Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism (2018)
news.gallup.com
news.gallup.com
This coming from a young American, who tries to understand my cohorts logic/reasoning. Most have very little understanding of history or even current events. They just want “free” things provides by government and lower taxes.
As a young American myself, I would gladly pay (significantly) more in taxes in exchange for a much stronger social safety net. Broadly, this is for two reasons, one altruistic and one selfish:
1) There are tons of people in dire economic straits through no direct fault of their own; those whose industries are dying, those whom our healthcare system has failed, etc. I can't ignore this in good conscience if there's something we as a society can do to improve the situation.
2) While I'm well-off as a tech worker right now, and demand is high, there's no guarantee that will continue to be the case indefinitely. It would give me much peace of mind if the lower bound of how far I could ultimately fall was a lot higher than it is now.
It’s worth playing around with a German tax calculator: https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calcu.... A single person making 30,000 euros in Germany pays about 25% of total income in taxes. In California it’s about 15%. Someone making 300,000 euros pays about 45%. In California, it’s almost exactly the same, 44%. That’s not counting the 20% VAT, which will disproportionately hit the person making 30,000. (That also doesn’t count all the middle class deductions which don’t exist in Germany, like the mortgage interest deduction.)
I’m perfectly willing to pay German taxes to have a German style welfare state. (It would be even better if we had Germans running those new public services.) The question is whether middle class Americans are willing to do so.
I broke my arm in the autumn and had paid leave. I was working my 2nd season as a temp worker in a chocolate factory. (I'm in norway because my spouse is Norwegian. I'm lower middle class if anything). There also isn't as much difference between poor and rich, though the difference definitely exists.
Children's healthcare is free. Maternity leave exists and it is fairly robust. People get paid days off if they are sick, and parents get more so they can properly take care of their children (I'm pretty sure this is similar to Germany).
You don't notice the VAT most of the time. Here it is 0% for books/newspapers, 15% on food, and 25% on everything else. The VAT is included in the price, which is much preferable to having 8.5% sales tax on things as a surprise at the register (or having to do careful math and know the local tax rate). I also don't need to pay tips so a waitress can survive. I can actually have life stability in ways I could not have in the US.
Our former au pair is a young German lady who previously worked an entry level office job in Germany. When she tore her ACL, she was able to pay the hospital and EMT bills out of her own income. Her taxes and mandatory social insurance payments were also 40% of her paycheck. And although college in Germany is almost free, she wasn’t eligible to enroll based on her scores on the abitur exam. She definitely would’ve gone to college in the US, but only about 30% of German high school graduates enroll in college, versus almost 70% here.
I personally like the German system a lot. I think college is overrated and that it’s great that in Germany you can graduate high school at 16, do an apprenticeship, and get a real job with room for growth. But young liberals in the US seem to be under the view that you can have your cake and eat it too. They don’t realize that Germany, etc., doesn’t match their vision for the US, where the government pays for people with average grades to get social science degrees and put off getting a real job until 25, while taxing entry level workers next to nothing.
In Roosevelt's day anyone earning 1 million + was taxed at 95%. Basically meaning all their money went back to the state. It encouraged them to spend it on business and grow their business holdings.
The big wins come in having a single-payer for health who can say : No we will not pay $35 to hospitals for a single ibuprofen, stop gouging prices. Or we will not pay more than $x for insulin - don't like it? We'll end your patent term for non-generics early so prices CAN go down.
It's that collective bargaining combined WITH the end of insurance salaries. More money is free'd up for hospitals, and if we can make the system tech-streamlined, we could save even more. The more we automate the entire stack the better for the entire billing/management of funds to drs/hospitals.
It may well be a win! I think it is. But that’s not the pitch liberal Democrats are making. They’re saying “you can have European style benefits, but you won’t pay European style taxes. The top 1% and corporations will pay for all of it.” That’s not realistic.
> In Roosevelt's day anyone earning 1 million + was taxed at 95%. Basically meaning all their money went back to the state. It encouraged them to spend it on business and grow their business holdings.
Roosevelt’s economic ideas were bad and the US and Europe have spent decades unwinding similar policies. That’s the lesson liberal Democrats refuse to take away from Europe. The Reagan Revolution happened in Europe as well as the US. Industries were deregulated, businesses were privatized, and taxes were lowered. Europe continues to move further to the right.
And Germany, France, and Sweden don’t “soak the rich” as the US tries to do: https://images.app.goo.gl/xbVh5c9cXHqfMESx6. They have high but relatively flat taxes on individuals, and moderate taxes on corporations and capital gains. An in-depth comparison of Germany and US taxation is here: https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2.... Overall US taxes are about 10% of GDP lower than Germany ($2 trillion). A small part of that difference comes from lower taxes on capital (23% versus 27% overall). The real difference is significantly lower taxes on labor, and massively lower taxes on consumption.
