The recent film by Agnieszka Holland, Mr. Jones, portrays the Soviet Russians’ attempt in the 1930s — with the assistance of sympathetic Western journalists like Walter Duranty — to cover up the famine caused by collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine. The film is a heart-wrenching and damning account of the Soviet experiment — and of the dishonesty that enabled it.
And yet, 87 years after Gareth Jones showed the world the crimes of socialism, there are still Western enablers who engage in a different kind of coverup of the same facts. As a result, a growing number of young people consider themselves socialists, and socialist politicians have risen in prominence. One was almost nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president of the United States.
It is only thirty years since socialist regimes collapsed economically around the globe, leaving in their wake a death toll of tens of millions. We have seen the same pattern repeated in Venezuela in only the last twenty years. How do today’s defenders of socialism try to cover up this history and justify the ideology that supported such murderous regimes?
One tactic that today’s socialists employ is to portray the lessons of history and world affairs as irrelevant to their cause. They claim that the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Cuba, and today’s regime in Venezuela are not real examples of socialism at all. Real socialism, you may have heard them say, has never been tried.
What makes people think this is true? What do they mean by “socialism” and is their view even plausible?
What is “socialism”?
Socialism, in a standard definition, means public ownership of the means of production, which implies the abolishing of private property and ending the capitalist system of free trade and free markets. This is often understood to mean state ownership of the means of production.
By that standard, the Soviet Union, Communist China, and other authoritarian regimes all count as “socialist”: in every case, insurgents seized control of governments which then expropriated private farms, factories and shops from their capitalist owners — many of whom lost not only their property, but their lives. What’s more, these insurgents were led by figures (Lenin, Mao, Castro, etc.) that were explicitly committed to socialist ideology.
The economic failure, famine, and bloodshed suffered by each of these countries flowed directly from the same policies advocated by today’s socialists. Just as socialists demand, businesses were torn from the hands of their creators, those who both knew how to produce and who had a personal financial stake in improving their ability to produce. These businesses were then managed by bureaucrats who lacked both of these qualifications, and who also lacked the tool of the free market pricing system to calculate how much of which goods to produce. Production decisions were determined not with an eye to creating value above cost, but to the demands of arbitrary edicts from central planners. It is no accident that this system created shortages and starvation, and that regimes had to crush the resulting dissent to retain power.
Socialists try to insulate the system they advocate from this evidence of failure by using a talking point that (as we shall see) they have used since the beginning of their movement. They put a spin on the “public ownership of the means of production” definition. Real socialism, they say, doesn’t mean state control of the economy; it means control by “the people,” especially by the workers.
For instance, Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto, claims that real socialism means “democratic” control of the workplace by worker collectives. He claims that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a socialist society because it did not involve democratic control.1 Likewise, Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs and author of Why You Should Be a Socialist, claims that, for similar reasons, none of the authoritarian socialist regimes of the twentieth century were socialist, and claims to “hate government and capitalism alike.”2 Richard Wolff, who has been described as “America’s most prominent Marxist economist,” agrees.3 He argues that the Soviet Union was really an example of “state capitalism”: while the nominally socialist party controlled the state, the state was “still capitalist in the employer-employee organization of its economy” because “a minority of persons . . . [the central planners] functioned as employers of an employee majority.”4
Using their definition of “socialism,” these thinkers would have us believe that since state control of the economy is not control by “the people,” no full-scale socialist political system has ever existed in history. If true, this would allow them to excuse their ideology from any responsibility for the murder and oppression of the brutal, allegedly “socialist” systems of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century. It also allows them to pose as the torchbearers of a noble ideal that has simply been corrupted by political operators of the past.
Is there any plausibility to the claim that “socialism” doesn’t really mean state control of the economy, but something else? Are today’s socialists really envisioning a wholly new system than what the revolutionaries of the past actually implemented? Or are they simply playing games with the word “socialism” to avoid the obvious facts?
