Have We Made Our Own Twisted Form of Communism?

I love the skit on The Tonight Show when Jay Leno asks people on the streets of Los Angeles, “Who is the president of the United States?’  It always amazes me that a lot of people don’t know the answer.  I thought long and hard about the meaning of “socialism” and “communism,”  before I started spouting off at the mouth.  I wasn’t sure where socialism ended and communism started.  I decided to google it.  I found this simple quote, “socialism generally refers to an economic system, while communism generally refers to both an economic and a political system.”  It’s good to know we haven’t reached communism, but how close are we to socialism?  Once again, I decided to google the definition of socialism.  This is what I found, “Socialists, however, see capitalism as a possible part of the ideal state and believe that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. In fact, one of the ideas of socialism is that everyone within the society will benefit from capitalism as much as possible as long as the capitalism is controlled somehow by a centralized planning system.”  I’m sure there are variations on these definitions, so you don’t need to give me a lesson on it.

I am a firm believer in capitalism.  The words socialist and communist make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  There’s one thing that keeps bothering me over and over and that is the financial meltdown that just happened in this country.  How did this all start?  We now know the capitalists on wall street were constantly looking for loopholes around government regulation.  We also know that the socialists in government were trying to get everyone into a house of their own.  Interest rates went lower and lower.  Loan qualifications got easier and easier.  Could you not say that it was like free money?  I took my share of the free money, but I also paid it back.

Millions of two thousand square foot houses were stamped out all over the country.  We’ve got businessman, teachers, salesman, fire fighters, engineers, accountants, electricians, landscapers, nurses, blue collar all owning houses and all living in the same neighborhoods together.  The level playing field is the nirvana of the socialist.  The construction boom the nirvana of the capitalist.  The pinnacle of our society where everyone lives in a nice house whether they earned it or not.  Where the baby boomers have taught us nothing, the greatest generation told us a lot, but we haven’t listened.  When there is no competition, there is no excellence.  No competition for loans and no competition for capital.  It’s not just the rich that were greedy.  It’s also the middle class and all the blue collar people that went out and lived beyond their means.  We’re all too fat and happy with our houses, cars, jacuzzi’s, boats, jet skis and barbecues.  There is no edge to anyone anymore.

As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually,  you run out of other peoples’ money.”   As we’ve run out of money, we’ve created our twisted form of communism.

Just because we were all created equal doesn’t mean we should all end up the same.  Enough for now, I got to go turn on the jacuzzi and grille a couple of steaks.  I’m no different than the rest of you, but I do need that edge back.

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