I have a friend.
Oh, don't laugh. I bet you have one, too.
Anyway, this friend is very smart, and he's a gifted artist (8 Hugos!), and talented at explaining things, like socialism to Republicans.
He's calm, and he uses words and examples that Republicans can support. He makes them think without hurting their brains and he posits a bright and prosperous future, something Republicans are greedily desperate for.
The reason, I think, that so many people support Republicans (at least around here, where it seems 9 out of 10 people are Republicans - and historically, Oklahoma was a Democratic state - the names of many rural newspapers bear mute testimony to that) is because they are hurting financially and they think that by emulating the wealthy, they will become wealthy.
All those self-help books that proclaimed "If you visualize it, it's yours" and "name it and claim it" and so on. Those were shouted from pulpits, screamed in headlines, and people chanted them like some sort of life-saving mantra. What did they want? Wealth! When did they want it? Yesterday!
The Democrats gave them logic and hard work and immediate sacrifice for longer term gains. No self-help sound bytes, no painless get-rich-quick schemes. Nothing the people can chant and believe in.
But they don't realize that the Republican sound bytes and fury are all aimed at them to keep them forking over the money so the wealthy get wealthier. They keep treading water and blaming the Republican-created smokescreens that demonized the very things that would save them and help them to the better life they want.
And here comes my friend, and offers a few pithy observances.
It would almost seem absurd to think of some corporation profiting from putting out fires.
Yeah, can we say "arson" and what about those fire companies that stood by and watched homes burn down because the people hadn't paid the for-profit fees, and the fireman refused to take the fess at the time of the fire?Contrast those images with the ones of the tax-payer supported firefighters fighting the wild fires and working to save homes and businesses without regard to whether the home owners and businessmen paid some extortionist for-profit fees, just every day taxes.
Everyone pays into the system and this helps reduce the price for everyone, so they get to keep more of their hard earned cash.
Isn't that what they've been giving us as the reason why it's cheaper to get insurance through your job than on your own? Wouldn't it make sense to eliminate the money-sponge insurance companies that are soaking up most of the extortionist premiums being paid and pay a lot less in taxes to get far better health care?
There are some things that taxes should pay for, and can pay for more efficiently and less expensively to the average citizen than any for-profit company can: roads, utilities, education, health care, fire, police, social security. These would be like no-deductible, no-co-pay, everybody qualifies non-profit insurance where the bulk of the premium (taxes) goes towards providing the services. The reason some government services don't function well right now is because they are so starved for financial support due to the imbalance of taxes (the poor pay proportionately more than the wealthy - it should be the other way around). Properly funded by taxes, they'd be able to hire sufficient employees to get the work done cheaper and better than any for-profit company could manage - for-profit companies have to squeeze their clients to make those mega-million bonuses and pay out dividends to the stock holders. There's no sense in working to benefit only the wealthy. A government doesn't have to worry about making profits, only about working right and satisfying the citizenry.
We've seen how for-profit retirements worked out - many people who set aside money in those for-profit 401(k)s are heading back to work because they were gutted by greed - and not their greed, but the greed of the corporations they had to choose from to invest in for those 401(k) portfolios. Social Security, on the other hand, would be vastly profitable if it hadn't been used as a piggy bank for politicians wet dreams instead of supporting the people who paid into it for decades.
We can't bootstrap ourselves up if we are being charged into poverty by the greedy for-profits.
In a social democracy, I would get to keep more of my money, be better educated, better protected, and healthier, with a senior life of modest comfort. and my children would have more opportunities to be entrepreneurial and adventurous without crushing college debts. (OK, not my children - they received scholarships and I managed to help them pay off their college loans so they get to start life debt-free - but you know, our societal children.)
I would not trust a for-profit company to have my best interests at heart. Once they've sucked me financially dry, any "care" they had for me would also evaporate.
In a social democracy, I would matter regardless of my financial standing.