2016 Feb 22^nd

Today I’ll respond to a letter to the editor of the Traverse City Record Eagle. Mr. Thomas Baird comments on the dangers posed by Bernie Sander’s candidacy for the Presidency. He begins by quoting Nikita Khrushchev’s remark to an American diplomat that his children would live under communism. Khrushchev was quite wrong; it seems that the children of the Russians of that generation are now living under a very limited form of Capitalism. They can now their own homes, start businesses in some areas and buy stock in public companies.

Baird is worried that Sanders’ socialism will morph into communism; our attention is called to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR. The USSR was not socialistic it was communistic and there is an enormous difference between socialism and communism. Communism requires that the state own everything, there is no private property, except perhaps for your toothbrush, your underwear and your overcoat. You rent your apartment from the state and the state sets the rent. You buy your food from a store owned by the state and the food is priced according to the state’s wishes. In the USSR you could not leave the country without government approval. Cuba comes close to having a purely communistic government but that is beginning to change as well.

The United States has some socialistic programs and it would be political trouble for any right winger to try to change these. We have public highways; these are owned by the people and are free to any user. Then there is Social Security and Medicare. These are socialistic programs. For the poor there is Medicaid and Supplement Social Security. There is a program to provide information to farmers from the agronomists at Michigan State University. There are food stamps for those who are employed by huge corporations at wages below the poverty level. There is rent assistance for the indigent. There is unemployment assistance that compensates out-of-work folks. We already have many socialistic programs. Does that mean that we are headed toward communism? Some right wing purists will tell you that’s possible but given that their parents get Social Security and can therefore live on their own instead of with them, these purists probably won’t complain too much about Social Security.

If we look at other countries the right likes to label as socialist, we find paid maternity and paternity leave, free health care and free medication, financial support for special needs children and free college education. Imagine finishing medical school or law school with no indebtedness. This is all paid for with tax money in countries that don’t support a multi-billion dollar defense industry and therefore can spend tax money on their citizens.