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Comment by nmbr213 | Hacker News Reader

I would say socialism but I'd get downvoted into oblivion and be told that "it wasn't a real socialism". Oh wait...

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14900447 and marked it off-topic.

A capitalist Venezuela faced similar economic problems in the 80's-90's, even had the same response to the unrest when they jailed Chavez. Socialism isn't the cause, it just wasn't the solution they hoped.

Check the statistics about Venezuela's economic structure.

Chavez claimed he was a socialist because that has positive connotations over there and the US wanted to portray him as a socialist for the opposite reason.

But check

* percentage of workforce work in public sector

* government expenditure as % of GDP

* percentage of workforce that is part of a union

* taxes

* state enterprises

* the welfare and state provided benefits

Compare all of these to a country like Norway (richest or 2nd richest country in the world, also an oil state of sorts). You'll find that if Venezuela is socialist, than Norway must be a straight up reincarnation of the USSR.

You can say socialism if you want. But if you then use Venezuela as a reason on why the USA can't have universal healthcare, someone points out countries in Europe that have universal healthcare and are doing fine, then it's your turn to say "that's not real socialism". Not that you would do this of course, but these arguments tend to get really twisted.

Arguing on the internet is so much fun :p

I heard Bernie Sanders on NPR talking up single payer--he only touts the positives while completely ignoring the huge increase in taxes that will be required to pay for it. I think of Europe and slowly failing because of their socialism and when there isn't anymore wealth to extract from people to keep it all going, it will fail awesomely fast, just like these schemes always do in the end. So simply observing a place at a point in time does not inform you about the total story. The US has enough socialism going without nationalizing healthcare. I don't have any answers, but sentencing my children to a lifetime of debt slavery is certainly not the answer.

Reminder: the US already spends more public money on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Finland, Canada and many others.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PUBL.ZS?year_high...

You don't pay less taxes than many Europeans. You just get a worse deal from them.

They've had universal healthcare since what...the 50s? And the countries seem to have only gotten richer much then. Let me know when they start declining, they are nowhere near failure yet.

The USA has already socialized 40-50% of its healthcare through the VA and Medicare/Medicaid. We also spend a lot more on healthcare and get worse results than other countries with pure universal systems, so you can't say this is about "saving money."

This is so disingenuous. We don't blame capitalism when an industry struggles in Europe or the US. And when the financial crisis hit in 2007-2008, capitalism didn't get the blame it deserved.

Who's "we"? I see plenty of people blaming capitalism, especially on left leaning hubs like Reddit. Pretty much anytime there's a major corporate scandal criticism of capitalism is towards the top.

Which is fine, at least under capitalism you're allowed to criticize it.

capitalism you're allowed to criticize it

What does this even mean?

Are you under the impression that capitalism gave the world free-speech?

There was no capitalism involved in 2008 & 2009. If we had a real market system, those big banks that were levered 100:1 would all be gone, their billionaire CEOs would be broke. No, we NEED that kind of accountability and we don't have it!

It is real socialism but it's been done in an extremely resource-poor country with numerous other issues, not the least of which is massive amounts of systemic corruption and crime.

Socialism clearly isn't working here, but I wouldn't say it's at fault for the current struggles.

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