VIDEO
Posted on March 4, 2013 by Kamil ZawadzkiWe are so far removed from socialism, either in its pure/theoretical form or in its form as practiced and enforced in the Soviet Union, Cuba, etc., that it just makes all the fear-mongering about Obama being a socialist or communist or Marxist or even what one stupid Tea Party meme called “democratic socialism” all a silly joke.
92% of the people asked in the cited survey don’t even want socialism, and I agree that there has to be some incentive to work – having everyone make equal income no matter what their seniority, experience, etc., would inevitably become a disincentive to work.
The “ideal” economic distribution graph in this video seems quite fair and acceptable to me, as it’s a nice upward slope that suggests promise for rewarding hard work and experience. But it’s so far off from our actual reality, it’s sad. It’s jarring. And kind of depressing.
A professor of mine from undergrad said it best when he posted this clip on his Facebook:
This is a really nice, graphic depiction of inequality in action. If you don’t understand the problem after this, we have an even bigger problem… (and a hint: the answer is not that capitalism has rewarded certain people for hard work. The answer is that certain people have taken advantage of the political system to set up rules that let them reward themselves.)
