The other day on one of our historical anniversary trailing series, we ran this anniversary:
Monday, July 29, 1901. Reds.
The Social Democratic Party and Socialist Labor Party merged to create the Socialist Party of America.
Donald Trump reacted with glea, giving him a phony baloney issue to campaign on (he was already 70 years old at least). Chuck Gray cried.This Socialist Party, a real Socialist Party, lasted until 1972, at which time it became the Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA), which is sort of ironic in that one of the parties that merged to form it had been the Social Democratic Party.
The original US Social Democratic Party had been formed in 1898, basically at the dawn of socialism in the United States as a serious movement. It was not as old, however, as the Socialist Labor Party, which had formed in 1877.Symbol of the Socialist Labor Party,
People like Der Fibber seem to have just discovered Socialism, with Trump himself being by far the most Socialist President the country has had since the Great Depression, but the US had a strong Socialist movement at one time. It no longer does, and the Social Democrats USA only have marginal influence on the country's politics at all at present by running as progressive Democrats. At one time, particularly following the collapse of the Progressive Party, which had evolved out of the Republican Party, Socialist seriously contended with the two main parties as a force in American elections, although they were always distinctly a minority third party.Theodore Roosevelt was, of course, the most famous member of the Progressive Party, and that party advanced some ideas that would be regarded as Socialist by modern bed wetting Republicans. However, Roosevelt at the time noted that it was necessary to carve the best concept out of the progressive left so as to avoid true Socialism. That principal still applies. It was applied, of course, most broadly by the Democrats during the Great Depression, bringing in some socialist concepts such as Social Security. Franklin Roosevelt co opted quite a few socialistic ideas during the Depression, many of which retreated post World War Two, although even such diverse Presidents as Harry S. Truman and Richard Nixon attempted to bring in national health care, something every advanced economy brought in following World War Two save for the United States.Outright socialism, in which the state owns the means of production, was advocated in a form by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, but it took until Donald Trump until it was advocated for in the really crude socialist form. In that sense, Trump is outright the most socialist president the country has ever had. If socialism is a really bad idea, and for the most part it is, Trump is a socialist and is advocating for it.Given that, the adoption of the Republican Party of the color red is really appropriate.Continuing the dispossession of Native Americans from their land, Department of the Interior began the process of drawing for allotment of land applications in the former Kiowa and Comanche Indian nations in Oklahoma.Last edition:
The entry was timely, as people like Mike Johnson have pissing their drawers in feigned fright that the Democratic Party is populated by Communists.
Mike Johnson, who claims to be a Christian but who has no problem with making outrageous lies, knows that's false. As we've noted here before, Johnson appears to adhere to New Apostolic Reformation views and apparently is sincere in his statements that God has appointed him to be a latter day Moses, even though the real Moses was capable of doing actual miracles and didn't lie to the Jews. Johnson has no demonstrable metaphysical gifts and is an outrageous liar. Indeed, he'd be in the category of people that St. Aquinas would warn is in serious danger of going to Hell.*
We've already posted on that topic, so here we're going to post on something else, that being the punditry's warning cry "oh no, Democrats, you are flirting with Socialism and that's going to wreck you".
I don't think it will.
Indeed, I'll note that I started this thread a while back, but like a lot of posts here, there's been a long delay in finishing it. Since I started, one more supposed Democratic Socialist has obtained a primary victory. I just posted on that:
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic Senatorial candidate from Michigan, showed up on Face the Nation last weekend.
Dr. El-Sayed is freaking the Democrats out nationally as he's yet another Democrat whose branded as a Democratic Socialist. The Democrats are in fear that the primaries are going to ruin their chances of taking back Congress through the choice of "extreme" candidates.
I don't think so.
I think that the Democratic party is misreading a national shift in young voters views, but I'll deal with that in a separate thread. Anyhow, Dr. El-Sayed, in his interview, didn't come across as a Socialist at all, but rather as . . . a Distributist. Indeed, he nearly used the classic line of Chesterton about the problem with capitalism being too few capitalists, and he declared himself to be a capitalist, making a distinction between capitalism and corporatism, which we've often made here. He also spoke extensively about health care for all, which frankly isn't that scary of idea for most people under 65 years of age anymore.
