> Worse, the welfare states of Europe and folks in the US enjoy the standard
> of living we do to even attempt such self-payment only because of massive
> expropriate of the labor of third world workers producing consumer goods
> as sub-level wages. The goal of any real socialist or even social
> democratic moevment has to aim for expropriation of the income (at
> minimum) of the first world wealthy to pay not only for a welfare state
> here but for redistribution globally.
>
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Nathan, you amaze me. Your political vision combines ever more grandiloquent dreams of global socialism with fervent loyalty to a series of increasingly centrist New Democrats.
Without global redistribution, you say there is no hope of socialism or even social democracy. But the US government will not even allow third world countries to voluntarily *withdraw* from the global system. Asking the US to *fund* such a withdrawal is hilarious.
I assume you envision this American-funded world socialist state to be administered by a left-wing Democrat president. (Under pressure, of course, from below.) It's not going to happen. Even the Roosevelt Administration, which actually harbored a few people who shared your agenda, was dominated and overcome by the business wing that runs your party.
Seth