"They're A Bunch Of Socialist"

I had a colleague today, who is older, go on a diatribe about the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and how “they are nothing but a bunch of socialist!”  I will not refer specifically to his occupational status, but if you read carefully you will be able to deduce the nature of it.  While this is not the time or the place to be critical of my colleague, it is a place where I might voice my opinion on the matter of that “bunch of socialist!”

I have two points on the “socialist” bit. 1) Social Security, Welfare, Workers Compensation, and basically any other public service are all socialistic programs.  They create a burden on all society.  Please do not accuse people of being socialist as if it were a bad thing. If anything they would be Communist but now I split hairs 2) The OWS movement asks for is that those who make far more money than the rest of us to by more in taxes than those of us trying to scrape by.   

1) Social Security, Welfare, Workers Compensation, and basically any other public service are all socialistic programs.  They create a burden on all society.  Please do not accuse people of being socialist as if it were a bad thing.  Merriam- Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as follows

1 any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a system of society or group living in which there is no private property

b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3 a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Under my comprehension of those definitions, government programs would fall under the distribution of goods.  Is Social Security, a program that takes money from working people and give it to those who have worked their entire lives, that bad?  I think not.  Retirees deserve to benefit from their hard work and giving up of their money to the Social Security network.  I pay into Social Security; I pay into the Unemployment Benefits fund.  Is it as definite that I will benefit from either program as those benefiting now? No. In fact I will not be able to do so if projections remain true.  There are solutions to this problem and it leads me to my next point.

Besides the large programs like Social Security and Welfare, there are small, no less important, programs that we all pay for and others benefit from.  Those who claim others to be socialist pay taxes that go to a variety of services they may never use.  A person pays taxes that go towards fire a rescue service, but may never use them.  Tax money can be spent to build county, state and federal roads that would be nearly impossible for every tax paying citizen to drive on. Sound like a bad thing?  I know without a doubt that I did not/ will not directly benefit from every tax dollar taken from my pay check.  Some of it will go to salmon research in Alaska, or to build a new dorm at UVA.  Not every tax dollar paid by an Alaskan Grab fisherman goes to his benefit, but I would bet a cup of coffee it might go to buying wind turbines for the Gereau Center For Applied Technology and Career Exploration’s CEED building.   

2) The OWS movement asks for is that those who make far more money than the rest of us to by more in taxes than those of us trying to scrape by.   In what universe is it just, fair, decent or otherwise that someone who becomes a teacher, goes so far into debt, yet people who already have money obtain college educations, go to work on Wall Street, and make millions of dollars?  Yes, I chose to be a teacher. Yes, I understood that I would not make large sums of money doing so, yet I did so because I thought teaching would be stable and lucrative enough to provide for the kind of family structure I would like. Those in the middle see the ground crumbling away, and need someone to support it.  Why should we place an every growing burden on those beneath us, when those above could easily do the job?  Besides, the wealthiest of the wealth did not get there but on the backs of teachers, laborers, and factory managers. It is only just to take from those who have so much, and give to those who have little or less. Wealthy people should pay more. They make more. Heaven knows they do not make it legally, or dare we say morally.  My parents taught me “Easy Come, Easy Go.” It is easy for the wealthy to make more money because the cards are stacked in their favor.  All the OWS is asking for is a new deck that is not stacked as tall. 

Too as a bonus…Why would any working person not like a system in which pay is according to work done?  That might mean that those corporate bums would get paid for what they really done: which is nothing as to compared to the work done by say, any other profession except athletes who are over paid as well.