Supported NAFTA? True, but only because their masters in the CFR wanted them to. Unfortunately, Republicans are just as guilty on this score as the dems.
Cutting social programs? Name one. The only reason Clinton agreed to reform of welfare was because he was triangulating and trying to stay in power. The dems as a party were virulently opposed to this change.
Economic liberalization? Show the evidence. The dems ever since Roosevelt have been building bigger and bigger government and more regulation every chance they’ve gotten.
Market-based healthcare system? Don’t make me laugh!! A single-payer healthcare system isn’t market based, bud. I actually happen to think that a single-payer system might be what we need, but don’t be fooled into thinking that it is market-based; it isn’t.

“One last thing, compare what Cuba has been able to accomplish (and they do have democracy in Cuba, far from perfect, but no worse than most of the poor capitalist countries in the world). Less than 3% of the country is malnourished, daily calorie intake is about 2600…”

There you go, showing your true colors: RED! And I don’t mean “red-state” (the phoney recolorization of the parties by the media in 2004 or thereabouts); I mean COMMUNIST RED!! Fidel Castro is an absolutist Communist Dictator and a fervent Socialist believer. BTW which is why all the leading lights of the Democrat party like Jesse Jackson, Hollywood and media Liberals have made repeated pilgrimages to visit their hero Fidel and fawn and bubble over him.

Your own words confirm exactly what I’ve been trying to say: Democrats look to Communist Dictators like Fidel Castro as their role models, because THEY AGREE WITH THEM!! Your own words condemn you.

These reforms are not “socialist” but they involve the state squashing what the people want and this is only benefiting a small group of elites, mainly the West. People like you claim this only happens in “socialist” countries, so I’m confused. I’m sure you could care less, or are even aware, but it’s sad to hear you talk about “big government” and try to pretend it is something only found on the left. You have to know jack $hit about the subject to say something so stupid.

This is such an a-historic and ignorant comment. The Democratic Party, the freaking Democratic Party who has supported NAFTA, cutting social programs, economic liberalization, who is for a market based healthcare system is communist…only for people who are incapable of seeing the world outside of black and white.

Let’s talk about capitalist development, which you seem to know nothing about. Did you know that South Korea, the “capitalist” alternative to North Korea, developed with MASSIVE state development? They based their developmental model on Japan, another “capitalist” country in which the state controlled the vast majority of economic activity. Know how Japan would fund their highly successful technological breakthroughs? Did big Japanese corporations compete in the marketplace and develop technologies out of “enlightened self interest”? No, the government would get together with the military, the banks, the corporations and they’d all collectively figure out investment, savings, public spending and the like. This was copied by every other country in the region, including recently China. Some “free market” miracle.

I challenge you to show here how South Korea’s state capitalist development was that much different than the USSR’s state capitalist development. How about Chile? They’re the “free market” model for Latin America. Never mind the fact that copper, the state owned copper company that was never privatized, provided the country with 90% of its export revenues, to this day providing around 60% (the rest was raw materials, developed economies don’t export mainly raw materials). Chile was saved just a few years ago by its state copper company from a massive capital flight induced recession. Its “free market” reforms caused Chile to go through the most severe recession in Latin America in the early 1980’s, the only thing that saved it was statist policies far and away more than even Allende called for. Its PRIVATE public transportation system lost over $30 million in April of 2006 and had to be rescued by the far more efficient STATE system. Its conservative candidate during its last presidential election called for a massive reforming of the privatized social security system because of how poorly it has functioned, if you want some quotes from the CONSERVATIVE candidate let me know. By the time Pinochet, one of many “capitalist” dictators the West supported) left, workers made LESS adjusted for inflation than when he took over, wealth concentration and poverty had increased many times over. I challenge you again, find me economists who will call Chile anything but a “free market” economy and a success.

How about our own. I’ll give you a link called “The Conservative Nanny State” that shows how much our economy relies, and always has, on massive state involvement. The military industrial complex, which are state institutions, is where most of our technology comes from. We spend over a TRILLION on it annually, all things considered. We socialize the costs of most corporate R & D through the military system, NASA, public universities and private companies almost entirely reliant on the state. Most of what we export is either state funded weapons or state supported agriculture.

http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:ab581cKDXqgJ:www.conservativenannystate.org/cnswebbook.pdf+the+conservative+nanny+state&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

The different between “socialist” and “capitalist” development is that in “socialist” development many times the state will try to socialize some of the benefits, which scares off investors and economically isolates the country. If countries want to continue they have to do so by being self reliant, which shows just how little democracy and capitalism are linked. The “capitalist” state development, like we see in modern China, doesn’t. They, like us, socialize most of the costs of economic activity and privatize most of the benefits, so investors are enticed to put their money in.

One last thing, compare what Cuba has been able to accomplish (and they do have democracy in Cuba, far from perfect, but no worse than most of the poor capitalist countries in the world). Less than 3% of the country is malnourished, daily calorie intake is about 2600, they have an almost self sustaining agricultural system that is mostly organic, one of the best educational systems in Latin America, an amazing bio-tech industry, one of the best healthcare systems in Latin America, produce large amounts of doctors who offer their services around the world, has pretty good sports institutions (as evident by Cuba’s performance in international competition and creating professional athletes), and they don’t receive a single cent from the IMF or World Bank. This while being under attack for decades from the world’s superpower just miles off of its coast. The country and its institutions are far from perfect, I just would like to hear a “capitalist” country at the same developmental stage as Cuba who has done a fraction as well for the general public, and was able to accomplish that without help by the West.

What you are holding up as an ideal exists in the minds of people like yourself. You’ve been fed propaganda and you’ll be damned if you have even a passing knowledge if what you’ve been fed, by interests who benefit from your ignorance, has any connection to reality.

So according to you the only “true” Communism is the Israeli Kibbutzim? Here is the definition of Communist from Wikipedia:
“Manifesto of the Communist Party (German: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), often referred to as The Communist Manifesto, was first published on February 21, 1848, and is one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, it laid out the League’s purposes and program. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the bourgeois social order and to eventually bring about a classless and stateless society, and the abolition of private property.”

So according to the Communist Manifesto itself, written by Marx and Engels (a Jesuit Priest), Communism uses violent revolutionary methods to overthrow the existing social orders (including Capitalism). But you say that the Israeli Kibbutzim are the true communists? They must not have been reading Karl Marx, which was the basic blueprint followed by Stalin, Mao, etc.

Methinks you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I don’t have many good things to say about US Democrats, but how come the US Republicans running this country are the ones that are pushing for big government, and fewer individual liberties (they still do push for “low taxes” i.e. - borrowing money from China that we can never repay…)

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/the-wiretapping-bill-president-bush-and-fear-lead-the-senate-off-a-cliff/?hp

Clearly, you are the one not aware of the basics of the topic, my friend.