Socialism & Communism

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KristenM
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by KristenM »

Malcolm wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:20 pm
TharpaChodron wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 6:30 pm
Malcolm wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 4:51 pm

What you are seeing is not welfare payments. Most of these people are on disability. Welfare in the US is really only available to mothers with children. Staying on foodstamps is a huge pain in the ass for these folks, because they must prove to the Gvt. they have a stove and an apartment. Disability payments however require no such proof. And yes, if you start working and earn more than a certain amount, your disability is pulled.
Hmmm, you may be right (you usually are), but I actually worked a bit inside the welfare program (Welfare to Work) and I learned about the eligibility requirements and how it works. Every state might be different, but in California a person can qualify for food stamps and receive them for their entire life, as it's only based on income (I believe).
Food stamps are not welfare.


I am 99% sure you don't need an actual home address in California to get food stamps. You can tell them you are homeless and they put the county's own P.O. Box address as your own and people come pick up their checks right at the office.
Since food stamps are a block grant program, different states have different rules. In Mass, you have to have a stove.
Oh, and I guess it looks like an adult can time out of the program, but children don't tie-out, so a person still receives benefits for the kids until they turn 18 (that's the CalWorks program).
That is across the board. But you know, these aid programs account for a minuscule percentage of the budget.

The actual Calfresh website says this: " CalFresh (federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) is a federally mandated, state-supervised, and county-operated government entitlement program that provides monthly food benefits to assist low-income households in purchasing the food they need to maintain adequate nutritional levels."

I'm all for a social welfare system, just one that is more effective and comprehensive. I think we need to be giving more help, not less, but done the right way.
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Minobu
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by Minobu »

TharpaChodron wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:38 pm

I'm all for a social welfare system, just one that is more effective and comprehensive. I think we need to be giving more help, not less, but done the right way.
we have a lot of social nets and universal health care in Canada.
welfare abuse is rampant. health care system is abused beyond belief..i needed a heart monitor..they sent me to a company and the thing was broken.
they gave me another and i showed them that the metal used to make the connection of the thing that plugs into the monitor is so cheap it has no memory and won't bend back so it doesn't touch...the thing is made in china and the importer decided to make short cuts...the company said it was health canada approved..i said maybe the initial one you showed them but it is not the same obviously...

i saw this same monitor on people and showed them it wasn't working proper 2 years later...


and sometimes over the top.

Justin Trudeau decided to bring the welfare kids out of poverty. so he now gives to low income and welfare families $650.00 per kid per month.

A new Canadian with ten kids due to their culture now gets $6500.00 a month tax free... Are their kids probably thinking about having as many kids as possible instead of working....????
to tell you the truth..if i was a teen ager the thought might cross my mind.
in two years a nice tidy sum of $1300.00 a month plus the fact i am a teen with kids welfare of about $2400.00 a month.

don't tell anyone....but they do...people are flocking into Canada illegally due to the fact chances are they will be Canadians in 3 years.
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Minobu
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by Minobu »

when i say having kids due to their culture ..don't shoot me...i've talked to them and they said it is part of their religion...
Gaddafi said once..."you don;t have to kill people in Europe just have many children and in a few generations you will be in power. not an exact quote but i was told this.

also Catholics are told to have lots of kids and in days of old French Canadians were from large families, the Catholic church practically ordered them to do so.
i'm sounding sort of bigoted and racist ..maybe so but not intending to be.
KristenM
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by KristenM »

Minobu wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:43 pm
TharpaChodron wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:38 pm

I'm all for a social welfare system, just one that is more effective and comprehensive. I think we need to be giving more help, not less, but done the right way.
we have a lot of social nets and universal health care in Canada.
welfare abuse is rampant. health care system is abused beyond belief..i needed a heart monitor..they sent me to a company and the thing was broken.
they gave me another and i showed them that the metal used to make the connection of the thing that plugs into the monitor is so cheap it has no memory and won't bend back so it doesn't touch...the thing is made in china and the importer decided to make short cuts...the company said it was health canada approved..i said maybe the initial one you showed them but it is not the same obviously...

i saw this same monitor on people and showed them it wasn't working proper 2 years later...


and sometimes over the top.

