Socialism vs Capitalism

[WBU ALUM]

Spin it any inconceivable and unbelievable way you wish, cookie. You always do.

I still don't know what this discussion is doing in the Socialism vs Capitalism thread unless cookie is trying to point out that now that the US is leaning more socialist that more people may be wanting to leave the US.

[cookie]

Spin it any inconceivable and unbelievable way you wish, cookie. You always do.

I still don't know what this discussion is doing in the Socialism vs Capitalism thread unless cookie is trying to point out that now that the US is leaning more socialist that more people may be wanting to leave the US.

The US more socialist ????who would dare say a thing like that ????

[goonersh]

Socialism and Capitalism are, at their extreme.. both exactly the same... spot the difference between fascism and communism.... There is none... its all about control....they are both funded by the same bankers too

[cookie]

Socialism and Capitalism are, at their extreme.. both exactly the same... spot the difference between fascism and communism.... There is none... its all about control....they are both funded by the same bankers too

=D> =D> =D>

more examples of extreme capitalism ....


What a bad joke American business has become ????????


Exiting GM CEO Wagoner gets lifetime salary, millions in benefits

After 32 years with the company, Wagoner plans to officially resign on August 1, though he ceased work in his role as CEO on March 27. He will receive $1.6 million in annual benefits over the next five years, along with an annual salary of $74,030 for the rest of his life, The Wall Street Journal revealed late Tuesday.

“Wagoner will continue to receive liability insurance coverage at a level similar with other retired executives until Jan. 1, 2010,” the paper noted. “He also will receive a life insurance policy, which the company has maintained for his benefit since Jan. 1, 1997, or its cash value, currently $2.6 million.”

The Detroit Free Press estimated the package to be worth $8.2 million.

“His retirement benefits had been valued at $22.1 million in 2008, but pensions for top executives were cut by two-thirds as part of the company’s bankruptcy sale to a government-owned entity,” the noted. “Wagoner also had held about 3 million options to buy GM shares that are now worthless.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-200 ... 13524.html

He will sit around and play golf, smoke cigars,....
He get this compensation for helping ruin a major US company and industry...
while the union workers worry about getting promised health benefits....

extreme hands-off Capitalism at his best!!!!!!

[The man from Ketchup]

I think you will find the post about people living America was from the point they (America) are the 114th happiest nation in the world.

So if Capitalism is so successful why are they not the happiest nation or at least in the top 10?

[cookie]

.

time to find some answers in our History lessons....

this article clearly explains how capitalism (which used to be a good system) changed to the extreme into a world based on self-interest,
a world with only one interest: maximized profit,
WBU claims that this theory in the long run automatically produce the best possible outcome for society as a whole!!!!
maximized pursuit of self-interest would automatically bring the greatest possible efficiency and return!!!

but Ethical responsibility (beyond minimal legality) and civic obligation would be stripped from business as obstacles ...


Seaford's conclusion:


Capitalism destroys limits in society and in human relations because it places the individual, or a society, in a position of “predatory isolation.

Blame the Midas Touch

If one tries to draw an urgently contemporary lesson from Greek myth, the story of Midas is irresistible. It provides a commentary on our global economic and financial crisis, in which the pursuit of wealth has ruined us.


Posted on Jul 16, 2009


By William Pfaff

ATHENS—The peculiar charm of the anthropomorphic gods of classical Greece is that they were so like us, exemplifying our weaknesses and follies, inspiring the mortal occupants of Attic Greece to the invention of philosophy—the application of natural reason to the causes and meaning of existence—and to tragedy, which deals with the irony and confrontation with justice that destroys a human of noble but flawed intentions.

If one tries to draw an urgently contemporary lesson from Greek myth, the story of Midas is irresistible. It provides a commentary on our global economic and financial crisis, in which the pursuit of wealth has ruined us.

Seventy years ago, capitalism was widely thought to have failed because of the Crash and Great Depression. Following the Second World War, however, the United States was reassured by the wartime accomplishment of American industry, while in Western Europe there was less confidence. The magical promises of revolutionary change offered between the wars by fascism and Communism were discredited.

Fascism in Italy famously made the trains run on time, drained the Pontine Marshes, and launched an improbable new Roman imperialism.

Nazi Germany’s people were put to work by public investment, building the first limited-access national public highway system, and by rearmament. The raison d’etre of both fascism and Nazism proved ultimately to be war.

