In article ,
dgk wrote:

I believe the socialist ideal was to make sure that the fruits of
labor were divided equitably, not that everyone should be miserable.
It may have worked that way in practice, but that was not the intent.

Most revolutions end up being tools whereby the strong oppress the weak,
usually after getting the weak to do the heavy lifting of revolt. Not
infrequently the weak are no better off than they were before.

Here, in the USA, the shining example of capitalism, we have a society
where we cannot afford to have healthcare for all.

Nor, ironically enough, can we afford to not have health care financing
for all (health care finance being the hurdle here).

Nor can we keep our parks nice, or our cities clean, or our people
educated. We can, however, spend huge amounts of money for two
unnecessary wars. There's a great thought isn't it, unnecessary war.

Oh, our city maintenance and civic quality of life went in the dumper
long before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least here in St. Paul.
It happened during Norm Coleman's stint as mayor. Our taxes went up,
city services went down and corporate welfare boomed. The public
welfare, not so much. And education has suffered in America for many
years, since we put the whacky and the delusional in charge of our
schools on a regular basis. We have become a nation in which stupidity
is held up as a virtue and enforced ignorance is seen as good policy.

Of course, the excesses of the wealthy, led by Greenspan and Rubin,
have pretty much pushed our financial system to the limit, which will
drain more wealth from the middle class to prop it back up. I don't
think Obama will succeed in trying to undue the disaster of the
Clinton/Bush years because he's just a centerist democrat. But I sure
hope he does, because otherwise we're going to see facism here.

Ummm. "Going to?" Maybe you were living somewhere else 2001-2009.