Justin Trudeau decided to bring the welfare kids out of poverty. so he now gives to low income and welfare families $650.00 per kid per month.

A new Canadian with ten kids due to their culture now gets $6500.00 a month tax free... Are their kids probably thinking about having as many kids as possible instead of working....????
to tell you the truth..if i was a teen ager the thought might cross my mind.
in two years a nice tidy sum of $1300.00 a month plus the fact i am a teen with kids welfare of about $2400.00 a month.

don't tell anyone....but they do...people are flocking into Canada illegally due to the fact chances are they will be Canadians in 3 years.
It seems that every country has at least some issues when it comes to health care. sorry to hear about that happening to you.

I have heard that quite a few people immigrate to Canada, especially since the US has become less favorable because of various reasons. Maybe a Canadian version of Trump is looming in the future for your country. :o
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Minobu
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by Minobu »

TharpaChodron wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 10:51 pm
Minobu wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:43 pm
TharpaChodron wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:38 pm

I'm all for a social welfare system, just one that is more effective and comprehensive. I think we need to be giving more help, not less, but done the right way.
we have a lot of social nets and universal health care in Canada.
welfare abuse is rampant. health care system is abused beyond belief..i needed a heart monitor..they sent me to a company and the thing was broken.
they gave me another and i showed them that the metal used to make the connection of the thing that plugs into the monitor is so cheap it has no memory and won't bend back so it doesn't touch...the thing is made in china and the importer decided to make short cuts...the company said it was health canada approved..i said maybe the initial one you showed them but it is not the same obviously...

i saw this same monitor on people and showed them it wasn't working proper 2 years later...


and sometimes over the top.

Justin Trudeau decided to bring the welfare kids out of poverty. so he now gives to low income and welfare families $650.00 per kid per month.

A new Canadian with ten kids due to their culture now gets $6500.00 a month tax free... Are their kids probably thinking about having as many kids as possible instead of working....????
to tell you the truth..if i was a teen ager the thought might cross my mind.
in two years a nice tidy sum of $1300.00 a month plus the fact i am a teen with kids welfare of about $2400.00 a month.

don't tell anyone....but they do...people are flocking into Canada illegally due to the fact chances are they will be Canadians in 3 years.
It seems that every country has at least some issues when it comes to health care. sorry to hear about that happening to you.

I have heard that quite a few people immigrate to Canada, especially since the US has become less favorable because of various reasons. Maybe a Canadian version of Trump is looming in the future for your country. :o
well the last guy was a probably racist right wingnut who hated Obama.
\somehow he now works for a large American consulting firm

he ran his last election with an anti moslem face covering tactic in quebec , which now just made face coverings illegal to wear in any government run operation....like riding a bus..a lot of people revolted with face coverings on buses...


Canada is not the utopian society it makes out to be,

our health care system works and doesn't work...you gotta sort be your own doctor..

there is hope though we do have some people with a semblance of sanity. problem is the country is so resource rich that control is pretty much locked up and our politicians are just a game..both sides are used..
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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

President talks to friendly crowd of Latino expatriates on evils of Socialism/Communism:

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Grigoris
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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Nicholas Weeks wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:50 pm President talks to friendly crowd of Latino expatriates on evils of Socialism/Communism:

Of course he is an expert on socialism, given that he is using the state to support his own business ventures.

Mind you it is not a left-wing inspired type of socialism, but a particularly abhorrent type of socialism: corporatism (the pinnacle of fascism).
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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Heh, Trump basically won the election on quasi-socialist appeals (infrastructure. trade), dressed up as something different, with a huge dose of racism and ignorance. Like most wannabe brownshirts, he's great with lying to (well, a part of) the working class to get their vote.
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:58 pm Heh, Trump basically won the election on quasi-socialist appeals, dressed up as something different, with a huge dose of racism and ignorance.
Just cannot get away from anti-Trump feelings... So be it.

