Nesrie
2038
Yeah they’re such hypocrites. Pretty sick of hearing them bash other people for doing the same thing they are.
“They’re not near what they were in the '60s” (referring to the Democrats) is also alternatively and barely coded as he used to support a racist, pre-civil rights, near southern-democrat style party which has since left him (and thank the gods for that).
Menzo
2041
I think this is an insightful point. A “democrat,” who hasn’t voted for a Democrat in 30 years, but longs for the Democratic party of the 60s, is probably just a racist.
ShivaX
2042
“I liked the Democrats before the Civil Rights stuff,” is pretty easy to parse.
Exactly.
I love pointing this out to every “but socialism!” person I know. Our current system of government funded safety nets, ridiculously overpriced healthcare, and “fair trade” economy are all far more socialist than much of what is being proposed by leading Democrats.
Older people love to counter my Social Security and Medicaid points with a proud “ah…but I paid into those systems for decades, it’s just my money I’m taking back out!” -smug face-
Except…no, it’s not. The Social Security and Medicare taxes people like Mr. Baker paid into the system in the 70’s through the 00’s don’t add up to enough money to cover even the first decade of benefits they’re pulling out. The average social security monthly benefit is $1,400. That’s $168,000 in benefits from age 62-72. At even the current 6.2% social security tax rate there is no way the average 65-year-old paid that much into the system even if they were employed full time from age 18 to age 62. Even when you account for the additional 6.2% employers pay into the system, it still doesn’t add up enough money to cover the tab for a decade of benefits.
With Medicare/Medicaid it gets even more ridiculous. The current rate for that entitlement tax is 1.45% (2.9% with employer match). One overnight visit to a hospital or a single outpatient surgery at the rates paid by employed, insured younger people would wipe out everything someone 65 years old paid into the Medicare system in one fell swoop. In fact, one of the biggest reasons the healthcare industry lobbyists cite for the astronomical rise in healthcare costs is the fact that Medicare/Medicaid patients pay so little of the actual cost for all their services that the industry has to make up the difference by charging working/insured people more.Guess what Mr. Baker, it’s not just the “poor people” (old white term for blacks and Hispanics) who drive up the cost of healthcare for your adult children and your grandchildren…IT’S YOU.
Don’t even get me started on the fucking farm subsidies, tax exemptions for corporations, and the myriad other government programs that essentially give money away to people who either already have a shitton of money or who would be doing just fine without the handouts.
We already live in a socialist society. I wish candidates and the media would have the balls to point this out to the people who complain that they aren’t happy with the current state of politics, but at least Trump and the GOP are better than “Socialism”.
I want to have your children.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Oghier
2046
A lot of GOP hypocrisy on socialism is easily understood: Everything is a zero-sum game for them, and they don’t give a shit about anyone outside their narrowly defined tribe.
It’s more greed than hypocrisy.
RichVR
2047
I think a lot of it is that they don’t know the difference between socialism and communism. To them it’s the same thing.
Oghier
2048
Yeah… and Fox has been pushing “socialism = Venezuala” idea for years now. My parents and their friends are sure that Bernie, AOC and the rest are exactly like Maduro.
And they are, perhaps even more disturbingly, blind to the merging of two related trends:
- We have been drifting towards corporate socialism since Reagan (more or less regardless of party affiliation)
- The right have, at the same time, been drifting towards authoritarianism
As these unite in current politics, we pass through oligarchy and begin to approach fascism rather than socialism or communism.
Diego
Timex
2050
I wonder what changed in the 60’s.
'Tis a puzzlement indeed.
Aceris
2052
Ding ding ding. I’ve been advocating for the Ds to think more about winning swing voters, but this guy isn’t a swing voter, and the Ds absolutely shouldn’t be listening to him.
A lot of people on this forum don’t know the difference between social democracy and democratic socialism, and many of those who do are disingenuous about it, so this is hardly surprising.
The term “socialist” is hopelessly wide, and I’m tired of people hiding behind this.
Well, he’s not, but he is a socialist like Maduro is a socialist. We know this because he said so.
“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina” - Bernie Sanders 2011(ish).
He’s not endorsing the horrors of the Venezuelan regime (which he’s denounced in no uncertain terms), which happened after this, but he is endorsing anticapitalist socialism, as opposed to social democracy. But criticise this and you inevitably get told “It works for Sweden”, when Sweden do something very different.
“Capitalism is great, let’s regulate it properly so it doesn’t screw people over” is a hard enough sell to swing voters in the US (and I’m convinced it’s one that needs to be made). The idea that the Ds will do better saying “Capitalism is broken” seems misguided to me.
It hardly matters what Sanders truly believes, or what he would do in office, when there’s plenty of tape out there of him falling into the “Capitalism is broken” camp.
Matt_W
2053
Jesus. Communism and socialism and social democracy and democratic socialism actually are hopelessly muddled and muddied concepts. Here’s what I think is a baseline for all U.S. democrats (including Bernie):
- authoritarianism is bad
- democracy is good
- planned economies don’t work
- capitalist economies tend toward inequality and oligarchy
- we should counter that trend in capitalist economies
- people shouldn’t starve to death or die of preventable sickness
There’s some variance in the application and degree of these principles–particularly 1 and 5–but those fall broadly within the a social democratic paradigm. When Bernie says “capitalism is broken”, he’s pointing at inequality and poverty and people dying because they can’t afford healthcare. He’s not suggesting that we switch to a state-run economy.
Aceris
2054
By 2010 the Venezuelan economy had substantial price controls, government control of the major exporters, and “democratic” control of huge numbers of cooperatives, with substantial government support which meant they were effectively no longer looking to the market as their primary guide for resource allocation. It might not have been a conventional “planned” economy, but it was certainly an explicitly anticapitalist one.
Bernie held that up as an example.
And this is my point. It’s kind of hard to know if Bernie is actually an anticapitalist because he’s mostly been carefully ambiguous about it. Maybe he really lies somewhere in the grey area between. But that ambiguity is enough for people who think he might be an anticapitalist, and think anticapitalism in any form is a disastrous policy, to not want to vote for him.
Nesrie
2055
He’s not very good at pointing out the difference between his ideal Democratic Socialist society and Communism, what people think of when they think of Socialism.
One of the reasons he has this problem is see if you can get him to explain it without throwing out “free” healthcare and “free” college as an answer. He can’t really do it. So then you wind up having a bunch of academia, read professors, try and explain it for him which also doesn’t work.
And of course there is the ever helpful, hey anyone in Europe would understand to which I say great, too bad he isn’t campaigning over there. Since he is here, come up with a real damn message and stop throwing free in the mix. Someone on that team ought to be able to explain that his concept actually includes private property and not an actual rejection of capitalistic based markets. But hey stayed tuned for story of healthcare problem of the week no… 50 instead.
Timex
2056
I concur with this.
This is one of Bernie’s biggest problems. That he wasn’t able to condemn Venezuela’s anti-capitalist aspect, clearly, is a problem. Because in an economic sense, what went down in Venezuela was bad, and directly related to their full embrace of socialist economic policies.
Not just straightforwardly saying, “This was bad, we don’t want to nationalize industry,” creates an opening for the GOP to attack him, despite the fact that 99% of Democrats would never want that kind of socialist system.
And maybe that’s because Bernie actually does believe in that kind of nationalization… but it’s a bad plan. It ain’t gonna work.
