I thought Charles Krauthammer laid it out pretty well in today’s Dispatch. He states that prior to this crisis (the TARP and the stimulus), government spending in the US was 34% of GDP. Since those events, it is up to 40%. He points out that Europe is at 47%. He believes that Obama is aiming for that (I’m not 100% sure about that, but it seems plausible.)

I’m not sure if Europe is “socialist,” but we can all agree that it is more socialist than the US. Apparently, 7% more socialist.

Krauthhammer paints Europe as a poorly run place (low growth, over-regulation, etc…). Of course, citizens there have health care, pensions, viable public transportation, decent housing, less poverty, longer lives and less violent crime.

Krauthammer ends with, “Let the debate begin.”

Perfect.

Sounds pretty socialist to me.

Thanks for the response. I think the problem with President Obama is that he is actively seeking socialism. His call to have government interfere with contracts between two private parties (you and your mortgage company), his willingness to tax “The Rich” explicitly for the purpose of income redistribution and his massive increases in government spending are 3 examples from his first 6 weeks in office.

In your example, you discuss only the executive branch, however, congress was an effective check on executive power for much of that time, including all of the administrations of President’s Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43.

What we have now is unchecked political power that the Democrats have used and are planning to use to implement an unmoderated far-left agenda. Whether this is true socialism or not is not important, the effect will be the same – that the job producers in this country will relunctantly take their ball and go home rather than be taxed at a 63% rate (40% federal, 12% fica, 2.9% medicare, 6% state, 2% city). As Mayor Bloomberg in NYC noted a few week ago, you cannot continue to tax the same group of people over and over again and expect that they will not change their behavior and when that happens, it’s game over for the country.

I understand the Clintons were a breath of fresh air, so maybe their eight years cleaned up 12 years of Reagan Bush, but I just wanted to check.

The USA has been the most successful and powerful country in the world for the past century or so (probably a bit less than that). I think that is because we strike a pretty good balance. Note that there have been 28 presidential elections since 1900, and that each party has won 14 of them. It is a balancing act—too much of one, and you lose the benefits of the other.

The past eight years were spent tending to our capitalist ceiling at the expense of our socialist floor. We had tax cuts for the rich, while piling up deficits even though times were good. The money, in the hands of the wealthy, was (over) leveraged and went chasing after the same real estate, over and over again, bidding up the price until the entire economy collapsed. Meanwhile, over forty million people remained without health insurance.

So now, the pendulum has swung the other way, and we are working on repairing the floor. Time for universal health care, an improved environment, etc… Once these items are dealt with, the Democrats will try to cling to power just like the Republicans did, and they will get thrown out. And so on.

So, I do not believe that we should or will become a socialist country. Nor do I believe that President Obama is leading us there. He is just a reaction to the failed crony capitalism of the past eight years. While the change is welcomed by me, but maybe not by you, I believe it is incremental and cyclical.

I wonder if you might address the substance of the fight. Do you believe American society should be socialist or do you not believe that President Obama will lead us to socialism?