The Soviet system attracted parts of the Western working class and intelligentsia because of its romantic millenarianism, promising to make everyone happy in a new and better world, while crushing those who stood in the way.

The cold war effectively stranded those in Western Europe and the U.S. who had been part of the pro-Communist left before the war, leaving Western governments with their prewar capitalist and social democratic economic systems to rebuild.

This proved a great success; the industrial and social systems were rebuilt in Europe, with Marshall aid, and the American economy soared to meet postwar consumer demand and to create the new military-industrial system Dwight Eisenhower had warned against, but which the cold war seemed to demand. Whatever the fantasy that went into the latter—and there was much—all this Western economic activity was connected to utility. In all of the democracies there was an acknowledged obligation to share the wealth.

The social transformation of the United States during the 1950s and 1960s was phenomenal, due to the education of the population, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, and to new popular housing and innovative enterprise. In continental Europe, the early postwar decades are still commonly referred to as the “glorious years.”

What brought the Western economies from that to the present world crisis was, in my view, a revolutionary theory. The American business model was changed. At some point a consensus emerged in the academic community on a new business model. This demanded abandonment of the social concerns previously expected from business, and demanded from corporations the highest possible profits.

It advocated minimal taxation and political regulation, so as to produce the highest stockholder earnings possible. It said that a rationally perfected industrial economy must be based on maximized pursuit of self-interest, and would then automatically bring the greatest possible efficiency and return.

Maximum self-interest by management would imposeIf one tries to draw an urgently contemporary lesson from Greek myth, the story of Midas is irresistible. It provides a commentary on our global economic and financial crisis, in which the pursuit of wealth has ruined us. Free trade and globalization would produce raw materials at lowest possible cost, and maximum sales income.

Ethical responsibility (beyond minimal legality) and civic obligation would be stripped from business as obstacles to maximized profit, which the theory claimed would in the long run automatically produce the best possible outcome for society as a whole. That is the world in which we have been living.

Now, to Midas.

In the June 19 issue of the (London) Times Literary Supplement, the Exeter University classicist Richard Seaford elaborates on an argument he first made in 2004 in a book called “Money and the Early Greek Mind.” This proposed that “the pivotal position of the Greeks” in the world culture of the period they dominated came largely from their invention of money.

Until money, an individual’s possible possessions had to be tangible, useful and necessarily limited enough to enjoy and control. One can directly possess only so much property, herds, ships, or enjoy so much food, sex, honors, reputation, and so on, before being satisfied (or sated). But you cannot possess too much money, because money is fungible, transferable, portable and theoretically unlimited in quantity.

Money thus isolates the individual because it removes him from the real world of relationships, property and useful things, to the world of potentially unlimited possession of something whose essential characteristic is that in itself it is useless. It destroys limits in society and in human relations because it places the individual, or a society, in a position, as Seaford says, of “predatory isolation.”

This was the plight of Midas. He could not drink, eat, touch or love, because anything and everything he touched turned to gold. He bore the worst of curses—which he had himself invited. He begged the god Dionysus for mercy, who lifted the curse. Who will lift the curse from us?

[WBU ALUM]

WBU claims that this theory in the long run automatically produce the best possible outcome for society as a whole!!!!
maximized pursuit of self-interest would automatically bring the greatest possible efficiency and return!!!

but Ethical responsibility (beyond minimal legality) and civic obligation would be stripped from business as obstacles ...

This is a blatant mischaracterization of my statements.

My objections to government control in capitalism have always focused solely on government's attempts to regulate supply and demand with phony interest rates, wage minimums and ceilings, and other such attempted government controls that stifle competition and create unfair advantages for political allies. Regulation to protect consumers, labor and the government are always necessary in areas of safety, fraud and deception.

cookie, you can have your fun with this, but I would appreciate you practicing some honesty and accuracy if you decide to speak for me again.

[cookie]

WBU claims that this theory in the long run automatically produce the best possible outcome for society as a whole!!!!
maximized pursuit of self-interest would automatically bring the greatest possible efficiency and return!!!

but Ethical responsibility (beyond minimal legality) and civic obligation would be stripped from business as obstacles ...

This is a blatant mischaracterization of my statements.

My objections to government control in capitalism have always focused solely on government's attempts to regulate supply and demand with phony interest rates, wage minimums and ceilings, and other such attempted government controls that stifle competition and create unfair advantages for political allies. Regulation to protect consumers, labor and the government are always necessary in areas of safety, fraud and deception.

cookie, you can have your fun with this, but I would appreciate you practicing some honesty and accuracy if you decide to speak for me again.

