Socialism in Venezuela has made illiteracy a thing of the past

I did, and I don't see any of that. It says that revenues expanded after WWII, and so benefits were increased. Are you sure you quoted the right quotes? Sure they have an obligation; the legal obligation incurred by any Treasury instrument. Just because the instruments are owned by the SSA doesn't change the fact that the instruments are backed by the full faith and credit of the US Treasury.Randman, these arguments have been exploded before. And we're way off-topic. It's pretty obvious that you don't have any factual basis for your obligations.

That's probably true However it IS socialism, because under market socialism the means of production are owned by the state rather than by groups of capitalists. Allocation of resources, on the other hand, would be determined by the market rather than by the state. This is basically what already exists for state-owned power plants, etc.Mick

Mick, be honest and read the darn quote. Domain Names, Web Hosting and Online Marketing Services | Network SolutionsWhat part of that sentence do you not understand? Repeat slowly:"The federal government had used surplus payroll taxes to finance the war effort."Repeat, and repeat again, out loud, until it becomes clear.This message has been edited by randman, 11-08-2005 04:00 PM

And this is different under Reagan and Bush than it was under Roosevelt, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton....how?The fact is, just as I stated and just as you ignorantly denied, the practice of spending excess social security taxes and only filing an IOU was started very early on with the program and started by Roosevelt and the dems, not Republicans. It is the democratic party when they controlled both Congress and the Presidency that started this long-standing practice.The only president to try to change this corrupt practice, and to make sure more funds are used for retirement is the current president with his proposal some of this can be used for retirement accounts instead of for Congress to spend, but as you know, he has not been able to garner enough support in Congress, chiefly due to the democrats demonizing the issue.The dems want to make sure all the poor man's retirement money is available to be used exclusively by Congress, and no wonder since it's been such a boon for them to expand government programs.

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Waiting lists for critical surgery are one reason the US does not follow England and Canada's lead. Compensation for doctors leading to less innovation and quality is another.

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But if you provide basic medical care, as in preventative care to everyone, there will be less of a need for critical surgery.If you have yearly cancer screenings, you can find and deal with, say, skin cancer in it's early stages, when it is a minor outpatient surgery.If you have no insurance and get skin cancer, you will likely only get medical care when a major operation, radiation, chemo,etc. are all needed to save your life, costing hundreds of times more than routine medical care, and that preventative screening, would have.

So maybe providing free preventive care, to a certain degree, is a good idea, if it saves money.

Payroll taxes.Not FICA taxes. I mean, it's clear as a bell to me that they're not talking about a SS surplus; they're talking about the income tax that funds the general budget. Obviously you read it differently. Can you explain to me what leads you to do so?

You know, I asked you before, and you didn't answer.Why do you suppose that the President's plan was so universally unpopular, despite the entire corporate mechanism of media working hand in hand with Republican leaders to promote it in the most effective way possible?Ah, right. Democrats. Despite being in the complete minority in every branch and having no power at all, somehow they were able to foil Republicans once again. And how does that work, exactly?

Socialism is a very desirable state; however, it has never succeeded because of human nature. In a true socialist system all members must work and live within a single goal. It only takes one member to take more than his share or only one member to do less than his share for the entire system to fail.In today’s quasi socialistic societies we see many examples of forced socialism for the betterment of the ruling party, aka capitalism, and voluntary or legislated socialism for the betterment of the less fortunate, aka the welfare state.We can clearly see now that Soviet communism was nothing more than an exoskeleton with a hollow core incapable of maintaining the shell of a world power. What power it did project came from tyranny and fear. A legislative socialism can only survive as long as there is a strong working class which can be bled to support the less fortunate and freeloaders.The one thing that makes capitalistic societies work and socialist societies fail is the simple phrase, “What’s in it for me?” The human animal is naturally selfish and will endure great effort to survive. When you insure survival many stop taking the effort to provide for them selves. While living in Australia I remember a PM that promised, “By 1990 no child will live in poverty.” He won the election and promptly established their dole system where money and shelter were given out based on how disadvantaged you could prove you were. Consequently, the number of children living in poverty doubled by 1990 and large dole neighborhoods filled up with freeloaders.

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In a true socialist system all members must work and live within a single goal.

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(Sigh.) Hello, Francis. Are you another non-socialist who is going to tell the rest of us what "true socialism" is? At any rate, I'm interested in knowing what this "single goal" of "true socialism" is supposed to be.-

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It only takes one member to take more than his share or only one member to do less than his share for the entire system to fail.

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How does this happen?-

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A legislative socialism can only survive as long as there is a strong working class which can be bled to support the less fortunate and freeloaders.

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Socialism, by its very definition, means that the working class is the one that is in control. Are you saying that in "true socialism" that the "single goal" that everyone has is to bleed themselves?-

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The human animal is naturally selfish and will endure great effort to survive.

