SEVERUSMAX
Benevolent Master
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2004
- Posts
- 28,995
Yes, I was once a Republican, seems like a lifetime ago. Back then, I believed that prosperity would reach us all, eventually, once the "engine" of private enterprise got really going and businesses would start hiring in large numbers, full employment would be around the corner, people could voluntarily spread the wealth once the government got off their backs with all of their Nanny State regulations.
Well, now, we've seen the "engine" of Koch Brothers-style, Ayn Rand, objectivist, Rothbardite anarcho-libertarian capitalism unleashed, and the results are revealing indeed: growing poverty, so much so that the UN is reporting on Third World conditions and the return of Third World, preventable conditions, traditionally linked to abject poverty, hunger, and malnourishment, such as ringworm, in places like Alabama and Mississippi.
Far from lifting all boats, as I once believed in my Jack Kemp-style optimism, the rising tide has drowned many of us in poverty, misery, a shrinking middle class, growing ranks of working poor who must work two or three jobs per person in the household just to pay bills. The only reason that my bills aren't more crushing is that I don't own a car and have the accompanying expenses of that. I walk to work, which in the Arizona summer heat can threaten heatstroke, but is otherwise quite bearable.
So, yeah, I recant all of my past confidence in unregulated, "pure market" capitalism and openly endorse social democracy, or as Bernie Sanders likes to call it, "democratic socialism" here in good ol' America. It seems that the Norman Thomases, Upton Sinclairs, Eugene Debses, etc. of the American socialist tradition were onto something, weren't they?
Well, now, we've seen the "engine" of Koch Brothers-style, Ayn Rand, objectivist, Rothbardite anarcho-libertarian capitalism unleashed, and the results are revealing indeed: growing poverty, so much so that the UN is reporting on Third World conditions and the return of Third World, preventable conditions, traditionally linked to abject poverty, hunger, and malnourishment, such as ringworm, in places like Alabama and Mississippi.
Far from lifting all boats, as I once believed in my Jack Kemp-style optimism, the rising tide has drowned many of us in poverty, misery, a shrinking middle class, growing ranks of working poor who must work two or three jobs per person in the household just to pay bills. The only reason that my bills aren't more crushing is that I don't own a car and have the accompanying expenses of that. I walk to work, which in the Arizona summer heat can threaten heatstroke, but is otherwise quite bearable.
So, yeah, I recant all of my past confidence in unregulated, "pure market" capitalism and openly endorse social democracy, or as Bernie Sanders likes to call it, "democratic socialism" here in good ol' America. It seems that the Norman Thomases, Upton Sinclairs, Eugene Debses, etc. of the American socialist tradition were onto something, weren't they?