The salient point is that the Latino expats in the audience loved his support for Freedom from the destructive Socialism in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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Nicholas Weeks wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:03 pm
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:58 pm Heh, Trump basically won the election on quasi-socialist appeals, dressed up as something different, with a huge dose of racism and ignorance.
Just cannot get away from anti-Trump feelings... So be it.

The salient point is that the Latino expats in the audience loved his support for Freedom from the destructive Socialism in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Can't get away from anti-Trump feelings. What tragedy that is..perhaps a safe space is needed;)

Of course they did, they have their own agenda, even if they are correct in some of their criticism about those regimes. You can also find lots of people who will stick up for said regimes, again despite those regimes very obvious failings, people's ideologies often line up with their interests, no surprise there.

This sort of thing "proves" nothing except that people who already want to buy what's being sold will indeed buy it. Aggressive authoritarian socialism has certainly done some terrible things, but the "Voice of America" version of it's critique is bubblegum nonsense, straight out of the Red Scare era, and even more nonsensical coming from an ignorant person like Trump.

I could just as easily find footage of people talking about all atrocities committed by United Fruit or something in South America as "proof" that state socialism was needed in Latin America, it's especially funny to talk about the "destruction" wrought by socialism in a place like Nicaragua which employed US backed counter-revolutionary (anti-communist) death squads that massacred entire villages with axes and similar things. Pot meet kettle, foot, meet mouth, this sort of thing is silly, fantasy-based criticism.
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by PeterC »

:good:

There's no point expecting to hear intelligent discussion of 'socialism' in the US as most people there just use it as a term of abuse without understanding what it means. How many US senators do you think actually read Das Kapital? In which, BTW, Marx says very little about the communist relations of production. He does say that it can't manifest until the period of the capitalist relations of production has completely run its course, and this can't be accelerated by political actions, only by changing the mode of production - i.e., by developments in science/technology. There's actually a lot of very good ideas in Kapital, it's a shame it's not read more.

The idea of a universal basic income is a complete no-brainer for any serious economist. Advances in technology are resulting in lower marginal product of labor and higher marginal product of capital. The marginal product of labor will always be above zero, so it's always possible to keep people working, but at lower and lower wages in, and in increasingly degrading jobs - which is exactly what's been happening for the past half-century. So if your goal is to allow people to live with a modicum of comfort and dignity, the logical way to do that is to start the income scale above zero, by providing everyone with a basic income, and to pay for that by taxing capital - i.e. companies. That's before you get into second-order distribution issue like progressive taxes on accumulated wealth.

But people have an issue with universal basic income, because it often offends some deeply-held belief that people ought to work if they want to live. The analogy I find helpful on this is aliens. Suppose we were visited by a race of advanced aliens who gave us a new technology that could manufacture everything we needed at zero or trivial cost (in terms of energy, materials, etc.), and we could make an unlimited number of these machines. Nobody needs to work - we can decide to travel, write poetry, practice the Dharma, whatever. Would we say, no, that's not right, if you want to use the alien machine then you need to spend eight hours a day in McDonalds flipping burgers? Obviously not, because the individual would derive more marginal benefit from spending his eight hours in leisure than society would from him using those eight hours to flip burgers, since the machine could produce a perfect burger instantly at no cost. Now we would need some mechanism to incentivize people to do *some* work, but with the machines, we wouldn't need nearly as much work, so that spare time could just be converted into leisure activities.

And that is, effectively, where we're heading: it's just the technologies involved (automation, AI, etc.) were self-invented and not given to us by aliens. But to the simple economist, they are the same, because they just lower the total cost of production and drastically lower the marginal product of labor. (There are issues around material/energy usage, though.) So we have a choice. Either we set up a mechanism that keeps people alive and comfortable by sharing the economic surplus - and that's universal basic income, or an enhanced version of the rather pathetic system that people call 'welfare' today - or we decide that it's ok for people to starve, not have access to medicine, etc. I would note that in many countries, notably the US, societies are going for option B - let the poor die, and exclude them from the political process so that they can't effectively challenge that decision.