Soon thereafter Donald Trump posted this:
I'm really at the point where I constantly wonder how dense Donald Trump really is. In a couple of other posts here I've called him dumb and stupid. I don't use those terms lightly, but I really think he's a very dim man.He's also very isolated and I fear kept that way. This actually illustrates a good p oint I don't think he meant to.On the left we see Trump, wearing a tuxedo, which most American men do not own, and Melanija Knavs, a Slovenian former model whose fame, had it not been for marrying Trump, would be the fading memory of her nude body in an add for something. This was apparently taken at the last inaugural ball.Frankly, in any more decent age Trump's marriage to a woman who had openly engaged in what is a pornographic image would have precluded him from being President. But then also, Trump was a playboy serial polygamist and that would have precluded it as well. Knavs is dressed in a Herve Pierre designed dress. The price of the dress has not been publicly revealed, but Pierre's dresses start in the low $1,000s and run up to the mid $4,000s, which is not unreasonable for such things.So, on the left, basically, we have the carefless class of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, or Trump's case, perhaps more accurately, the imperial class of pre revolutionary Russia. There's actually nothing to admire about Trump professionally or politically at all, but he loves himself and you are supposed to love him.On the right, we have Dr. El-Sayed and his wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a practicing psychiatrist, two accomplished individuals. They met as students and have two children. In speaking of their marriage, El-Sayed sounds like a traditionalist Catholic.But he's Muslim, and in this photo, that's why you are supposed to hate him.And that says a lot about the mindset of those still supporting Trump, and who assume you support Trump. You are supposed to love a wealthy vapid playboy who is a serial polygamist and has no personal or demonstrable religious beliefs at all, and who is making the rich richer and the poor poorer, because, well, he's white and people like El-Sayed are darker. And you are supposed to hate Elissa Campbell because the Freedom Caucus is too cowardly to try to take on a constitutional amendment they now know was the product of paranoia. And you are supposed to support Degenfelder and Hageman as Trump endorsed them, even if that means, implicitly, supporting what we've noted above as well as a losing war in the Middle East.
And for some people, that will be enough.
On a somewhat different note, following up what I've noted above, I pass a place every day which is sprouting an ever growing crop of WFC candidate signs. All the main ones are there, Bien, Hageman, etc., but also people like Jeske. The funny thing is, I know that the premises owner is a felon whose son is the pen for a felony.
Their criminal problems aside, it's pathetic. By all appearances these people aren't doing well but there they are, supporting a group of people who would screw them completely. Why?
I'm sure there's a whole boatload of speculation on that very topic, but this year, it's oddly common.
A lot of the Republican angst about "Communists" is just a hope that the American public is so dense it'll be stampeded into voting for the Nazi Party in 1932, um, no, um the GOP this Fall. If that doesn't work, maybe you hate Muslims and that will work. Or perhaps you hate Haitians. In a pinch, if that doesn't work, an Administration lead by a serial polygamist and which has a man in the cabinet married to another man might figure that you hate gays, or transvestites.
Whomever you hate, they hate them to, save for white folks. . . well straight Protestant white folks. Or some of them.
Anyhow, I don't think the Democrats are overall going to get any closer to Socialism than they already are, which right now isn't very close, and I don't think El-Sayed is a socialist at all. Indeed, while there are certain Socialist ideas "Progressive" Democrats flirt with, it's Mad King Donny who actually outright advocated for state Socialism.
Government Ownership Stakes in Companies Becoming Routine Under Trump
For that matter, it's a pretty rich irony to have a party who wants to take ownership of interest in private companies and the mineral wealth of other nations running around saying "look, there are Communists afoot.
Well, after all, the party of the GOP is red. It's only a matter of time until they replace the elephant with the Red Rose. Or maybe the hammer and cycle.
Anyhow, I'm going to take a distinctly different view about "Democratic Socialist" and the Democratic Party.
I'm not concerned at all that too many Democratic districts are going to be populated by Democratic Socialist. I frankly think it's a good thing that some are, and it wouldn't be a bad thing if more were.
Now, I'm a Catholic and as is well known Socialism is heavily disfavored by the Catholic Church. The classic example of that is Rerum Novarum, which states:
5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.
6. What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation, for the brute has no power of self direction, but is governed by two main instincts, which keep his powers on the alert, impel him to develop them in a fitting manner, and stimulate and determine him to action without any power of choice. One of these instincts is self preservation, the other the propagation of the species. Both can attain their purpose by means of things which lie within range; beyond their verge the brute creation cannot go, for they are moved to action by their senses only, and in the special direction which these suggest. But with man it is wholly different. He possesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of the animal being, and hence enjoys at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material. But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity’s humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially from the brute. And on this very account – that man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason – it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession; he must have not only things that perish in the use, but those also which, though they have been reduced into use, continue for further use in after time.