If we moved to a German tax system, it wouldn’t “soak the rich.” Capitalists would see their taxes go up a little. Labor and consumers would see their taxes go up massively.
Single payer health insurance allows folks to do cost-saving things with health insurance. Such as sending a nurse out to a home up to 6 times a day instead of a nursing home. Even if you live on an island or spend summers in a mountain cabin, this is still cheaper overall than a nursing home. Pay for some people's travel instead of making things available everywhere. and so on. There is also a private system. My understanding is that the government still pays their normal rate for most services and you pay the rest.
I'm also not sure Germany's tax rates are all that much different than here in Norway with the possible exception of the church tax. [1]
Colleges in the states will let about anyone in if you are willing to pay for it. You don't need to take advanced courses, simply do well enough at average classes. Working hard to keep your grades up in advanced classes wasn't enough to get a scholarship - at least it wasn't when I was in school years ago. I can't imagine that has changed now. In both places, however, it is possible to go back as an adult.
College education is shorter without as many required classes. The system for vocational school is much, much more robust however. Want to work cleaning places? You usually need your schooling certificate or experience behind you. Some employers will send you to school as well.
[1] https://www.expatica.com/de/finance/taxes/income-tax-in-germ...
An investment banker in NYC pays a marginal rate of 50% above $1 million. She could see her tax go down slightly under a Norwegian system. But Norway raises 10% more of its GDP in tax revenue than the U.S. That's coming from somewhere, and that's the middle class. But that approach is exactly the opposite of what Democrats in the U.S. are proposing.
It really doesn't matter if the tax rate is 24% in california if you are paying out of pocket for health care. You cannot compare tax rates from the US to Norway without including both state tax, federal tax, and health care (because the Norwegian tax rate includes this).
In the US, Even if you are lucky enough to have an employer who pays for part of it, you are likely paying a few hundred a month, on top of which you must pay for the deductible (at least a few thousand)... and then you still pay 20% until you've reached the out of pocket. Prescriptions are something else entirely (I am taking one that costs 8k in the us. I pay nothing due to the type of medicine it is). For medical, I paid about 2500kr out of pocket (less than 300) for the year and now most things are covered. If I wind up in the hopsital, I'll have bandages and possibly prescriptions if they aren't maintenance prescriptions. These are reasonably priced. Children's medical care is free.
And again, the taxes include schooling. This helps doctors not need to be paid as much, for example, because they aren't having to pay back loans for 8 years of schooling. And so on. I'm an immigrant, and I get schooling if I qualify and health care.
And as I've said elsewhere, you don't notice the VAT most times. The only time I really noticed was when ordering and importing an instrument into norway last year. It is included in price. FWIW, VAT is 0% on books and newspapers, 15% on food, and 25% on everything else. I know the price when I get to the register.
I'm awfully certain that the us could make up much of that 10% if they simply didn't have as many tax breaks for different folks.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/72005/umfrage...
That is a familiar Republican talking point. "Starve the beast"; "Drain the swamp", et cetera.
Hasn't really happened - government and spending has grown healthily under Trump.
As other commenters have pointed out, the terms socialism and capitalism are very broad. However, the fact that small business and entrepreneurs are viewed positively and big business is viewed negatively (at least by Democrats), suggests that people are primarily upset about corporate capitalism and want a form of socialism that addresses it.
The fact that both big business and the federal government are both viewed negatively suggests that American socialists are concerned about the power and negative impact of corporations but, contrary to what conservatives tend to assert, don't want a centralized system run by the federal government. I wonder if policies could be developed that are tailored to this specific approach to socialism?
It compares the existing system with an hypothetical system. Means, people will project their current suffering onto the former while projecting their hopes and dreams on the latter. This screws the results in a major way. If this proves anything it is the profoundness of the "grass is greener on the other site" effect.
Also, I don't think casting a plethora of political, social and ecological phenomena onto some kind of hypothetical binary switch is gonna provide any valuable insight. Also also, especially in the US "socialism" is used to describe things that an European would see as some kind of base condition, like affordable dentists, while it's also serving as the description of the politics of thoroughly fucked up countries. This gives the word very little substance.
I'm a bit disappointed that this kind of "here are some numbers: 36, 1, 0.64" kind of article gains this much traction on HN...
Edit: grammar
Perhaps both are true. I don't know if these stereotypes are actually supported by data, but it seems like we tend to expect young people to be both more idealistic/naive (depending on your perspective) and open to change. Similarly, the very terms 'progressive' and 'conservative' refer to the degree to which they advocate change.
