Has western style socialism broken people's spirits? A discussion on the above topic. What do you think? Has the socialist style of government or wealth distribution system through the confiscation of goods made people feel like it is not worth working or at least it is harder than the alternative?
Welfare states were created under demographic and cultural homogeny. With the recent influx of third-world immigrants who want something for nothing, and the notable slide in western morality, the welfare state can't survive. It's crushing the taxpayer, which yes, makes the productive not want to work (or work less).
No, still 99% of voters for for either socialist party in the USA. 99% of Americans are socialists still.
The desire for socialism is a symptom of an already-broken spirit. Therefore, the less an individual desires socialism, the less of a broken spirit that person is. It's all in Nietzsche, at least the psychological and philosophical aspects of it. You won't find a detailed analysis of political economy in his works, but at some point, you don't need one.
The American people are under siege by a so-called government who has no regard for our Constitution. The real question is when will they get the guts to say no more?
Can we distinguish between legitimate "public goods" and "socialism" for the purposes of discussion? There are a lot of people who want the government to function in its proper role of providing public goods, of which there is a specific definition (military and police being one of the most obvious and least contentious). One of the problems of dealing with socialists (hardcore or softcore) is that they want to turn everything under the sun into a public good, even when it doesn't meet the definition. Thus, they will say that medical care is a public good, even though it clearly is not, except insofar as it relates to communicable disease, where the government should definitely play a role in quarantining diseased individuals. That's it, though. Or they will call things "market failures" as a justification for turning over control of that aspect of society to the government when there really is no market failure or market failure was caused by government interference to begin with, so granting the government additional powers compounds the issue. Calling everything "socialism" is unhelpful, though, and is part of the general trend toward sloppiness and imprecision in language.
For businesses, Western style socialism/cronyism is even worst than actual communism (at least the current brand of communism called red capitalists seen in China and Vietnam). In states like California, you have regulations of all kind up the ying yang with the special job killers: the environmental laws. Yes, the Demorat run California and has made it almost the welfare capital of the U.S. Heck there even ads in Mexico detailing the steps for illegal immigrants to undertake in order to get government handouts: welfare and health insurance. Go to any hospital in California and you will see many illegal immigrants hogging up the emergency or intensive care while you have to wait hours for non critical/life threatening treatments. They can't go to the doctors so when they have a serious health problem, straight to the hospital they go. In time a lot of illegal immigrants will get amnesty and either working for cash while getting welfare, only claim half of the actual wage for low income status, or not working at all and depend of disability benefits or welfare. It's the modern version of one mule and 40 acres I guess. As Rambo would say "Die for something or live for nothing" I'll say "Not working on any thing and always get something" The new slogan for production output in Western societies.
National debt and socialism are two separate things. The problem is what the debt is being spent on, which are not broad investments to provide public goods, but targeted "investments" to pay off cronies. That's not even "socialism", it's crony capitalism or clientelism. If it were socialism, the benefits of that debt would be more evenly distributed.
The US has fascism if you define it as government and private sector working together to screw over everybody. We have medical fascism wherein outsiders that cure things are treated with disdain, we have financial fascism wherein the elite level of management like ex senator Corzine can lose Billions and not be prosecuted.. why would anybody be happy with this garbage?