To: The Philosopher who wrote (105492 ) 6/1/2005 1:15:38 AM From: Grainne Respond to Socialists are liberals, but many, many liberals are not socialists. They are capitalists who simply believe in sturdy societal safety nets, particularly national health insurance, high quality public education and other educational programs like Head Start in America, and reasonable regulation, particularly environmental regulations, for corporations. They believe that children are born innocent and deserve a good start in life, regardless of the status of their parents. The people in western Europe who you call socialist are getting up and going to work or to their own businesses and farms every day. They are not really sharing much of their wealth; they still benefit from the industriousness of their labor. The wealthy are wealthy; the poor are poor. But they do believe in paying higher taxes so that everyone has health insurance, etc. There is an argument to be made that this is very selfish--societies benefit from being mostly middle class, so there is not social chaos or a huge crime rate or lots of homeless people. It costs a lot of money to incarcerate a relatively large percentage of your population, and that is what we are seeing in America. Some states are struggling to fund public education because their prisons are so full and so costly. Societies benefit when their populations are well fed, well educated and stable. The primary problem with the European model is a low birth rate combined with new competition with inexpensive foreign products created with cheap labor in the third world. The no vote on the EC referendum in France has behind it a lot of protectionist sentiment, and that is certainly understandable.
