The arguments for socialism

[mu4]

Why do you attribute resilience and strength to economies that have some planning? Redistribution does not create wealth.

I'm not sure what you mean here? I never attributed resilience or strength to planning, nor did I attributed it to market based mechanisms.

I think the modern economies that have planned and market qualities have shown their resilience and strength.

Redistribution can be a efficiency mechanism, used to create greater efficiencies in systems. The primary mechanism of redistribution in relation to socialism is the redistribution of wealth in the form of wages/education/etc for labor to the unemployed and members of society who are not in the market economy for whatever reason. There have been many reasons for why people have been left out of the market economy, whether it is lay-offs, cost cutting for business profit, and many other factors. When these people are able to provide for themselves and benefit the economy, they generate wealth.

I'm not for all forms of wealth redistribution.

Currently in the US, the income tax for the middle class is much higher then the capital gains tax. By the fact that most of the capital in the US is owned by the rich and ultra rich, this is a form of wealth redistribution to the wealthy as they generally pay lower taxes then the middle class. So this form of wealth redistribution I am absolutely against as it penalize wage earning members of society vs ownership members of society.

You call modern economies successful? The west is set to economically collapse sometime between six months to three years from now.

Almost every economy in the world is some form of mixed mode economy, and they all are of varing levels of stability and success. The collapse of much of the world happened 100 years ago, due to gross inequalities in many areas of life. People fought for the equality of the sexes, races, class, and ethnicity.

The US has largely abandoned it's working class in favor of financial service, real estate and other capital oriented industries in the Post-Reagan era. Privatization and deregulation has lead to lay-offs in pursuit of growth, reduction of taxes on the richest member of society and social services programs which are outdated and only help non-working members of society have led to large deficits and reduced efficiency. The real wages of the middle class is lower then it was in the 70's but the wealthy are wealthier then ever before. What has happened isn't a failure of socialism, because that never existed in the US, not really, but a failure of free-market utopianism, a delusion much like Soviet style command economy.