Tag Archives: Socialism

A Giant Strike Toward Socialism, by Grace-Marie Turner

Posted on August 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Everything the government touches turns to crap and healthcare is certainly no exception. From Grace-Marie Turner at realclearhealth.com:

Step by step, for nearly 70 years, liberals have been marching the United States toward government-controlled health care, and the Schumer-Manchin bill is another giant stride.

COVID provided the opening for Congress to enhance and expand Obamacare subsidies for two years, and the bill before the House would extend them for three more years. So much for a temporary program.

The added subsidies push up prices and premiums. And they are a regressive use of taxpayer dollars since much of the benefit accrues to higher-income people.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that, among subsidized Obamacare marketplace enrollees, taxpayers pay 82% of premiums. That generates substantial reliance on government for health insurance.

With taxpayers footing the bill, there are few incentives for insurance companies to moderate costs. Premiums for insurance in the individual market increased by 143% over six years to 2019, and deductibles also have skyrocketed. The average annual premium plus deductible for a family of four with an ACA plan was about $25,000 in 2021. And that is for coverage with extremely narrow physician networks and often limited access to the best hospitals.

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The Coming Global Fracture as Economic Orders Clash, by Michael Hudson

Posted on June 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s a battle between state-directed economic philosophies. From Michael Hudson at unz.com:

“Taken from an interview with the newly founded German magazine “ViER” which will be published in August 2022.” ViER (FOUR), stands for the media as fourth power in checks and balances).

(1.) Prof. Hudson, your new book “The Destiny of Civilization” is out now. This lecture series on finance capitalism and the New Cold War presents an overview of your unique geo-political perspective.

You talk about an ongoing ideological and material conflict between financialized and de-industrialized countries like United States against the mixed-economies of China and Russia. What is this conflict about and why is the world right now at a unique “point of fracture” as your book states?

Today’s global fracture is dividing the world between two different economic philosophies: In the US/NATO West, finance capitalism is de-industrializing economies and has shifted manufacturing to Eurasian leadership, above all China, India and other Asian countries in conjunction with Russia providing basic raw materials and arms.

These countries are a basic extension of industrial capitalism evolving into socialism, that is, into a mixed economy with strong government infrastructure investment to provide education, health care, transportation and other basic needs by treating them as public utilities with subsidized or free services for these needs.

In the neoliberal US/NATO West, by contrast, this basic infrastructure is privatized as a rent-extracting natural monopoly.

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Posted in Business, Capitalism, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Energy, Eurasian Axis, Financial markets, Geopolitics, Governments, Trade

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“Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore”, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on May 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

Capitalism is the economic system of free people, which means the U.S. has not had capitalism for a long time. Nonetheless, those who want to tear down the present system persist in calling it capitalism. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Recently, an American colleague commented to me, “We no longer live in a democracy but a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”

Is he correct? Well, a dictatorship may be defined as “a form of government in which absolute authority is exercised by a dictator.”

The US today is not be ruled by dictatorship (although, to some, it may well feel that way.)

But, if that’s the case, what form of rule does exist in the US?

At its formation, the founding fathers argued over whether the United States should be a republic or a democracy. Those founders who later formed the Federalist Party felt that it should be a democracy – rule by representatives elected by the people. Thomas Jefferson, who created the Democratic Republican Party, argued that it should be a republic – a state in which the method of governance is democracy, but the principle of governance is that the rights of the individual are paramount.

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Socialism: Opiate of the Masses, by Jon Rappoport

Posted on April 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

The deeply held beliefs of socialists generally find no support in history or logical analysis. That, of course, has never stopped a socialist. From Jon Rappoport at lewrockwell.com:

Let’s get something straight. There is no pure form of socialism, where “the government owns the means of production.”

The means of production own the government, and vice versa. It’s always collusion. Elite power players stitch themselves together like a walking Frankenstein corpse.

Socialism can be done with a smile or with guns and jails. Styles vary.

For example, the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] believes an international “joining of hands across the water” would be just dandy.

You could call the CFR’s agenda socialism or Globalism or fascism or dictatorship or the corporate state—it doesn’t matter. For the sake of brevity, call it socialism.

At street level (not within the CFR), every proponent of the socialist “solution” either has no idea who installs it and runs it, or astonishingly believes “the government” can be transformed into a beneficent enterprise and shed its core corruption, as it takes the reins of absolute power.

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Posted in Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Government, Morality, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

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Minimising Government’s Dominance over Your Life, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on November 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you really want to at least partially rid yourself of government, you’re probably going to have to move. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Recently, whilst having lunch with several successful businessmen, the value of formal education was being discussed and one said, “When I got out of school, I thought I was fully educated and ready to take on the business world, but actually, I was clueless.”

