Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Poll: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

by Craig Brown

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/04/09


More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics

Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that most of the reconsideration of the desirability of religious involvement in politics has occurred among conservatives. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view.

As a result, conservatives' views on this issue are much more in line with the views of moderates and liberals than was previously the case. Similarly, the sharp divisions between Republicans and Democrats that previously existed on this issue have disappeared.



http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=334
 
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

The loony left's utopia, as written in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto:

1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the State

7. Extention of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

 
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

The left's demonization of capitalism is succeeding

Rick Moran

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/04/the_lefts_demonization_of_capi.html

[FONT=times new roman,times]This Rasmussen survey on support for capitalism in America will open your eyes this morning:
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

[/FONT]​
Obviously, leftist dominance in academia and education are having exactly the effect that was foretold many years ago; younger people have been so indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is evil that they have no clue that all those material possessions they take such delight in using - TV, computer, internet, CD's, - would not be available to them in most socialist countries.

There is also the callowness of youth at work with these attitudes as once these youngsters grow up and start to raise a family, all of a sudden they want lower taxes and the opportunities only afforded those who live in capitalistic societies. I sure hope the same thing happens to this crop of young people.

And how about those eye popping numbers for Democrats? Just 39% believe in capitalism? Kind of makes our present situation a little more understandable, doesn't it.
 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

<style></style>There's something called the Earned Income Tax Credit:

Enacted in 1975, the initially modest EIC has been expanded by tax legislation on a number of occasions, including the more widely-publicized Reagan EIC expansion of 1986.

Today, the EITC is one of the largest anti-poverty tools in the United States (despite the fact that most income measures, including the poverty rate, do not account for the credit), and enjoys broad bipartisan support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_Income_Tax_Credit


 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Alaska- America's Socialist State

Share this on Twitter - Alaska- America's Socialist State <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> //Create your sharelet with desired properties and set button element to false var object = SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title:'Alaska- America's Socialist State', url:'http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/2/583327/-AlaskaAmericas-Socialist-State'}, {button:false, offsetLeft: -200}); //Output your customized button document.write(' '); //Tie customized button to ShareThis button functionality. var element = document.getElementById("share"); object.attachButton(element);*</script>
Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 10:06:03 AM PDT

We all know that pot was legal in Alaska (and still is in the 1st judicial circuit) and that Sarah Palin admits to smoking it "when it was legal". Alaskans know that the state has many more bars than churches. We know that Alaska was admitted at the same time as Hawaii because it was assumed with the unions there Alaska would become Blue, while Hawaii would become Red. But we assume that Alaska is pro-free enterprise because of the Repug stranglehold there now. In fact Alaska is a state-corporate government much like China, ie the government is partners with the oil corporations. Through a "rebate" of taxes on those corporations each resident of Alaska is receiving $2000 next year in cash payments (that's $14,000 for Palin's family of 7!). (nice to live in a socialist state that sits on a sea of oil)



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Alaska is not really a fiscally conservative state. All the subsurface resources belong to the State, so all the oil revenue goes directly to the State Treasury and is then distributed into the economy by political rather than market forces. Call it socialist, call it state capitalism, but the driving force in Alaska economics is not Main Street capitalism. Palin and the Legislature dramatically increased taxes on the oil industry last year and the right side of the GOP has been quite critical of the action. Those who sided with Palin dismissed that opposition by casting the opponents of the tax measure as being in thrall to the Oil Industry, an industry much tainted by corruption scandals over the last year or so. The governor signs checks to residents distributing the state's share of oil revenue
The government of Alaska is almost all-powerful, much of the State has little or no local government. Only the larger cities and towns have local government; the State does everything, pays for all the schools, provides much of the health care, paves and plows the roads, where there are roads, builds and maintains the airports throughout the state, operates a huge ferry system which it promotes for tourist dollars, and pays any state resident's tuition at any college they wish to attend anywhere. Until recently the State even operated a major dairy.
Leighton Woodhouse has a good column entitled "Red Alaska" in today's HuffPo:
But it's instructive to bear in mind, as conservative Republicans laud her record as governor, that much of Alaska's social welfare is based on what amounts to a socialist principle of taxing big corporations for their use of publicly owned resources and returning a portion of those profits back to regular working people trying to pay their heating bills.
Palin may run a quasi-socialist state government, but only because it's convenient in Alaska. No such easy solutions to budget shortfalls and rising energy prices will come in Washington DC, where the absence of an economic Everlasting Gobstopper like the Alaskan oil fields requires actual choices with actual political consequences, and where ideologies count in policy making.
When the Alaskan state government needs more money, legislators don't have to resort to jacking up taxes on working Alaskans, or scrapping social programs, or turning to 'market-based solutions.' They can just raise taxes on the profits of Big Oil, as Sarah Palin did last year (not as bold a move as one might assume, given that record profit-making oil companies in Alaska had just been exposed for bribing legislators) in an effort to attain for the Alaskan people "an equitable share for our resources," and like President Hugo Chavez did in his country a few months ago for much the same reason. In fact, just last week, Palin cut checks of $1,200 to every Alaska resident to offset the burden of rising fuel prices, paid for by taxes on the oil industry. That beats the hell out of McCain's 'gas tax holiday' for making a real difference in the pocketbooks of working Alaskans. No wonder she's so popular.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
 
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Here's a fact our Obama-Hitler youth never learned in school:

"Capitalism" is Karl Marx's coined term for the Free Enterprise or Free Market System so that it can be explained in ugly demonizing terms.

It's the perverted loony left's way of "morally leveling the playing field."

Calling the free market "capitalism" is like Ted Kennedy calling himself "Cappaquiddick Boy".

It's the enemy's slur.

