Is this man truly a genius? An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an “A”.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a “B”. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a “D”! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the new average was an “F”. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Human nature will always cause socialism's style of government to fail because the world has producers and non-producers (makers and takers). It could not be any simpler than that.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Socialism doesn't mean "everyone makes the same amount of money" I would like to explain, but my english sucks. There are several over-simplifications and the "but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed" is outright wrong. Funny thing, I discussed this very same chain-mail today.

The professor deserves what he gets because he's allegedly an economics professor yet doesn't know how the graduated marginal tax rates work. Fail.

Dude we're not even close to socialism -__-

Um...yes we are. We have a centrally planned economy. We have the government in bed with business.

Obama has stepped in and decided that Alabama got too many points yesterday and has redistributed some of those points to Notre Dame resulting in a tie in the game and a tie for the national championship. When asked for a comment, Obama said, "Alabama obviously got more than their fair share. They didn't win that all by themselves! What does one team need all those points for"?

Um...yes we are. We have a centrally planned economy. We have the government in bed with business. The government even took control of two of the three automobile companies as well as other businesses. We have programs in place to re-distibute wealth. We have government controlled health care. China has a partial capitalist economy....but they are still communist.

Okay, first of all, I am not right-wing....far from it. I am a libertarian in the truest sense. I believe in limited federal government as outlined in the constitution. I do not agree with the wars of aggression that we have been involved in since the 1950s. I do not believe in the Patriot act or the War on Terror. I believe the US Government has overstepped its bounds and has been doing so for over 100 years.

I never said that the US was completely state socialist. However, we are much more geared towards socialism as well as state capitalism in which our economy is centrally planned and manipulated by the Federal Reserve in direct violation of the Constitution. We do not have a free market economy as we should. Yes, it can be considered crony capitalist and even corporatist. However, we do have a massive social program structure in which the main goal is redistribution of wealth. We are heading in more of a socialist direction with the mindset of "the good of the whole" attitude. Our founders believed that protecting individual liberty first would work for the better of the whole rather than thinking about "the whole" as a staring point. We also have a huge military industrial complex which is borderline Imperialism.

In the case of China, they are run by the Communist party of China and is still majority state owned business but could also be considered state capitalist.

I do know what communism is and The Old One described it when he described socialism. The two are just about one and the same.

We are not in a socialist state because workers do not have all that much control over the means of production. It's just that simple. It has nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth, or "averaging all the grades together", or any of that idiocy. The economy is not centrally controlled, and 9/10 of the crazy conspiracy powers attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank by right wingers do not exist. Basically it just buys & sell bonds and provide a couple of convenient banking services common to any clearing system anywhere in the world. You don't need to take my word for it, anyone with Wikipedia and some grasp of reality can understand that, but if you do buy into the ct loonybin stuff, you are already lacking one or both of those things.

Now, if the 99 Percent ever caught on, they might question why government issues debt at all. There is no real need to do so. The laws that currently require it have been retained to disguise our corporate welfare as a return on supposedly necessary lending. Rather than issuing debt, it would be much simpler if the government permitted itself just to spend money into existence, as appropriate, without borrowing from anybody. Bank reserves could simply be allowed to mount, with no need at all for them to attract positive interest unless the government deemed it appropriate.

Needless to say, any such move must be prevented from happening at all costs! Otherwise, reality would be easily perceived even by many in the 99 Percent, making it more difficult to justify our corporate welfare as legitimate income.

Socialism is (basically) common ownership of the "means of production" ex. farms, factories, any workplaces really and the tools/machines that go along with them. It's not just the gov't taxing and redistributing.

What?? Are you serious? You are clueless as to what the Fed does and what they are capable of. Try looking up fractional reserve banking. Do you realize they answer to no one and have never been audited?

Anytime anyone uses "socialism" to describe Obama means they clearly don't know what they're talking about and have a poor grasp of the definitions of different government systems. And thus I don't have to listen to them, because they have nothing to contribute.

I always wonder why people say socialism has never worked when there are plenty of democratic socialist countries whose economies are far better off than America's right now.

I always wonder why people say socialism has never worked when there are plenty of democratic socialist countries whose economies are far better off than America's right now.

O RLY? Name one.

Sweden, Germany, France, Holland, etc.