Ted Rall for February 12, 2014

You forgot the part about outsourcing slavery

That strip pretty much sums up the planet.

Yep. Easiest way to criticize a system is to ignore history and assume abuses are inherent. You do realize that the rightwing looks at socialism through the same foolish partisan kaleidescope, Ted, right? And they make the same foolish, unwarranted statements about it, right?.Ignorant isn’t a political stance. Anybody can be ignorant, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

What Ted just described is called corporatism. We haven’t had a capitalist economy in at least a century.

There have been rich and poor people under all forms of economic systems. It is extremely naïve to hope wish for one particular system to produce ‘equality’.

Capitalism favors monopolies in private hands..Socialism demands monopolies in government hands..Which is worse?

Wow – that does sum it up. Replaces a whole economics 101 class.

Wow Genome, there is at least one intelligent person in attendance. Obviously unbridled capitalism or socialism becomes really evil. Our fine congressmen should be crafting a balance between the two that works. Perhaps they should spend more time in Washington actually working and less time running for office.

Far more choice over the private hands than when the government runs things..Corporations in private hands, however big, cannot force you to purchase a product or service. Corporations in government hands can (example: Obamacare. Buy a plan or get fined / taxed. Either way you pay)..That is the big difference. Socialism and Big Government have the power to coherce the public and people in any way they choose. Private corporations in private hands cannot do that.

Capitalism was a progressive development in its time. Markets can be wonderful. But capitalism and markets bring on their own problems. The answer isn’t doing away with markets, but regulating them. Social problems need social solutions.

Genome had it right. A compromise is necessary between the two. The best way to accomplish that is to give government power divide that up between competing factions while limiting its purse strings. That way it has power to enforce rules but is limited in its reach by lack of easy access to money.At the same time, allow capitalism the opposite. Give it money (capital) but limit its access to power..Right now government has far too much access to capital (money) through the power to tax virtually anything and everything as well as having too much power. Capitalism will get squeezed out in favor of Big Government..We need a balance and right now we don’t have that.

There’s a simple solution to solving the problem of income inequality. The Democrats need to nominate Elizabeth Warren in 2016. The 1%ers will go broke trying to keep her out of the White House.

Ted thanks for replying, so many comments are allowed to just be thrown out there again and again, it’s nice to see them get put in their place.

Looks like Ted has outsourced his brain!

That is happening because Capitalism in America is morphing into Statist Capitalism. That is, it is becoming a cabal of Big Government and Big Corporations where government makes policy and privately owned corporations provide the physical operations at a profit.

On the regressive tax item, why should I have to pay one more cent than any other citizen of the United States who uses the same services.

Am I more equal than them? And now that I am more equal, why do I seem to get less from it?

I love all this forced generosity with other people’s money. Personally I couldn’t live with robbing people who are actually providing a service to others and the community to give to those that seem to only have selfish motives.

(Yes, I’m over characterizing, but what does this cartoon do?)

Ted, I hope you realize that we are living during a resumption of the Great Depression of the ’30s, and that the global crisis of overproduction is leading us straight toward socialist revolution. . .Yay!

Revolution usually doesn’t fix anything. However, it is what happens when people have no hope of improvement and then get desperate.

The level of discourse on this particular strip is quantum leaps above the usual!I’ll second that.

Keep beating the drum for a socialist economic model and while you’re at it explain to me why the Communist economy failed in the former USSR?The USSR wasn’t Communism. It was really just a new group of elites overthrowing the old one. It was less Socialist than Sweden, France, England or West Germany.“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm

‘Revolution’ will solve the ‘problem’ of others having more than you?Absolutely, as long as you can hold the reigns. Didn’t work out for Robespierre because he was too idealistic, but Bonaparte would’ve been set for life if he weren’t so ambitious.

Sigh. Socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the workers. There are no socialist states on earth, and as far as I know, haven’t ever been any. The USSR was not socialist; it was centrally controlled and run by an elite who did the effective owning and controlling, and like other capitalists, lived by exploiting labor and other resources and manufacturing consent through propaganda. Rall has simply pointed out the Welfarist, Bismarckian two-step which keeps Western capitalism going.

Pretty sure most of the telecom revolution occurred due to changes in regulation and the breakup of Ma Bell.

But that is an instance where by far most of the gains in the economy (computer, internet, cell phones) are due to the government for the most part getting the hell out of it and not noticing the beast it released.

If our government had time travel, they would do everything in their power to prevent the free internet and probably the explosion of cell phones (with those pesky video recorders).

Rall is no better than the Teabaggers he and his ilk despise, educated just enough to be dangerous.