Tag: socialism

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Hard Words, Soft Left

socialism, democrats, Hillary Clinton, Common Sense

“The word ‘socialist’ is a really hard word,” warned former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

“Now, I love Bernie Sanders, really,” Granholm added, acknowledging she’s okay with his socialist policies — just not the term.

Not in mixed company.

The former governor of the Wolverine State was responding to a question — “How about the charges ‘he’s a socialist’?” — from Martha Raddatz, who was hosting ABC’s This Week that week.

“The socialist label is something that he applies to himself, right,” Granholm noted. “So the question is how does that play across America?”

Armed with a Gallup poll, Granholm answered that socialism doesn’t play very well at all. Voters are “even” less apt to vote for a “socialist” than for an “atheist.” In case you wondered.

So, what is the difference between a socialist and a Democrat?

“You’re the chairman of the Democratic Party, tell me the difference between you and a socialist,” Chris Matthews had implored Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on MSNBC months ago.

“The relevant debate we’ll be having over the course of this campaign,” dodged the DNC chair, “is what’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.”

Chuck Todd, noting that Bernie Sanders “is an unabashed socialist” who is always praising European social democracies, echoed the question on Meet the Press: “what is the difference?”

“It’s always fun to be interviewed by Chris Matthews and I know that he enjoys that banter,” bobbed an answer-less Wasserman Schultz. “The important distinction we’ll be discussing in this campaign [blah, blah, blah] . . .”

Earlier this month, Matthews likewise asked Hillary Clinton to state the difference. Mrs. Clinton said she wasn’t a socialist but, instead, “a progressive Democrat.”

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn’t answer the question either,” Matthews replied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture meme property rights too much government

Human Interest Story

Income inequality, newspaper clipping, humor, satire, social justice, socialism, Common Sense, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob

“Local Moralist Doing His Part to End Income Inequality”

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Income inequality, newspaper clipping, humor, satire, social justice, socialism, Common Sense, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Collateral Damage Defines Socialist B.S.

Bernie Sanders, consequences, socialism, economics, illustration, Common Sense

Senator Bernie Sanders gave us a big present last week. In one simple “tweet” he warbled out the essence of his socialism: “You have families out there paying 6, 8, 10 percent on student debt but you can refinance your homes at 3 percent. What sense is that?”

That’s what he broadcast. That’s what this self-proclaimed socialist wrote — or allowed his staff to write — on his official Twitter account, @SenSanders.

And it is not as if he had the excuse of haste. He was repeating a thought from his presidential campaign account in September: “It makes no sense that students and their parents pay higher interest rates for college than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.”

To the earlier post, Twitter erupted in criticism. The gist? Have you never heard of collateral, sir?

Lenders can charge less on secured loans because, in case of default, the recourse is to take the collateral, the car or house, thereby recouping the loss.

But an unsecured loan? Well, by law one cannot easily slough off student loans — but one can simply not pay, or pay late. Hence the higher rates.

From its beginnings, socialism — and progressivism and Fabianism and fascism and social democracy, following — has been fueled by complaints about markets.

Without showing any understanding of the logic of markets.

Which is why, when put into practice, socialistic and interventionist programs produce such great amounts of negative collateral effects. Socialism is the philosophy of good intentions that yields collateral damage worse than the problems meant to be solved.

Oh, Bernie Sanders! Your initials say so much.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

Spoiler Alert — Making Socialism Work

Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction, TV, internet, devil, socialism, Common Sense, illustration

Despite the hoopla, I did not get a chance to watch Childhood’s End, the miniseries that aired this week on the SyFy channel.

But I didn’t really need to — and not just because it failed to receive critical or popular acclaim.

This is the age of the Internet, and — Spoiler Alert! — many cats get let out of many a bag. Facebook, Twitter, water coolers . . . we all hear things outside the designated venues.

Of course, many people knew the plot line of SyFy’s miniseries — simply because it’s based on a 1953 novel by Arthur C. Clarke.

So, when we notice that one of the show’s creators interprets the story’s stark ending as being more personal than cosmic, that it is about accepting the inevitability of death, we are not going to go into a snit about “spoilers.” We can all can handle it like . . . grown-ups.

Yes, the tale is in the “out there” branch of science fiction. Aliens come. They bring mankind a Golden Age, an era of plenty, curing disease and ending the need to work. And then, after a long stretch, they reveal themselves, in full-frontal corporeality: they look like devils, with huge horns, red gnarly skin, cloven hooves, wings and a tail. But finally the big truth dawns: the last generation of children becomes clairvoyant, ascend into the air, and, while destroying the planet, become “as one” in the universal Overmind.

Accepting death? Why not this interpretation: sure, socialism can work — but only by stripping us of our individuality and destroying humanity along with all life on the planet.

The devil, you say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility

Finland on 800-Euros-a-Month

Finland, Guaranteed Income, UBI, welfare, income, Common Sense, illustration

Some folks think the world owes them a living.

Must we appease them?

Should government hand every man, woman and child a check each month to make sure we’re all taken care of?

Finland is embracing this basic idea with a pilot program, providing everyone an “unconditional basic income” (UBI). Treating citizens equally is enshrined in Finland’s constitution, so every Finn will receive the same 800-euros a month without regard to income or lack thereof.

It sounds like Democrat George McGovern’s “guaranteed annual income,” which was mocked and ridiculed during the 1972 presidential campaign.

But you might be surprised who has supported the UBI: free-market economist Milton Friedman advanced the similar “negative income tax” back in 1962; Martin Luther King liked it; Austrian economist F. A. Hayek endorsed the concept; Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground, has developed a version of the proposal.

