I think that the word socialism is one that we should re-think. I agree with you that one of the basic tenants of socialism seems to be a redistribution of wealth. How does their saying go – from each according to their ability, to each according to their need – or something like that.
It seems to me that western culture all has some degree of socialism. Wouldn’t we all like to have a class-less society? (Maybe not those in the “upper†class who reap all the rewards of a class-based society, but surely the rest of us would I think.) The early followers of Jesus were certainly as socialist as you could get. When the US instituted the income tax to pay for WW1, (back when we paid for wars that we waged), and then kept the income tax in place after the war debt was paid, that income tax was used to begin to implement the progressive policies that marked all of western society in the post-enlightenment world. We were making a conscious decision to re-distribute wealth in that progressive era. We were all instituting some form of “socialismâ€.
We could spend a lot of time discussing the different paths that we and other nations have been on since then, but I think that it is fair to say that in the US or any other western country, there are going to be those who are satisfied with the way that the wealth is distributed and spent, and those who aren’t. I have heard for years from people in this country who talk about how unhappy the people in more socialist countries are with both the distribution of wealth policies and the use of that money – usually things like social medicine or universal health care used as the example. However, I never hear those things from the people in those countries. The everyday people that I have known from Canada, Sweden, Britain, Norway, and Germany have generally felt pretty good and positive about their social systems. A case can be made that our economy in this country is suffering, though certainly not in as bad a shape as France and Germany as you point out. However, during our last recession, (01-02), as I recall the European countries fared better than we did, but I didn’t hear much talk of our economic problems being tied to the fact that we had an almost completely private system of medicine. Why is it that when their economy is in the tank, we always want to bring out the “social medicine†card as the cause?
I agree that the working class in many countries is getting fed up with the load that they are being asked to carry, but I don’t see this as linked very strongly to the social policies of the country. I think that a culture makes value statements about themselves when they decide what is important – what they want to pay for. The more socially progressive countries make value statements that indicate a strong sense of accountability for everyone in the culture – regardless of class or economic privilege. My dealings with the everyday folks like you and me in those countries leads me to believe that they generally support those national values. Where they get upset, just like the people in this country get upset, is when an ever increasing burden of the bill falls on their shoulders, as those who are wealthier see their portion of the bill reduced. While the European countries remain more socially progressive than the US, there has been a growing trend in those countries to follow the lead of the US and redistribute the tax burden away from the wealthy and toward the poor and middle class. This – in my opinion – is what causes the unrest among the working class that is growing throughout the western world – the fact that their share of the bill continues to increase, while the share that the wealthy pay decreases.