WBU claims that this theory in the long run automatically produce the best possible outcome for society as a whole!!!!

So do you now no longer claim that Capitalism produces the best outcome for society??????

this is new to me

[WBU ALUM]

Socialist America sinking
Posted: July 16, 2009
Patrick J. Buchanan

After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published "The People's Pottage." A year later, in 1954, he died. "The People's Pottage" opens thus:

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."

Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.

Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When "Silent Cal" Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.

And today? Obama's first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.

The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.

Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and "sin taxes" on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.

Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi's House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.

Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.

The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having "erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?

While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.

Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.

Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.

Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.

As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.

All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – "for ourselves and our posterity."

China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that's swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.

"The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event," writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine. "Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious."

Even the establishment is starting to get the message.

Socialist America sinking

Maybe all of this is why Americans are unhappy. It's not capitalism anymore. It's socialism and fascism.

[cookie]

Capitalism is on its way to self destruction !!!!

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty which are embodied in one maxim: the fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate"

Bertrand Russell.
.

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit


How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher airs live tonight at 10pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mahe ... 44050.html


I just have to add this letter from a canadian citizen:

I just don't understand you Americans. And this isn't to say that I am looking down, but I just don't get your priorites. It is totally bizarre.Well not all that bizarre when you come to realise that it's all about money and nothing else. I think, though, that at some point everyone has to come to the realisation that one hand washes the other. Really, here we are in 2009 and the richest and most powerful country on earth who considered it a great priority and achievement to send a man to the moon and stick a flag and shoot a golf club on it 40 years ago (or whatever, and who the hell cares anyway given we can't even look after each other properly here on this very planet) and you are still dicking around whether gays can marry or not and all people in the country can have decent and ready health care. Sunuvabitch. What in HELL is the problem with you people??
I can say a good deal about our medical system up here. And thank God for it! For it's bloody good and we can all get it.

When did greed became the new Patriotism?

When did capitalism took over????


It seems UNpatriotic to me when US companies move to poor countries and take the jobs out of the USA,
but capitalism is putting profits before people and Country, UNPATRIOTIC indeed because they do it all for the love of money, and NOT for the love of their country


Bill is 100% right:
he is saying that there are some entities in society that should exist just to provide service to the public for the common good.
Entities like hospitals should not be run for profit, but for taking care of the needs of a country's citizens.
There should not be a health care industry run by insurance companies.

[rick]

Cookie, A longtime since i contributed to this thread, but have to say i agree 100% as well to your last post. These days capitalism is mainly about greed, not providing a better service. True, socialism has its problems, not always efficient, but usually fair (2nd class service for everyone). Unfortunately the balance between the 2 is still to capitalist. In UK, socialism eroded by Thatcher and Blair, not sure who is more socialist now, Tories or Labour!

Capitalism wrecked my savings and cost me my job (outsourced and laid off by cost cutting company providing government services). Fortunately enough socialist benefits left to keep me from starving in Uk, should last until i get my enormous,fat, government civil service pension (yeah, i will be so rich i could even rent a 2 bedroom house in UK on it, as long as i do not eat or heat the house). Only good planning and hard cash savings will keep me going (and, in 2 years time, by relying on Thai cost of living!)

[arjay]

Yes, bringing out the practical implications of the subject, the growth of the banks, their demand for growth, and their booming branch network, (in the 70's & 80's) got me my job and my career progression.

The move towards automation, centralisation of administration and other efficiencies (post plc) got me my early retirement. Now and I just sit back and watch.

Governments of both types came and went during that period, as did recessions, booms and busts. So I can't say whether capitalism or socialism had much to do with it, though I suppose you could argue it was a result of market forces and thus capitalism.

Inflation seems to represent a greater threat to the retired and those on low or fixed incomes, and neither of the political persuasions seem immune to inflation. Give it another 12 months and that will be the big threat to many economies.

[goonersh]

Inflation seems to represent a greater threat to the retired and those on low or fixed incomes, and neither of the political persuasions seem immune to inflation. Give it another 12 months and that will be the big threat to many economies.