Trump is like a natural Reichstagg fire to kick us in the ass and start looking inward and making changes. I'm optimistic that in the next 10 years many of these programs will be implemented (especially as automation picks up and jobs start disappearing by millions).
What do you expect? They’ve grown up seeing the increasing failure and corruptedness of American corporatism and global capitalism.
Of course they will be drawn to something different!
What would be interesting is to see what young Europeans who has grown up with “socialism” answers when asked the same.
Will their experiences with the failures of socialism cause them to come up with the opposite answer?
I wonder how defining the terms would change the outcome. I've found that most laypersons simply equate Socialism with Welfare.
That aside, this is an interesting split happening in America. I know it's mostly impossible, but I would love to understand the origin of this shift. I, personally, have to believe a lot of it has to do with our complete inability to fix healthcare in this country. I'm firmly in the pro-capitalism side, but even I have to admit at this point I'd take single payer over our current Kafkaesque nightmare.
Nowhere in Western Europe can properly be described as “socialist,” not even “socialist life” after the 1980s and 1990s when states went on a massive privatization binge. They’re capitalist democracies where heavy taxes on individuals (especially the middle class) are used to fund a broad welfare state.
Socialism is a very strong but diverse set of policys. For Europeans like me, free healthcare is not part of socialism, while in America it is often seen so.
That said, socialism sounds great on paper, but put in practice, we have seen that taking over the means of production by force and distributing them somehow (that's real socialism) does not work as intended, so force has to be used to keep the system running. Most young people lack the historical context to understand that good intentions can have bad consequences. As of today, no socialist system worked. It's safe to say that all of them had good intentions. To me, this seems to be a good argument against socialism (but not against things like free healthcare!).
The advice of the older generations that have prospered under the current economic regime no longer seems to hold true for most young people, so can you blame them for their doubt?
It seems like y'all over there have been taught for multiple generations now that it's either the status quo or [GDR|USSR], and until very recently, nobody seemed capable of (openly) speaking of anythibg going beyond this limited range of settings.
Thanks for making my poibt I guess... FYI I'm not only not American, I'm also not a native English speaker. Why not ask me outright how I dare appropriating your precious language by using your words at all?
Good to see that more Americans are realising that unchecked capitalism isn't doing them any good though.
What is called 'capitalism' changed every few decades until it froze after Milton Friedman. Friedman's negative income tax proposal (effectively very similar to UBI) was already too radical.
The 'socialism' froze around the same time to the baby boomer era Social Democracy that worked actually quite well in industrial society. It has no answers to post-industrial problems. Except in cases where capitalism is overshooting.
Eventually there will be change, but it can't be framed socialism vs capitalism. See for example: http://radicalmarkets.com/ and Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST).
Intro to radical markets: https://paulrberg.com/post/2018/12/24/radical-markets/
> We propose a Visas between Individuals Program (VIP) that would tie together the interests of the working classes of rich and poor countries through sponsorship of visas and sharing of the gains from migration. Because every citizen would benefit from migration, rather than just the wealthy or those in cosmopolitan cities, migration would move from being one of the most divisive issues in wealthy countries to a widely popular source of growing middle-class income
So a person giving some immigrant a visa will have the option to cancel it? This type of relations between individuals will surely result in abuse.
The USA is looking more and more like Brazil or Saudi Arabia every day. Great times for a select few, shantytowns (or concentration camps) for the rest. At some point that breaks down, regardless of how much you spend on police.
what they didn't see is what a centrally planned socialist economy does to a country. i'd like to invite them to a trip around eastern europe and post-soviet republics and 'republics'.
EDIT: the title of the article is indeed "Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism". But what I found most interesting is the second table which shows "Views About Capitalism and Socialism: by Age" (overall)
Which of these problems:
- Corruption in the government
- Lack of affordable healthcare
- Expensive universities
- No social safety net
- Problematic privatized prison system
- Pollution
could have been avoided with more socialism? If the obvious answer is: "most of them", then i can't blame them.
Yesterday on the news it was said that the Green parties in Europe have the future because half of the young voters (18-25) voted for progressive parties, but they forgot that in 5 years they will all be at the age of starting a family and will vote much more conservative.
Historically, young people always prefer socialism, because they tend not to have a firm idea of what capitalism is, or how they benefit from it. They are still learning how the world works and what their place is in it. They are more prone to utopianism and idealism. This generation, in particular, has no historical knowledge of the great human cost of socialism to the billions of people who, in the last century, suffered under socialist regimes.
Hence the well-known quote that no one can definitively attribute[1]: "A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head."
[1] https://katecarruthers.com/2005/02/11/alleged-quote-by-churc...
