Should the US be 100% capitalism with no concern of social ethics?

[keepitlow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hn6ad4_FzM

Sure Universal Healthcare is a form of socialism. So what? We already have many socialzed sytems in force within the US.

Medicare, Social Security, our the Postal Service as well as Public Education are all forms of socialism. Sure our socialized systems need improvement as they are mismanaged through the corrupt politicians. But mismanaged or not would we do better as a country without such systems?

Should the US be 100% capitalism with no concern of social ethics?

In the vid Prez Johnson touched on the answer ...you need a mix of capitalism and free markets as well as social safety nets. It is just a question of what the mix is?

Socialism is what saved our country from going bust with the Wall Street debacle. Maybe we needed to go through a terrible depression and die off to clean house. But that is not the way things went down. So we must give credit where credit is due and the saving grace that kept America as well as the world going turned out to be socialism and not the free market capitalism.

Another fellow (I think on the AR-15 forum) had a solution to America's woes. He subscribed to the "Scrooge Theory."

He said if a person can't get along without pills, medicine, psychiatric care, welfare, Medicare, food stamps or gov handouts to live - then they need to just die. He wasn't bitter about it, just viewed this as the correct way to run a country under the law of natural selection.

I heard similar views from the survival podcast man about gov entitlements. (He didn't mention the need to die part) but, I agree with him the gov keeps a certain amount on the citizens beholden to the politicians for handouts,

But that is how we built our nation. Do we kill off half of the pop in midstream? If that was the case, America would be a very different place, wouldn't it?

But as America goes bust from corrupt politicians, we run out of fossil fuels and fewer and fewer of us can afford to get healthcare...that 'kill off' is exactly where we are headed.

http://dieoff.org/

Where are you on this issue?

Socialized mix for the US or dump all social programs and let capitalists have full control?

[Gun Geezer]

There is a time and a place for social programs. The problem is an ever increasing segment of bottom feeders are abusing the programs to the point where they are unsustainable. The government lets these people slide because they represent sure fire votes that help keep them in office. Our knee jerk reaction to throw money at every problem and assume the responsibility of being the conscience of the entire world is too burdensome for the healthiest economy. It's easy to be a liberal when you are a have or a have not, it's those of us in the middle that are getting squeezed to the limit.

[ampaterry]

YES, we should be 100% capitalism with zero social programs.
The government should have never entered into the rob Peter to help out Paul situation.

Read Atlas Shrugged -

The point is, if someone is genuinely in NEED, human beings are compassionate enough to HELP that person. Charities are set up for this, and it should never have become the duty of the government.

If someone needs meds and will die without them, is that a good enough reason to have the Government start buying their meds?
No.
Their aunt, cousin, kids, neighbors, or the Salvation Army will take care of them if they are actually in NEED. The problem with the government doing it is that the doll quickly increases from the basic NEEDS of one that CAN NOT get them for themself to the WANTS of those that are too lazy to work for them.

[Terry_P]

I think the point is moot as we aren't going to roll back social security, eliminate the USPS as congress is granted the power to establish post offices, or other entrenched programs. What we need to look at is how these programs are being expanded to cover illegal aliens, being abused by other not eligible such as false disability, workers comp, etc. and future programs that will further restrict our freedoms like universal healthcare, cap and trade and the rest of Obozo's agenda. As an example Social Security was established as a retirement program that citizens contributed to and drew from as they got older and presumably unable to work. Now we have SSD, people are living 10 years longer in short the program has expanded and the population has changed. George Bush tried to change the program to mirror IRA's allowing investments much as the Federal Thrift Savings program operates for part of future SS contributions. It was an excellent idea but would have limited congresses power to raid (borrow) from the fund for other activities so democrats fired up the AARP and other democratic support groups and the bill was killed. Five years later we are 5 years closer to bankruptcy of the fund and nothing has been done. Maybe what we should do is vote the bums out and put someone in there that can make some real change like rounding up the bloodsuckers and either deport them or arrest them.

[Trouble 45-70]

What Terry said.

I didn't want these programs but by Congressional action they are about the only game in town. Unfortunately, I have had to plan my retirement around these programs.

This should be an interesting year. I suspect that after the election, it will be discovered that there is too little income to SS to balance payments and Congress may have to stop raiding the by then nonexistent fund. Will have to ask my Congresscritter how all those IOUs they wrote to we the people are working out now.

Wonder if they have lied about how many are really unemployed now. That's a lot of cash not going into SS, Govt. coffers. Then there is the drain of constantly paying unemployment benefits. Glad I'm not a Congresscritter. I think they are in for a rude awakening when all the lies come home to roost.

Will there rioting in the streets when the SS checks come up short or stop all together?

Just wondering.

[hogger129]

Total 100% capitalism would not be a good thing because then the workers or the people who do not own the means of production would be exploited. But as we have seen, too much regulation is not good either. There needs to be a constant balance. Right now, we have too much regulation. With too much regulation, you kill competition and then it lowers the quality of goods and services. That's one reason communism failed in Russia. Quantity was valued over quality because there was too much regulation and not enough competition.

Personally, I like the libertarian view best on how involved the government needs to be.

[larryg]

While social programs always sound good and most people never get past this point. The reality is you have to force ably take that money from the people who earned it and give it to people who many times are just too lazy to work for it which the government should never do.

The other problem is no social program can every be administered properly by the central government, it needs to be local so you can truly know the individual situation.

[ponycar17]

Actually, if you're a student of economics you realize that there will always be haves and have-nots regardless of the social programs offered. Government assistance in health care only raises the costs, and eventually you're back to paying what you were before, as a proportion of your income. Take France for instance, where socialized healthcare only pays about 70% of the cost of procedures. The other 30% is mostly paid for by the emergence of private supplementary insurance programs. Those who can't pay for the supplementary insurance are back to where they would be without nationalization. The market has a way of correcting things... Supply and demand is a real phenomenon.

In the US, Medicare pays only a percentage of the cost of procedures. One local hospital is right in the middle of a county that has a VERY high unemployment rate of around 25%. Because Medicare only pays about $0.93 (on average) on every dollar of a procedure's cost (not price) the hospital is about to go under since most of their patients are now on Medicare. You cannot continue taking a 7% loss and stay afloat while running a business.

The real problem that kicked off the desire for everyone to have coverage was government meddling in the first place. During WWII the government set wages for workers in industry as a way to prevent inflation of the cost of goods sold to the armed services. Companies began offering 'health insurance' as a way to attract workers since they couldn't pay any more than the next company. And so was born the biggest problem in the American health care industry because of damned government meddling with economic market forces. Insurance companies negotiate lower prices for their members and the rest of Americans without coverage are left to make up the difference. Because insurance made it so easy for Americans to avoid dealing with the true costs of procedures, gradual pricing inflation occurred and demand followed as ease of service only coddled Americans' rapidly growing hypochondriac nature.

So yes, we should be 100% capitalist. If the outreached hand is filled it continues coming back. Pretty soon people don't even desire to take care of themselves because someone else will do it. Look at what LBJ's 'Great Society' did to the black community. In most areas, they're worse off today than in LBJ's day.