Welfare & Socialism Lies Blocked The American Dream

The most loving or Christian politics you can imagine involves providing the basic building blocks for success in life and lifting people up with help when they are down and out.

• Human rights like health care, child care, housing, great education & pay, paid vacations and sick leave, and retirement give people the foundations for success and happiness.
• Social safety net programs like welfare lend a helping hand when people are down and out, lifting them up so they can succeed.

But greedy, corrupt billionaires worked hard for decades to cut taxes for themselves and the corporations they controlled, not for regular Americans.

• They used false stereotypes about the lazy poor and confusion about socialism to raise hysteria in the media and brainwash people against government services.
• Of course, tax cuts sounded great, especially to racists who didn’t want their tax dollars going to “those” people.
• But Big Money lobbied to make sure nearly all the tax cuts went to the superrich.
• Between 1961 and 2006, the after-tax income of the 400 richest Americans skyrocketed 28 times larger, while their tax burden dropped by 60%.

The vast majority of people use welfare (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) only temporarily and work when they can. 

• Half of welfare families only have one child.
• Children on welfare are no more likely to go on welfare when they grow up than are other children.
• Cash welfare systems exist in 171 countries around the world.
• Studies show people receiving cash assistance typically don’t waste it on things like alcohol and tobacco.

Yet President Ronald Reagan played the race card to demonize taxes and government services, lying and inventing a mythical welfare queen with “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards” and a Cadillac.

• This worked spectacularly well for corrupt billionaires and their Republican puppet politicians.
• By stirring up racial resentments, Reagan turned the American South Republican instead of Democrat ever since.
• This and our undemocratic Senate and Electoral College giving small rural states advantages over larger states has kept Republicans dominant despite policies hurting average people and despite losing the majority vote in most elections.

The word socialism has a long history and many confusing meanings and definitions. 

• Old-style socialism or communism means the government owning all the manufacturing and distribution of goods.
• Nobody in America is talking about our government taking over companies or taking over anyone’s private property.

All modern countries spend money for the common good (public services).  This includes things like:

• Social Security
• Medicare & Medicaid
• police
• fire departments
• public schools
• libraries
• public hospitals
• post office
• highway system
• electrical energy grid
• clean water and sewage systems
• national, state, and local park systems
• public health and disease control
• unemployment insurance
• public transportation
• basic medical and scientific research

These things make our country great. 

All modern countries have elements of capitalism (private enterprise) and public services or social spending. 

Experts have several different names for the form of governments in northern Europe that are now the true lands of opportunity, with great human rights and social services:

• social democracy
• democratic socialism
• welfare capitalism

 But decades of media hysteria by billionaire puppet talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have demonized the words “welfare” and “socialism.”

The fearmongering of greedy billionaires can’t fool us any longer! 

• HELP that lifts people up when they are down and out (social safety net programs) and GREAT JOB BENEFITS won’t turn us into another Cuba or Russia!
• That is ridiculous!
• Let’s be very clear! Let’s stop using the tainted, demonized words welfare and socialism!

LOVING CAPITALISM

Basic human and worker rights and social safety net programs are actually loving capitalism or Christian capitalism, the foundations of THE AMERICAN DREAM!

In fact, greedy billionaires and Republicans have been demonizing social services for the last 100 years.  They tried to block all these following programs by calling them socialism or communism!

• Social Security
• Medicare and Medicaid
• our interstate highway system
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (keeps money in the bank safe)
• child labor laws
• agricultural price supports
• our Civil Rights Act of 1964
• the unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act

They even called the polio vaccine communist! 

The irony is greedy billionaires, Trump, Republicans, and Wall Street love government spending (socialism) for the rich but not for regular Americans.

• Big corporations get hundreds of billions of dollars in federal support every year.
• Wall Street got $700 billion from the Treasury and trillions of dollars from the Federal Reserve after our economy collapsed in 2008, while regular Americans lost their homes and businesses.

The US has a surprising history of loving capitalism or democratic socialism, the same form of government as the countries in northern Europe with great social services!

• In the first two decades of the 20^th century, millions of people in the US read socialist newspapers and elected over 1,000 socialists to government offices.
• In those early decades of the 1900s, we had 2 socialist members of Congress, dozens of socialist state legislators, and over 130 socialist mayors.
• People in 353 cities and towns elected Socialist Party candidates.
• Many leading socialists were Protestant clergy.
• The socialist leader Eugene Debs ran for president in 1912 and won 6% of the vote. He described socialist politics as CHRISTIAN POLITICS.

Democratic socialists were some of the very first people in the US to fight for the human rights we take for granted today:

• our 8-hour workday
• our 5-day work week
• minimum wage laws
• outlawing child labor
• overtime pay
• organizing unions
• pensions for old people (Social Security)
• consumer protection laws
• progressive income taxes
• universal health care
• civil rights
• women’s right to vote
• public housing
• workers’ compensation after injuries at work