Not nessisarily true.

I think socialism is a good idea... considering four issues.

1) Can the government do it better.  ( Yes sometimes they can.)

2) Is it paid for fairly.  (By taxing everyone proportionally.  Not just "Well we'll pay for it by raising the price on junkfood... or rich people... or steel tariffs)

3) Will it actually work?  If the government can do it better... but it's still going to be broken... I don't want any part of it.  It's nearly impossible to reform government entities.

4) Will said act infringe on peoples freedom.

It's just rare these 4 issues line up correctly, because our government is full of people with their own agendas which are usually "Pay off my buddies."

80% of new laws proposed feel like nothing more the political back scratching at the publics expense.

Really we need to find a way to have politics stop attracting sociopaths.

Something like a 2 term limit on every position.

well, there's a job gojn in at he origingal hotek in roslin if anyhone is that depsrate for a job its right niext to rosslyn chael fot those iof you who are tin to that kina thing :)

Socialism would be the perfect system if society was perfect. Unfortunately, that's never the case. It's far from perfect, so we have to do something more practical.

If society was perfect there would be no need for socialism.

The rich would provide for those less fortunate out of their own pockets.

I actualy think it would be better and more productive to follow that route.  To try and change our culture to focus more on helping others.

It is the most efffective form... and such things aren't unheard of in the past.

You should the UK, nearly 3 million people are unemployed at the moment including me, I have had several job interview over the last few months with no success.

I'll post a few definitions from Economics.com

...

Socialism - The exact meaning of socialism is much debated, but in theory it includes some collective ownership of the means of production and a strong emphasis on equality, of some sort.

...

Public Goods - Things that can be consumed by everybody in a society, or nobody at all. They have three characteristics. They are:

• non-rival – one person consuming them does not stop another person consuming them;

• non-excludable – if one person can consume them, it is impossible to stop another person consuming them;

• non-rejectable – people cannot choose not to consume them even if they want to.

Examples include clean air, a national defence system and the judiciary. The combination of non-rivalry and non-excludability means that it can be hard to get people to pay to consume them, so they might not be provided at all if left to Market Forces. Thus public goods are regarded as an example of MARKET FAILURE, and in most countries they are provided at least in part by Government and paid for through compulsory TAXATION.

...

Market Failure - When a market left to itself does not allocate resources efficiently. Interventionist politicians usually allege market failure to justify their interventions. Economists have identified four main sorts or causes of market failure.

• The abuse of Market Power which can occur whenever a single buyer or seller can exert significant influence over Prices or Output (see Monopoly ot Monopsony).

• Externalities – when the market does not take into account the impact of an economic activity on outsiders. For example, the market may ignore the costs imposed on outsiders by a firm polluting the environment.

• Public Goods, such as national defence. How much defence would be provided if it were left to the market?

• Where there is incomplete or Asymmetric Information or uncertainty.

Abuse of market power is best tackled through Antitruest policy. Externalities can be reduced through Regulation, a tax or subsidy, or by using property rights to force the market to take into account the welfare of all who are affected by an economic activity. The supply of public goods can be ensured by compelling everybody to pay for them through the tax system.

...

Any economy without some form of socialism would be a complete disaster.  It is a well understood economic fact that the government has to provide some goods through taxation, as the private market is unable to provide those goods. 

The difference is what people consider public goods.  The government providing public goods such as roads and a military is not considered socialism, I guess because people understand this to be an economic necessity.  However, people want to call other public goods, such as education and healthcare, as socialist if provided by the government.  Note that healthcare's status as a public is not as clear or agreed upon as the status of roads or security.

Its unneccesary, especially when people choose to stick a name on something for emotional reasons when it serves no purpose in the economic debate.

The government providing a limited set of goods and services as or more efficiently as the private sector is not called socialism, it is called good government. The government providing a set of goods and services regardless of the cost or inefficiency of government delivery to rectify perceived economic unfairness is called socialism.

Using healthcare as an example, even if evidence was presented that government run healthcare would cost several times and provide lower quality care than private healthcare Socialists would continue to press for public healthcare because they believed that a system without everyone having full access to healthcare was unfair.

In contrast, most people do support public education in principle and most of the opposition of public education in the United States comes from the fact that the United States spends far more than most other countries on their public education system and gets very inconsistent mediocre results from it.

Manus -

On one end, you argue about the abuse of market power should companies exert a monopoly or monosopy. Why is this any different if the government exerts the monopoly?

The difference is accountability.  If a private company has a monopoly, the company can charge whatever price they want and deliver whatever quality of good they want, and the consumer has no choice but to purchase the good.  If the government has a monopoly, they need to balance price and quality with consumer expectations (similar to what a private business would do in a competitive market), and if politicians fail to do so then will have to answer to the public.  Note that this phenomenon is not unique to democracies, even a dictarotship/monarchy like Saudi Arabia wants to keep the price of government provided goods (oil) down to keep the populous happy.

You violated your own defintion of socialism, which is what my point of my post was.  You stated:

     Government does a good job of providing goods - not Socialism

     Government does a bad job of provding goods - Socialism

Your defintion of a socialism has nothing to do with wether or not the government provides goods, just if the government can provide goods effectively.

...

Yes, under your definition socialists would desire equality and push for the government to provide healthcare even if it was more costly.  But are they not socialists if they push for government healthcare and it turns out to be less costly?  Is a capitalist someone who pushes for the private market to provide goods even though the government is more efficient at providing that good?

...

Yes, the United States government is doing a poor job at providing education.  Let us consider the United States government providing education and the United Kingdom's government providing healthcare.  If one government does a good job at providing education and another does a bad job, can we say that one government is socialist and the other is not, even though they are fundamentally doing the same thing?