Here's the thing, however. The Church isn't all that keen on unrestrained capitalism either, and that's what we currently have. Witness:
2. Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes.(1) It is a subject on which We have already touched more than once, incidentally. But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men’s judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.
3. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
20. Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss. The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages axe fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers… which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”(6) Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?
42. If we turn not to things external and material, the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. Man’s powers, like his general nature, are limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, but only on condition of due intermission and proper rest. Daily labor, therefore, should be so regulated as not to be protracted over longer hours than strength admits. How many and how long the intervals of rest should be must depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who work in mines and quarries, and extract coal, stone and metals from the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year should be taken into account; for not unfrequently a kind of labor is easy at one time which at another is intolerable or exceedingly difficult. Finally, work which is quite suitable for a strong man cannot rightly be required from a woman or a child. And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For, just as very rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so does too early an experience of life’s hard toil blight the young promise of a child’s faculties, and render any true education impossible. Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family. As a general principle it may be laid down that a workman ought to have leisure and rest proportionate to the wear and tear of his strength, for waste of strength must be repaired by cessation from hard work.
In all agreements between masters and work people there is always the condition expressed or understood that there should be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To agree in any other sense would be against what is right and just; for it can never be just or right to require on the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of those duties which a man owes to his God and to himself.
It was Rerum Novarum that caused Distributism to come about, and then it was the evil of World War Two that cause this third way to be more or less forgotten.** It's been forgotten so much that I've spoken to fellow Catholics who are completely unaware of both Rerum Novarum and Distributism. Indeed, this is so much the case that I know very orthodox Catholics who absolutely believe that Socialism is a hideous evil, which I understand, and assume that this means that the good and benevolent opposite is Capitalism.
It isn't.
Socialism and Corporate Capitalism are effectively step brothers. Over time, since the end of the Cold War, this has become more and more the case. Perhaps the better analogy is that they're kissing cousins.***Suffice it to say, real Socialism occurs hardly anywhere at all. Probably only North Korea, which is a true Communist state, with Communism requiring Socialism as an economic model, exists anymore. China, often cited as an example, isn't communist anymore, but rather has a species of state capitalism which is more typical of fascist states.
Modern Socialism tends to have evolved into Social Democracy, which is really just a social concept rather than an economic one. Social Democrats tend to favor a very activist government, boosting policies they see as good (not all are by any means) for what they perceive as the good of the public (which they don't always get right). They'll sometimes seek to back that with socialist policies through state funding, but often they don't'.
So what do the Democratic Socialist of America propose?
Well, frankly, a bunch of pie in the sky unrealistic stuff, but some stuff that actually would be a real advance. Looking at economics, they propose:
ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY
Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.
That is Socialism. It'll never happen.
And here's the rest of what they propose:
What We Fight For
Here's one idea that I think is partially a good one (I"m not for expanding Congress)
A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS
Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.
You can look up the balance yourself. As noted, most of these ideas are rooted in a charmingly naive late 60s early 70s sort of world view that has already gotten us into a lot of trouble. Some are just goofball. A few creep up on being MAGA, such as:
END THE U.S. WAR MACHINE
Defund the Department of War. End all foreign wars and close overseas military bases. Support and fully employ veterans. End immunity for U.S. war criminals and support the International Criminal Court's mandate to prosecute war crimes.
Not exactly MAGA, but the ending foreign wars and closing overseas bases was or is.
Okay, how can I say that any part of this is a good thing?
Here's how.
The early American republic was virulently anti corporation, and therefore pro free market and anti capitalism. Some have even claimed that corporations were illegal in the early US, which isn't true, but it's close to true. In order to exist, early on, corporations required direct legislative action. It wasn't really until the Industrial Revolution hit the US that corporations began to become common and legislatures allowed for easy incorporation. That's a long time ago in the nation's history, of course, given as the Industrial Revolution in the US began in the 1790s.
Even at that, however, there were always opposing forces that sought to restrain capitalism. Capitalist like to point out how rich capitalism made our society and others, but they don't like to point out that it was accompanied by abject human misery, massive social disruption, and the destruction of the natural order. Indeed, modern American, and European, traditionalism seeks to return society, or at least a person's individual society, to the conditions of the pre Industrial Revolution world.
Or so Traditionalist believe.
