How about the country discussed in the Daily Show clips, Sweden? Seems like a pretty fine place. Looks a lot better than the place I live in now. And France. Even if I'm not a citizen, I'd still get treated pretty well there. And England. Aren't they doing pretty well?
Neither Sweden nor the UK nor France are remotely socialist. The Daily show's clip was a jibe at the freep crowd
labelling them socialist and painting them as hell-holes.
All these countries are absolutely capitalist, as are the U.S.
The difference between the U.S. and say, Sweden, or France, is the existence of a welfare state instead of privatized welfare. It has however no rooting in socialism at all; the idea of state-run welfare has two founding stones: A) the protection of the financial markets from the influence of
institutional investors B) the conviction that a healthy populace makes for a more efficient work-force.
Both points are completely correct, and the crisis at hand came to being exactly because A) was being increasingly neglected. It would lead too far at this point to discuss this in detail here; but I invite you, if you are interested, to take a look at scientific literature on the impact of institutional investment on financial markets.
If a country that is purely Socialistic is bad, does that mean that Socialism is bad? Or can some Socialistic things be incorporated, for the betterment of the country, without ruining the country?
First, let's ask the man, Marx, what socialism is:
Karl Marx wrote...
"Sozialismus ist die Permanenzerklärung der Revolution, die Klassendiktatur des Proletariats als notwendiger Durchgangspunkt zur Abschaffung der Klassenunterschiede überhaupt, zur Abschaffung sämtlicher Produktionsverhältnisse, worauf sie beruhen, zur Abschaffung sämtlicher gesellschaftlicher Beziehungen, die diesen Produktionsverhältnissen entsprechen, zur Umwälzung sämtlicher Ideen, die aus diesen gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen hervorgehen." (Marx: Class Struggle In France)
"Socialism is the revolution made permanent; the class-dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary step in ridding the world of class differences; the abolition of the means of production they depend on; the abolitions of the societal relations rooted in these means; the upheaval of all and any ideas that originate with these social relations."
Then let's look at whether these things can be incorporated without ruining the country:
Can dictatorship (of the proletariat) be incorporated without ruining the country? It can not.
Can the other steps (abolition of the means of production that cause class differences; of their effects on societal relations; the upheaval of any and all ideas that originate with them) be incorporated without dictatorship and permanent revolution? They can not.
Case closed.
I'll admit, Socialism may not be the best thing in the world, but it's far from being the demon that a lot of people make it out to be, and a country doesn't have to completely forgo Capitalism to incorporate some Socialist ideas to help its citizens. So why do people act like it's either or?
Because socialism and capitalism are polar opposites that make a strong point of being mutually exclusive.