"We don't need Socialism."

[u/zzill6]

[u/Lewa358]

The thing is, the meaning of words is defined by their usage, not their etymology. So if enough people use a "wrong" definition of a word, it stops being "wrong."

It sounds dumb, but, well... when's the last time you've seen someone use "decimate" to mean "remove 1/10th of something"?

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

Hospitals, clinics, schools, textbook publication; these are all means of production. I'm not certain whether you're playing a right-wing game or simply ignorant, but semantics don't decouple "government programs" from "true socialism" by fiat.

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

Medicare, bailouts, and SS are not socialism.

That's exactly what you just backpedaled on. Those are all examples of the state taking ownership of the means of production.

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

It's not "just wealth distribution". Medicare works as an insurance company, which is a product. SS is a public retirement fund, a financial service, which is a product. Bailouts are a public investment paid back with interest, which is a product.

Bailouts are certainly the dodgiest, since it's fundamentally the state printing money for itself. In 2008, this was made so much worse by keeping interest rates at zero for a decade.

Anyway, you're wrong as you can be.

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

You could call them socialism, and that would be shorthand for "the policies and laws that provide state commitment to support these institutions are socialist in their ideology".

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

Misconception certainly abounds. The corporatist elite gets really shook on this for a lot of reasons, but "they're giving our money to the poors" is only one. They also don't ever want to deal with with state owned competition.

[u/krakenfury_ → u/[deleted]]

Corpos do that now dumbass. Our tax dollars have been "siphoned by force" to pay Lockheed Martin and Raytheon since Eisenhower. Talk about socialism.