13 Jan 2024 7:35 am
Zeets2: "I reject your basic premise because you equate the changes and improvements WILLINGLY PROVIDED BY PRIVATE EMPLOYERS with how your socialistic ideals empower their government to MANDATE such reforms ... So any 'achievements' won by the USSR workers had NOTHING TO DO with the concession of business owners to offer greater benefits to workers. That choice was made freely and under no government pressure to do so."
Very well. But how do you, Zeets2, account for New York financier and banker Simon Straus' comment that "Widespread and successful homeowning activities in the US would do more to alleviate social unrest and build a bulwark against the encroachments of Bolshevism than any other development"? --excerpted from a 1917 Washington Post op-ed.
Too, and again, the Labor Department then initiated its "Own Your Own Home" program, later led by Herbert Hoover, which provided liquidity for banks toward the expansion of home loans. In 1933, the New Deal's "Home Owners' Loan Corporation was launched, which granted home loans to workers, making homeownership far more accessible.
Yes, the US government and banking capitalists initiated that program and many others voluntarily. However, as evidenced by Simon Straus's statement, they were motivated by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Zeets2: "["Obamacare"] was a complete fraud and ONLY survived the backlash from the country because of the lies ... starting with, "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it..."
I couldn't agree anymore, Zeets2. But if the Affordable Care Act were a manifestation of socialism, those "covered" by it wouldn't be paying premiums to insurance companies because, under socialism, insurance companies wouldn't exist. And you know that medical insurance companies had a hand in writing the ACA, right, Zeets2?
Zeets2: "The free market works and that's the reality you socialists can never accept. Need an example?] When business owners found a dearth of employees willing to take a job at the prevailing minimum wage over the past few years, THEY AND THEY ALONE offered higher wages than the minimum wage state and federal laws mandated. Capitalists like me have no problem with that..."
As evidenced by the fact that various state legislatures have relaxed laws relative to child labor over the past two years, which has enabled many capitalists to hire children at lower wages, capitalists do have a problem with paying higher wages. As we can also see by the closing of several recently organized Starbucks stores, capitalists will go to great lengths to resist paying higher wages. And why wouldn't they? After all, the unpaid portion of the economic wealth produced by workers' labor power is the source of capitalist profits.
Zeets2: "Capitalists like me..."
I take it that you are a business owner and or a significant stockholder. Is that correct, Zeets2?