I think western Europeans are too stupid to love socialism. They think that everyone should be given a decent life. But it is Utopia. People are naturally, greedy and selfish. Compassion, empathy, and fairness are against human nature. People will always want more money and more power and have a higher status. Inequality is a good thing, it is desirable . There have always been rich and poor and there will always be. Name me a country or a society ever existed that has not rich and poor. There is not one. There is always someone rulling with privileges and someone being ruled. Europeans should deal with the facet that life is unfair.
You'll have to define what you mean by socialism as well as the policies that it pertains to and which countries that you think it applies to.
Does this mean we shouldn't do anything to combat poverty? Or help alleviate the flight of the poor? There has always been murder, war, theft and a multitude of other crimes should we therefore disband the police force or halt any efforts to stifle warmongering? Should we therefore abandon the rule of law and delegate it to the philosophy of "every man for himself"? The "there has always been and therefore there always shall be" argument is ludicrous, it always has been and it always shall be. While I may have a picture of Margaret Thatcher as my avatar I can still concede that socialism, or rather social democracy, is a truly beautiful construct and one that has been employed successfully in Scandinavia (that's Sweden Norway, Denmark and Finland for our American friends) under the Nordic Model to achieve high literacy rates, models of education and high HDI scores. While the system is very complicate it essentially involves a combination of a welfare state and free-market capitalism meaning that it can strive to achieve traditional capitalist efficiency without trampling the workforce. When I read your post my first thought was that you've confused socialism with communism, those are two very different political ideologies. The differences would take too long to explain so for the time being I recommend you look at Socialism as communism-lite. Both entail protecting the rights of the worker, however one is compatible with capitalist economics while the other demands a focus of command economies and hence communist economics. I personally would dread to live under the American "swim or down system", I like my NHS and wouldn't particularly like to part with it any time soon. I'm also a supporter of the well fare system even if it does lead to outrageous cases of benefit cheating, but should a few isolated incidents really serve to demonise a system? I mean tax evasion by the rich costs the state far substantially more annually than benefit abuse. I also can't bring myself to agree that compassion is not a human characteristic? Since when is feeling sorry towards those less fortunate, or feeling sympathetic, unnatural? Since when has the act of giving money to those less fortunate than yourselves been frowned upon? Couldn't these very same arguments be applied to the work of charities globally, or material aid from one state to a less developed or disaster stricken state? Just because life is "unfair" doesn't detract from the goal of making it more fair, it doesn't detract from the sense of the rich or those who have been successful in life helping those who have not. It's not often a case of those at the bottom being "lay abouts" while those at the top being hard working individuals-its equally as often the case the the rich are simply rich due to inheritance while those at the bottom are generally there not through hard work but through a family history of poverty and the low social mobility within Britain. I, while being traditionally a conservative voter, would be more than willing to allocate my tax money towards the "deserving" poor, those who are not abusers but those who genuinely make efforts to work but are the victims of structural unemployment or a history of low wages in the region in which they live. The European system really in ingenious, the socio/capitalist ideal which we have formed in this country makes perfect sense even if it has been degraded and even more stunning success can be found in the Nordic countries. Despite having higher taxes these nations routinely outrank the US on everything from social mobility, to wealth equality, to education despite the US supposedly being the birth place of the "American dream" and the home of social mobility where any individual can climb to the top through thrift, moderation and hard work.
It depends what we understand by "socialism" - hepl people to have a decent life, which is quite normal, is really not the same as make people welfare recipients, who ruin the country. The problem is just to find the good balance, no not enought but no to much too... Sarkozy had an idea: make work welfare recipients - we don't speak about that nowdays, and it's a pity, it was a nice idea.
workfare - doesn't help much, as it just takes away jobs from those who would be hoping to do it for a real wage
I assume you never left North or South America... Travel the world and see the solutions to problems. There are 196 countries in the world, and that means that there are pretty much 200 solutions to any problem you see. Whether it's health care, or civil rights, or something else. Probably the country you live in doesn't rank #1 in everything, so it is interesting to see other peoples solutions...
I think people who dismiss the entire population of half a continent as stupid then go on to demonstrate complete ignorance of the term they claim to be discussing are arrogant bigots who aren't worthy of serious attention.
Ah well honest Joe, lets hope you never need the empathy, understanding and care of the medical and nursing services. If you do however, I would suggest you take yourself off to your cave and linger there alone to hope for the best.
What the heck are you talking about?! What does that have to do with my objection to the OP calling all Western Europeans (including you BTW) stupid?
Please accept my apologies Joe. I meant to address my comment to Kehau who said that compassiom., empathy and fairness went against human nature..
