Quote from: darkangel11 on December 26, 2017, 08:33:40 PM

Personally I hate communism and I won't understand why anyone would be in favour of the system that has worked like a cancer everywhere it appeared.

That would be due to not knowing what communism is, and confusing marxist-leninist state capitalism with communism. Its a common mistake to make especially in US or other anglo-american countries, because these countries have gone through immense propaganda to vilify communism, not leninism, state capitalism or even mistermed socialism, because communism was a threat to the established 0.1%'s control on economy and politics.

And even if one uses the incorrect terms for communism:

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Thanks to it the Eastern Europe is still in a disadvantage compared to its Western part and countries where Communism has ruled for too long have gone through civil wars, martial law, dictators and poverty. Communism cannot exist in a modern world because it's model of power is delusional, mythical. It will always end up the way the Animal Farm did.

Actually, those countries are in EU since last 15~ years, and they are even worse than when they started:

A ~10% of population lives much, much better and in much luxury, but a majority has to do with considerably less than what they had during leninism.

During those 'poverty' times, they had full employment guarantee, free housing, free education, free healthcare, reasonable work hours, reasonable retirement age, paid vacations, immense number of free social clubs which would cost in the order of ~10,000-15,000/year in US to obtain memberships (not that one could use all of them but eh), never had to fear homelessness, bankruptcy or anything of that order, leave aside the neoliberal stressful work environment they face today.

The ironical result is that now a good deal of them are immigrants in Western Europe, and they are being the target of anti-immigration sentiments and vilification. So much that they had become a major item in Brexit politics.

As for 'animal farm', as chomsky says any dictator would admire the cooperation and obedience of western media - and the mythical freedom so much advocated in the west actually does not exist:

Leaving aside you are only as free as the size of your wallet and any freedom is limited financially so that only those who are compliant with the system can have any say, if per chance people so much as shake themselves up and start organizing, the real face of the system immediately shows itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Proving once that Voltaire's timeless words about finding out who is ruling you by looking at whom you are not allowed to criticize, Occupy protesters were bagged, harassed, beaten on the ground and arrested to be fined tens of thousands of dollars for trespassing on public property, effectively bankrupting many of them since these are ordinary people who would not be able to shell out such cash, and discouraging millions who could not risk encountering the same fines. In short, freedom was again tied to the size of one's wallet, and they didnt have the wallet size for that freedom.

All of this happened after press was pushed away from the relevant areas and prevented from taking footage. So much for media freedom.

In the end, all these people needed to do to see the real breadth and width of their liberty was to criticize who really rules them: Wall Street.

After 2011, numerous 3 letter agencies and many private corporations started using the word 'terrorism' in regard to activists, anti-corporate crowd, and anyone who challenges who's really in power.

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I won't argue about the level and number of services offered in Spain because I haven't been there, but to compare:
Bulgaria 10% on both corporate and individual

Bulgaria, Romania are still in the process of letting multinational corporations plunder their natural resources, and they are also recipients of Eu aid to industrialize and raise life standards.

But before that, the quality of healthcare, education, services in Spain and these two countries cannot even be compared. If otherwise, there wouldnt be so many romanians in Spain.

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Belarus: corporate 18% individual 13%-17%, no taxes on cryptocurrencies

Man...

Belarus is de facto Soviet Union, still. Run in the manner of soviet union, structured in the manner of soviet union, it even still retains KGB as name of its intelligence service.

Public ownership of major natural resources is another way of funding a state and social services, by the way. Numerous countries do it, and that also includes Norway.

Its still public ownership of resources. Except, instead of a nation selling out their natural resources to private corporations for plunder, it retains them and uses the profits. Then taxes can be naturally reduced, for they are being met from another resource.

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Even in Russia you have 13% individual and 20% corporate and I believe all these countries offer free education.

To quote Vladimir Vladimirovich:

"Russia is a company owned by a country".

The reason Vladimir Putin is so popular is that he runs Russia as USSR 2.0. All major natural resources, especially oil, are owned through state owned corporations, and these fund the state and its programs.

On top of that Vladimir Putin not only revived numerous Soviet Era labour awards with the name "Russian" at the start instead of "Soviet", but also has brought back various important features like youth organizations back.

Immense oil profits and defense profits via state owned companies allow Russia to retain many services free or very cheap. So even if they cannot match the surefire guarantee levels and amplitude of services and service quality like in USSR days, they can still sport a pretty socialized state.

To top that their capitalism is weird: Corporations do what state tells them to do.

When US forced Eu to sanction Russia, with big expense to Eu businesses, Putin government said 'we will do import substitution and turn our face Eastward".