With all the uber/temporary employment and lack of unionisation. People start to look at socialism, not as a counterpoint to capitalism, but the marginalisation of many in society.
I, for instance, understand and believe in Capitalism, so as I do in Socialism. I'm in a very privileged position in society, with everything I need in terms of compensation, career etc. But I can't close my eyes to how everybody around me is suffering even to find a real job.
For many Americans, they would be better off by using a travel machine and being on the workforce in the 70's. Which tells me that they feel left behind, and of course, they will want a solution, which socialism "seems" to offer. At least in the short term. They get things for free. And forget that one must have worked for that thing to be created.
If society doesn't work in a way that people are able to produce and create things, as it currently is for many americans, they will defend whatever systems that tells those people that *ism will fix their problems.
In the very deep end, I think Americans haven't changed much. They want to be able to conquer their own future, the American Dream is still alive, but how society is organised in America very much suck for most young Americans.
What all Americans don't want to admit is that the US isn't as important anymore. Other countries are catching up and that will make US even poorer in relation to them.
Lately the only real product that the US has been selling is the dollar, and this won't last. The country must adapt to a new reality, which the eyes of many doesn't want to see.
And that's very different than historical socialism which looks more like Venezuela than Denmark.
In my experience, no need to point out that it's not universal, the US is the only place that worships the profit motive whilst aspiring to fascism. Lots of places have those things by de facto argument but nowhere else does conservative thought mean desiring a state where these things come as a secondary consequence if not a primary motivation.
Let alone while being championed as freedom(tm). The US is a very strange place; perhaps the one metric it is most exceptional. I've met, lived & worked with and admired many American people. I can appreciate the American experiment and ideals. It's just too bad what those Americans do in the name of those American ideals that seems so very.... unamerican.
This is such a red herring and quite impossible to argue with.
Among my age cohort (29), most of my peers have received an élite education, and this included a study of Hegel, Marx, Adam Smith, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Deleuze, etc. Nearly all of us identify as socialists of varying stripes (syndicalists, trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and so on)
Nearly everyone I've interacted with who has espoused similar views to yourself has in fact never read even the introductory text of socialism, and this ignorance leads to debate in bad faith.
In the interest of meeting the debate on its own terms, you should have at least read an introductory pamphlet presented by your opponent. We have of course, The Communist Manifesto. It's a 20 page propaganda pamphlet that has been translated for over a century now into every language, and is of course freely available on the internet. You should be able to get through it in a few hours.
You may be surprised to find that your strawmen do not exist.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...
> These are all simple platitudes, provided without reference. Imagine believing that 'socialism is just a phase' -- as if the entire history of the USSR, the Eastern bloc, most of Asia, and the 20th century history of labor and social activism can be reduced to just 'idealistic children'!
Any cursory study of the history of the USSR, Cuba, Marxist China, Cambodia, etc shows a very small minority group of radical, violent thugs taking power through intimidation, assassination, political propaganda and getting lucky from the presence of destabilized imperialistic regimes. It was indeed 'just a phase' and a god-awful phase at that. As an example, the proletariat that Lenin and the Bolsheviks claimed to liberate hated the Bolsheviks, and instead supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were actually a center-left agrarian reform party who won the first and only election in revolutionary Russia (1917) before being disbanded by Lenin.
> Among my age cohort (29), most of my peers have received an élite education, and this included a study of Hegel, Marx, Adam Smith, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Deleuze, etc. Nearly all of us identify as socialists of varying stripes (syndicalists, trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and so on)
I don't see your point here. People with elite educations can obviously go both ways. I myself have an education from an elite institution, for instance. And obviously many people without so-called elite educations have been known to support leftist politics.
> Nearly everyone I've interacted with who has espoused similar views to yourself has in fact never read even the introductory text of socialism, and this ignorance leads to debate in bad faith.
While that's definitely something I can't argue with, but I'll say that I have closely read Hegel, Marx, Smith, Trotsky, Engels...that said, political persuasion tends to be based on moral precepts more than intellectual ones. Political differences in human societies far precede reading. It's a fair point that debating particular ideas requires the reading of those ideas, but it's also a fair point that practice trumps theory -- I don't need to read anything to know that Capitalist China is better than Communist China on all meaningful metrics of human development and thriving; that Capitalist Korea is better than Communist Korea, etc.
> In the interest of meeting the debate on its own terms, you should have at least read an introductory pamphlet presented by your opponent. We have of course, The Communist Manifesto. It's a 20 page propaganda pamphlet that has been translated for over a century now into every language, and is of course freely available on the internet. You should be able to get through it in a few hours.
Don't know how to deal with the patronization here. I've read it! Although of Marx's writing, I find Das Kapital to be the most persuasive, though weak as a justification for political action.