Voters Overwhelmingly Prefer Free Market to Socialism

Know what? I'll take it, despite the fact that a Rasmussen poll is most definitely slanted toward the demographic that thinks Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! are edgy late night TV.
Doesn't really matter, because what really matters is whether or not most people prefer a capitalist system, and were Rasmussen attempting to do more than just fellate whoever is paying them, they would insist on using the proper word: CAPITALISM.
So, assuming Rasmussen were being honest and ethical, seventy four percent of respondents would say that they prefer capitalism to socialism.

And, know what? Even if another more ethical pollster were doing the survey, I'd bet that an overwhelming majority would still choose capitalism.
And that shouldn't surprise anyone. We've been capitalists for...what is it...242 years now?
We simply do not have any frame of reference or experience with a socialist economic system, so it is quite natural to assume that people are going to have a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude toward a question that boils down to a choice.

All that having been said however, we do have experience with adding a two or three small quasi-socialist tweaks to our economic system, and what is surprising is why we abandoned those tweaks when they served us so well.
The New Deal turbocharged our economy and yielded the most robust skyrocket to prosperity our country has ever known, or the world has ever witnessed. Our economy and standard of living was the envy of the world for over three decades.
AND NOTHING TRIED SINCE has ever come remotely close.

It has been forty years since we tossed The New Deal overboard and hitched ourselves to the dead weight known as Trickle Down Economics.
Enough, time to be honest. Our modified, regulated New Deal economy was the secret sauce, and adding those quasi-socialist touches to our capitalism was the perfect hybrid.
America will never ever be a socialist economy but dabbling with the right spices showed us that the right flavor of capitalism is the way to go, and the best flavor to add is just a wee tiny touch of socialism around the edges, just enough to turn the system into a tool that serves the middle class, the working family.

It would be interesting to see what the old fogies would say if Rasmussen were to ask if they preferred The New Deal over what we have now.
But I'd bet money they'd never launch a survey of that type.

zimmer said:

So much for the NY Socialist and her theory about Free, Free, Free, Free, Open Borders, Hate Police and more free ****.

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Damn, didn't know you hated freedom so much. Why do you hate our freedom?

Checkerboard Strangler said:

....we do have experience with adding a two or three small quasi-socialist tweaks to our economic system, and what is surprising is why we abandoned those tweaks when they served us so well.

The New Deal turbocharged our economy and yielded the most robust skyrocket to prosperity our country has ever known, or the world has ever witnessed. Our economy and standard of living was the envy of the world for over three decades.
AND NOTHING TRIED SINCE has ever come remotely close.....

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Perhaps I'm forgetting something that happened in the '30s, the one essential element of socialism is that the government own the factors of production -- land and land equivalents, labor, capital and entrepreneurship -- and, IIRC, even in the New Deal days, the government did not own them. Even today, the electromagnetic spectrum is, AFAIK, only factor of production the government essentially owns.

Xelor said:

Perhaps I'm forgetting something that happened in the '30s, the one essential element of socialism is that the government own the factors of production -- land and land equivalents, labor, capital and entrepreneurship -- and, IIRC, even in the New Deal days, the government did not own them. Even today, the electromagnetic spectrum is, AFAIK, only factor of production the government essentially owns.

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Hence the reason I used the lackadaisical term "quasi-socialist tweaks", as in "not actually socialism" per se.
We did not apply actual socialism, we applied a kind of pseudo-proto model and we only applied it as a form of regulation.

CriticalThought said:

Wow, imagine how angry they would be if we had a president who imposes protectionist tarriffs.

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You mean if he responded to the nations with protectionist tariffs by imposing some on them...right?

It's people like Zimmer, the Kochs, and a good many in The Freedom Caucus and a smattering of other DP members who are convinced that we are rocketing down the path to some kind of nightmare scenario of confiscatory government sanctioned socialism.

It's pure porn for those who have super-sized amygdalas, or...at the very least, those for whom stimulating the super-sized amygdala of others is a cash cow. And THAT latter most definitely is a cash cow, as we can see.

The world is full of would be preachers, would be doomsayers and would be cult leaders.
Some of the would be preachers are even really nice people, and the nicest among them wouldn't dream of actually trying to pull it off but they could if they wanted to.

So Leon remembers the next day, my father came to his apartment and wanted him to go on the road and preach. He was going to buy the bus, he was going to take care of all of this because he felt that Leon could preach.

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ttwtt78640 said:

SS is a retirement supplement and includes (often overlooked) disability insurance - which I hope that you never have to use but which could be vitally important (since your 'slowly building' 401K would build no more). SS is not intended to replace a private pension or retirement savings plan. I get about $1,800/month in SS retirement benefits by starting at age 62 (it would have been about $2,300/month had I waited until age 66 to start my benefits). Unlike SS, a 401K plan does not increase (and may decrease) as cost of living rises.

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Yet the government has 0 accountability to pay it. In fact you get a notification that they can pay up to 75% or less. Of what you are supposed to get if something happens.

ludin said:

Yet the government has 0 accountability to pay it. In fact you get a notification that they can pay up to 75% or less. Of what you are supposed to get if something happens.

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Your 401K has no guarantee that you will get any specific yield (benefit level) at all. Fairly simple math should indicate what level of payroll tax increase is required for SS to meet the 'pay as you go' benefits. Folks seem to have no problem saying that government employee retirees must be paid 'what they were promised' and even go so far at to say if the local government making that 'promise' can (or will) not do so then a higher level of government must do so.

ttwtt78640 said:

Your 401K has no guarantee that you will get any specific yield (benefit level) at all. Fairly simple math should indicate what level of payroll tax increase is required for SS to meet the 'pay as you go' benefits. Folks seem to have no problem saying that government employee retirees must be paid 'what they were promised' and even go so far at to say if the local government making that 'promise' can (or will) not do so then a higher level of government must do so.

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People should read the SS documentation they get.

ludin said:

People should read the SS documentation they get.

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Why when that 'documentation' is subject to change with little (or no?) notice? That is like reading the current (80K pages?) of federal income tax law - by the time you can finish reading it (if ever) it will likely have changed.

The simple fact is that (by far most) folks must pay into the SS system and many are counting on (or currently) receiving 'promised' SS benefits as part of their retirement (or disability contingency) plans. So long as congress has the power to alter that SS 'deal' then there is precious little that can be done by me about it.