Fantasy speculation about the role of the state
Not everyone proposing a novelty is indulging in fantasy. A newly envisioned invention, like an airplane, can be based on known facts about birds, kites, and gliders. But even then, experiments are needed to prove the efficacy of the idea. And if the proposal is, say, a perpetual motion machine, which has no experimental basis and goes against the laws of physics, the proposal is selling a fantasy.
Although the proposal that “real” socialism doesn’t require the use of state power might sound new or innovative to the uninitiated, a few questions and a little knowledge of history are sufficient to show it is just as much a fantasy as a perpetual motion machine.
First, note that the socialists paper over the coercion and even violence that would obviously need to happen to expropriate private property from peaceful citizens to set up their system in the first place. (The mask drops when they start advocating “lawbreaking and sabotage” as worthy tactics in revolutionary social change.5) By itself this calls into question any assertion that socialism can be implemented without bloodshed: socialist ends cannot be detached from socialist means.
But even if we could imagine that private property holders were simply persuaded to give up their holdings peacefully, the notion that the ideal socialist system would work without coercion or oppression is hard to imagine, if it is even coherently meaningful to begin with. Consider Richard Wolff’s explanation for how a system of worker co-ops would gradually wean itself from the need for a state:
An economy based on worker co-ops would revolutionize the relationship between the state and the people. In their capacity as a self-employed collectivity, workers would occupy the spot traditionally held by the workplace in state-workplace relations and interactions. . . . The workers would collectively and democratically hold the purse strings to which the state would have to appeal. The state would thus depend on citizens and workers rather than the other way around. . . . The state would have fewer ways and means to impose its own momentum and goals upon citizens or workplaces. To that extent, the state’s “withering away” would become more immediately achievable than in any other variety of socialism known thus far.6
As I’ve argued elsewhere at greater length, the allegation that “democratic control” ensures freedom from coercion and oppression is an old fallacy that turns on an equivocation between a government with elected representatives and a society run by majority rule. The latter is what socialists advocate when they claim that factories should be run by workers, regardless of what the factory’s original creators have to say about it. This constitutes a direct violation of the rights of a minority of individuals. So if workers really do end up holding “the purse strings” of the factories and the power to make the state appeal to them, it makes little sense to say that the state would “wither away” as an entity independent of the workers.7 Rather, the workers would in effect be running a state.8
When Wolff is pressed to provide a real-world example of the system he envisions, he and other socialists often point to the Mondragon Corporation, a Spanish worker-owned manufacturer of a variety of industrial and consumer goods.9 But Mondragon is an international corporation that sells its products to private firms all over the globe, and employs an increasing number of foreign workers who are not members of the collective. At the same time, its workers increasingly depend on pensions from the Spanish state.10 Invoking the Mondragon example evades the question of whether a company like Mondragon could survive in the absence of a more general capitalist system that buys its products and provides market prices by which to calculate resource allocation, and the system of state-sanctioned private property rights that makes this possible.11 It also evades the question of whether a company run “democratically” (unlike most corporations) could exist in the absence of a coercive state that taxes capitalists to fund worker pensions.
The idea that real socialism involves social control of the economy without the state is not new, but you need to be aware of some history to realize this. It goes back at least as far as 1877, when Frederick Engels claimed in Anti-Dühring that after the proletariat seizes control of the state and thereby the means of production, the state would “wither away” or “die out.”12 Evading the important role of a state in protecting peaceful coexistence among individuals by protecting their rights, Marx and Engels held that the only role of a state is to enforce the exploitation of one class by another. Working from this fantastic premise, they deduced without evidence that once the state comes to represent the proletariat, class distinctions would disappear and, with them, the need for the state.13Lenin toed the same line in a lengthier work of no greater depth, but since he was himself a political operative who needed to rationalize his revolutionary actions, he argued that state control of the means of production was necessary as a transitional measure on the way to the achievement of real socialism.14 The same argument was then invoked for years by Stalin as he continued to starve and murder people in the name of eventually achieving the ideal of real socialism.15
All of this means that Lenin and Stalin and the other founders of the brutal Marxist regimes justified their actions using the exact same fantasy as today’s socialists do. They promised that the system they advocated would eventually eliminate state oppression as well. We saw what it actually delivered.
