While bored, I ended up jumping around friends’ Facebook walls and read posts from random people that I may or may not have ever met. The Six Degrees of Facebook, essentially. On one wall I found a post that read as follows:
yeah, i agree, i am not against Obama, but i disagree with the philosphy that the stimulus package and more government spending is the right solution. and i don’t think pelosi and reid did him any favors by locking out the republicans when they created the bill and then expected support for it. but it is what it is – moving towards national healthcare run by the government and nationalization of banks is socialism.
This person has every right to disagree with Obama’s politics. But the final remark is incorrect. A country can have social programs without being a socialist state. No one was screaming socialism when Bush was in office, yet he was the one whose spending was completely out of control to the point where the administration claimed that deficits don’t matter. We’ve also had social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for decades, yet again, the Republicans weren’t screaming socialism 6 months ago. In fact, Bush spent a TON of money on Medicare just before he left office. Finally, Bush was the one who started the whole “nationalization” of banks with the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG bailouts. Again, no calls of socialism, yet these were all characteristics of socialist policy.
Obama does have a plan for health care reform and so did all of the other presidential candidates. Only Clinton’s even came close to being universal coverage. I am not sure that Obama’s plan of forcing employers to provide health care really is the answer at all, but I do know that it’s not national healthcare nor socialism.
I am not an economist. I’m not even an political scientist by degree. I have no idea what the best course of action is with regards to the banking system. In my gut I would rather them fail than the Big Three. I also would rather the president didn’t tell the GM CEO to step down – but that’s what happens when the government essentially owns part of the company. I can see this being a dangerous state of affairs but I also don’t see it as socialism. If you ask for the government’s help, then you should be held accountable to their stipulations. If you don’t want the help, then let capitalism do its thing and GM would most likely be going through bankruptcy right now. Which they still could be doing soon. Either way, it wasn’t a hostile takeover by the government like what happened in Venezula. Far from it.
Regardless of how it all turns out, we are not living under socialism, we are not heading toward socialism, and having social programs when you’re one of the wealthiest and strongest countries in the world is not socialism. It’s part of what makes us one of the best nations on the planet.
Agree to Disagree 