The problem here is that employers are not held accountable. If you impose a heavy fine on the employer for not reporting an employee without verifying their status you would have more control who is in this country. Take the Texas abortion rule where anyone can collect a reward for turning anyone in for violating the law. You'll put that in place and see how fast employers will stop hiring illegal immigrants.

Rich, while I think this is a great topic, the likelihood that it won't become political is huge.

People have different ideas about capitalism and socialism.

The basic idea behind capitalism is free enterprise, which also entails freedom of speech and self-determination. It protect the rights of the individual. Its goal is the maximization of profit. This can lead to class differences and market monopoly, and abuse of the individual by those with the capital / wealth, and oligarchy (rule by an elite class).

The basic idea behind socialism is the greatest good for the greatest number. The rights of the society as a whole supersede that of the individual. It has been said that the mark of a great society is how well they care for its weakest members, and also that socialism is the political expression of Christianity. However, it can lead to the suppression of the individual and the stifling of incentive, and control of the society by a small group or oligarchy (rule by an elite class).

See where this is headed? I myself think that we need to find a balance whereby the individual is not stifled but at the same time the weakest in society are cared for. In my opinion we have a long way to go to get there. And while I'm not an economist, it doesn't seem to me that anyone has come up with an economic theory that will solve this problem.

That sound very much that is happening wright now
 

Looking at what is happening now it is being taken shape in USA

Right, the corporations are making record profits with the lowest taxes in history, and the divergence between the rich and poor is also the greatest in our history, because there is little regulation and legislation is on the side of corporations because of Citizens United and other SCOTUS rulings.

Looking to other countries for cheap labor has the benefits of lower costs for INDIVIDUAL companies. That's great for them. But, there are other GREAT costs for the US and US society. Namely, China and others STEAL our technology. There are additional shipping costs to making goods overseas. We have singlehandedly made China into a world power that rivals the US and NOW threatens us MILITARILY. It has increased supply disruptions of important goods and medicines for the US. This even includes even CRITICAL military parts.

Outsourcing has made individual Corporations rich, but has been responsible for the average wages of US citizens remaining constant (with respect to inflation) since 1970. Outsourcing in combination with bad tax policy has given the US the greatest WEALTH DISPARITY in the 1st world. The country that fought a revolution against KINGS now is again ruled by KINGS.........Corporate KINGS......Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc, etc!!!!!!

Everything in society is political, from religion to education. It is there like a matrix, a subtext for everything!

The US's "route to greatness" is the same as it has EVER been .........the same as it was for South Korea.......invest in your people, your own citizens. By that I mean - we NEED a VERY progressive tax system - meaning the rich MUST pay more .....and more like in the 1950s when America was TRULY great.

By invest, I mean to pull back from outsourcing, encourage small farmers and local farmers' markets, invest in highways and mass transportation, invest in clean air, and encourage E-bikes, golf carts, and electric cars and trucks.

MOST of all, the US needs to return to the tremendous PUBLIC education of the past by INCREASING taxes that support education. Return to providing VOCATIONAL education. Find a way to keep class size low. Recruit more teachers and pay them MORE. That is what I mean by investing in US citizens. Failure to do that will result in China becoming the world's dominant country and the US will be slowly weakened by an internal lack of unity.

Well stated, we need more people like that.

I agree. Socialism is NOT a "bad word" and in the right amount can be thought of as the guard rails for effective Capitalism.

The 1st step is to overcome the fact that the SS card can be EASILY forged.

The successful need to give a HELPING HAND to those less successful. That's the rising tide lifts all boats theory. And the Federal Government can cause the rising tide. That's how the SS system began. Did not Jesus or someone else say to TEACH a starving man how to FISH? Today, I would say that means we need better PUBLIC education.

That is more directed toward China and Russia. There is NOTHING wrong with Sweden and Finland, which are mostly capitalist anyway. They rank in the top ten among countries in infant mortality and other measures of quality of life. Look it up! The US ranks around 30th. The US WAS in the top 10 around 1950. But, by 1975 the US middle class started to lose ground, mostly due to OVERLY greedy capitalists.......can we say Jack Welsh ? Or today's greedy CEOs ?

Agreed. Good post.

An all-time great post. Wonderful.

The problem with Capitalism???? You don't have a democracy, you have an illusion of democracy.

I REALLY wish that it was true. If that were true, how can it be explained that the last 3 generations of US Americans, when asked, say that their children are not as well off as the PRIOR generation? There was a survey in the news recently about this - and a good majority of Americans said that their next generation will NOT be as well off as they have been. I mean those are the FACTS about the US and it is NOT optimistic.

US wealth DISPARITY is the greatest in the 1st world. At least, we are number one at something.

Excellent Response!

Because we are the richest country.

