Obama The Socialist, 2001 Interview

If you genuinely need a working vehicle like that, it earns its keep in legitimate use and you factor the costs into your budget with a clean conscience. It's running far more vehicle than you need, for some kind of status or display (or compensatory ) reasons, that should and probably will come under some kind of regulatory oversight eventually.

Why don't we just have a scale at the tax office? That way we can do a height/weight comparison and, using a sophisticated math formula, calculate people's final tax bill. The obese would pay substantially higher taxes...say 4-5 times higher because they are using so much more of our food supply than what is required to live a healthy life. We could have government employees roaming the streets at night, monitoring houses with porch lights on and taxing them more for excessive use of our electricity. The possibilities here are endless!

I hope my sarcasm is coming through ok. Laying it on as thick as I can.

Camac, since I read your post, I though about it.

I googled the definitions "communism", "socialism" and "social democracy" and found interesting things (again).
Did you know that the term "communism" contains a lot more than these "creepy things", which tried to sell the Soviet union and their "satellites" in Eastern Europe as a desirable kind of social order.
Unfortunately has just the most unacceptable kind of communism a certain importance in the world history and this little part of the term "communism" has set as a definition.
(if you are interested read more ---> click ! This site and all sites I named in this post are written in German but they contain a lot of informations, please try to find someone for a translation, who speaks better German as I can speak English)
But that isn't the reason I write this.

Camac, you wrote

I agree, that any of these countries is a communistic country. But I have a problem to accept, that they have socialism (in varying degrees of course).
My problem is laying in one part of the definition "socialism":

(source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialismus)

I'll try to translate this so exact as I can:
"(Socialists)...are mostly of a common opinion that see in private property the root of all evil and therefore strive the collectivization of that..."

Any of the named countries (want to) do this.

I found inside of definition "social demcracy" something and I think this the best describe of these countries.

(source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialdemokratie)

I'll try an exact translation again:
"...that the social democrates see the state in the social main responsibility. Germans consider that it have the function to liquidate the roots of social unfairness, whereas the scandinavian social democrates strive a redistribution (welfare state). Anglo-Saxon social democrates see there function in that, to guide the economy to accept the welfare for their workers..."

In contrast to socialists accept social democrates the private properties.
I hope, that you see where is my problem. I could never say that one of named countries have socialism but I can agree insistent, if you say, that they have an social democracy in varying degrees.

P.S.
I was born and raised in a country, which had "real existing socialism" (look to the definition please) named German Democratic Republic (GDR) and if I look back, that wasn't my best period of live...
This state defined as "...stay on the pre-stage to communism" - Thanks god, we broke down the (not only Berlin) wall in 1990...

I hope, there aren't too many mistakes - I know my English can be God-awful

Greetings from Austria

Ingo

Sorry, I have to correct two links:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialismus

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialdemokratie


Ingo

This is an interesting analysis of how these three expressions of socialism focus their concerns -- stamping out social injustice or unfairness, distribution of resources (and I guess the means of production as well?), and getting the economy to care for the worker's needs. I think the third one, that you would call Anglo-Saxon, is most familiar in America as a socialist style of operating. It really is interesting to see these three distinct things set out separately.

I think your translation is fine, and your English accomplishes all that it needs to.

Ingo,

I agree, your English does accomplish what it intends, and it is good to hear from someone who has experienced it.

Jillian

Thank you for the compliment.

Sometime it's difficult for me to follow the discussions, especially if you speak (write) about things, I haven't background informations enough...
That's the reason too, that I don't write many and long threads. First I try to read and to understand and if it so I can answer too.
I think after a time the things will go better. It's interesting for me to learn something about (not only) politics in other countries...
For understanding, I didn't learn English in the school but I learned by selfmade and with help of a correspondence with someone from Poland. But that's round about 25 years ago! It's logical that my English is still a little bit rusty. (My daughter -17years- has a lot of fun if I ask her something about it).
Sorry I am

Ingo

Ingo,

Here is a website that does free translations that may be of help to you.

SDL/Freetranslations

Here is an example of its translation of the sentence above to German:

Ingo,

Hier ist eine Website, die Übersetzungen befreit, die von Hilfe zu Ihnen sein dürfen.

and back to english again:
Ingo,

Here a website that frees translations is, that may be of aid to you.

It is not perfect, but close enough to give you the gist of the meaning.

Steven , thanks for help. I'm sure I'll use this site.

Ingo