Gary Varvel for February 21, 2019

Another timely warning about the menace of programs like Socialist Security.

Do any of these conservative cartoonists have an original idea?

Down with equality! Long live the Kakistocracy!

Again I worry more that American capitalism is not sustainable. Because of the of the increasingly high cost of higher education in America many high tech jobs are filled using H1B visas which creates a secondary problem of immigrants illegally overstaying their visas. While the older generations have a muddled idea of socialism, the younger generations suffer under the failing supply-side economics that makes a feeble attempt to monetize, privatize and profitize all aspects of American’s products and services yet does not allow the middle-class wage-earners to share in those profits. Wealth inequity is not allowing the consumers to enjoy the disposable income that they once had and this reduces, not increases the profit and quality of American goods and services. American workers once had the skills to compete with lower labor costs through more innovative manufacturing processes and were able to sustain gainful employment when companies were incentivized to provide training to get tax relief. Without those incentives, America’s workforce is forced to bear the burden of paying their own training costs or accepting lower wage employment brought on by the lower wages of outsourced labor that companies employ to improve profit margins. How much longer this race to the bottom can last is more of a threat than the democratic socialist hybrid economics that other OECD nations employ. If America had a growing GDP and no debt, I might buy Varvel premise, but it simply does not match the real world that most of us live in where we see America falling behind nations the utilize socialism to great advantage. A dictatorship calling itself socialism may fool the older generation but our younger generations are fully aware of the dire deficiencies in American capitalism.

Obsolete Sanders will pull through again of running another failure campaign..

Varvel, you represent a party that has been hell bent on doing away with all environmental regulations. It’s ironic that you should represent the idea of a more equitable distribution of a nation’s resources as toxic. If it was, the Republican Party would have adopted socialism.

Hey, Varvie, we had another sinkhole open up in downtown Indianapolis. I think that’s the third or fourth one in the last six months.

And it’s all because the pols kept cutting taxes for the businesses, so maintenance didn’t happen.

fusilier, who doesn’t want to get started on the infant mortality figures in the entire state.

James 2:24

And once again @alwayswrong demonstrates his utter lack of knowledge and the poor state of our education system. I’ve been to Sweden and other social democracies with no one hungry and no discernable homeless. Better yet is the fact that capitalism thrives in a social democracy.

Poor brainwashed Varvel. He is for corporate socialism, but not for people socialism. He ignores the socialism benefits he receives and wants more tax cuts for the 1 percent. Republican wanna be Varvel.

So far the only ones who benefit from our socialism are the very, very poor and the very, very rich. The rest of us in the middle get the shaft. It’s time to take the rich from the equation.

Great toon today.

1.5 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires.

Typical.

There are two ways (at least) of thinking about socialism. One way is to look at what socialist theorists have said over the past couple of hundred years; another way is to look at the actual programs of the various socialist parties. There is overlap between the two, but they aren’t identical. First, the theorists. There is a wide variety of different socialist theories, from authoritarian to anarchistic, but I would say the one point they have in common is a class analysis of society, and a belief that the relationship between the classes is adversarial: there will never be an alliance between the classes, and there will always be a struggle between the classes, unless somehow you can create a society without classes. Most socialists (but not all) call for some kind of social ownership of the means of production and natural resources. Social ownership does NOT necessarily mean government ownership. Union ownership, for instance, counts as social ownership. Second, the programs of the parties. Socialist parties have advocated a lot of different programs, mostly on the way towards a socialist society rather than as a full realization of socialism. So, for example, universal health care is not the definition of socialism, but it’s the kind of improvement in society that many socialist parties call for as a practical improvement. Historically socialist parties also called for the eight-hour work day, the elimination of child labor, health and safety regulations for the workplace, the rights of women and minorities, and so on. None of these is exclusive to socialism: many others who are NOT socialists call for the practical improvements socialist parties have promoted. Those who call themselves Democratic Socialists mostly don’t make a big deal of the conflict between the classes, and so they don’t count as real socialists; but they do advocate many of the practical programs socialist also favor.

