Don't hold your breath.

Are you serious UG??? I've been waiting for over 6 months - Don't get your hopes up.

I know, I know; and it doesn't bother me that tw is so very dishonest, so very often. It demonstrates that we're all better men than he.

Funny the guy can't raise his ethical standards any, though. Really remarkable.

This is what a commie looks like, people.

Well clearly it does bother you else you wouldn't point it out on such a regular basis.....

Oh, and given my new usertitle, this is what a commie looks like :

Actually, I am the bitter fruit that his sins have borne him. It is something of a pleasure to stuff this bitter fruit down his craw regularly. There's also some obligation to the interest of humankind here.

And DanaC, I am acutely disappointed in you -- thought you had more brains in that head. Communism was a crank's work and a creature of the nineteenth century that the entire globe had to spend the bulk of the twentieth century proving wrong. You want to ride that wave of the past? Foolish! Unmodern, too. Socialism and communism is presently keeping the Old World less than functional.

Oh Urbane, please. You know exactly what I am and are not the slightest bit disappointed. I am not a communist: that was a joke based on LJ's choice of usertitle for me. I am, however, a socialist as you well know. A socialist, and a Marxist.

Socialist is a very broad term that can have varying definitions as well so it is hard to categorize socialists as one group. It is possible to have a free market socialist economy, just that it would most likely be extremely union controlled or need a lot of government regulations (not control) because the free market will naturally shift towards capitalism.

Dana, darling, those affiliations still mean you're NOT an economic literate. Sorrreeee.

Read Hazlitt, for starters.

You'll find a LOT of Americans thoroughly down on and vehemently opposed to Socialism because we understand, however inchoately, that it simply won't work anywhere near as well as laissez-faire capitalism, and we've watched the socialist programs of the socialist welfare states gradually sink to the ground. Nobody can get rich under socialism except the few exceptional artists -- who often have to shield their wealth from the revenue officials of their own countries and keep the lucre offshore. In capitalism, far more people can get rich because there's far less interference and the US is pretty much without a class structure designed to impose glass ceilings and other impediments to self-betterment.

We end up doing much good by doing damned well. You could have this too -- at one time you did -- but your nation has to get thoroughly tired of the failed promises of the Welfare State first and not so much overthrow, as throw over, all that.

Urbane, sweetie, your assumption that economic literacy leads automatically to an acceptance of laissez faire capitalism shows how narrow your worldview is.

Britain's welfare system isn't perfect, but it mitigates some of the worse excesses of the market. People get rich in the UK. Lots of people get rich in the UK. The fact that more people get rich in the USA is not a marker of success unless you deem getting rich to be the ultimate expression of success. In the UK, we consider large numbers of people without access to medicine or decent housing a mark of failure, rather than the lower number of wealthy elite. WE use our system to try and resolve such issues, and these are relatively popular because they are relatively successful.

The vast majority of English people do not look at your country and say 'I wish we had that'. The vast majority of English people prefer the system we have here. It is how we do things. We tried the whole laissez-faire capitalism experiment during the 18th and19th centuries and the result was Dickensian. We fought for the safeguards we have. Why would we give them up for a small chance at fabulous wealth?

DanaC, check something: we're wealthy, no? Now do we suffer at present from Dickensian conditions? We seem to have found safeguards, haven't we? And do they get in the way of becoming wealthy?

It's not remotely an assumption: we Americans are five percent of the world population and we are twenty percent of the globe's economy. We are walking, living, breathing proof that laissez-faire is the way to go -- and because of its free and libertarian nature, it does not compel us to be uniform business-drones, either. It's been working this way for roughly three centuries now. That's proof enough for this kid.

If it's not Dickensian, why are all the illegals needed?

Are they or are they not escaping from an utter absence of jobs and money south of the border?

I have been reading about/studying Iran for years. Since I was a young teen.
SO complex, especially now.
There is no way to have a concise conversation about the current situation without being so simplistic, as to just be... sorry... but... wrong.
I mean, at least for myself.
Perhaps someone else can, but I can't.
There are so many generational, regional, cultural, ethnic, religious, spiritual and educational differences... and each feels differently about the West, as well as the US.
All of them intersect and overlap.
Some love us, some hate us, most don't give a shit... truly, MOST. Most just want the best social services for their families and businesses and really could care less if those in power deal with the US and Europe or not.
That nation is old. OLD, old in a way the most Europeans cannot understand and old in a way that Americans... well, don't even try, I don't.
As I studied Persia I learned the meaning of the word foreign.
One dream of mine has been to go. I dream of it at least weekly, mostly of the smells.... it aches in my heart.

Of course that's what they're escaping but the reason there are no jobs or money is because they are here instead of fixing their own house. So being here, US employers can hire them cheap, treat them like slaves, make the taxpayer care for them because they get no benefits and keep them in line with the immigration cops. Dickensian it is.

My point, of course, is that this ends up being an improvement of their condition. Billions of US dollars in remittances (or envios, as the Spanish has it) going south don't lie -- they are affording to do this, and en masse. I live in the middle of where this sort of thing is going on, and frankly, what I see is a lot of these people earning enough to put them in at least the lower middle class. The crop pickers mostly get to the fields in private automobiles -- of various vintages, never the very newest, no doubt a couple-three per vehicle, but private autos.