Why should we believe socialists today who also claim that their proposals to nationalize industries will take us further from and not closer to the specter of the Soviet catastrophe? They offer no better evidence than hucksters who sell perpetual motion machines. In fact what they’re doing is much worse, both because they actively evade the evidence, and because what they sell isn’t just dysfunctional — it’s deadly.
The real meaning of socialism
Socialism means public ownership of the means of production. But to understand what this means in practical reality — and why it cannot mean what the socialists propose — we must appreciate what “public ownership” actually refers to.
There is no magical entity called “the public.” A society is composed of individual human beings. In reality, the only mechanism by which the actions of an entire society can be coordinated is by means of a government. And so the only way for anything resembling “the public” to systematically deprive capitalists of private property and to abolish capitalist free trade is for the state to do it. Every socialist acknowledges this, whether they advocate violent revolution to establish a collectivist state or a majority vote to establish the same.
@Deplorable Me:
Honestly, who thinks he can go 90 minutes. Vegas oddsmakers not in his favor…
@Greg:
Did you ever figure out the difference between “protect” and “promote?”
@:
Intel officials tell Congress that Russia is spreading false information about Biden
This is from cnn, really. No one trusts cnn moron….
Nobody trusts the a-hole you put in the White House except for yourselves. Everybody recognizes what he is but his supporters. He’d see the country burned to the ground if it would help him stay in power.
Everything you see on the news? It’s the Trump Effect. What was his convoy of idiots doing invading Portland by the thousands? What were the results? He’ll exploit that, by provoking more violence and then pretending to be the solution. Everybody but his supporters know what he’s doing. Of all the amoral grifters this country would be better off without, Trump tops the list.
@Imbecile:
Spoken like a true enemy of America
Donald Trump is the enemy of America. He should join his little buddy Jerry Falwell Jr in a joint “leave of absence”. Maybe all of our public schools should add a basic course on “How to Recognize a Bunco Artist” to the core curriculum.
The Problem with American Politics
@Greg:
Guess what? WE are all that matters, not those who put a fascist that uses the IRS, DOJ, IC and FBI to attack his political enemies or runs guns to Mexican cartels.
The exact opposite is true. Trump is trying to put out the fires while Democrats are fanning the flames and dumping gasoline on them.
So, if I throw a tantrum and burn down your house because you pissed me off, that’s YOUR fault? That’s you logic.
What are the left wing terrorists that have been destroying Portland for over three months doing there? Get rid of them and you have no violence. If the left stops committing violence, there would be no violence. If the Democrats would do their duty and enforce the law, there would be no violence. Very difficult to see how this is Trump’s fault. Just because you don’t want to accept responsibility for massive Democrat failure doesn’t make it so.
Trump’s core pitch boils down to “Vote for me, or Biden will bring you four years of what has happened since I’ve become President.”
If you want to buy this nonsense, simply insert another dollar.
Patriot Prayer
@Greg: Trump restored much of the damage Obama and Biden left behind. Biden, as the brainless puppet and tool of the far, far left, would bring about further wreckage. More corruption. More failure. Just like Obama.
Trump should not go to Portland Tuesday. The situation is increasingly tense and his bombastic rhetoric only makes things worse. It’s a calculated provocation. His presence will likely trigger more violence, which he will then attempt to blame on the left and politically exploit. The whole thing could quickly blow up into a disaster. He should stay the hell away. He should do as Biden has done and publicly condemn violence no matter which side causes it.
What Biden is describing is the path straight to hell. Anyone who advocates or condones it truly is an enemy of America. It doesn’t matter what their sign says, or if they’re waving American flags.