Entire country retooled and started to integrate with China and new silk road, not even one corporation or company tried to refuse or lobby against the change, leave aside spending money to force government to do what they want instead of what the electorate wants. In US, such a situation would be unimaginable.

Its easy to understand what "Russia is a company owned by a country" means by looking at that example...

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Awarding people lower taxes for being less productive and punishing others with higher ones for doing something right is exploitation at its finest.

No, letting people employ 3 million people and giving them dimes to make a fortune bigger than 150 countries in the world is exploitation.

Thats what Walton family is. Something bigger than 150 countries in the world. They could easily become their own empire over the backs of the people they make work, and the small businesses they bankrupted.

Any organization that grows to thousands of people cannot be considered like a small shop run by one person. Its no longer one person's actual honest effort, but one or few majority shareholders making people work, and taking most of the value generated.

The people who get highest share from their actual work are top technical personnel in Silicon Valley companies, and even they get to a maximum of 10% they create.

Everyone else on the planet get much less than 10% of what actual economic value they create, all the rest goes to majority shareholders of that corporation.

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The problem with prepaid, government run healthcare is that it creates lines, huge lines.If you are in need you end up waiting months or even years for it because there are hundreds of people waiting for the same thing and the hospital has a limited number of (...). Many people have to go to a private clinic and pay anyway, even though they've been paying healthcare tax for the last 20 years.

Please dont talk from hearsay and propaganda.

Such a reality does not exist. Nowhere in Europe, Japan, or even in Russia or the examples you gave.

It just doesnt freaking exist. It only exists in the speak that come out of private think-thanks which receive healthcare money in US, and fox news, but the latter is among the former anyway.

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To give you an example, I had my health insurance years ago and I had to go to the dentist. I got told that x-rays aren't refunded and so are painkillers and so is the root canal treatment that I had to do. Guess what my insurance would cover. The extraction...

In almost all countries with socialized healthcare, dental is not covered. That's not an example. And in many of such countries, if the dental situation was causing a health situation, the system would take care of it.

But...

I very much suspect you are in UK or another country which suffered through a series of neoliberal governments in the past decade and went through privatization push for those services.

NHS has been underfunded, and crippled in order to justify privatizing it for a long time. Similar stunts were pulled in numerous other countries who got through neoliberal governments.

Farage in UK was talking about how UK needed an 'american style system' before Brexit. Now he seems to have shut up after the 300 mil pounds a month for nhs lie got out.

Neoliberal right wing government which has been in power since last 10 years in Spain wanted to do the same to spanish health system.

Spaniards went out to streets. Blood was spilled. Neoliberal government had to pipe down. That was not even enough, for after that Spaniards gave ~20% of the assembly to communists, another 20% to socialists. Madrid state assembly was taken over by socialists, and a socialist (not social democrat) woman was put as president.

That's how you protect your public services from rape and privatization. If you dont, it takes around a decade before they cripple and sell it all...

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I agree with the rest, the system in the US isn't good and the corporations aren't good

My chap...

The system in US is not 'not good', its murderous. Glaxo Smith Klein was not the only company which got prosecuted for killing hundreds of thousands of people at that point in time, there were 3 others, and together, these 4 corporations constitute the majority of pharmaceutical sector.

Moreover the system itself kills people every day.

https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-American-citizens-living-on-US-soil-who-died-because-they-couldnt-afford-healthcare/answer/Dem-Stag
https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-American-citizens-living-on-US-soil-who-died-because-they-couldnt-afford-healthcare/answer/Robert-Rister
https://www.quora.com/In-the-U-S-if-an-uninsured-homeless-man-shows-up-in-the-emergency-room-in-urgent-need-of-a-100-000-operation-will-the-hospital-perform-it-or-let-him-die/answer/Robert-Rister
https://www.quora.com/Have-any-American-citizens-ever-been-personally-denied-healthcare-in-the-USA/answer/Tessa-E-Tea
https://www.quora.com/Have-any-American-citizens-ever-been-personally-denied-healthcare-in-the-USA/answer/Jack-Menendez

These are personal stories. Below are statistics.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18638/barbara-ehrenreich-americas-blue-collar-white-people-are-dying-at-astoundin

Corporations are past the point of sociopathy. For, it is encouraged, rewarded and even enforced.

https://hbr.org/2012/03/psychopaths-on-wall-street

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but the system in the EU isn't either. They're blindly taking in migrants that they later have to fight on the streets and they're making the citizens pay for it all.

Compared to US, system in Eu would be Star Trek compared to 1000 AD.

Migrants are an ironic point - because it is neoliberal right wing governments which are taking in immigrants as a means to reduce labor costs to make way for more corporate profits...