The only difference between American socialism and Argentinian socialism was that Argentinian socialism pretended to help the poor but America doesn't even pretend to help the poor.
Snap, Chip, ssi, ssdi, medicaid, medicare (since recipients don't pay their way), ACA subsidies, progressive income tax (half of us pay no federal tax at all), 1-12 schooling/daycare (often with free lunch, sometimes also free breakfast)
Big brothers/sisters, salvation army, habitat for humanity, red cross, food banks too numerous to list, Shriners hospitals
Oh, forgot about the billions Los Angeles has spent on homeless housing
America at least "pretends"
Shriners are cool though.
Literally the things held hostage for politics right now? How can you claim America helps the poor when we are literally living a government shutdown where poor are held hostage?
> Big brothers/sisters, salvation army, habitat for humanity, red cross, food banks too numerous to list, Shriners hospitals
These are not government. This is about people helping people. Some American people are helpful to each other. But the societal unit of government isn't - aka - there are people who don't want to help others at all.
> America at least "pretends"
American people try really hard - especially in blue states. But American government system holds people hostage. The work requirements, the constant paperwork, the sudden ineligibility - this is all uniquely American - designed to not disburse the benefits that people may be entitled to. America has the pretence of programs but if they truly wanted to help the poor, they'd make the programs truly usable - not hostage to political processes and eligibility corner cases.
Every country is more than its government. The original assertion was that America doesn't pretend to care about the poor.
Apparently, the assertion should have been "America doesn't care about the poor as much as I feel they should and no evidence you bring contrariwise will change my mind".
It reminds me of the houses in the gated communities with "no borders" signs in the manicured lawns.
The US also bails out a group of people all the time. The group is called the rich.
Furthermore, it subsidizes select groups like big ag.
Except these, the US is predominantly capitalistic but so was Argentina. Their populace was fed up with the pretense of helping the poor while bailing out oligarchs. America doesn't seem to pretend to help the poor. Poors are undesirables.
“Bailing out the rich” isn’t socialist is it? What do you think “socialist” means?
I don’t think you understand why the word “socialist” scares so many people. It’s not a word you can just slap on anything to make it “bad”, many people are actually scared about the underlying ideas not the word.
Some Americans seem to just think socialism=bad “because the CIA and the NYT does propaganda”. You may think America is bad and I may agree with you, that doesn’t make it socialist.
In the GDR you couldn’t start a private enterprise without a license. Any enterprise doing anything.
In socialist Burma, there were no privately-owned factories _at all_.
In Czechoslovakia the constitution banned a private company from employing anyone other than the owner of the company.
In Soviet Russia you needed a permit to move city. If you were a farmer you were unlikely to get that permit. You work for the collective farm, the government set the price they would pay you for your produce, and you couldn’t move city to a new job.
I hope these examples show why “the us government is socialist partly because it owns shares in Intel and partly because it’s a lender-of-last-resort for rich people” sounds fatuous.
Your argument is a variant of the straw man fallacy. Look it up.