@Greg:
How is it going to get worse? All they do is destroy property and kill for the sake of political terrorism. It has more to do with weak Democrats allowing and encouraging it than Trump.
He should go there and have the mayor arrested.
@Gregthedumbass:
President Trump is going to Kenosha on Tuesday zipperhead….
He should also stay the hell out of Kenosha.
August 30, 2020 – Trump praises right-wing supporters, rails against protesters after unrest in Portland
Bombast and bravado are the camouflage of a weak, incompetent president. He’s promoting divisions and exacerbating dangerous tensions for the purpose of political exploitation, but he’s playing with nitroglycerin. The man is an idiot.
August 30, 2020 – Trump supporters drive through crowd and pepper spray protesters in Portland – video
August 30, 2020 – Wisconsin governor urges Trump not to visit Kenosha: ‘I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing’
Kenosha. Happy now? It’s easy to misstate a detail when Trump is sticking his—nose—into so many unwanted places.
@Greg: A naked political move on the account of the incompetent Wis. Governor, and easily dismissed.
Trump has the right to visit Kenosha just as Tony Evers has the sovereign duty to protect his State and it’s citizens.
Trump is doing his job.
Evers is not.
And “unwanted” by who? Douchebags getting more airplay than they should?
Wisconsin votes Red by a landslide in November.
Happy now? Hehe.
You idiots are at war with out Constitutional Republic, supplanting our leaders and fomenting violence in the streets.
Blake is dead because he made bad decisions and didn’t obey the law. It’s not a “debate”. It’s fact.
Marxists love more blacks dead so the white boys can go out and pretend they care about “black lives”.
Just as in Nazi Germany, the play is to use the criminals of society as the “new police”.
Not on our watch. You didn’t disarm the population. Mistake number one, greg. The next Portland encounter will not be a dead Trump supporter who only came with pepper spray. It’s going to be a few dozen Rittenhouses with good aim, good exit strategies, and no witnesses.
This thread is done, and the Marxist apologist greg has been shown to be the uneducated, indoctrinated drone he is.
MARXISM HAS BEEN PROVEN TO NOT WORK WITH THE BLOOD OF HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.
It won’t find a place in America, and this true contagion of race-induced Marxism by the REGRESSIVE Left will be resisted, and beaten….like the Nazis..like the Soviets.
We will not go back to Segregation like the Democrats want, and we will not replace the Constitution with the a one-Party police state a la early 20th Century.
Carry on…
Peaceful Trump supporters come to Portland
Does he criticize these guys? Hell no. They’re provoking more of the disorder and violence that he needs.
Did you see the crap he’s been retweeting today? A video of a black assailant pushing a white woman into the side of a subway car, tagged Black Lives Matter/ANTIFA. Actually, it’s an incident from October 2019, involving a disturbed man named Isiah Thompson who had been arrested on multiple earlier occasion for subway-related offenses. He has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter or ANTIFA. A bit earlier there was his retweet of of a post regarding Jay Bishop, proclaiming him to have been murdered by ANTIFA. It isn’t yet known who shot him. He’s been claimed as a supporter by Patriot Prayer, a right-wing group.
You seem woefully ignorant of the thinking (writings) from antifa/blm, Greg.
Had you not read their belief in pre-emptory attacks so as to kill or injure people they label as “fascists.”
Like the murder of that Christian man last night who simply was walking alone down a street.
His merely wearing a pro-prayer hat made him (to antifa) a legitimate target.
If the antifa perp is ever arrested we might see how that plays out in court.
For a larger example of this type of thinking look at the dozens of times al Qaeda stopped people in a makeshift traffic blockage so as to demand an act of fealty to allah.
Those who refused or tried, but failed to say all the words correctly, were murdered.
Same thing.
Pickup trucks with Trump flags flying plowing through crowds and randomly spraying people with mace likely worked up a lot of hostility. That’s pretty much a predictable reaction. Carrying firearms without a permit is legal throughout the state of Oregon, so anyone with a brain should know this sort of provocation is sooner or later going to get somebody killed.
