Communism Gaining Ground?

[Timebuilder]

??? American manufacturing is driven off by its own greed and lack of responsibility to the very communities that built them.

Actually, the shareholders, and that includes every little old lady with an income mutual fund, demanded that the American businesses remain profitable. This profitability is the source of a company's ability to hire poeple and to issue dividends to investors.

"Greed" is a term aplied by socialists to ANY profit making institution. It is those profit making institutions that have made America one of earth's greatest nations. If we lose that, America is lost.

"Those pesky and annoying minimum wage and environmental laws..... let's just move to some third world country

I see this long sentence starts with quotation marks, but it is not attributed to anyone. Is this your way of putting words in the mouth of some imaginary capitalist? That's my guess, at least.

Let the market dictate public policy, yeah , let's put the chickens in charge of the chicken feed.

I see you pasted a quote, yet failed to read or at least understand what was quoted. America is a place where the people, or "the chickens" if you prefer, are in charge of everything. Liberals don't like the idea of the people being in charge of anything. They see themselves as the only reasonable, compassionate, sufficiently intelligent life on the planet. They are their own aristocracy. Let's review.

The better solution would have been to trust the free market, and use common sense when writing laws that affect our jobs. Of course, when you are a university professor or a politician, your job won't leave when manufacturing is driven off to Maylaysia.

The free market is the bedrock of American business, so it must have worked pretty well for a long time. There have always been scoundrels among us, and we need to have a legal framwork to keep them in check, to be sure. That's why we need the second half of the first sentence, "and use common sense when writing laws that affect our jobs."

This is a clear case of the NIMBY effect. You see it when someone wants to open or expand a landfill, or start a quarry business on a piece of land they have purchased. "Not in MY back yard, you don't!!" "Put it somewhere else" is the cry. We have managed to put our businesses "somewhere else".

In this case, we made it untenable through various welfare programs, wage dictates, and environmental restrictions for businesses to remain profitable here, but we still want to wear those sneakers and jeans. Now, it's all in someone else's backyard, and the various interest groups are happy. We are still bleeding factories to countries that are more "user friendly" every day.

Apparently, our environmentalists are not nearly as concerned about what happens in someone else's backyard as they were about their own. And they still put on those sneakers and jeans.

If this trend continues unchecked, we will soon have so few jobs that we will become another also-ran, socialist country with 79% percent income tax, a six week wait to see a doctor, two months guaranteed vacations, and a populace with no spirit or drive.

That's not America. I think we need to make some positive change that makes America more competitive. Not socialism, not communism.

We need to save American capitalism.

 

[SennaP1]

Just thought I'd chime in on this one. Having grown up in an Eastern Bloc country. I always am amazed by the Romance of Communism that some people conceive. I don't know if these so called Neo-Communists/Socialists have the notion that it would really be better that way but...Let me tell you you would not want you children growing up in a Communist state. I can state examples of what it was like there.
For example going to the grocery and not finding anything on the shelves but Vodka, eggs, and cheese. Or having to be put on a gov't waitlist for a phone connection, apartment building, or just to even buy a car. BTW my grandparents were finally granted such amenities in 1991-92. Even though this was 2 years past when Communism officially fell. I could go on and on about it, Luckily my Dad was brave enough to get out before Martial Law was declared, and we eventually joined him here.
And as much as I love my native country, I will be forever indebted to my Dad for bringing me here. A country I truly believe is the greatest, and I think I really know what freedom is. Because after all, I don't think you know what freedom is until it has been taken away from you. Now I am neither a Bush Man nor a Dean Man. Just a man.

PS. Somebody said something about Eastern European women, yeah its the truth, all of you guys need to check that part of the world out. Try starting in Budapest, and work your way North.

 

[Timebuilder]

Great story.

Some folks don't know that the lead singer of Stepenwolf, the sixties rock group, escaped from East Berlin with his mother as a child.

There is no romance about communism, unless it is in the mind of an American liberal.