The others laughed, recalling their own introductions into business. All agreed that, although they had taken all of the requisite courses, formal schooling prepared them not at all in the understanding of commerce.

That is, all except one. He, as a boy, had been encouraged by his parents to take on a paper route, open lemonade stands, cut lawns for neighbours, etc. Although his parents couldn’t afford university for him, by the time he graduated high school, he thoroughly understood the principles of commerce.

The bicycle that he rode in his early teens was bought out of profits from his early business ventures. Later on, he bought his first car out of his earnings. And so, when he left school, he hit the road running and was ahead of his “luckier” peers who were then at university.

When they graduated, each had an advantage the others didn’t have. Yet, at the lunch meeting mentioned above, each university graduate agreed that understanding commerce, which they had had to learn on their own, after graduation, was the central lesson that enabled their later success.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Economy, Governments, Investing, Taxes, Tyranny

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Central Banks and Socialism Are Forever Linked Together, by Jorg Guido Hullsman

Posted on October 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

You’ll never see free, private money in a socialized system. From Jorg Guido Hullsman at lewrockwell.com:

It is well known that socialism is a shortage economy. It is the economy of inefficiency and corruption, of indifferent workers and of bigwigs, of lacking spare parts, of lacking funds, of failure, of permanent reform needs and of constantly unsuccessful reforms. This concerns in particular total socialism, as it was realized in the Soviet Union or under National Socialism. But it is no less evident in the numerous partial socialisms that are featured in the real existing welfare state, in its numerous state “systems.” Budget deficits year in, year out despite high contributions—that is the reality in the state pension system and in the state health system. The state education system is similar: declining student performance and growing illiteracy despite sky-rocketing expenditure. No private entrepreneur could afford to let the costs get out of hand in such a way. Anyone who is in competition has to keep improving. Only those who have a legal monopoly and can make use of taxpayers’ money if necessary do not need it.

Now there is one partial socialism that stands out from the usual array of failures. Here we see gains instead of losses. Here we often find all the other signs of a successfully run company, from the private legal form to the pinstripe-filled boardroom. We are talking about central banking. The term “central bank” actually refers quite clearly to a centrally planned economy. But when people talk about the Fed, the ECB or other central banks today, hardly anyone thinks that they are talking about an offspring of the socialist spirit. On the contrary, central banks are typically viewed as particularly “capitalist.” After all, what would be more capitalist than money? And what would be more closely related to money than a bank?

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Governments, History, Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda

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“The Great Reset” Is the Road to Socialism Mises Warned Us About, by Tho Bishop

Posted on October 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Socialism has been smuggled in by a thousand compromises. When a fundamental principle compromises with political expediency, who wins? From Thos Bishop at mises.org:

Through the sheer power of his intellectual output, Ludwig von Mises established himself as one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work Human Action remains a foundational text of the Austrian school. His critique outlining the impracticality of socialism was vindicated with the fall of the Soviet Union and remains without a serious intellectual challenge today.

Just as important, but often overlooked, is his work on the economic system that continues to infect the world today: interventionism.

Like contemporaries such as James Burnham, Mises discerned that the true threat to free markets in the West was not a true socialist revolution, but rather a “middle of the road” approach that so attracted an intellectually shallow political class.

In 1950, during one of his most important speeches, Mises identified the most dangerous ideology on the global stage:

They reject socialism no less than capitalism. They recommend a third system, which, as they say, is as far from capitalism as it is from socialism, which as a third system of society’s economic organization, stands midway between the two other systems, and while retaining the advantages of both, avoids the disadvantages inherent in each. This third system is known as the system of interventionism. In the terminology of American politics it is often referred to as the middle-of-the-road policy.

This ideology succeeded where communism failed, successfully toppling governments around the world that never had true respect for property rights.

But as Mises understood, however, this “managerial revolution” could not last as a sustainable form of government. Interventionism may be politically convenient, but ultimately it is grounded in volatile inconsistencies. It must be rejected completely, or it will inevitably lead to more and more power shifting to the state.

This is precisely what we have seen.

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Capitalism—A New Idea, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on September 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

There’s not one person on this planet who has lived under a purely capitalistic system, yet every economic ill and shortcoming is attributed to capitalism. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

Capitalism, whether praised or derided, is an economic system and ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and operation for profit.

Classical economics recognises capitalism as the most effective means by which an economy can thrive. Certainly, in 1776, Adam Smith made one of the best cases for capitalism in his book, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (known more commonly as The Wealth of Nations). But the term “capitalism” actually was first used to deride the ideology, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in The Communist Manifesto, in 1848.

