Ask the kids today how socialism usually ends. Ask them what Elena and Nicky Caucescu got for Christmas in 1989.

Then ask them why. Then ask them why this happens every single time its tried.

Have tried to argue with them, but unless it comes from an extreme left professor it's a lie. Logic evidence of their own experience and eyes don't matter.

Yeah, but today's repackaged "democratic socialism" will be different. Ask any Sanders fan.

And not only the young. My 60-something wife has fallen for it. No amount of argument in the same vein as above will move her off the position that, if only we had more of what Bernie is selling, what a wonderful world it would be.

Ah, but this time it will be different because the right people will be in charge!

/s

Ugh, cpabroker and dee nile.

Their liberal professors didn't teach them accurate American history; socialism was tried in the American colonies. Both Jamestown and Cape Cod were originally socialist; and both had more than half their settlers die within the first year.

It was only by instituting private land that both colonies were saved. Private ownership meant that those that labored reaped the benefits. Under socialism those that labored had to share the results of that labor with freeloaders.

Those who support socialism are really freeloaders; hoping that others will do the work while they reap the rewards. And, therein, lies the problem - everyone wants to be the freeloader and let others do the work.

How about we institute socialism in the classroom? Everyone shares the same grade based upon the total amount of work produced by the class. No one is graded individually. I'd be willing to bet that everyone would fail as they would expect someone else to do the reading, essay writing, and studying for the final exams. Now, THAT would be the way to teach them about socialism.

Socialism works because the socialists say it will. The Communism 101 professor I mentioned in another thread would tell the class in one breath how wonderful the Soviet Union was and in the next breath tell them that the reason the Soviet Union wasn't a worker's paradise is that it was not real socialism, as if real socialism doesn't degenerate into brutal dictatorship by default.

Ah, but Bernie tells us, his socialism will be Danish socialism. Denmark hasn't devolved into famine and dictatorship (yet). Denmark's citizens pay 60% income tax.

The Danish Value Added Tax is 25%. Compare that with the US sales tax average of 7%.

Unlike the US, Danish corporate taxes are 3%. Will Bernie be willing to lower the US rate from its current 25% to 3%?

Even the Danes have expressed doubt that their system would work in the US. The US is too heterogenous. Denmark is culturally and racially homogenous country, hence their xenophobia toward non-European ethnicities, especially those living in Denmark.

Alcohol abuse is also quite common in Denmark, as it is in England and many other nationalized healthcare countries. Why take care of your health when the government is supposed to do it for you?

How about that free education. Since the schools are "free" and everyone gets in, Danish universities do not have the same competition that US universities have. Name one Danish university that ranks as a world-class university. Danish students often take college for granted and usually spend extra time there meandering toward graduation.

Nonetheless, the Danes are healthier. They ride bikes everywhere. Of course owning a car there is expensive; it is estimated that the car tax in Denmark to 180%. With dependable trains and a country of only 16,573 square miles, who has far to go?

Compare Denmark's 16 thousand square miles to the US's 3.8 million square miles and you begin to understand why Sanders' vision of imposing a Denmark-style social order on the US is little more than academic dreaming. The land area of Denmark fits entirely inside any number of US states.

Bernie Sanders has a vision of Denmark not rooted in the reality of Denmark.

Ah, but this time it will be different because the right people will be in charge!

That's always been the fall back position of these people, whether they're talking about Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, the Ortegas, the Castro Brothers, and all the rest.

Or the old chestnut of Comrade Stalin must not know about this!

And many of them revere Che as some sort of demi-god. They just don't know what a nasty, racist piece of work he was. And even if you tell them, and show them his own words, they'll chalk it up as propaganda.

I looked outside, and you weren't picking up the trash that blew into my yard. I do for myself what you won't do for me, and I won't do for you. Why would you expect life to be different?

Conflating totalitarian communist regimes with government-regulated or assisted industries is ludicrous.

The USA is not a capitalist society; it is a mix of capitalism and socialism, currently weighted towards support of industry instead of support of the individual, with the hope that the golden showers raining down on the 1% will someday actually be made of gold.

But yeah, believe Hitler and the USSR and Mao and the Khmer Rouge were all "socialists" because they said so. May I interest you in a bridge in Brooklyn? I'll give you a great price on it.

Beg pardon - raining down FROM the 1%.

It's been raining money ON the 1% pretty continuously for the last few decades.

You are correct Gog. The funny thing is those wanabe socialist dictators love raining money down on the 1%.

Grade socialism? That is what happens in every school group project: at least 1 of the 3 or 4 does no work (freeloads) Every. Single. Time. In college my team on a technical project couldn't handle the computer parts, which I did myself. They all 3 went to the prof and told him I did most of the work and he gave me an A and them a B--but this is wildly exceptional, as my kids have told me over and over while in school.
This stuff about the 1% is pure envy. Most people in the 1% are only in it for 1 year or 2, due to selling a business, getting a buyout, or getting an inheritance (see Mark Perry's blog). 51% of the population will be in the top 10% for at least a year during their lifetime. When government takes too much of the earnings of the people there is nothing left in profits to motivate people or to provide for expanding businesses. The people who complain that taxes are too low are just not paying attention. When you combine federal, state, sales, highway tolls, property taxes I pay about 35% of my income in tax. That doesn't even count that companies have to pay tax after paying their employees, including the 15% payroll (SS) tax.
Politicians have always promised free stuff, even the Romans. That does not mean they can deliver.

