The Reductio Ad Absurdum of Socialism: Venezuela

[Ragnar]

Shipping jobs overseas = redistribution of wealth.


The problem with Chavez is he thinks Capitalism, the free market and the good old USofA are his enemies. His real enemy is reality. That is a fight he can't win and no socialist ever has won.

 

[Oscar Wao]

I hate it when people use the Sudan/Somalia/et al. myth.

 

[Vel]

Socialism's goal is for everyone to fail equally, except for the elite ruling class who live well while everyone else experiences declining living standards.

Yeah that is goal.

How about not letting war lords hold all the land and the rights, while the rest go poor?
And it isn't socialistic programs that are giving the elite more power in this country. It is rulngs like the Supreme Court made that are allowing it to happen, or people like siding with corporations, while they ship our jobs overseas.

Why do you consider them to be OUR jobs?

 

[jeffrockit]

I think you have to have some socialistic programs, kind of like our current system, which is not destroying the middle class. Moving manufactoring jobs to Mexico(middle class jobs) to other countries, is what is destroying this country. CEO's making 20 million a year, while paying their workers min wage, and not giving them health care, also helps. Taking bonuses, while laying off workers, is what is destroying our economy.
You guys bitch about unions, but have no problem with CEO's bleeding their companies dry so they can fly to play golf in Palm Springs.

The unions bosses are no better than the CEO's. While workers toil in their blue collar jobs, the union bosses do this:
Thats Outrageous -- Corrupt Union Bosses | Michael Crowley | Reader's Digest

 

[asaratis]

Wrong. I don't support anyone Bleeding A Company Dry, including the Government.

The size of the Federal Government as a % of GDP has increased by 25% in one year (ObamaCare will shoot it past the 30% level). That's more bleeding than any cabal of CEOs have commited - and why the private sector is Not Creating Jobs.

The private sector is not creating jobs because the trans-national corperations shipped our jobs overseas. And when their theivery becomes too obvious, they skip the country. Halliburton, Dubai.

Companies will locate where it is cheapest to operate. The USA has taxed companies enough to drive them elsewhere. That has little to do with socialism though. We've been doing that for a long time already.

The socialism part is going to take us down the same path that it has taken many other failed countries. Two have been mentioned here already.

Study the history of Argentina from about 1900 to today and you will be studying the gradual ruining of a perfectly good country via the socialist agenda.

There is no reason to expect a different result from the socialist movement in the USA. History repeats itself.

You Obama zombies are just too fucking stupid to realize you've been had. Obama, Pelosi, Reid and a host of rich government officials are already part of the ruling elite and do not give two shits what you think or do. They are set for life. And their children will become the ruling elite after them.

Obama zombies are fucking lunatics. I wouldn't mind saying you get what you deserve except that it's taking the rest of us down with you.

 

[asaratis]

I think you have to have some socialistic programs, kind of like our current system, which is not destroying the middle class. Moving manufactoring jobs to Mexico(middle class jobs) to other countries, is what is destroying this country. CEO's making 20 million a year, while paying their workers min wage, and not giving them health care, also helps. Taking bonuses, while laying off workers, is what is destroying our economy.
You guys bitch about unions, but have no problem with CEO's bleeding their companies dry so they can fly to play golf in Palm Springs.

The unions bosses are no better than the CEO's. While workers toil in their blue collar jobs, the union bosses do this:
Thats Outrageous -- Corrupt Union Bosses | Michael Crowley | Reader's Digest

That article should be a must read at all union meetings.

You can safely bet that some union graft money goes to pay politicians for their votes. This is why Obama is so kind to the unions. The money keeps going up the ladder.

I found this rather interesting.

Then there are the four steelworkers officials in Virginia who pleaded guilty to pilfering some $10,000 from a relief fund that was established for workers following a foundry explosion.

In Ohio, a machinists union treasurer admitted embezzling $36,000 in union funds. A brazen bookkeeper in New Mexico stole $57,000 from a builders union, at the same time that she filched $11,600 in dues from her second job at a local ironworkers union. Then she forged checks to cover her tracks.

Of course, this is only the illegal side of robbery. Union bosses are effectively picking pockets by taking salaries that dwarf the earnings of the working stiffs who support them. For instance, a Chicago Teamsters leader who retired a few months ago earned $586,000 last year. Salaries like his may explain why the rank and file across the country often pay $500 or more in annual dues.

Other union leaders with fat paychecks include John Bowers, president of the longshoremen, who made $421,000 last year, plus another $172,000 as head of the union's Atlantic Coast district; Douglas McCarron, president of the national carpenters union, who pulled in $336,000; and Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, who got a salary of $412,000, along with a $130,000 "allowance."

It will take rare courage to bring down salaries like these. Pay is often voted on at public meetings where a dissenter risks a lot by openly defying the big guys.

There's more chance of netting the out-and-out criminals if the Labor Department follows through on its pledge to tighten financial accounting and oversight. Just demanding an annual audit may deter some of the embezzlement, bloated salaries and perks.


Here's the ultimate deterrent, though. Last year, Pat Tornillo was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $800,000 to the United Teachers of Dade. And Barbara Bullock, the former teachers union president in Washington, D.C., is serving a nine-year sentence at a prison in Alderson, West Virginia. America's union workers will only get justice when all the corrupt union bosses get theirs.

 

[boedicca]

No kidding. Unions are incredibly corrupt.

I actually became a Teamster one summer for a factory job - a very eye opening experience. The jobs were segregated by gender, with the women doing the dirtiest, most uncomfortable tasks. In our section, the son of the union steward sat around and watched us for 55 minutes out of each hour, and then he spent 5 minutes sweeping up.

He was paid more than the women.

The factory was a seasonal business. They hired at least twice as many women as they needed for the work (we discovered later). The minimum amount of work to have to pay the union initiation fee was three weeks. A lot women were laid off right after they reached the union payment threshold.

I learned very quickly how much The Teamsters are a shakedown, patronage con game. I doubt other unions are much different.