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Tewald, please don't be so afraid of that "left winged" new president you have : we in France have had a real socialist president for 14 years (François Mitterrand, from 1981 to 1995), and still, people have not been so unhappy during that period. Still, the government at that time was far more "left-winged" than the one you will have.
I think that Obama's program is more about solidarity, health, education, employment, and environment than "taking from the rich to give to the poor".
BTW, a lot of richmen (the very rich, I mean !), do not work to get money : they simply take benefits from the money they invest in other's people work....
Reading you, I guess you are the kind of people I am : a middle class person who gets up early everyday to earn money for his family, works hard, pays all his bills, take little vacation, educates his children, and owns a house he has bought himself.
This is not a reason for considering that poor people are all lazy persons who do not have work because they do not want to work, and prefer to live on charity, and other's persons money...
First, most of the poors are not educated enough to get a job. Second, they can have psychologic, alcool, drugs, and family problems. Third, they can simply have health problems or be disabled.
Surviving in this hard world is also a question of luck : not everybody have ben raised in a "good family", in a "good town", in a "good country".....I consider me as lucky : I was born in France, where we have a "solidarity system" (not socialist), which provides free education, free health, some garanties for work, and a retirement system.
My family was very poor, still, thanks to our system, I have been well educated, got graduated, a good job, and so on...my parents certainly could not have afforded the long studied I made if we had been american...
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Dutch columnists have frequently warned that Barack Obama will turn out not be as progressive as many Europeans will have hoped. There seems to be a great cultural divide across the Atlantic, with both sides tending to believe that they have the true key to Western Civilisation in hand.
To many citizens of the US, the word socialism seems to be a 'fnord' (look it up on the Wiki!) just like in Europe it is generally considered impolite to call somebody a fascist. Polarisation in that sense might overlook that there does seem to be such a thing as the right person with the right policies at the right time.
Mc Cain would not have made a bad president, yet, if his side had won the election, I would have been very worried about the future indeed. Obama seriously outclasses what the Republicans seemed to have to offer. Most importantly, his arrival on the scene was a great remedy to the apathy of American voters, who have long turned out in very low numbers to choose the evil they know over the evil they don't, which is the only option in a two-party system.
Obama's election will have far-reaching consequences, and most of them should turn out to be for the better. At the very least, it will keep the ship we are all on from sinking, for now.
F.
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Socialist?
A badge I wear with pride! 
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chouia, please understand that I am not "considering that poor people are all lazy persons..." Far from it. However, I also do not consider that NO poor person is a lazy person.
If you can get enough money to live on by NOT working, and can make just a little more by putting in 40+ hours of work every day, very few people would work. That is what I am concerned about. Also, the very rich who "invest in other's...work" are making it possible for those people to work; that is what capitalism is all about.
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| Also, the very rich who "invest in other's...work" are making it possible for those people to work; that is what capitalism is all about. |
Aye, but the incentive of the very rich in investing is not others' work, but the return they expect from their investment. And in fact, machines guided by cybernetic systems do tend to produce more cost-efficiently than human workers. What would you invest in if you had the spare dough?
Wherever the truth may lie, the president-elect will not and cannot overturn the wheels of capitalism. Any successful system will prevail until it has outlived its usefulness to its adherents. Until then, we all get to live with its good sides and its bad sides.
May your portfolios prevail!, F.
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