What do we mean by capitalism and socialism?
Socialism was described decades ago as the system of the bogeyman, the heathenistic regime coming to take away your money and freedom.
But, if we give into the fear-mongering of late about socialism, and have integrity, we would have to say we’re willing to put our retirees back into the workforce, under their relatives’ roofs...because they wouldn’t be able to take care of themselves, no longer getting their Social Security checks or access to healthcare through Medicare. We would only have the higher-income kids educated because the others couldn’t afford school fees...as it used to be a few centuries ago.
We fear socialism even though many of the US allies have socialism—democracy and capitalism as well—such as a socialistic health care system provided by the government, e.g. the UK, which includes Canada. Many of the Scandinavian countries as well. In fact, Denmark—that many would say has many successful corporations (Lego, anyone?)—has one of the highest income tax rates to pay for its social programs.
Likewise, US corporations—and some say to hold unions at bay—started to provide health insurance. The owners, stockholders would pay for others’ health care. And we have Social Security and Medicare for the retired amongst us. We have government-provided elementary and secondary education systems.
And don’t consider any state or federal road or transportation systems. We would have to take away the FAA and only have private corporate control over air traffic. It might be a system like the early days of Microsoft’s Word documents trying to be read by Apple’s Pages program...and vice versa. Different airlines could only operate in areas where they ‘subscribed’ to the traffic control system and might have to have several onboard communication hardware/software/radio systems.
Those programs we might admit help our capitalistic economic system because it reduces fear, anxiety of being able to provide for yourself in your working age and in your retirement. It helps us with a smoother infrastructure. Do we really think we want pure capitalism?
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