Rhetoric on Capitalism vs Socialism Falls to Stupidism
You won’t find stupidism in a dictionary, so don’t bother
looking. I just invented it.
There are many great
attributes to Capitalism, but it needs controls (and once had them).
Four out of the five best
nations in which to live, according to residents, are socialistic: Canada (no),
Sweden (yes), Denmark (yes), Norway (yes) and Finland (yes).
Now you can the positives and negatives on both sides and
discuss them intelligently, but all too often that’s when stupidism rears its
ugly head. And ugly it is.
Shall we fiddle with definitions?
One calls socialism ‘a political and economic theory of social
organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and
exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.’
Catch that owned or regulated part? Community as a whole doesn’t own the interstate highways, rural
electrification, social security, Medicare or our over-stuffed military. But
government does regulate them, or at
least tries to. In the case of the
military and privately held banks, it’s not doing all that well.
In the case of the military, it can’t even account for $21 trillion of Pentagon
financial transactions. They could not
be traced, documented, or explained,
even though it’s required by law.
Our privately held banks, $700 billion you think? Nomi
Prins (author, journalist and public speaker) uncovers the hush-hush programs
and crunches the hidden numbers to calculate the shocking actual size of the
bailout: $14.4 trillion and counting.
The Marxist definition of
Socialism that twists the knickers of stupidism is ‘a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the
realization of Communism.’
By god that would smoke my
shorts as well, but it isn’t happening.
Nowhere, even in the most figmented of imaginations, is anything of the kind on
the menu or about to be added as a side-dish.
Lets take the Green
New Deal as an example, because the stupidest arguments that it will keep
us all from flying and mandate no more beef are simply off the wall. Although
still in its developmental stage, here’s what it basically hopes to accomplish.
Fund
sustainable, renewable energy to make America 100%
fossil-fuel free by the very quickest means possible. Probably 15 million union scale jobs in that,
with ownership in private hands. Positive environmental impact beyond compare.
High-speed
rail,
operated by private transportation companies (including airlines) and probably built
in the median of the interstate highways. We already own this land, there are
no grade crossings and it already has access central-city to central-city
across the nation. Another 15 million jobs? Most likely.
Guarantee
clean air, fresh water and non-toxic food. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
are already tasked with these concerns. But they’ve been ignored, defunded and
politically neutered in favor of corporate profits. We frack, build lakes of
animal waste, allow growth hormones and antibiotics in meat and spray
carcinogens on fruits and vegetables. All we need do is fund and empower those
who are currently handcuffed and frustrated.
Okay smartass, how you gonna pay for all this? Even the American Action Forum estimates that,
between 2020 and 2029, the energy and environmental components of the Green New
Deal would cost $8.3 trillion to $12.3 trillion. Have I cherry-picked a liberal
source? Hardly.
The American Action Forum is a
nonprofit issue advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. which promotes center right public policy. They promote
innovative, free-market solutions to
create a smaller, smarter government. AAF sources their information to credible
sources.
But I take your point, so let’s double the numbers.
Everything seems to double on large programs. $16 to $25 trillion is now the
number we’ll deal with. Okay? Are we at least talking to one another now?
Between the Pentagon and the
Big Banks, we’ve already pissed $35 trillion down the toilet since 2007 and
gotten damned little for the effort. The banks are being sued right and left
for fraud against their customers and the Pentagon hasn’t won a war since WWII.
Even so, it’s a major amount
of dough and we must find it and one
way or another it must be borrowed. Stay with me.
There are two kinds of national debt: 1) money spent for
running the country, like the military, social welfare programs and federal
employees to run everything. When they exceed taxes and other income, the
national debt increases and that’s
unsustainable. Gotta watch those costs like a hawk. Printing money to
overcome those costs is inflationary as hell and you can’t outrun inflation.
2) is money spent on assets
like infrastructure and programs that leave us stronger as a nation, such as higher wages, rebuilding the middle
class, reducing environmental threats and thereby allowing capitalism to thrive. Those are investments instead of wild-eyed spending. You can print money for investment
in assets, because there’s something left at the end of the print-run.
Does it make sense to borrow
(in this case print) money to booze it up and live large? Hardly. But the wise
man borrows to invest, particularly
when that investment is sound and may even save his life.
Enough noodling around. If we
don’t move to save this planet, we’re all
dead. Even now, it will never recover to what we expect to leave our children. On
average over the past 10,000 years, nine species have gone extinct every
century. In the last century alone, 500
species have already left this earth and a million
more are expected to die off before the end of this one.
The moral (if there is such a thing) is don’t listen to or
fall victim to stupidism. We need to talk
and even more that that, we need to listen.
And even more than the even more of that
even more, we need to act.
Quickly.