The Failure of American Socialism
May. 10th, 2016 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sathorI had another partial post written on this topic, but I guess I'd rather condense it down anyway - I scrapped the other earlier.
Many facets of American Socialism do not examine the actual contributions of those who receive benefits from them, with exceptions in the cases of unemployment and social security.
For those who receive unemployment, the monies released to them are relative to the amount of money they made while employed - in this sense, unemployment is a fair kind of socialism - payout is inexorably connected to the contributions of the individual. It is a double standard, however, to only provide it to those who are unemployed without apparent fault - as firing or lay offs can be just as much a consequence of individual activity as resigning or quitting can be.
Social security keeps track of how much you have paid in - how much you have contributed to society - and returns that investment when you have reached an age deemed worthy of retirement by society. There is no double standard, no unfair allocation of resources - a person who lives long enough receives exactly the same amount as anyone else who paid in the same, regardless of their current life situation or recent decision making. It is, in fact, the model of ideological socialism - people receiving the safety net they deserve (even if there are some problems with capitalist market forces and wages that would need to be rectified to truly make it fair.)
Welfare does not care if you have ever worked, it only requires that you attempt to find work. It is, in fact, more difficult for a person who has successfully worked a great deal to receive welfare, than it is for a person who has not. Thus the safety net is not fairly applied - it often ends up only aiding the lowest common denominators, while ignoring others. The prevalence of the homeless can tell us that welfare does not function in America, and that it needs to be reexamined.
Financial aid for university does not care if you have ever worked, have ever tried to save finances for education - it only cares that you do not currently have assets, regardless of the circumstances behind the numbers of your bank account. If you save for years to attend university, you ultimately only harm yourself as far as affordable loans and grants are concerned. An individual who has saved should, at the least, receive the same benefits as a financially irresponsible individual, if we are to provide aid at all.
This is the primary problem with socialism in America - that it does not care for the details and the actual contributions of the individual - it is why there is such a huge outcry against Bernie Sanders and his favorite European countries, even if his intentions mean well, and even if their systems function perfectly fine.
It is my opinion that this kind of socialism was no mistake by the ruling elite - it was created out of the necessity of pitting people against one-another, and of providing unfair benefits to some, while ignoring others - it was created to discredit socialism itself, which is not at all similar in its ideological form to this abomination. In a pure form of socialism, contributions to the society are rewarded accordingly - not just by market forces (which can result in incredibly important careers being underpaid due to the perceived ease of worker replacement) but also by the demand for that work, and by the necessity of it.
Many facets of American Socialism do not examine the actual contributions of those who receive benefits from them, with exceptions in the cases of unemployment and social security.
For those who receive unemployment, the monies released to them are relative to the amount of money they made while employed - in this sense, unemployment is a fair kind of socialism - payout is inexorably connected to the contributions of the individual. It is a double standard, however, to only provide it to those who are unemployed without apparent fault - as firing or lay offs can be just as much a consequence of individual activity as resigning or quitting can be.
Social security keeps track of how much you have paid in - how much you have contributed to society - and returns that investment when you have reached an age deemed worthy of retirement by society. There is no double standard, no unfair allocation of resources - a person who lives long enough receives exactly the same amount as anyone else who paid in the same, regardless of their current life situation or recent decision making. It is, in fact, the model of ideological socialism - people receiving the safety net they deserve (even if there are some problems with capitalist market forces and wages that would need to be rectified to truly make it fair.)
Welfare does not care if you have ever worked, it only requires that you attempt to find work. It is, in fact, more difficult for a person who has successfully worked a great deal to receive welfare, than it is for a person who has not. Thus the safety net is not fairly applied - it often ends up only aiding the lowest common denominators, while ignoring others. The prevalence of the homeless can tell us that welfare does not function in America, and that it needs to be reexamined.
Financial aid for university does not care if you have ever worked, have ever tried to save finances for education - it only cares that you do not currently have assets, regardless of the circumstances behind the numbers of your bank account. If you save for years to attend university, you ultimately only harm yourself as far as affordable loans and grants are concerned. An individual who has saved should, at the least, receive the same benefits as a financially irresponsible individual, if we are to provide aid at all.
This is the primary problem with socialism in America - that it does not care for the details and the actual contributions of the individual - it is why there is such a huge outcry against Bernie Sanders and his favorite European countries, even if his intentions mean well, and even if their systems function perfectly fine.
It is my opinion that this kind of socialism was no mistake by the ruling elite - it was created out of the necessity of pitting people against one-another, and of providing unfair benefits to some, while ignoring others - it was created to discredit socialism itself, which is not at all similar in its ideological form to this abomination. In a pure form of socialism, contributions to the society are rewarded accordingly - not just by market forces (which can result in incredibly important careers being underpaid due to the perceived ease of worker replacement) but also by the demand for that work, and by the necessity of it.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 08:20 pm (UTC)"Social security.... There is no double standard, no unfair allocation of resources - a person who lives long enough receives exactly the same amount as anyone else who paid in the same, regardless of their current life situation or recent decision making."
Not so. The main beneficiaries of Social Security - the ones it was originally intended to benefit - are people who did not work for pay, nor pay in to the system: traditional wives. Let me tell you, there are plenty of rich widows who never worked a day in their lives, who receive a quarter-century or more of Social Security payments because they married someone with a high-paying job.
More later! *hugs* Hope your day's going well!
i
Date: 2016-05-12 04:15 am (UTC)But it does just further support my view that American socialism is more or less nothing like socialism, and I have to believe that it was designed that way intentionally. The common view of real socialism is this system that takes from anyone who does well and redistributes it to all the people who do nothing - but I don't believe that was the intention of Karl Marx or Lenin, or any of the other major communist/socialist thinkers. That's the problem with American socialism, anyway - it seems to have led a lot of people to think wrongly about what it actually means, and it doesn't help when the media paints it always the same way - some black mother with seven kids living off the system, having never worked a day in her life. That's not socialism though - that's something else completely.
That tired old example is, maybe, more an instance of negligence - there are a whole slew of reasons *why* a person ends up in that kind of lifestyle to begin with, among them poor education and lack of opportunity, but I also think there is some truth to the conservative argument that the ease of access to such social spending for certain sectors has a role to play as well.
-hugs- Hope your day went well as well! Spent basically all day after noon out in the garage with my dad, grinding the rust off of the last piece of a 1950s backhoe, prepping for enamel primer. Wish I could learn everything he knows when it comes to mechanics.