United States Heading towards a Depression?

Wow. We're trying to have a grown up discussion here, Jeremy. Though i expected no less than an immature comment from you.

 

There's a reason we're the richest country in the world. And us being less socialist than most of Europe is probably a big part of it.
Quick, name the top five technology companies that come to your mind. I will: Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, Ebay, Amazon, IBM, Yahoo!, Cisco.
Oops, well that's more than five but five was too easy off the top of my head. Why does all this technological innovation come from the U.S.?

 

There is also a reason why 2% of the population own over 90% of the wealth and why millions upon millions are homeless and die because they can't get healthcare.

 

So all the people who bought property will oil or mineral rights over the last couple centuries should just have that property confiscated?

 

I imagine it would have to be bought back off them.

 

Then what it the point?

You want the government to lay out billions or trillions in cash so they can manage the assets? That hardly seems efficient on multiple levels - the most obvious being that the government will better manage the assets than individuals.

 

These ideas always sound good, but if you don't have "good" people in the government, something always goes wrong. The world has years and years (centuries) of history to show that.

 

I think your numbers are way off. In the U.S. you are allowed to succeed or fail. It's not perfect for sure, no system is. We could exercise more control over the economic and social reins like Europe, but then would we even be having this conversation? Much of the technology that allows me to type this message is built upon many layers of technology, much of which was developed by U.S. companies(the C/C++ languages for example). Would Google exist? Would Apple or Microsoft? What about the technological advances that led to the internet backbone we have today? How much of that came from the US?
If you're going to criticize it you also have to acknowledge the good that our system has given the world. Capitalism is a system based on inequality(but the inequality isn't prescribed or dictated like many think), but it's still better for everyone over the long run.

 

The point would be that the people would own the natural resources of that country, not private companies that can hold the people to ransom on rediculous prices or anything like that.

For example, Petrol (Car gas) in Saudi Arabia is 0.10 a litre.

 

In my opinion, "standard of living" is a difficult thing to normalize in the way of comparative valuations, Logic, since what is valuable to one society is often not important to another. That said, many of the socialist countries routinely enjoy a higher standard of living than we do, by many widely held measures. They also do value things differently than we do - they see certain things as national priorities (such as universal access to education and health), and are willing to pay for them.

 

How come all those great Scandinavian programmers always end up working for American companies? Socialism is good for that society, but their success and productivity always seems to be limited.
The US is the richest country in history and is also responsible for the greatest outpouring of wealth to the world, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example. How much wealth has been voluntarily socialized and distributed around the world by Rich American capitalists?

 

Some of us just don't want a wasteful government in charge of stuff.

 

That was a valid comment. Universal or state run health care never works. I assumed that your post which I quoted was a joke. I guess I know now who is being immature.

I'm gonna go with my first impression of your goofy post.

 

I don't have any sourcing supporting or refuting that, so can't reply. If you have some material showing an exodus of, say, professional Scandinavians from their countries, I'd be interested to take a look, Logic.

Again, I'd ask for a source on this. What are you using as the marker for "richest?"

Tons. American philanthropy is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

I think we're getting away from my original purpose - which was to respond to the apparent nefarious quality ascribed to "socialism" - which presumes, for one, that there is a "thing" called socialism, and that it is somehow universally "bad" in its applications. I would argue that many societies seemed to have enjoyed a good deal of success, by many indicators, under socialist, or mixed-economy, systems. Again, looking at several things among the nordic social democracies (say, to pick one from the hat, the relatively bloodless approach to worker-producer bargained positions), or the "trente glorieuses" or "wonder years" of France's dirigisme, or Germany's (and Austria's) sozialemarktwirtschaft.

 

Keep in mind that that " 2% " of the population also supplies 95% of the total collected tax revenue.

If they did not, you'd have billions homeless and dying, not millions.

BTW, I have friends that still fly over here (to the US - from the UK) to get dental work.

 

The people would be in charge and advise the government on how to manage the money in the teasury.

 

Yeah, time to change my shorts... Just pissed myself laughing.

Seriously, in an ideal world, it would be incredible if it really worked that way.

We've found that Government has a hard enough time being in charge of Government, much less the peoples money. Most of us know better how to handle our own money and should be left with more of it to spend on the things you want the government to have control over.

 

Indeed, and this is what socialism is. So why is everyone using it as an epiphet? Lack of understanding in my opinion.

 

Because when you've experienced it first hand, you realize why it will NEVER work.

Back in the 80's everyone in the USSR had a job. Here is how it worked (and this is just one example).

At the grocery store you'd have one person to retrieve your items from you. One to ring up the items. One to pass those items to another that opened the bag, to another that put the items in the bag, and finally to another that handed you the bags, after still another gave you your change.

The only understanding lacking here is your obvious inexperience and wisdom on the subject.

In theory, Scientific Socialism makes sense. In practice, it will never succeed.

 

Can we agree that one way to judge "waste" is to judge money in for benefit received?

If so, I'd like to return to some data I discussed quite a while ago - there, I said, "We stand top for how much $$ we drop on medicine, but across many different comparative studies, we're not getting a lot of bang for our buck," and I'd stand by this now, and it isn't just healthcare. Might be interesting - one perspective, completely unsourced, but I hope, food for thought:

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/04/the_scandinavia.html

Again - in the event this point is missed - I'm not a socialist, and I'm not preaching any creed. If I'm preaching, I'm preaching to look at specifics, and part of those specifics must be to consider how, when, and why different countries developed solutions to the effects engendered by industrialization, and how those solutions influenced structural effects down the road, as well as the perceptions over words that carry such normative weight as "socialism," "capitalism,' etc.