Of course, whether Mister Marx was correct in his criticisms or not, he lived in an age when capitalism and a free market were essentially one and the same. Today, this is not the case. The capitalist system has been under attack for roughly 100 years, particularly in North America and the EU.

A tenet of capitalism is that, if it’s left alone, it will sort itself out and will serve virtually everyone well. Conversely, every effort to make the free market less free diminishes the very existence of capitalism, making it less able to function.

Today, we’re continually reminded that we live under a capitalist system and that it hasn’t worked. The middle class is disappearing, and the cost of goods has become too high to be affordable. There are far more losers than winners, and the greed of big business is destroying the economy.

This is what we repeatedly hear from left-leaning people and, in fact, they are correct. They then go on to label these troubles as byproducts of capitalism and use this assumption to argue that capitalism should give way to socialism.

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Sustainability and Super Pandemics: The Connection by Dr. Igor Shepherd

Posted on September 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Sustainability is one of those code words endlessly repeated by our would-be rulers. It means: let us rule the world. From Dr. Igor Shepherd at lewrockwell.com:

Sustainability. What the heck is this and what does it have to do with super pandemics? The “Kool-Aid” version of sustainability is defined as a way for people to use resources without the resources running out—but the actual blueprint behind it is to subvert current governments for global takeover. Sustainability is already deeply entrenched in all governments, world health organizations, military, universities, corporations, and the pharmaceutical goliaths rolling out the mRNA weaponized vaccines. Through sustainability, super pandemics become one nasty way with which to transform the world.

In the 1980’s, Agenda 21 emerged on the scene, and began to circulate among American thinkers, and cause a stir. Agenda 21 was a United Nation’s-founded “communist” scheme to globalize world governments by the year 2021, under the guise of “saving the environment.” The marketing campaign that our earth needed saving was the means with which the founders hoped to revamp the world’s governments under one stringent global umbrella. The premeditated “coup d’état” was out there in plain sight, but the globalists employed effective propaganda to convince the majority of people that Agenda 21 was all about the environment, and nothing more. The foolery worked, and the majority of Americans ignored the visible signs of infiltration.

To continue keeping this “freedom-flattening” plot under wraps, the globalists shifted gears, and labeled Agenda 21 under a softer tag, calling it Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development (SD) is code word for communism. It became popular in 1987, after a report titled, Our Common Future, was circulated under the direction of Gro Brundtland, who endorsed communism, and was vice president for Socialist International. She had previously worked as director for the World Health Organization. One of her most notable quotes provides clues that a planned emergency was on the books to usher in global change. She stated:

“In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.”

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Energy, Environment, Governments, Media, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda, Science

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The Soviet Union Is Gone, but the Young Yearn for Socialism, by Richard Ebeling

Posted on August 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

It’s one of the more pitiful aspects of contemporary education that most young people have no clue about the twentieth century horrors of socialism, and think it would actually be a desirable system under which to live. For their sake, and our own, let’s hope they never get their wish. From Richard Ebeling at aier.org:

This August marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the end to the Soviet Union. During August 19-21, 1991, hardline members of the Soviet Communist Party and the KGB attempted a coup d’état in Moscow to prevent the political and economic reforms introduced over the prior five years from going any further. The coup failed, and on Christmas Eve, 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved and disappeared from the political map of the world.

The events of those days are especially imprinted on my mind because I was in Moscow at the time, watching and, indeed, even participating in those August 1991 events. Frequently traveling to the Soviet Union on privatization and market reform consulting work, especially in the, now, former Soviet republic of Lithuania and in Moscow, I witnessed the failed coup attempt and its immediate aftermath.

The Soviet regime had ruled Russia and the other 14 component republics of the U.S.S.R. for nearly 75 years, since the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 led by Vladimir Lenin and his communist cadre of Marxist followers. During that almost three-quarters of a century, first under Lenin and especially Joseph Stalin and then their successors, historians have estimated that upwards of 64 million people – innocent, unarmed men, women and children – died at the hands of the Soviet regime in the name of building the “bright, beautiful future” of socialism.

Mass Murder and Slave Labor Under Soviet Socialism

The forced collectivization of the land under Stalin in the early 1930s, alone, is calculated to have cost the lives of nine to twelve million Russian and Ukrainian peasants and their families who resisted the loss of their private farms and being forced into state collective farms that replaced them. Some were simply shot; others were tortured to death or sent to die as slave laborers in the concentration and labor camps in Siberia or Soviet Central Asia known as the GULAG. Millions were slowly starved to death by a government-created famine designed to force submission to the central planning dictates of Stalin and his henchmen.

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