In actuality, that's not what those yearning for the conditions of the past really want. Generally, depending upon whom they are, they are looking either for an imagined 1950s, or for a more agrarian/distributist or even ethnic ghetto past.
Before looking at that, why would they want t hat, if we're just all rolling in does.
Well, because we aren't.
Wealth is a funny thing. Just because there's a lot of it around in any one society, doesn't mean by a long shot that everyone in it is actually wealthy, which is what some of the capitalist like to claim.
There's been, interestingly, a number of recent pundits commenting on this. Here's one
Americans are richer than ever, so why are they so angry? | Allison Schrager
Schrager notes, in that article, this:
More people are upper-middle class than ever, and even lower-income Americans are richer by almost every measure compared to previous generations. And yet more than 3 in 5 Americans say the economy is not working for them.
She noted that it might be a product of Easterlin's paradox, which holds that while people on higher incomes are typically happier than their lower-income counterparts at a given point in time, higher incomes don't produce greater happiness over time. This is well known, although the reasons for that don't seem to be agreed upon. The reason is the existential one, found in Yeoman's Third Law of Behavior. That extra wealth probably only operates for higher happiness over time if it returns you to the state that pre existed the modern world to some degree.
She goes on in that article to observe a whole whose of explanations for this, some of which we've handed here before, probably all of them, and more. And here's another factor that's figuring in:
Trump's huge hidden upward redistribution
The truth about Trump's war, Trump's tariffs, and Trumponomics
Threading everything together, what we really have is this. Oligarchic conditions make people miserable, and the modern economy is existentially unnatural. We have had conditions in the past that were fundamentally oligarchical, the Feudal economy of the Middle Ages was, and we've had a "modern" economy in the US since about 1790, but it didn't really come to dominate in its misery infliction until after the 1970s.
The reason is basically this:
Yeoman's Third Law of Behavior. I know why the caged tiger paces.
Almost all of us, but not quite all of us, realizes this instinctively The people who don't are those who have fallen into such deep despair that they loathe the way that we really are, or those who have fallen so deeply into one of the Seven Deadly Sins that they can't crawl away from them.
The capitalist in control of our current economy fall into the latter category to a major extent, with Donald Trump being a prime example.
Donald Trump is not a very smart man. He is a wealthy man, and, at that level of wealth, he has the character defect of Greed that most very wealthy people have. But he either doesn't realize that, or thinks that it's a good thing.
And here's the thing.
A lot of Demcoratic Socialist likely aren't socialist at all.
Dr. El-Sayed, as noted, appeared on Meet the Press. and he sure didn't sound like a Socialist.
He sounded like a Distributist.
KRISTEN WELKER:
You have said, and I want to talk about your political identity now. You have said you’re not a Democratic Socialist. You were backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, who, of course, proudly says he is a Democratic Socialist. You even attended events hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America. Where do you differ from Senator Sanders? Is there one policy issue where you can point out a difference?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED:
Capitalism. You know, I’m a scientist and I believe in good, thoughtful, evidence-based solutions to problems. You know, when it comes to the question of capitalism, allocating capital based on supply and demand at the level at which it’s supposed to work, where you have free entry and exit into markets, you know, I support that idea. I understand right now, though, that we don’t live under capitalism. We live under corporatism. You have huge corporations that have used their power, in effect, to try and buy politicians, so that those politicians will turn around and help them use government to protect their position in markets. That is anti-capitalist. And look, you can go back to Adam Smith, the guy who coined the idea of capitalism, and he understood that the biggest risk to capitalism was not government regulation. It was always monopoly and oligopoly. If you think about the circumstances that we live under right now, the power of the biggest players in almost every market, both to squeeze labor to pay us less and to raise prices so that we have to pay more, that has been anti-capitalist on its own terms. And so it’s not that you have to be a socialist to believe that the government has a role in protecting a market or guaranteeing us health care or fixing our roads and bridges or providing us good schools. It’s that you have to understand what capitalism is and how it works.
El-Sayed is exactly right. And not just on that.