The rationale? Save money by consolidating duplicative welfare programs. After all, the U.S. government runs 79 means-tested benefit programs, each with its costly, redundant bureaucracy.

Counter-intuitively, perhaps, Finland’s social engineers think the move will increase employment. Why? Because welfare benefits currently can be withdrawn when Finns gain employment and the attendant income, which discourages folks from risking their secure base benefits.

That’s the case here, too.

The government passing out money — our money — stinks. Folks should take care of themselves, or depend on charity — not confiscatory taxation. Yet, if this version of a safety net does indeed encourage industry, employment, and good old-fashioned money-making amongst the poor . . . it may very well be a step in the right direction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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FREE!

socialism, free, stuff, don't worry, comrades, it will all be free, collage, photomontage, illustration, meme, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Don’t worry comrades!

Click here for a high resolution version of the image (suitable for sharing and using as a screensaver):

meme, free stuff, free, don't worry, collage, photomontage, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, illustration, Common Sense

socialism, free, stuff, don't worry, comrades, it will all be free, collage, photomontage, illustration, meme, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Fairy-Tale “Free”

Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-tale candidate.

Well, yeah.

Not “once upon a time,” but today . . .  the federal government’s public debt is in the double-digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!

He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.

But the costs have to be paid.

And will be.

That’s the essence of common-sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.

And those costs can be killer.

Far-left-of-center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from . . . three pot-of-gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”

We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.

Bernie didn’t get that lesson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Hard Looker?

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

What is a “democratic socialist”?

According to leading presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders, such a socialist “takes a hard look at countries around the world who [sic] have successful records fighting and implementing programs for the middle class and working families.”

I don’t believe him. He shows his cavalier attitude in his next few words: “When you do that you automatically go to countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden . . .”

Competent comparative economics doesn’t simply focus on a few policies one happens to admire and then trumpet them for America. Other countries following Bernie-branded socialist policies are in or headed into the proverbial toilet, i.e. PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

The common-on-the-left meme runs like this: “No Other Advanced Country,” which Kevin D. Williamson handily demolishes in a recent article:

If we are to go around the world cherry-picking policies from happy countries, we might pass over French paid-leave laws in favor of the Swiss capital-gains tax (generally 0.00 percent) or the Swiss national minimum wage (there isn’t one), or Finland’s very liberal (in the good sense of that word) education system, or Sweden’s free-trade regime and its financial-regulatory system. We’d have to make radical improvements on our federal balance sheet to get our public debt down to Norwegian levels.

American success has never really been about copycatting Europe. We need to look hard at those who pretend otherwise — like nova Bernie, the rising star of the left, who’s now besting Hillary in polls in New Hampshire and Iowa.

And about “democratic socialism” — extreme redistributionism in a putative republic — Bernie needs to look hard at the worldwide experience . . . not hardly look.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Weekend with Bernie: Leftist Demagogue

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s main opponent on the Democratic side of Campaign 2016, is a demagogue.

My Democratic friends balk at this, contending the term better applies to Donald Trump. But, no matter how different these men may be, their differences don’t mean that only one of them can be a demagogue.

Perhaps demagogues of very different stripes.

First, definitions.

A demagogue (from French “demagogue,” derived from the Greek “demos,” for “people”) is, my dictionary says, a political leader in a democracy who appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the lower socioeconomic classes in order to gain power.

The charge makes sense because Sen. Sanders has made wealth and income inequality his main issue, and because he relentlessly attacks higher-income Americans as a source of America’s current woes — whose wealth Sanders targets as the cure (provided it goes through his hands, first).

True, he appeals mostly to college-educated middle-class folks and bohos. But he uses the code-phrase “everyday working Americans” as a wedge, and the poor as an innocent shield, to advance what are, in fact, elitist solutions.

Like most self-professed socialists the Senator is only faux-prole, workingman manqué. Intellectuals, collegians and government workers have long dominated the socialist movement.

Socialist Demagogue defined: Emotion, Fear, Prejudice and Ignorance - Bernie Sanders

Though Sanders rightly attacks the plutocracy, he never attacks the government half of the plutocrats’ power structure. Never admits that unions are plutocratic in nature, too.

Instead, he appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudice and ignorance of those who, against all evidence, see more government only as a solution and never as a problem.

Par for the socialist course. That, remember, is a word Sanders chose.

For its historic demagogic appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies Popular

Are Democrats Socialists?

Deer in the Headlights

Does it matter that the chair of the Democratic National Committee doesn’t know if her party is socialist?

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was grilling Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on the meaning of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s popularity within the Democratic Party. Mrs. Wasserman-Schultz responded by boasting that the Democrats “really are a Big Tent Party.” Then Matthews veered out her comfort zone of horse-race politics and self-congratulatory posturing.

“What is the difference between a Democrat and a Socialist?” he asked.

Mrs. W-S chuckled. Uncomfortably.

“I used to think there was a big difference,” Matthews went on. “What do you think it is?” Mrs. W-S evaded, blathering on how it is that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is what will really count in the upcoming election.

Karl Dickey, at the Examiner, holds that Democrats, today, are socialists: “one only needs to look at the Democratic Party’s platform to understand that it is a socialistic political party.”

Meanwhile, Juan Williams, discussing the issue on Fox News’s The Five, argues that there is a big difference between Democrats and socialists: Dems just like regulation and redistributing wealth; socialists want to nationalize industry and run everything through a central bureau.

And that is the definition that anti-socialist economists Yves Guyot and Ludwig von Mises settled on. Technically, Williams is right.

But the fact that the head of the Democratic Party waffled on the distinction says more about the party than a definitive answer would have.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Deer in the Headlights