You simply cannot print so much new money without resulting inflation, and you cannot print billons and billions of new money without hyperinflation, we are now entering a period of deflation... this WILL be followed by hyperinflation, its basic economics and has happend throughout history.. go read "the merchants of venice" wiki....not the play, the REAL ones

You are right Arjay, give it 12-18 months and everyone will wake up to find that their 1 million in pensions wont even buy a loaf of bread.. then the poo is really going to hit the fan

ta

[cookie]

old cartoon about Socialism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lexREXXhE1I

some call it :

The true source of the GOP's "socialism" attacks against President Obama

[rick]

I think there is a rather wide gap between socialism and communism (as europeans see it). Of course, with no experience of it in USA, maybe they think they are the same..... hence the cartoon?

There are no real communist states left in Europe (unless you count Byelorussia). Interestingly, probably the most successful remaining communist state is on USA's doorstep - Cuba. I am sure many will immediately claim that economically it is not successful - true (but USA is partially responsible). But Cuba does have one of the highest literacy rates in the world and an excellent health care system.

So where does the balance lie? Due to an injury, i have been unable to work much the last 7 months. Because i live in a socialist utopia (ha! I wish, but at least something exists), I have been able to survive because i do get mostly free medical treatment and some financial benefits. If i was in a capitalist utopia my health would depend on the quality of my medical insurance (will they pay? for how long), my savings or charity. I also remember when i did apply for accident insurance, because i had previously had an injury (some years before), I was assessed as a bad risk and declined (not profitable enough for a capitalist system). Thats the problem with capitalism, even essential services can be denied to you just because it is not profitable.

Capitalism is to Darwinian (survival of the fittest!) But i believe that is morally wrong when it is human life and welfare at stake. I know many members of this forum have an issue with access to medical care here in Thailand - because of the limited public system, there age and health problems. I believe that a reasonable level of health care should be provided by the state, no matter the health or age of the patient.

I am not asking for government run shops and supermarkets, everything controlled by the state. Just that the state provides a safety net to all for the essentials of life.

[WBU ALUM]

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

* Adrian Rogers, 1931 *

[rick]

WBU, I would agree (at least in part) with your quote. But it is all down to balance. If in my case i was in the States, was refused health insurance for some reason (or quoted an unaffordable sum), then had an accident that left me without work for 7 months, I think I would be in deep trouble. Fortunately, I am not; but neither am i laughing all the way to the bank. By safety net i mean that, not a feather mattress! I believe a safety net should be sufficient to provide for BASIC needs.

Personally i think the way the system currently works is very poor, one person can exploit the system and get far more than a more honest individual. I would prefer to see the current money spent on all the benefits (including tax allowances, but not medical care)) gathered into one cake and split evenly among all citizens (i.e. all permanent residents above say 16). the rich get it, the poor get it. If you think you can live permanently on that, best of luck. But you will have avery BASIC level of existence.

[Michael C]

I did not write this myself and it appears to come from an anonymous source in America, but I did correct some of the poor grammar before posting it here. I thought it was a humorous statement about those in America that fear socialism so much:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock, powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the television to one of the Federal Communications Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the US Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way, I deposit my mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and dropped the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence, because the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection and which has not been plundered of all its valuables, thanks to the local police department.

I then log onto the internet, which was developed by the Defense Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

[TJ]

Here an extensive and interesting history of American Socialism that may interest you. From about 1700 on there have been many American socialist communities. One of the more memorable socialist communities was New Harmony founded by the weathy Scot industrialist Robert Owen. Anyone remember him? He also established a socialist community, New Lanark, with workers at his Scotland factory village.

"The only laudable object anyone can have in rehearsing and studying the histories of the socialistic failures is that of learning from them practical lessons for guidance in present and future experiments. With this in view, the great experiment at New Harmony is well worth faithful consideration. It was, as we have said, the first and most notable. of the entire series of non-religious Communities. It had for its antecedent the vast reputation that Owen had gained by his success at New Lanark. He came to this country with the prestige of a reformer who had the confidence and patronage of Lords, Dukes and Sovereigns in the old world. His lectures were received with attention by large assemblies in our principal cities. At Washington he was accomodate by the Speaker and President with the Hall of Representatives, in which he delivered several lectures before the President, the President elect, all the judges of the Supreme Court and a great number of members of Congress...

He had a large private fortune, and drew into his schemes other capitalists, so that his experiment had the advantage of unlimited wealth. That wealth, as we have seen, placed at his command unlimited land and a ready-made village. These attractions brought him men in unlimited numbers."

http://mises.org/books/americansocialisms.pdf

[TJ]

Here's what Pravda is saying about the U.S. communists: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BK burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe."

and the rest at http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

That is some good reporting, pretty much on the mark, or Marx.