That, of course, might be the intention of somebody sitting off at a safe distance and encouraging it. There’s no way anyone could expect it to result in deescalation, but deescalation won’t produce exploitable media material or useful martyrs to throw in the balance against the rising body count that’s the reason for the protests to begin with.
The violence in Portland was subsiding after Trump pulled out his federal enforcers. That certainly couldn’t be allowed to continue when there was an election strategy involved.
@Nathan Blue:
Agreed. This thread has disintegrated into another TDS display by greg. This individual aka greg, is mentally unhinged. The eruptions of pablum that is inaccurate continues to define greg as the imbecile he/she/it is. He/she/it makes countless unsupportive statements that genuinely show intellectual ineptitude because except for a handful of like fellows, no one person here believe a word of it.
Every day is an IQ test. Everyday greg shows that he/she/it’s IQ may be non existent.
@Greg:
Why? Because the left has imported into Kenosha a bunch of spoiled, entitled crybabies that possess no self control or restraint? Because the left has imported terrorists to terrorize the residents there? No, HERE is what should happen: the TERRORISTS should leave.
Those are peaceful protesters. What is wrong with peaceful protesters? Are you denying peaceful protesters their 1st Amendment rights?
Where is the “bombast and bravado”? Point it out. Meanwhile, what really shows weakness and incompetence is weakness and incompetence and that is all that Democrats exhibit. Constantly blaming Trump for what YOU created and lost control of is weakness and incompetence. Allowing pointless violence to continue to over THREE MONTHS unabated is weakness and incompetence.
Trump is the President of the United States. EVERYTHING is his business, especially where weak, incompetent Democrats put citizens’ lives at risk by refusing to do their duty to protect them.
Provoking? By just being there? What about the VIOLENT TERRORISTS already there COMMITTING violence? Did you forget about them? Over three months of non-stop violence in one of the most liberal places in the country. So, what are they protesting? Where liberals rule and have ruled for decades, what is to protest? What is wrong there? Answer THAT. WHY are the violent protests always where liberals have been long-term deciders?
No one but BLM/ANTIFA was there and you can here them on video shouting they “have a Trumper”. If you wonder why people here call you stupid, THIS is an example of why. Cmon, MAN!!
Either your terrorists are illegally blocking a thoroughfare or they are too stupid to know the difference between roads and sidewalks. Either way, they didn’t “plow through” anyone and pepper spayed those attacking their vehicles. Your terrorists are who don’t belong, not peaceful citizens who support the President of the United States.
Three months of unabated terrorism is the provocation. YOU are the provocation. Did the BLM/ANTIFA thug that shot the peaceful Trump protester have a permit to carry their weapon? Oh… we don’t know because after the MURDER, they ran away (instead of turning himself in, as Rittenhouse did after he defended himself against terrorist attack).
Provide proof. You are lying. The violence was escalating and targeting a federal courthouse and the cowardly Democrats were doing what they do best… NOTHING.
@July 4th American: @Nathan Blue: But are not all of Greg’s remarks the actual proof of the failure of socialism? He defends political terrorism and lies about any response to it. He defends the abject failure of the socialists who were elected to protect taxpaying citizens; instead, they protect the imported violent terrorists who are promoting socialism’s next step; MARXISM. No clearer argument against socialism could be made than Greg’s weak and silly defense of it and the violence that is required to prop it up.
A real-life example of Socialism is the building of sport stadiums with taxpayer money. The hook was the revenue from fans attending games would more than pay for the stadium.
Now, the same people who said taxpayers should pay for the stadium have shut down those stadiums and stopped the revenue stream to pay for them. The local taxpayers are now stuck with any continuing payments tied to those empty stadiums.
This is the problem with socialism, the people who control the business are not invested in the business, they are invested in government. And a socialist government only includes the citizenry in the government. If you are not in government you are simply a cog in the machine.