 

[Snakum]

The export of jobs is caused by companies that want carte blanche to operate without regard to people and environment, not due to common sense laws regarding wage and environmental protection.

In a nutshell ... dat's it. There is a difference between GREED and the motivation to prosper. One acts for no other reason than personal enrichment, at the expense of integrity and honesty (polititions ), the other acts for personal gain but with the rights of others and his basic responsibility to his fellow man in mind, as well. Being a capitalist doesn't have to mean being a greedy, dishonest, pr!ck.

I want to see what happens when the board members and CEOs of the GREEDY companies (not all companies are) realize that no one here in the US can afford their shoes, clothes, electronics, etc. anymore because we all work in the service industry for minimum wage. I want to see the reaction of the rabid right-wing pilots (not all R-W pilots are such) when congress and the admnistration begins allowing foreign passenger carriers to fly domestic routes and Mesa is the only US airline that can stay in business. I'd like to see TBs reaction when he's forced to live on this much-maligned minimum wage (I am NOT wishing bad things on him, though, for the record. he's a nice guy ) because there's nothing else out there. Try feeding a family on it.

It will be sad ... but it will be interesting.

Minh

And for what it's worth ... I am anti-abortion, but I am pro- women's rights. A woman's rights should end where the life of her child begins. That anyone can not see that a six-month-old unborn child is a HUMAN LIFE is beyond me ... I will never understand that one.

 

[bart]

I don't know much about their goals, but I had a lot of fun killing communists in the mid 80's. They tend to think their passion for their ideology makes them bullet-proof.

It does not...

 

[Timebuilder]

I have lived on minimum wage. In fact, SAG and AFTRA set minimum wages for actors, so I will be living on "minumum wage" very soon.

I think it is a misperception about "greed" in the minds of corporations. Certainly you can have a "greedy" CEO, but he is there at the whim of the shareholders, the coupon clipping grannies, the 51% share millionaires, and the small investors with a block of 100 shares. Every share gets a vote.

A few decades ago, we decided it didn't matter where we made things. Now, we are starting to pay a price for that idea.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Originally posted by SennaP1
I always am amazed by the Romance of Communism that some people conceive.

Outside of the American Communist Party, who the hell finds Communism romantic? It's proven time and again to be one of the most (if not the most) rotten socio-political systems out there.

I think you'll find that communism is not as popular an idea in the U.S. as the members of this forum would have you believe. There are a lot of far-right wingers who think that anyone who suggests that the federal government should have any authority whatsoever (and doesn't have a George W. Bush shrine in their home) is a "communist." It's a word that gets thrown around a lot.

It's kind of like the guy who, when I told him the Theory of Evolution made sense to me, asked "oh, so you're a monkey, huh?" Americans dislike centrism...it's too complicated to understand that conflicting ideals often co-exist.* They much prefer black-and-white identities. You're either a communist or a fascist. A monkey or a spirit. A democrat or a republican. An angel or a devil.

It's not politics, it's semantics.

So take heart. Very, very few Americans truly support communism.

(Rebuttal, Vlad? )




*Apparently Strom Thurmond understood this better than we realized.

 

[Snakum]

I had a lot of fun killing communists in the mid 80's.

As did I, in the late 80s. I never suspected that I'd become one of them.

Minh "Grunt-Grunt" Thong

 

[Timebuilder]

I think that the idea of making a choice between two things is a part of being human, and that comes from God.

Yes or no when voting.

Light separated from the darkness.

0 and 1 in binary language.

Pitch up or down.

In other words, "maybe" is associated with not making a commited choice.

In Matthew 6:24, we find "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other..."

When you stand in the middle of the road, you are in danger of being run over by a bus.

 

[Typhoon1244]

I wasn't going to get into this, but since snakum commented on it...

...I had a lot of fun killing communists in the mid 80's.

With all due respect, duty is duty. You're not supposed to enjoy it.