Those that hope to capitalize on the negative semantic “socialism” for political gain, overlook that the economies of the most successful nations on Earth are partnership between capitalism and socialism – the European Nordic countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the USA. According to a United Nations study, the happiest nations on Earth are these same nations, particularly the Nordic countries that are proportionately higher in socialism. In the U.S., some of the most transformational development projects in its history were partnerships between public and private enterprise – the Pacific Railway, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, etc, etc, etc. The Hoover Dam, which electrifies the arid Southwest and makes possible large cities like Las Vegas is owned by the U.S. Government.

Here is a “socialist” program that had fantastic success – Utah reduced chronic homelessness by 91%

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how

Lest just say Socialism every day for the next 18 months.

The current system is putting us in debt to the tune of 2 trillion dollars a year, but Bernie’s Socialism is the enemy of the American economy.

This cartoon is a sure sign of fear.

Good to see that Gary reads Lisa’sposts.

You’d have a line of business leaders huffing on that tail pipe fighting for their share of corporate welfare. Well over $100 billion annually, not sure if that includes both federal and state/local subsidies.

Healthcare, retirement, and education are not “stuff”! I would like all conservatives to stop calling it that. For goodness’ sake, people DIE when they cannot afford healthcare. They cannot achieve their full potential and fully contribute to society without a full education. And they cannot retire without sufficient pensions. And this isn’t even socialism; this is democratic socialism.

Dang it, I must be getting old.

Varvie has never once ’tooned about free stuff for millionaires. Take professional sports:

I’m still paying taxes for the Hoosier/RCA Dome, even though it was demolished 11 years ago. Mayor Bill Hudnut pushed it through the city-county council back in 1980, and used it (along with tax subsidies) to get Bob Irsay to move the Baltimore Colts here.

Jimmie Irsay didn’t like sharing the stadium with the Indiana Pacers NBA team, so he got us to build Lucas Oil/Rape of The Taxpayer Stadium to the tune of a billion dollars. Irsay also gets a cut of the rental fees if anybody else uses the stadium.

As the Hoosier/RCA dome went down, we (as in the taxpayers) built Bankers’ Life Fieldhouse for the Pacers, owned by the billionaire Simon Brothers.

Since the City-County Council is no longer under corporatist control, It refused any money to build a new stadium for the professional soccer team Indy Eleven. So the multi-millionaire owner went to the supermajority Republican state legislature to get a tax-incentive financing bill through. (It’s still in committee, so I don’t know how it’ll fare.)

But Varvie thinks that a decent education and decent healthcare for everyone is wrong.

fusilier

James 2:24

Amazon had a profit of more than $11 billion and paid zero income tax. Plus they were given $100 million for a tax rate of -1%. The bottom 20% have an effective rate of 1.5%. So the poorest are funding corporate welfare.

I think Varvel’s confused this with the GOP ‘plan’ of plutocratism.

Oh, c’mon, you guys; always calling for original work. This is only the 12,478th time that a conservative cartoonist has used the phrase “Free Stuff.” So it’s still pretty original.

Better than the free stuff we are giving the rich out of the middle class!

It’s an old refrain exaggerated to the limit.

Socialism is for the rich corporations, they call it subsidizing. It’s like bribery is called lobbying. Socialism for the poor is evil.

“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

This is all you got huh?

I’d rather see conservative cartoonists doing weak, derivative crap than anything hard-hitting and bitterly accurate about liberals, so I should probably “heart” this one.

Oh, and that’s a very nice rendering of the shiny tank.

The bottom line is socialism is like a helicopter parent: providing security, protection, and succor while simultaneously, and perhaps inadvertently, stifling, smothering, and weakening.

Mr. Varvel apparently misses the dead, burning rivers of recent times.

At the end of the day, the popularity of socialism is always inversely proportional to capitalism’s ability to provide for its people. If life was good for everyone, Bernie wouldn’t have such a strong following.

Gee, when a republican passes a tax cut for rich people, Varvel is mute. When republicans waste $65 B on a useless wall, Varvel is mute. When republicans steal money for emergencies, Varvel is mute. I think I prefer Varvel mute.