Commanding Heights: Interview <i>Lee Kuan Yew (b. 1923) The first officially elected prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew served in office from 1959-1990.He is also widely recognized as the founding father of modern Singapore. During three decades in which Lee held office, Singapore grew from being a developing country to one of the most developed nations in Asia.With his successive ministerial positions spanning over 50 years, Lee is also one of history's longest-serving ministers.</i> INTERVIEWER: Around the same time you were in England, there was the election of a Labor government and the desire of the government to take control over the commanding heights. There's a lot of appeal in the idea of a mixed economy. LEE KUAN YEW:When I was a student there [in England] in the 1940s, one day they passed the National Health Service Act. I went to the optician to pay for my pair of glasses and the optician said -- this was in Regent Street in Cambridge -- he says, "No, sir, you just sign here." He gave me a form; I signed -- free glasses, free dentists, free doctors. After a while it threatened to go broke, so they put a prescription charge -- 20 shillings or five shillings, I can't remember -- a token charge just to keep the prices down. At one time even the French used to come over for their spectacles and dentures, and they stopped that. Subsequently it was quite obvious it didn't work. These are scarce resources. You've only got a limited number of top-class surgeons or doctors, and if you promise everybody that they are entitled to the same treatment, it's just not practical. So the system malfunctions, [but] they can't dismantle it now because it's too popular; it's gone into the national psyche. INTERVIEWER: Why did that model of a mixed economy have such appeal throughout the developing world? LEE KUAN YEW: It's got an appeal even now in the developed world. Why not? You give the vote; I will deliver. I promise you this, so vote for me. You've got the French, the Germans -- they've also gotten into this welfare business, and it's tough cutting back, because once you've given it, cutting back means losing votes. It's a problem. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_leekuanyew.html This guy experienced the birth of European socialism first hand and saw it's failure yet fools like Obama want to repeat it....
The entire democrap party has embarked on this path as they see it as the way to monopolize the voters. I don't know if they just don't realize the end game will not be pretty for them or America or if their end game is a dictatorship under their control. Either way, we are on the express elevator to the collapse because Obama is cranking the socialist/marxist agenda more than any other president has and the financial health of the country is at the breaking point. Very soon we are going to witness, 'pop goes the weasel.'
That's one of Lil Ricky Retard's standard rationalizations that he THINKS supports his love of communism.
http://www.heritage.org/index/country/singapore Name one modern economy that went from poor to rich using socialism. I'll give you two modern economies besides singapore that improved greatly using fiscal conservatism. Canada and Sweden
The documentary "Commanding Heights" seems to lay out a convincing arguement that free markets are superior to controlled economies. Chile, Bolivia, post-war Germany, England, Russia, Poland, India, I'm sure their others I just can't recall. The evidence is hard for any socialist to deny.
no, that's not what is necessary. show cause and effect that socialism was the predominant reason for success In the canadian case, socialism was the disease and they treated that disease with fiscal conservatism. There was a clear causuality.