At least we know the leaders of those socialist countries have no more money than the poor folks they lead. :D

TOTAL millionaires # 1 China # 2 United States

millionaires per CAPITA
1 ) Qatar
2 )Singapore
3 )Kuwait
4 )Switzerland
5 ) Hong Kong

I am not sure how far down the list is the US ?

Well said. Thank you.

I've collected unemployment twice in my life, for a very short time, and my payments weren't even close to what I was making as an employee. Where conservatives get the idea that people can live well on unemployment ought to try it for a while.

I wonder how well the people of those countries live. It's swell to acknowledge those with millions........ how about focusing on the majority without millions, they need the attention.

What countries are you referring too?
Sounds like capitalist ones to me!:icon_wink:

Capitalism is the economic system that pays people to serve their fellow man. The better they serve, the wealthier they become.

Socialism is the economic system that pays people to steal from their fellow men. The more they steal, the poorer they become.

There has never been an example of successful socialism. Nations fail in exact proportion to the degree to which they tolerate socialism. They succeed to the exact degree to which they allow capitalism to flourish. Note the falling standard of living in America, as we have become more socialist, while even a tiny amount of capitalism injected into the Chinese economy allowed them raise their enormous population from dire poverty for the first time in modern history.

The poorest citizen of a capitalist country lives better than an average person in a socialist country. But neither system has the slightest impact on the standard of living of the extremely wealthy. Extreme wealth is merely extremely rare in a socialist country, because it requires extreme political power, rather than extreme service.

Some people attribute our social safety net to socialism, and would say that this proves that pure capitalism is an impossible goal. This is a false choice. Take Social Security, for example. A capitalist would have merely required workers to save for their own retirement, rather than confiscating 15% of every paycheck to provide a stipend for the previous generation's victims. (Imagine your own wealth today if you had been free to invest that 15% that was confiscated from you to pay your parent's pathetic return on their 15%!) Unemployment insurance could have been provided in the same way, by requiring workers to purchase private insurance if they could not prove that they have a year's worth of salary in savings -- which most would have, if they'd been able to own the 15% they were required to save for retirement. Bottom line, a capitalist "safety net" would have resulted in wealthier workers and more stable employment.

Welfare, on the other hand, is merely a socialist trap that creates generations of dependent citizens with no hope of escaping poverty. The capitalist alternative is private charity, because it is targeted and limited. It does not condemn generations of fatherless children to poverty, as our welfare system does. But since a socialist requires dependent victims to keep them in power, government welfare is always their solution to poverty, not employment,

A committed socialist will tell you that their pure socialist paradise can never be achieved so long as capitalism is allowed to "exploit workers". That's why they murdered 100 million innocent capitalists in the 20th century alone. I guess killing a man is not exactly exploiting him, but I doubt that the victim would appreciate the difference.

One final point. The inventor of socialism, Karl Marx, once pointed out that socialism is merely a phase on the way to communism. He saw no difference, in the long run. It was the only thing he ever got right.

As long as there is a country and a government, some degree of socialism will be necessary. The government itself is a socialist entity as is the military, police, fire, post office, social security and all other government entities.

The difference between the two is that a socialist service is always there but you have no choice. If you have a fire in your house, you call the fire department and they come and put out the fire and there is no cost to you. If you don't like the job that they're doing, you don't have the option of calling a competing fire department.

Whereas in a capitalist society, you may have the choice of several different companies to choose from. But if you don't pay, you don't get service.

Some socialism will always be necessary. It's a matter of choosing how much do we want. We need to decide what the balance should be.

Just because we have never lived without socialist infringements on our liberties does not mean it's the only way to live, or even normal. It's only been for the last 150 years since Marx published Das Kapital that stupid socialist leaders have been inflicting them on us, while never learning from the failures.

The great wealth of the modern world is entirely due to the capitalist policies that followed in the United States and Great Britain after the publication of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". Socialism in America only gained a foothold during the Great Depression, when America's second Socialist President, FDR, attempted to apply more socialism to rectify the failures of the first, Woodrow Wilson. FDR failed to solve the Depression for over 10 years, until WW2 came along and finally forced Wilson's ignorant FED to print the money necessary to end the DE-flation. But FDR got the credit, anyway, and we've been stuck with a socialist government ever since. That doesn't make it either normal or necessary. It just means we're used to it because we've never known better. Read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" sometime, and learn the truth.

True public services, such as roads, police and fire protection have nothing to do with Socialism. Public services have been provided by all governments since the Roman Empire. The difference is that they benefit ALL citizens regardless of wealth or social standing -- unlike socialist giveaway programs like Social Security and Welfare, that target specific factions in order to buy their votes. But those programs invariably vanish as soon as the Socialists achieve Communism, when the citizens effectively become serfs of the government and there is no longer a need to buy their votes. Serfs work until the day they die. Serfs take what their master gives them, not what they can earn and buy for themselves, through service to the fellow citizens.