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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (1062601)	3/26/2018 7:43:35 PM
From: arno	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574522

How do you suggest Alaska fund it's $2.3 billion deficit this year?

To: koan who wrote (1062601)	3/27/2018 10:54:18 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574522

Because koan, it goes to the very basic nature of human beings. In your utopia, no one has to work and the government takes all resources and apportions them out fairly, so everyone is treated equally and shares in those resources equally. But never in the history of the world has socialism or communism achieved these goals. Almost always, some are treated better than others. Almost always, those who are closer to the power centers that control the resources avail themselves and their cronies of those resources. Another fact of human nature is that people who are idle have no self-confidence and no purpose. This leads to all sorts of discontent, which leads to conflict. People who have work have purpose and build self-reliance, which builds confidence and a spirit of helping others to achieve what you have achieved. One last thing. There is an order of precedence. If you look at all Socialist countries, including the ones you claim have successful Democratic Socialist government (Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark), you have to ask yourself what came before the Socialist movements in those countries? Economic wealth and prosperity came from their capitalist enterprises and their free, Democratic governments. They accumulated wealth through Capitalism. It was only later, that they decided to use that wealth to introduce Socialism. This is also the case in almost every other country that is now Socialist or Communist, most notably the Nordic countries, the European countries, and Latin America and Canada. The few exceptions are countries like Russia, China, North Korea, who lurch from monarchies to dictatorships to Politburo Communism and then back again to Dictatorships. But where is all the economic dynamism? Is it in the Nordic countries? Not really. Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Tesla, and on and on and on was created here. The Chinese success has come not from Socialism or Communism or from Dictatorship, but from the small opening they gave to Capitalism. And their success in Capitalism was achieved largely by either outright copying our companies and doing it in their own language (Alibaba, Youkou, Huawei, etc.) or by outright theft of IP, as well as huge subsidies from government and a 300% runup of debt to support the predatory practices of their companies, with a specific targeting of US IP and market share. Lastly, I think the biggest problem I have with posts from you and zzpat is that you both are so absolutist in your thinking. You claim that ONLY Democrats are scientists, logical, and pure of heart. You don't even consider the possibility that there are people 95% aligned to each of those things, but just believe more in Capitalism than Socialism, or refuse to turn their back on God so they can be part of the modern club of so-called enlightened atheists. Does that make them evil? I'll tell you that Democrats simply do not have a monopoly on goodness and an absence of religion and a moral compass is killing this country. We certainly aren't getting good role models in Congress or the White House. So religion is needed more than ever. To quote Jimmy Carter, who I listed to today on NPR: "We took the highest principles of the great religions and enshrined them in our Universal Declaration of Human Rights."