Jack Fate
I'm Your Daddy
To your first point..defense spending and our present military are very socialistic.
To your second point..the war on poverty has been in a very large part sucessful. What it meant to be "poor" when I was growing up in this country..is vastly different what it means to be "poor" today. More "minorities" hold more high paying positions, and positions in government then at any time in our nation's history. That's a pretty good benchmark.
To your third point, see above. There are more people with college degrees as well.
It's silly to say Socialism is a failure. It's also silly to say that a government should become totally socialistic. My general preference..and it seems that this is become the world's preference, is a blend of the two. What's the right mixture?
That's still anyone's guess.
Then government as a whole is socialistic.
As far as welfare goes, the numbers are on my side on this. 2008 72% of black kids were born w/o a father around.
And you still can not work your way through college any more.
True that! Week before last my son and I went to a two day student/parent orientation at his university for him to enroll in his freshman year. In one of the sessions put on by the finacial folks at the school, they made it clear that while a student can certainly work and help pay for their college, the days of a student being able to work part time and pay their own way thru college is gone. I printed out tuition sheets from 2004/2005 thru 2010/2011 and on average, tuition for 30 hours per year increases about $550 per year. I didn't put a pencil to room and board, but it increase each year too. A year of college at his university will run about $16 to $17,000 per year this year. If tuition increases keep pace, the year he graduates it will be $18 to $19,000 per year.
It's tough being an upper middle class white male when it comes to scholarships. My son was a 4.00 honor student and graduated 33 out of 459. The best he could get was a $1000 per semester merit scholarship, which means we are on the hook for the additional $14,000 per year. If he were a female, a minority or we made less that $50,000 per year, he could get much, much more money for school. But, we've always paid our way and don't expect someone else to do it for us. It just kind of torques me that my tax dollars are funding kids with low grades, kids whose parents pay far less than me in tax dollars and kids who are a different gender or color than paying for my own child.
The reason for that is because the odds are you don't vote for those who give away what you have to work for. They know exactly who butters their bread.