1.) Thank you for dealing with this honestly, instead of gaslighting a "what on earth are you talking about???"
2.) I'm not writing off Marx or the Marxists at all. Too many seemingly mainstream normal people hold decidedly Marxist world views -- even ones that should have been debunked long ago.

and

3.) Marx was an intellectual and as such he had a lot of ideas. I'm admittedly picking and choosing the ones I object to and am using to label certain persons. To wit: someone who views a problem with today's work product not having enough meaning to a modern worker could be termed a Marxist (because that was one of Marx's ideas/concerns about modern work), but nobody bothers with that one -- on either side -- because the fate of the world doesn't seem to be hanging on it.

That's just ONE of its many problems - albeit a big one.

What a confused response this is. Where to start?

1.) Your friend was correct. Whatever Chavez brought was worse than whatever they had. Why? Because he was a Communist!
2.) That's not to say there weren't other problems that needed to be addressed in Venezuela. I agree on that, but the solution isn't to starve.
3.) "Opposed to the way extremism developed there" isn't the same as opposed to communism. Conveniently, it didn't mean anything.
4.) There is no Marxist strawman when millions of people have starved and are starving as a result of Marxist inspired policies.
5.) When you can't discern "shifts in policy" from "things that destroy the economy"-- and you don't care -- then you lose credibility.

Yep, and what's more, tax take alone is not much of a representation of the type of government. The question is where, and to whose benefit, is the government's fiscal activity. China takes a much smaller cut of GDP in taxes than the USA. Heck, even Venezuela takes less than the USA.

More pertinently, 'socialist' Australia takes a little less, and for my taxes I get quality public healthcare, quality public schooling for my kids, I received 4 quality university degrees publicly funded, my mother receives a decent government pension etc etc. Here's the kicker, though. Our country is back in fiscal surplus next year (the state has run significant surpluses for the past 5 years). The USA runs >$1 trillion deficits currently, and for as far into the future as anyone can forecast. Actually, that's not the kicker. This is >>>


In fact, the USA ranks pretty poorly in the international league tables according to the organisations that monitor these things.

Heritage Foundation (2018). "Country Rankings". 2018 Index of Economic Freedom considers the USA only “mostly free”.

Reporters Without Borders, Press Freedom Index, April 2018 rates the USA as “satisfactory”, behind the 17 countries that are “good”. Of course, the Trump administration is working assiduously to worsen that score further.

Economist, Democracy Index 31 January 2018 rates the USA as one of many “flawed democracies” behind 19 countries that enjoy “full democracy”.

The countries that rank higher, including on the Economic Freedom Index (yay, Oz) enjoy far more in "socialist" benefits than the USA. Providing healthcare, education and relief from poverty doesn't reduce freedoms, economic or other. It supports and sustains them.

I'm your man! Let's do this, SH.

I'd be a libertarian except libertarianism took a wrong turn for me sometime between "the vons" and Ayn.

There were plenty of folks who opposed Chavez (even evil "leftists" who are 1/2 of this country).

"millions starving" isn't where we happen to be at right now. Should we move some policies toward what works in Norway? Are millions there starving? That is why our "Marxist" is a strawman. It is not even in the same universe as to where the actual policy debate is happening. Is New Zealand starving? Is Minnesota starving? Aren't they more "Marxist" than the folks in Missouri and Mississippi? (to pick states that are alphabetically contiguous).

I've said it here often, "Our inability to learn from other countries, and possibly be slightly more similar to Canada, makes it more likely that we will eventually be like Venezuela." Your approach is exactly the problem.

50 posts in, I wish you would actually engage a single issue (you know, a real one). Here, public education, K-12:

Do you favor it at all?
Should it be more equal from school to school or district to district?
Are teachers over or under-paid?
What is working with it? What isn't, and how would you fix it?
Should it extend to preschool? Why or why not?

I'm sorry, "Marxism - Bad", "Marxists are ruining it", "the most anti-Marxist solution is best" doesn't cut it, and that is all that you are bringing.

I beg to differ. Your inability to identify a reoccurring danger is a danger. You don't know why people end up starving. And, you don't care. You aren't even mildly curious as far as I can tell. In fairness, I don't see your peers inquiring into it much either. I don't trust them, and I don't trust you to watch them.

For me Marxists are like Nazis. I'm just gonna count them out and take my chances. I'm not going to do something stupid like try to contort into the most anti-Nazi policy possible -- what would that even be sometimes? -- but I'm also not going to naively say "who cares about the fact that this guy passionately quotes Mein Kampf all the time, let's listen to his policy specifics!"

Huh, WTF?!? You get an early head start drinking this evening? I may not have agreed w/ you before, but at least it wasn’t too hard to follow the point you were trying to make, but now you’ve gone off the rails into plain loony nonsense...

I think many Americans, left, right, independent, just would like a Universal Health Care system like the rest of countries have around the world. You know, all those Western European countries that the US protected from socialism during the Cold War? Oh, and also Japan, Korea, and a whole pile of other countries that the US gives billions to for defense. Even the Israelis, have a VERY socialist set of programs in their country, which is actually quite strange since so many conservatives (especially on this forum) seem to love everything about that country as if it were an American State.

I think the much of the media and the conservatives are so scared of a slight tax increase that they are using propaganda to try and scare Americans away from supporting a Universal Health Care plan. Its actually not even that socialist of an idea. Its no different than a fire department or police department. Everyone pays the same for the same protection. The only reason why Health Care has been different is because they figured out how to profit from it.