Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Socialism, not a dirty word

"And in the midst of the worst global downturn since the Depression, Norway’s economy grew last year by just under 3 percent. The government enjoys a budget surplus of 11 percent and its ledger is entirely free of debt.

By comparison, the United States is expected to chalk up a fiscal deficit this year equal to 12.9 percent of its gross domestic product and push its total debt to $11 trillion, or 65 percent of the size of its economy."

And...

"Bring on the 12-month paid maternity leaves, the all-access-pass to nationalized health care. Because while capitalism was showing America who's your daddy (in our country, he who has the least morals and the most hunger, laughs all the way to his weekend house in the Hamptons), Norway's socialist finance minister was smugly buying our companies' depressed stock. The country has a cushy 11% budget surplus, zero national debt, and an economy that grew 3% last year while Uncle Sam was dancing a jig into a 12.9% deficit, $11 trillion in debt, and the Recession we now all know and love.

These statistics have me turning red with socialist envy.

Banks make up just two percent of the economy; drug addicts are given government-funded fixes (with clean needles); tight oversight means no excessive lending practices."

If this is a new kind of Kool Aid, I'm ready to drink some. It's time to change our attitude about how socialism works because god knows, capitalism in the US isn't doing too well as of late. I have a good friend from Sweden who shakes his head when discussing healthcare and bailouts in America. In Sweden, single payer universal healthcare is the law of the land and when Swedish banks imploded a few years ago, they were allowed to die, thus enabling the country to get out of recession with greater haste than thought possible, something Obama and company are NOT doing as we continue to pour our money into the black hole of WS zombie banks.

Food for thought if you ask me.

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