God's way of ownership and responsibility is no 'ism. It's just the right and natural way, as the Founding Fathers observed and declared in the Declaration of Independence:



Any deviation from the Creator's righteous path and plan for our lives is an abomination -- and patently UN-AMERICAN.

 

Doc Mercer

EOG Master
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

and you touting God in any post is about equal to OJ condeming Spousal Abuse

Go sell your shit in the child's section Mrs Robertson
 
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.


PROOF THAT WE HAVE DONE A HORRIBLE JOB OF RAISING AN ENTIRE GENERATION.
WE ARE GOING TO BE IN SAD SHAPE IN 20 YEARS WHEN THESE 30 YEAR OLDS ARE RUNNING THE COUNTRY AND BUSINESSES....OF COURSE IF THEY ACTUALLY HAVE SOME MONEY THEY MAY CHANGE THEIR MIND.
 

brucefan

EOG Dedicated
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket

<HR style="COLOR: #a93c3c; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a93c3c" SIZE=1><!-- / icon and title --><!-- message -->another reminder that socialism does not work and leds to shortages.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37786852

Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

"The battle for food is a matter of national security," said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.

It is also the latest issue to divide the Latin American country where Chavez has nationalized a wide swathe of the economy, he says to reverse years of exploitation of the poor.

Chavez supporters are grateful for a network of cheap state-run supermarkets and they say the raids will slow massive inflation.

Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

Jose Guzman, an assistant manager at a store raided in Catia, watched with resignation as government agents pored over the company's accounts and computers after the food ministry official and the television cameras left.

"The government is pushing this type of establishment toward bankruptcy," said Guzman, who linked the raid to the rotten food scandal. "Somehow they have to replace all the food that was lost, and this is the most expeditious way."

Wasted Food

Much of the wasted food, including powdered milk and meat, was found last month in the buildup to legislative elections in September. The scandal is humiliating for Chavez, who accuses wealthy elites of fueling inflation and causing shortages of products such as meat, sugar and milk by hoarding food.

"They are not going to stop us in the plan, which is to give the people what is their right," Chavez said Friday during the inauguration of a supermarket chain the government bought this year from French retailer Casino.

Food prices are up 41 percent in the last 12 months during a deep recession, government figures show, despite the government's growing network of state-run supermarkets that sell at discounts of up to 40 percent and are popular with his poor supporters.

South America's top oil exporter, Venezuela imports about 70 percent of its food and analysts say the economic hardships could give the opposition a boost at the ballot box?although most expect Chavez to retain a reduced parliamentary majority.

Fighting back, Chavez says he is in an economic war against the "parasitic bourgeoisie" that tries to convince Venezuelans that socialism does not work by twisting facts and taking advantage of honest mistakes.

"They know where we are headed, we are going to take from the Venezuela bourgeoisie the hegemony of dominance in this country," Chavez, who calls himself a Marxist, said to applause from supporters on his TV show on Sunday.

He has also revived threats to take over the country's largest private food processor, miller and brewer, Polar.

The president rushed to give public support to Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who as the boss of PDVSA is also responsible for food unit PDVAL, over the case of the rotting food.

Two former PDVAL managers have been jailed in the scandal, but that has not stifled opposition charges of government incompetence.

A string of expropriations and buyouts of companies during the last couple of years means the government now controls between 20 percent and 30 percent of the distribution of staple foods.

"We are bringing order to prices," Trade Minister Richard Canan told Reuters during the Catia raid. "There are traders who are taking these products to the black market ... That is a crime and our government will continue to target these stores."


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scrimmage

What you contemplate you imitate
Re: Just 53% Favor Capitalism Over Socialism

Giant Sucking Sound - Ross Perot 1992 Presidential Debate
<IFRAME title="YouTube video player" height=510 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rkgx1C_S6ls" frameBorder=0 width=640 allowfullscreen></IFRAME>
Americans are growing increasingly suspicious of the giant corporations which largely shape the economy.
Thus, the polling firm Globescan found a sharp drop in the level of support for ?free enterprise?:
When GlobeScan began tracking views in 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw the free market as the best economic system for the future?the highest level of support among tracking countries. Support started to fall away in the following years and recovered slightly after the financial crisis in 2007/8, but has plummeted since 2009, falling 15 points in a year [emphasis added] so that fewer than three in five (59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.
Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 percent to 44 percent between 2009 and 2010.
GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller commented: "America is the last place we would have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system. This is not good news for business." He added:
The poll suggest that American business is close to losing its social contract with average American families that has enabled it to prosper in the world. Inspired leadership will be needed to reverse this trend."
The breakdown of the ?social contract? is evident when you look at the radical shift in General Electric?s guiding philosophy. As Steven Greenhouse noted in The Big Squeeze, in 1962 GE?s employee benefits manager wrote,
Maximizing employer security is a prime company goal. The employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer?s most productive asset.
Compare that quaint attitude with the ruthless creed of Jack Welch, GE?s CEO from 1981 to 2001, who showed his disregard for employee loyalty when he declared, "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge" By that, he meant a readiness to seek out at a moment's notice the lowest possible wages and most pliable governments (weak regulations, low taxes, hostile to unions, etc.) anywhere on the globe.

U.S. FIRMS GROWING ABROAD, SHRINKING AT HOME
More and more corporations are enthusiastically carrying out Welch?s strategy, as David Wessel's stunning Wall Street Journal article and chart revealed this week, generating extensive comment in progressive media (see here and here):
U.S. multinational corporations?cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.
In quotes from:
As Offshoring Continues, US Public Peeved at "Free Market"

By Roger Bybee

April 22, 2011 "In These Times"
** As Offshoring Continues, US Public Peeved at "Free Market" :***** Information Clearing House: ICH
 
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