Read “All the Trouble in the World” by Peter O’Rourke for a good rundown of the ills of socialism. My favorite is the Department of Hemp in Bangladesh that existed at the time of publication (1990’s) but there hadn’t been a market for Hemp since the 1950’s. Government exists for the sake of government, not for the people.
@John Miller
@Greg:
That’s obviously untrue. I allow you the courtesy of correcting your lie. Go ahead…unless you need someone to post the hundreds of videos available of your voters attacking police, attacking the Portland Governor, attacking businesses, and attacking elderly counter-protestors
Arson blaming the firefighter, indeed.
Funny how there’s no news stories or footage of how the Federal assistance has protected and deescalated violence in Minneapolis and Kenosha.
Leftwing terrorists started this. Normal citizens and our duly elected officials are the only ones who can stop it. Hat’s off to governments of Minneapolis and Kenosha, and the state, by putting their partisan games aside and actually helping the citizens who elected them.
Note:
Blake is dead because he made bad decisions, as it Floyd.
Rittenhouse defended himself in both encounters in Kenosha. It’s not an opinion, it’s fact.
Democrats support the Marxist agendas of destroying the police so they can install their own, racial/class warfare, and government dependence.
@Greg
President Trump leafs and will not relinquish to brain dead joe biden.
Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in all national presidential election polls. The last intelligence community briefing warned that Russia is once again attempting to interfere with the upcoming
@July 4th American:
That’s one of those pithy sayings that sounds very clever, but doesn’t actually make any sense at all.
Money isn’t a substance like gasoline that can only be used once because it’s destroyed by the process of using it. It’s a medium of exchange that continues to circulate when used.
When the government collects it through taxes and then spends it to provide services or useful things, it goes back out into the same pool of dollars from which it came. It ends up back in the pockets of the taxpayers who use it for their own needs—including paying their taxes.
The health of an economy is measured by how freely money circulates, and by successfully matching the amount currency available to the amount needed to keep the wheels of the economy turning without creating significant inflation or deflation.
August 31, 2020 – DOJ kept investigators from completing probe of Trump ties to Russia: report
So, Mueller wasn’t allowed to finish investigating any leads concerning Trump’s possible business or financial ties with Russia.
August 31, 2020 – Appeals court denies Michael Flynn and Justice Department’s effort to end his case
The appeals court also declined to reassign the Flynn case to a different judge.
@gregthe imbecile:
The thread is about the dishonesty of socialism not Lt General Michael Flynn.
https://twitter.com/realderekutley/status/1300418496665448450?s=21
@Greg:
I see that both you and the NYSlimes are once again pimping for the Deep State that McCabe was an intricate part of and wrote an entire article based on Andrew McCabe’s claims.
McCabe needs to be sharing a cell with Comey, Brennan and Clapper.
We’ll see who’s wearing an orange jump suit a year after Trump has lost his magicial immunity from being charged and prosecuted. He and his assets may flee to Russia.
@Greg:
So where did it all go in Venezuela? I guess it’s still there… what the socialist leadership didn’t steal.
Money is also something that can become worthless and nobody makes it worthless like socialists.
No, Mueller wasn’t allowed to investigate, investigate, investigate, investigate and investigate. The “investigation” was focused. Not only that, but before he even started, he KNEW there was no collusion or cooperation with any Russians by anyone in Trump’s campaign. But, that’s how socialist regimes operate; they suppress the rule of law and use the power of the government to attack political enemies. That’s why you love it.
Case in point.
@Greg:
You mean when “the Law” is suddenly whatever Dems want it to be to fit their political agenda and their illegal seizure of power from the hands of the People?
Never going to happen.
Marxism will not prevail here.
You and your fellow Marxists don’t have the numbers and you don’t have the guns.
I think it’s time the USA started dropping crates of firearms into China, curing China from the plague of Communism by allowing a free and armed citizenry to govern themselves, like us.