Regarding the comments on Trump/Latinos/etc., I would just add that there's a difference between 'communism' and corruption. Many nominally communist countries (most weren't *really* communist) were simply kleptocracies, because central control creates greater opportunities for corruption. But democracy is in no way a safeguard against corruption. Some democracies are horribly corrupt, and often dictatorial regimes arise through the democratic system as legitimately-elected governments. 'Communism' is a straw man. The real issue is the failure in recent decades of many governments - including the US - to serve their people.
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Saint Stalin

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

So Communism in Russia died when the Soviet Union died...?? Old thought policing habits are the hardest to break, even when the movie was not made in Russia.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-fro ... e-47964774

[Edit to clarify - if not satisfy]
Last edited by Nicholas Weeks on Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Saint Stalin

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Nicholas Weeks wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:11 pm So Communism died when the Soviet Union died...?? Old habits are the hardest to break.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-fro ... e-47964774
No, it didn't actually. You forget Vietnam and Laos (for example). A newer addition would be the Republic of South Africa (the ANC instituted heavily socialist policies there). Let us not forget the recent gains by the Maoist party of Nepal.

Etc...

And no matter how strange it may seem to you in your little bubble, to Russians Hitler was always the worse evil.

Actually, I saw a recent poll where 70% of Russians that were interviewed consider Stalin in a positive light.
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Re: Saint Stalin

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Greg,

"And no matter how strange it may seem to you in your little bubble, ..."


How dare you impugn my bubble size! "It is quite as big for me, said he, as yours is big for you."
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Grigoris
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Re: Saint Stalin

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Nicholas Weeks wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:37 pm Greg,

"And no matter how strange it may seem to you in your little bubble, ..."


How dare you impugn my bubble size! "It is quite as big for me, said he, as yours is big for you."
That's fine, all of us live inside our little bubble, but the Russian bubble is HUGE and it does not conform all that well to what is happening inside your bubble. In the Russian bubble, Stalin is still pretty close to #1. If you go to Georgia, you will find they LOVE him.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... ood-leader
"My religion is not deceiving myself."
Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde
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Re: Saint Stalin

Post by Nemo »

Grigoris wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:58 pm
Nicholas Weeks wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:37 pm Greg,

"And no matter how strange it may seem to you in your little bubble, ..."


How dare you impugn my bubble size! "It is quite as big for me, said he, as yours is big for you."
That's fine, all of us live inside our little bubble, but the Russian bubble is HUGE and it does not conform all that well to what is happening inside your bubble. In the Russian bubble, Stalin is still pretty close to #1. If you go to Georgia, you will find they LOVE him.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... ood-leader
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Re: Saint Stalin

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Grigoris wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 5:58 pm
If you go to Georgia, you will find they LOVE him.
He used to give people a ride in his personal car (min 20:45 in the video). And he died with only 4.40 rubles in his saving account.
How can you not love him?

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Re: Socialism & Communism

Post by SunWuKong »

dharmagoat wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 12:52 am
Nicholas Weeks wrote:The secular ideologues of much of the Left still prefer political so-called solutions to try and fix samsara.
We have brakes. Do we leave it to spin wildly?
I samsara was a leftist plot. Now I have proof. Nothing tops DW!
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Grigoris
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Re: Socialism & Communism

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I recently returned from the United Nations Vesak Day conference where I was representing Greece for the second year running.

I was pretty bloody impressed by Vietnam.

It's GDP has has shown a continuous real growth since 1981 and unemployment has been steadily declining since 1991 (currently around 5.5%).

Buddhism is flourishing in the country. The Ninh Binh and Tam Chuc temples and cultural centers are a testament to that.

And all this under the watchful gaze of the Communist Party of Vietnam. :spy:

I was also impressed by the sensitivity and respect the Vietnamese government shows to it's ethnic minorities. The Ethnology museum and cultural tours to minority districts being the main evidence of this.
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"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."
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The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde
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