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This is false. If cross-cultural studies show anything, they show that most societies are heavily based on cooperation and sharing. And modern experiments attempting to test how game theory applies to real life situations show that people in the capitalist West (including the US) do not naturally follow what the assumptions about rational self-interest indicate that they should.The entire gamut of studies in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and so forth show, at best, that humans are not naturally anything. At worst (for your argument) they show that humans may have a natural tendency to cooperation and sharing, and that it takes a great deal of socialization to teach them to behave in naturally self-interested and selfish ways -- not surprising, since humans evolved from a social species. And socialism does not require human beings to be naturally cooperative anyway -- at least it requires no more than the natural tendency toward "enlightened self-interest" that the early capitalist theorizers, like Adam Smith, assumed.-Seeing that this is your first substantive post in a debate thread here, I should be kind to you. But since your first post chortled about how few intelligent "liberals" you have ever met and how you see very little intelligence on this board, I feel compelled to point out how this post is little more than empty rhetoric. But maybe you'll reign in your tendency toward condescension and I'll do likewise, and maybe we can have a polite, civilized discussion.Added in edit:
Ah, I just saw the short note that you wrote me in the other thread. I withdraw this last paragraph.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 08-Nov-2005 10:43 PM

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

Crash, what do you think "payroll taxes" are?Geesh man. Don't you know that FICA taxes are/were the same thing as payroll taxes? I guess you aren't old enough to remember when income taxes were not part of "payroll taxes" and just FICA and medicare were.But even if you didn't know that, how could you miss it considering the context of the quote? This is the original quote you disagreed with. I followed up drawing your attention to the sentence within this quote discussing social security. How can you miss this?Why not just admit you were wrong here?This message has been edited by randman, 11-08-2005 05:44 PM

Jim Crow was very popular, as was Hitler in Germany. People can have dumb ideas when influenced by propaganda, and that's exactly what the liberals and dems have done. They scared people into thinking that somehow the GOP would screw them out of their social security benefits.It's unfortunate, but often in the short term, such lying works. Hopefully, as people are better educated, they will see the basic unfairness of the current social security system on the average American worker, but then again, some people see only what they want to see.For example, despite showing you where social security funds were used to finance WWII, you still refuse to accept it.

What has amazed me here is the incredibly miserly attitute towards the achievement of lifting one an a half million people out of illiteracy in just a few years. There has been barely a gesture of congratulation from the anti-socialist contingent here; instead just comments like "humans are naturally selfish" and "it takes more than literacy to have a functioning society".The fact is that only a socialist government cared to invest in adult education classes etc. to such an extent as to remove illiteracy from the population. They removed 1 million people from illiteracy in just six months! Previous capitalist-style governments simply didn't do it. It's not that they couldn't have eliminated illiteracy if they had wanted to - there was enough money sloshing around to do it, quite clearly. It was just there was no political will; illiteracy just wasn't considered a very high priority.For people here to agree that illiteracy isn't a high priority, and to think that the elimination of illiteracy isn't something that should be applauded, or to say that human beings are naturally selfish so we just shouldn't bother, stinks of hypocricy. Any intelligent person should realise that literacy is the bedrock of a modern functioning democracy. (It is also the bedrock of being able to participate in interesting online debates about the biological world).

We have no disagreement on the definition of true socialism. Where the difference lies is in our understanding of the true base desires of natural human behavior. Yes, humans are social because we learn quickly that it is easier and more pleasant to survive in cooperation with others. This doesn’t change the basic selfish desires we have but in fact supports selfish desires at a more intellectual level.Our culture is full of examples. We go to work, not because we enjoy what we do but, because we want the personal reward every two weeks. We work harder when the opportunity for recognition or advancement is present. Corporations advertise because they want a larger share of the market. We want, we want, we want. The more we want, the more we are willing to work for it. This is what makes a capitalistic society work.It is also what makes socialist societies fail. The lists of freeloaders are long in the welfare/dole systems around the world. Many actually consider it their right to receive money from these systems without the responsibility of adding to the system. The shorter list is the one of manipulators who usurp the power within the system for their personal gain. Regardless of the method of abuse, one, but usually both, prevent the establishment of a true socialist society.It is inarguable that socialism cannot survive the presence of greed/selfishness.

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What has amazed me here is the incredibly miserly attitute towards the achievement of lifting one an a half million people out of illiteracy in just a few years.

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Be thankful that the attitude is only miserly, mick. The last time a government (the Sandanistas in Nicaragua) invested resources into literacy (and other social programs), the attitude was openly antagonistic, leading to an all-out war of terrorism by the U.S. that destroyed them.By the way, literacy rates in Nicaragua are way down, now.

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt