I'm a Democrat and not a socialist. n/t

[Ocelot II]

60. Those things are not socialism.

Socialism is an economic system in which the government controls the means of production and distribution. The existence of publicly-funded services and utilities does not make a society socialist unless the government also owns the entities that produce all of those services and utilities. The European countries that are touted as socialist, particularly Scandinavia, are actually examples of highly-regulated capitalism (and some of them are also monarchies). There are private corporations; people own their own businesses; and taxes on corporations and individuals are high enough to pay for social services. Even the Norwegian oil production company, Equinor, is only partially owned by the government, which uses profits from that ownership to fund social programs; the rest of the stock is owned privately. If we are going to promote "socialism" we need to understand what it really is and what it really is not; I think the preferred model is actually Scandinavian-style regulated capitalism.