If Democratic Socialism Works, Why Doesn’t Venezuela Have Toilet Paper?

Well the answer is those aren't socialist economies, and the best example you have of welfare capitalist states like the nordic countries have a failing system and lower quality of life than the US.

Canada is able to spend more money on socialist programs thanks to living in our defense shadow.

 

I must have misread your post which I thought implied that wealth redistribution (sans state ownership of everything) was socialism.

If we are talking a strict definition - State ownership of all resources and means of production - there is then no such thing as "Democratic Socialism" so the OP is nonsense.

 

Well it ultimately becomes complete wealth redistribution.

I mean we can talk about the definition of socialism, or we can talk about the inevitable results of socialism.

Socialism always ends up with all power and resources in the hands of a very few. Feudalism, basically.

Socialism is just a brief phase between freedom and communism.

 

Noticing a pattern there too?
For those on the Progressive Left who hate America...

Anyway, the streets in Europe aren't so pristine clean like they used to be 25 years ago...
Why Berlin is so dirty

No surprise there.

 

You are talking in black vs white terms. Here is the thing. Extreme Capitalism and extreme Socialism (totalitarian communism for example) meet at the far end of the spectrum. In both cases you have a few elite owning most resources and means of production.

We have managed to combine the worst elements of both into an ugly monster which I call the "Oligopoly-Bureaucracy Fusion Monster".

Your Feudalism example is a good one. The Establishment (Elite politicians and bureaucrats on both sides of the fence - who take their marching orders from international/national financiers) is turning this nation into one of indentured servitude.

One of the facets of Feudalism was that the serfs could not own property. Do explain to me how I own private property when I am forced to pay exorbitant rent (in the form of property tax) on that property ?

Although I hate taxes - I am not completely against them. Roads, infrastructure, police and so on cost money. This is a benefit to me but, also to the corporation who can not operate without these things.

Back in the 50's 60's the corp/worker tax split was 50/50 - which is where it should be. Now it is 20/80. Why am I paying McDonald's share of the tax bill ? OH OH OH .. but McD creates jobs ... doesn't count ?

1) No they dont and 2) No it doesn't. If McD were not selling burgers some private person would. The difference is that the private person spends profits in the local economy. McD gives much of those profits to some nameless faceless shareholder who may not even live in the country never mind spend in the local economy. The private guy sources his products from the local economy... McD ? not so much.

In this way a little cream is skimmed off the milk ... multiply by 1000 (and I can give you many other examples) and you are left with skim milk.

NIKE outsources shoe manufacture to some slave labor nation. Cost of shoe is 5 dollars. That shoe sells here for 120 dollars. Cost of sales is 15 dollars = 100 dollars in profit on which it pays taxes right ? WRONG.

If you were to make that shoe here in the US that would be the case .. but not if you make it in slave labor nation.

That shoe is sold to a shell company in Cayman (tax haven). That same shoe is then sold to the US affiliate for 90 Dollars.
This takes the taxable profit down to 15 dollars instead of 100... all perfectly legal.

In this way profits from products sold in the US escape taxation. NIKE needs roads, infrastructure, police and so on to sell its products. Why is it that I am forced to pay NIKE's share of the taxes ?

Buy gas at Exxon and the guy selling you the gas gets not one cent on the gas - he gets the chips and the gum. Were he to get that extra profit he would spend in the local economy. Instead ? nameless faceless shareholder.

I worked in the chemical sector for many years. There used to be 9-10 different competitors in that sector. I was in sales and when you sold something (making company more money) you got paid - a cut of that extra profit. Now there are two companies (which are essentially owned by the same people). They screw every penny out of the salesperson. The finance dept actually takes seminars on how to do this (not joking).

If you do not like it ? too bad .. you only have one other company to go to and they do the same thing. Oligopolism decreases wage competition - indentured servitude.

I was in a different sector but when I saw the Dow-Dupont merger I shook head. How is this not Monopolism - anti competitive = against laws on the books designed to prevent this.

The bureaucracy and the Oligopolies work together to bastardize fair and free markets. Tax law and regulation is being used to drive the worker into a state of indentured servitude where the Feudal lord steals the fruits of most of your labor.

Productivity has increased every year pretty much since the start of the industrial revolution - the promise of which was "more stuff with less labor". We should all be working half as much and have double the stuff.

In the 1960 the ave household income was 5000 and a house was 12,000. Roughly 2.5 x your annual income. Today the ave household income is closer to 50,000 but a house is 250,000 5 times annual income but here is the rub.

Back in the 60's the wife was not contributing to the household income. Someone working at Sears could afford a house, a car and wifey did not have to work.

Now even with both working it is a struggle. Welcome to the land of indentured servitude .. the land where it is your "Patriotic Duty" to give up individual liberty for security - over a risk of harm that is 400 times less than the risk of harm from "walking" - you heard correctly.

 

They ain't real clean hear either. Did you have a point are you just beating around the bush ?

 

The problem you have in pushing that narrative is that the US still has a higher quality of life than pretty much any country on earth. More disposable income. It's better in most metrics.