@Deplorable Me, #183:
It went up in smoke due to hyperinflation brought on by an extreme imbalance between tax revenue taken in and money going out. They simply cranked out more money to cover the difference, predictably crashing the value of their currency. The Venezuelan rate of inflation over the past three years:
2018 — 130,060 %
2019 — 9,586 %
2020 — 2,296 % (as of May)
This should serve as a lesson for anyone who believes an embedded $1 trillion annual deficit during an induced economic binge isn’t a big problem. It’s how you set yourself up for a $4 trillion dollar annual disaster when the inevitable downturn comes. We set ourselves up for the perfect storm, which was triggered by a viral pandemic.
This is one of the things the Trump administration won’t talk about or even acknowledge.
@Nathan Blue:
The law hasn’t changed. We have a current administration that believes itself to be above it, which has control of both the Senate and the DoJ.
@Greg: But you said the money just hangs around, indefinitely. NOW you say socialism can destroy it? Which is your story, Greg? Which version are you going to cling to?
Yeah, Venezuela has a lot of money. Socialism destroyed it. You want to do the same thing here.
@Greg:
You’d be well to know that, and to spread the word to your fellow revolutionaries.
Please give me one actual example of that that isn’t partisan relativism, unsupported by actual law.
The Democrats platform is basic Marxism, and their attempts to supplant the law while saying “Trump thinks he’s above the Law” are typical of tyrannical Communist movements.
Laws are not being enforced in Portland and other places. You do not support the Law, you support your Party. The only “Law” is what you/them consider to be for the greater good…the electorate’s say in the matter be damned.
Too few of you and too many guns in the hands of patriots.
Tell the CCP to try harder.
@Deplorable Me:
If you create an extra trillion dollars a year to cover costs that you aren’t taking in enough taxes to pay, it’s going to diminish the purchasing power of each individual dollar. Do it long for enough or rapidly enough, and you can render a nation’s currency worthless.
It’s a scam. Tax cuts do not “pay for themselves”. The size of your debt actually does matter. You may be able to declare bankruptcy on a gambling casino and go your merry way, but that doesn’t work for governments. When a government goes bankrupt it ceases to exist, and all things related to it go down the tubes with it. Social Security, Medicare, the healthcare system, public education, the military, border security, retirement systems, etc. Any money people have saved becomes worthless. No collection of conspiracy theorists or armed militia hee-haws are going to restore a working system of government or social order anytime soon, if ever.
There are too many guns in the hands of idiots. The country was already full of idiots. Now they’re all armed. It doesn’t make then any smarter. The worst thing that could happen to some of these people would be to get what they’re wishing for. They’d soon find out how much they’ve taken for granted.
How many people have died as a result of the present civil disorder since it began? 30 or 40? I don’t think it’s so high as 50.
Over 182,000 Americans are now dead from COVID-19, and many more will follow over the next few weeks.
@Greg: Not only can they pay for themselves, they do. If Pelosi would stop throwing money away at her campaign donors, we could balance the budget. Cutting wasteful spending is the key, not running businesses off with punitive taxes. A growing economy provides the revenue, not running people and jobs off with taxes and regulation. But, only an intelligent person can comprehend that.
Over half of the death count you so happily exploit came from Democrat run states and is a direct result of THEIR incompetence. Not only that but the count is grossly exaggerated… to serve a political goal. And YOUR party is using political terrorism as a tool. I don’t think you are in a position to offer opinions.
@Deplorable Me:
To which, Comrade Greggie responded:
Typical dodge coming from our resident Marxist.
What brought on the hyperinflation? It wasn’t a lack of taxation (remember, Comrade Greggie never saw a tax he didn’t approve of if it doesn’t affect him). It was a lack of actual revenue.
From a link that Comrade Greggie likes to use, Forbes, from 2007:
“So, can Chávez under-invest in the industry while diverting money to his pet causes? He can for a while, but you can see the results. Despite having enormous oil reserves, he and his cronies are running Venezuela’s oil industry right into the ground. His generosity to the poor has only been possible because he had a goose that laid golden eggs because they constantly reinvested money back into the business. Once he kills the goose, where is he going to get the money to continue his programs?”
