastructure is in private hands. If it's nationalized obviously the amount of assets owned by the government will jump.

[dilpill]

I don't think anyone in Congress is talking about nationalizing private hospitals, clinics, or other forms of health infrastructure. The plan with the most backing right now is the creation of a universal health care tax credit (it would be mandatory to have insurance), a public health care plan, and a national VAT to cover for the revenue lost to the tax credit.

[cmikes]

Nope. Universal healthcare would actually lower the public cost of health care.

Huh, so you're saying that taking over the multi-hundred billion private health care industry would lead to the government spending less on health care than it already does? Either all the efficiency they've been saving by not having it at the post office and various DMV's must be kicking in, or that's going to be one hell of a rationing system. The average wait for a MRI scan in Canada is upwards of two years, under your claim, it'll probably be more like five years here.

[Nattering Nabob]

Obama is nationalizing GM in order to save millions of jobs and he is initiating govt healthcare because 60+ percent of bankruptcies in America are caused by healthcare costs hitting middle class people who actually have healthcare plans...

[RonPaulalways]

^ And shifting the cost is going to improve the situation how? The risk and cost doesn't disappear, it just gets put on the general population.

Homogenizing risk creates moral hazard and increases the chance of a California fiscal crisis occurring.

[Nattering Nabob]

^ And shifting the cost is going to improve the situation how? The risk and cost doesn't disappear, it just gets put on the general population.

Homogenizing risk creates moral hazard and increases the chance of a California fiscal crisis occurring.

Risk shared by the general population is the idea of the insurance model.

The current problem is that incurance companies will not allow everyone (specifically sick people) into the pool in order to maximize their profit, also they dump people when they become liabilities (when they get sick).

You say the burden will only be shifted and not decreased?

All those former profits will no longer go to advertising and expensive executives and whatnot, they will go to pay for healthcare for people. The healthcare industry, fearfull of losing their golden egg, recently volunteered to reduce price increases by $3 trillion over the next 10 years alone.

But don't worry, you will still be able to purchase private health insurance, even Canadians can purchase private health insurance.

The healthcare industry has failed America and we are tired of paying too much for something so vital.

[RonPaulalways]

Risk shared by the general population is the idea of the insurance model.

Insurance doesn't decrease risk, it just changes who pays for it.

The current problem is that incurance companies will not allow everyone (specifically sick people) into the pool in order to maximize their profit, also they dump people when they become liabilities (when they get sick).

You say the burden will only be shifted and not decreased?

Not just shifted, but also increased, due to moral hazard (people no longer being fully responsible for the consequences of their decisions since there will be no chance that insurance will reject them).

All those former profits will no longer go to advertising and expensive executives and whatnot, they will go to pay for healthcare for people.

If profits led to increased prices, then having government take over every industry would lead to greater efficiency and lower prices for every product class. Iphones? Google? Intel? The population would be benefited if the government replaced all of these, after all, profits and advertising waste resources.

This is obviously not the case. A government run bureaucracy is never going to be as efficient as an organization run by shareholders who have an interest in the success of that organization proportional to their control of it.

This is elementary stuff, I'm surprised so many advocates of socialist policies like government run health care don't grasp it.

The healthcare industry, fearfull of losing their golden egg, recently volunteered to reduce price increases by $3 trillion over the next 10 years alone.

The fact that the health care industry can claim they can work in tandem to reduce prices shows that it operates like a cartel, a consequence of regulations and policies that have concentrated power in the medical industry into the hands of politically connected pharmaceuticals, HMOs, PPOs and professional associations (e.g. the AMA).

[qquote]The healthcare industry has failed America and we are tired of paying too much for something so vital.[/quote]

[Gelmax]

Huh, so you're saying that taking over the multi-hundred billion private health care industry would lead to the government spending less on health care than it already does? Either all the efficiency they've been saving by not having it at the post office and various DMV's must be kicking in, or that's going to be one hell of a rationing system. The average wait for a MRI scan in Canada is upwards of two years, under your claim, it'll probably be more like five years here.

Funny how you're using "the post office" and "the DMV" as examples, rather than Medicare, the already-existing publicly-owned single-payer health care plan, which seems to work just fine. Just open up Medicare to everyone (as opposed to just the elderly) and that'll be properly working UHC right there.

[keso]

An insurance company only has to give in 51% of the premiums that it takes in, the rest is profit...As it is a for profit industry.

You all seem to think that goverment health care will have a 49% overhead?