On the subject of socialism, right now it’s being so maligned that we’re in danger of not recognizing it’s value to our common good. It isn’t the warped version of Russia or Cuba, which became systems of totalitarian government regulation.
Socialism is defined as the community taking care of individuals in ways they can’t do for themselves. As was pointed out in one letter, it includes schools, fire and police departments, emergency services, food stamps, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc.
But if socialism, in trying to protect individuals, creates too many regulations and costs too much to finance, we have to pull back and let capitalism have more of a chance to meet society’s needs. We did this when we overhauled the welfare programs to provide education and child care to single parents so they could get decent paying jobs instead of just handouts.
On the side of capitalism, of course we need entrepreneurism to create innovations and jobs. But unfettered capitalism can take us down some dark roads that harm individuals. Just look at the number of people who lost jobs and homes because of unregulated business practices.
The truth is we need a balance of capitalism and socialism. When a situation veers too far in either direction we get into big difficulties. We needn’t sneer at anything that has been labeled socialistic. We just need to take a close look to see if we’ve over-corrected in asking government to do what private enterprise could do better.
For instance, private health insurance is not doing better than Medicare, so there’s no value in trouncing single-payer health insurance as ugly socialism. The important point would be to ask ourselves if we would be willing to have higher taxes instead of high insurance costs and, in some cases, very high deductibles or no insurance at all.
Sonja Larson
Mill Creek
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