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There are many socialist aspects to our government here in Australia - public healthcare, public schooling, etc. People who bang the 'socialism bad hur dur' dru

There are many socialist aspects to our government here in Australia - public healthcare, public schooling, etc. People who bang the 'socialism bad hur dur' drum generally don't observe the working socialist policies already doing well in society. As you said, corruption is the issue at play.

mc32 10y ago
I think a few people misunderstand socialism in LatAm. In LatAm socialism pretty much means businesses are American puppets, Americans are bad, being a puppet is bad so let's redistribute business and industry to the people and let the people run it. The professional class are bad (with the exception for physicians who are expected to live like other poor people) and farmworkers and laborers are the ultimate ideal (there is a terrible feudal-agrarian mindset which permeates)
SixSigma 10y ago
Seizing the means of production
int_19h 10y ago
These are welfare aspects, not socialist aspects. Socialism is public ownership of the means of production. When you tax on the high end of the income scale, and distribute those taxes as welfare, healthcare etc on the lower end, that's not socialism - it's welfare with capitalist economy as an engine (actually producing the income that you redistribute). The factories and the service providers are still privately owned. So Australia, Sweden etc are not socialist in any meaningful way. Venezuela, OTOH, was actually going that way, with an ongoing large-scale nationalization of private businesses: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nationalizations-idUSBRE89701X20121008 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nationa...