I have to say Craig only one out of four freeloading seems kinda low to me. I had a team of eight for my senior project in college. Two electrical engineers, two mechanical engineers, and four civil engineers. All of the civil engineers proceeded to goof off (chair races or paper football) because the problem the professor gave us was 'impossible'. And while they were wasting their time the electrical and mechanical engineers proceeded to solve the task at hand.

So 50% feel more realistic to me. As the soviets used to say, they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.

Conflating totalitarian communist regimes with government-regulated or assisted industries is ludicrous.

But yeah, believe Hitler and the USSR and Mao and the Khmer Rouge were all "socialists" because they said so.

Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at March 24, 2016 8:36 AM

The point, Gog, is not whether Hitler, Lenin, Chavez, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, et al were true socialists. The point is they claimed to be.

All of them came to power based on socialist promises they made (either to an electorate or to their revolutionaries).

Bernie is running for president, making socialist promises, and claiming that somehow his brand of socialism will avoid the descent into tyranny and chaos that characterizes so many of history's monsters who claimed to be socialists (even the ones who probably meant it before they came to power).

If you think Hitler wouldn't seize your assets for the Party and the causes it championed, you haven't been paying attention.

Politicians have always promised free stuff, even the Romans. That does not mean they can deliver. ~ Craig Loehle at March 24, 2016 11:32 AM

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river." ~ Nikita Khrushchev

"The point, Gog, is not whether Hitler, Lenin, Chavez, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, et al were true socialists. The point is they claimed to be."

Fair enough. Let's destroy the churches. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, too.

Hey, FSM only knows when one of *those* people will take power!

Craig & Ben - I was in a computer programming class in college where we had a group final project. I was on a team of 3. I wrote 95% of it (maybe more), one guy wrote 5% with my help. I made the 3rd guy at least be in the lab for an hour while I wrote code. The other two claimed they were too busy with their other finals. As if I didn't have other classes.

The prof called me into his office. He questioned me on it... he said my style was distinct and he knew I had written all of it but one subroutine. We all got the same grade on the project. I know the other two passed but not more than that. They both could have done themselves. The guy who wrote the one routine was just too much of a slacker to get it done unless he absolutely had to. I was really disappointed in the other guy...he was usually a good guy and hard worker...

Bernie's socialism doesn't seem so socialist -- for the most part it looks like modified capitalism with a really high safety net -- at least as far as I can tell -- note I have not looked into deeply.

Fair enough. Let's destroy the churches. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, too.

False. Hitler viewed Christianity as a weak religion and imposed a neo-pagan belief system on the Third Reich. He also privately praised Islam and lamented that Germany was a Christian nations stead of an Islamic one.

In fact, Hitler's intent was to destroy Christianity in Nazi Germany.

Wikipedia offers a decent summary. Shirer gives more detail in The Rise and Fall...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

Fair enough. Let's destroy the churches. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, too.

False. Hitler viewed Christianity as a weak religion and imposed a neo-pagan belief system on the Third Reich. He also privately praised Islam and lamented that Germany was a Christian nations stead of an Islamic one.

In fact, Hitler's intent was to destroy Christianity in Nazi Germany.

Wikipedia offers a decent summary. Shirer gives more detail in The Rise and Fall...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

"False. Hitler viewed Christianity as a weak religion"

After he took power, sure, he went all occulty-whackadoodle.

But first, from the horse's mouth:

“My feelings as a Christian

points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love

as a Christian

and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

As a Christian

I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows.

For as a Christian

I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.”

[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in “My New Order”, quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

Found that over at imright-dot-com or something...

True. Hitler opportunistically used Christianity to bolster his anti-Communist credentials and gain power in an already Christian nation.

The difference is that Hitler did not promise to impose a new Christian order on a non Christian nation. Lenin et al promised to impose new socialist orders on non socialist nations.

Because Communism and socialism depend heavily on centralized oversight of economic, social, and national affairs, they easily become dictatorships. Marx even called for a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to oversee reeducation of the buourgeosie.

Lenin et al spoke the language of class warfare hostile to the existing socio-economic structure. Hitler inflamed ethnic conflict and spoke of using the existing socio-economic structure.

"But yeah, believe Hitler and the USSR and Mao and the Khmer Rouge were all "socialists" because they said so. May I interest you in a bridge in Brooklyn? I'll give you a great price on it."

What, then, is your definition of socialism, and can you name any place where it has ever worked on a non-trivial scale? Don't give me feel-good fluff. And don't bother calling out the Scandinavian countries; in reality their socialism just barely continues to function, and it only does so because of appeals to tribe (their monocultural nature), and the fact that they enjoy large foreign-exchange surpluses thanks to tourism. In effect, we subsidize them.