Chavez, a Socialist, killed the means of production. There was nothing to tax because there was no income to tax. He ran out of money after he killed the economy by nationalizing the Venezuelan oil industry.
But Comrade Greggie, who is nothing but a mouthpiece for the left, will never address that his Socialists beliefs do not work.
When the money dried up, due to Chavez’s Socialism, the free stuff ended. Now, Venezuelans are digging in the garbage dumps trying to find enough to eat to keep them alive.
@retire05, #192:
That’s reality, not a dodge, and republicans once would have recognized it as such. Now your party is led by the self-proclaimed King of Debt.
The national debt was $19 Trillion when Trump was asked about it. It’s now $26.7 Trillion. He’s no longer worried about “the ticking time bomb”. He explained during a White House meeting that it would explode after he’s gone.
@Greg:
You’re wandering off the subject again, Comrade Greggie. But that’s your m.o. when you get bitch slapped, which you do with frequency.
And news flash!!! we all know the more radical you get with your TDS, the more Donald Trump’s reelection is a reality.
Really? How’s this?
August 31, 2020 – Twitter Flags 3 Posts From GOP Officials In 24 Hours For Spreading Misinformation Attacking Biden
Because they can’t win without lying and cheating.
@Greg:
So now you’re a big fan of Twitter? And you act like what Twitter did was all in the name of what? Honesty? Twitter is banning conservatives with record speed while they leave up Antifa/Burn, Loot and Murder posts.
So let’s see how many times you try to change the subject of this thread; so far we’ve had Venezuela, Twitter and heaven only knows what else.
As I said: You’re wandering off the subject again, Comrade Greggie.
@Greg:
More like the Dems can’t win without censorship and disinformation. Banning free speech, especially correct information, is not what we do here in America.
MARXISM DOESN’T WORK, AND THOSE WHO EMBRACE IT ARE ANIMALS. THEY EVENTUALLY DESTROY EVERYTHING. THE CCP IS NO EXCEPTION. COMMUNISM WILL FAIL IN CHINA.
The CCP has been able to survive at the pleasure of the United States, a pleasure that will no longer be indulged. Like a growing parasite, our President is excising it and making the host healthy again. I hope for a strong, Democratic China and support the people of China to rise up and take back their country.
@retire05, #196:
Trump has 85.6 million followers on Twitter. Dan Scavino has 729 thousand. Steve Scalise has 445 thousand. Total them up. That’s how many people any outright lies or deceptively manipulated videos can reach—and millions of people who see them don’t grasp the fact that they’re being deliberately, purposefully lied to. They’ve swallowed the pitch that anyone who points that out is lying.
Trump and company don’t like it when their lies are flagged as such. How unfortunate. If they don’t like it, maybe they should stop lying.
Were you thinking Biden was going to be a pushover for the playground bully? Think again.
Maybe Joe is again on those mysterious performance enhancing drugs Trump claimed he was taking after the convention speech. It was hilarious that Trump suggested he should be checked. He’ll probably refuse to debate unless Biden has a drug test before taking to the podium.
I wasn’t aware that you had been appointed hall monitor.
@retire05:
And the US is the world’s “golden goose”. Kill it with socialism and what is left to aid the rest of the world? Economic stupidity seems to be a liberal gene. Socialism never starts from the ground up; they need a wealthy host to take over and the inevitably destroy it.
@Greg: That “misinformation” was that Biden supported defunding the police. That is an absolute fact; Biden has stated it in no uncertain terms. Sure, he has also taken the opposite position, depending on what poll has shown what support at what moment. But it is a FACT that Biden has supported defunding. So, the censorship is for nothing but to protect Biden from his own positions.
Socialism has killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone.
Socialism has killed more than 60 million babies in America since Roe v Wade since 1973…