Venezuela

[Cato]

So when you go off on an ideological rant about the evils of socialism, first of all point to an actual socialist system (to be honest the closest we'll get for a long time is a European style mixed economy, humanity currently doesn't have the mentality to sustain a socialist economy) and second of all check your prejudices to see if your favoured way of doing things is not as crippled as what you believe you are arguing against.

This is where your argument is flawed. You are essentially saying that socialism is a grand idea, but simply not enacted appropriately, a la Stalin, Castro, Chavez, et al. You point to Europe, but the economy is NOT socialist. It is capitalist. If you're confused, answer this question...who owns the means of production? Varying degrees of regulation and taxation resulting in differing redistribution of wealth does not make an economy socialist. Who owns the means of production?

Arguing that capitalism is not perfect is hardly a justification for championing a system with a 100% failure rate. Nobody has argued that capitalism doesn't have its faults. The fact that you demand perfection from capitalism as justification for socialist economic policy is ideology writ large.

Let's do this. You choose the criteria by which we can measure a poor person. I maintain that as a percentage of the population there will be more poor people, by your measurement, in a socialist economy than there is in a capitalist economy. Seriously, you define the standard.

I love socialist propaganda. Leaders proclaim that their shelves are empty because of the capitalist devil, while ignoring the fact that shelves are not empty in capitalist based economies. You ask me to check my prejudices, I ask you to acknowledge who's shelves are empty and who has to stand in line for toilet paper. Simple math, you simply cannot set prices lower than the cost of production and expect continued production. Subsidies won't last forever because subsidies are a transfer of wealth that requires taxation which is only possible if there is revenue above the cost of production 'somewhere' in the economy. It's that fucking simple. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a moronic monetary alchemist.