KRISTEN WELKER:
One of the big issues you ran on, of course, was Medicare for All. So let’s talk about that. You served as a public health official in Michigan. You even co-authored a book making the case for Medicare for All. Senator Bernie Sanders also campaigned on it as a presidential candidate back in 2016. Ten years later, this idea still does not have a majority support in Congress. If you were to win in November, Dr. El-Sayed, how do you make Medicare for All a reality when, so far, it has not had enough support?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED:
Well, Kristen, I’ve been up and down my state. And everywhere I go, people say the same thing. It just shouldn’t be this hard. And one of the big things that they bring up is the fact that they’re worried about having to see a doctor if they get sick and what that’ll mean for them. The median deductible, meaning the money that you pay to get the health care you already thought you paid for every single month, is about $4,500 for a family of four. That and considering the fact that the median income is about $80,000 means that you’re going to lose more than a whole paycheck just to actually pay for the health care you thought you already paid for. Our system has only gotten less and less effective, less efficient over time as we’ve watched health insurance corporations collude with big hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry to figure out how to pick more and more of our dollars out of our pocket to put into theirs. We don’t have to live like this. We have an opportunity to guarantee cradle to grave health care from the moment that somebody is born to the moment that they expire, God willing, at 120 years of life after a long, healthy life in their sleep peacefully. And it would guarantee them the health care that they need independent of the circumstances, wherever they needed to go. That is the kind of security we’ve never had in this country and is the kind of security that the health care corporations have denied us. So we’re watching more people support Medicare for All every day. We’re watching more elected officials support Medicare for All every day. And in a lot of ways, this campaign was a referendum on whether or not we want healthcare here or bombs somewhere else. And I think the Michigander — the Michigan voter chose health care here.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Well, you know, some Americans worry, though, you can only make Medicare free and universal if you increase taxes. So if you are elected and make this push, would you need to increase taxes?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED:
As I’ve said across this campaign, I am for taxing billionaires their wealth.
* * *
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED:
So for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health insurance company. So imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced. I think all of us would be a lot more interested in that kind of a system if we knew that our healthcare would be free at the point of care and would be free without having to worry about losing it, in general. So there’s an opportunity here, I think, to trade what we give to a big corporation, who gets to decide who we get to see and who we don’t, for a little bit more paid into FICA. And I think that’s a trade that’s worth making. I think the broader public understands that that’s a trade worth making considering how many people are holding medical debt, a third of all Michigan households right now.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Just to be very clear, you’re describing this trade-off. You are effectively acknowledging that people making less than a million dollars could see their taxes go up. I just want to be very clear. Is that a yes?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED:
I’m saying that we’d be paying for healthcare in a different way. Instead of paying a health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million, I would much rather pay for durable healthcare into a government, which, of course, we all know provides healthcare for seniors who need healthcare the most. So if I’m trading paying a CEO to make more money or paying a government to guarantee me healthcare, I’m picking the latter every time.
I think that idea is not radical in today's environment, and moreover wouldn't have been radical at any time from 1932 to 1980, when the era of big money getting al the tax breaks came in. It hasn't worked.
And here is where I think the worrying Democrats are missing the mark.
I think it's the boomers, who were already in control of things in the 1980s, that worry about taxing the rich. . . nobody else does.
And it's the boomers who wring their hands over national health care, nobody else does.
And if Democrats are deluded on that, Conservatives better wake the crap up. There's every reason to believe, pundits aside, that the Democrats will take at least the House, and maybe the Senate, in the Fall. There's every reason to believe that people under 65 aren't afraid of national health care and are willing to utterly soad the rich in taxes. Republicans have sold themselves to rich oligarchs under Trump.
They better start adopting some of these policies themselves, taking a page out of the Progressive movement of the 1900s-1910s, or teh Democrats will replace them for a generation, such as happened in the 1930s.
Footnotes:
*As regards the end in view, a lie may be contrary to charity, through being told with the purpose of injuring God, and this is always a mortal sin, for it is opposed to religion; or in order to injure one's neighbor, in his person, his possessions or his good name, and this also is a mortal sin, since it is a mortal sin to injure one's neighbor, and one sins mortally if one has merely the intention of committing a mortal sin. But if the end intended be not contrary to charity, neither will the lie, considered under this aspect, be a mortal sin, as in the case of a jocose lie, where some little pleasure is intended, or in an officious lie, where the good also of one's neighbor is intended. Accidentally a lie may be contrary to charity by reason of scandal or any other injury resulting therefrom: and thus again it will be a mortal sin, for instance if a man were not deterred through scandal from lying publicly.
St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas.
** More and more I'm convinced that itw as World War Two that brought about most of hte evils of the current age in one way or another.
***I don't hear this term used m uch anymore, but what it is defined is as:
kissing cousin
noun
1. A relative close enough to be kissed in salutation, hence anyone with whom a person is fairly intimate:
The two species will often prove to be kissing cousins, for they'll crossbreed.
You guys talk like kissing cousins
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