The US lower quartile of income has an equivalent quality of life of the top quintiles of many countries, in fact. And I'm not just talking about the Congo.

Our wages and jobs are being driven down primarily by off shore slave labor and the transformation from a producer to a consumer.

Eventually we run out of money to buy things with, then WE are the slave labor.

That's where we were headed until 2016 anyway.

 

If you believe that, you don't know anything about the history of Venezuela.

 

Apparently the Miami Herald and the rest of the internet doesn't either, then.

 

"Neo-fascist"? LOLOLOL.. I've heard it all.

 

In absolute terms, yes, but relative to costs of living (in particular cost of housing) the situation is a little more complex.

 

I'm pretty sure the quality of life index takes housing into effect though. I'm not 100% sure, but it doesn't seem logical to leave one of the most important metrics out of the equation.

 

It might not be adequately weighted. For example, if everything else is completely perfect but the cost of housing is still 80% of the median income, the metric might still calculate the quality of life as being "great", because the ones who designed the metric didn't take into account the possibility of a single factor playing such an important role.

 

I have no idea, but I'd bet that however the metric was measured, it was measured the same across comparative countries.

 

The problem is not with my narrative - everything I stated is a fact. Our standard of living among first world nations is middle of the road. Given the size of our economy it should be much higher.

When you are talking statistics - you miss stuff. If I take one person making a billion dollars -and 99 people making zero - the average income is 10 million each.

This is why the feudal analogy is a good one. 45 million people in America (14%) live below the poverty line- these people have run out of money to buy things - happens every month !

This is based on the "official" statistics which are understated. Official stats are based in part on CPI. Sometime in the 90's energy and food was removed from CPI. The inflation numbers you hear out of the Gov't are bogus. Real inflation is much higher than reported. Since pensions are indexed on the basis of CPI .. the earning power decreases every year.

Just for comparison purposes - Russia is at 13.3%.

"Since 2016" This is partisan blindness speaking and drinking a whole lot of Trump koolaid. Trump is not doing anything substantive for the worker or the poor. Real wages are not rising and won't be anytime soon - this is despite a low unemployment rate and an increasing non farm payroll. This increase in wage competition - in a functional market - would lead to wage inflation. The fact that it hasn't tells you something.

What is happening is that an increasing proportion of increased productivity is going into the pockets of the Feudal Lords.

The majority of the Trump- Bump is due to massive credit card spending. Since the start of fiscal 2018 Trump has injected an extra 600 Billion in deficit spending into the economy - an economy that was already on sound footing.

I would hope that pumping this much extra cash into the economy would do something. The problem is that this is short term gain for long term pain - which is exactly what happened when Reagan tried this scam - the difference being that Reagan had way better economic conditions to work with overall.

What Trump is doing is the pinnacle of fiscal irresponsibility - the worker is going to pay the price and the piper is going to come to collect soon.

 

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However, when you stop and think about it, the cost of housing has always been high and above the median income.

 

It has to, because you will never have consensus. The only form of Socialism which works is the voluntary form.

 

Sure. Let's discuss it. Somalia went through a 15 year civil war that ended a little over a decade ago. Prior to that it was rules by the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party which nationalized much of the land, in a primarily agricultural economy, the factories, and the banks. Since the civil war ended, the country has grown more in 10 years than it did in 15 under socialist rule.

Back to Venezuela. Before Chavez was elected it wasn't the greatest place in the world. Still, people had electricity, toilet paper, and food.

The point I'm trying to make son is no matter how bad a place is, it's always going to be worse under socialism.

 

Look at how it operates. Other than adventures in Africa there isn't much different.

 

They do have toilet paper, you just have to wait until it gets redistributed to you after being used and flushed by the Socialist Elitists. You can find it at the redistribution centers for the people, otherwise known as "land fills"

 

It's impossible to know how much of Venezuela's problems are being caused by socialism and how much of their economic problems are being caused by US imperialism. Having the most powerful government on earth as an enemy tends to put a damper on your economic growth.

 

It's not so much the economic system as it is the scale at which their respective political systems operate.

Small-scale political systems tend to be more democratic, more homogeneous, and therefore more economically and socially stable.

 

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The question is that to date there has not been one country that has adopted Marxist Socialism unless government has been usurped by guile or force that has survived without mass starvation, murder, or genocide. Even Bill Ayers stated that the mass murdering of 25 million Americans would be needed to control America.
"Ayers paused for a moment and then said that it was likely that about 50 million Americans will have to be re-educated in concentration camps located in the American Southwest and that about 25 million would have to be eliminated, meaning that they would have to be murdered."
Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2014/06/read-this-carefully-disclosure.html

 

When Chavez was first elected there was a lot of hope that he would fix the horrible inequities in Venezuela.

 

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He did. He made all of Venezuela poor and starving while amassing and stealing over $5 Billion from the people. By the time Chavez died he had destroyed whatever manufacturing, including oil production supported Venezuela. Unfortunately his daughter now has the fortune the people of Venezuela need today.