Socialism?

The US presidential campaign has brought up socialism recently. Sparked by Sen Obama's discussion with Joe the plumber. I have lived in the US, so I'm not surprised as to why this would be an issue. Western European countries appear quite successful with the model where everything is laissez faire. The benefits would be having virtually free services, the downside would be high taxes. I had a discussion with a European friend and she was mentioning that she initially found the US system merciless. As she spent more time in the US, she found that more opportunities were open because their system.

Does the US really need a socialist style system? Does it make sense to tax high income earners to redistribute the wealth among the rest? I think it would be a big mistake. I have been pushing for a consumption based taxation rather than the current income based scheme. It is very absurd that productive members of society are taxed for the sake of the unproductive. I think it is the government's job to motivate and enable the unproductive to produce wealth. It is also the government's job to ensure new players have a level playing field in producing that wealth.

I am a citizen and resident of Philippines. Our country has had our forays into socialism in the form of land reform. Yep, land was distributed. Did it work? Because it was a "dole out', farmers borrowed money for the farm (using the land as collateral) but ended up getting in debt for buying appliances. After decades of land reform we can say it is a failure. We used to have sufficient rice, today we import it. As an NGO worker, the best practice we have in any project is to ensure the beneficiaries have some cash or sweat equity.

From my perspective, a lot of Americans don't know what poverty is. I consider American consumption habits much wasteful. I know because we buy the "junk" shipped to our country. How can we explain a nation with obesity as a major problem. Where the poor have cars! This is not poverty. Instead of socialism, I think a key solution to the current economic crisis would be a re-evaluation of . The root cause of the problem is consumption and here lies the solution. Income should be free and untaxed but consumption should be regulated. This would even go well with the proposed carbon taxation scheme to resolve the climate crisis.

Two cents from a Filipino across the ocean.