Socialism, Is It More Relevant Now?

Socialism has been looked upon like a "curse word" by Americans for quite some time. It was associated with Soviet Russia, the secretive and impregnable China and many such "unsavory" entities around the world.

Over the last few decades, when many European countries started to adopt a welfare state model, euphemism for socialist model, Americans were scoffing at them for allowing their governments to have so much control on their lives. Americans always believed that maximum freedom and liberty is what provides the best for the people and any government intervention on the day-to-day life was an anathema.

However this theory is dependent on the belief that th notion of "freedom and liberty" will be used positively by all participating entities. Looking at the current state of that country, it is clear that it did not happen that way. The so called 1% people, used all unethical means to amass wealth and skew the wealth distribution significantly towards them more so during the bad times. This was clearly evident in the way events unfolded during the 2008-09 recession, where when the majority of the people were losing out everything, jobs, homes, health, studies etc. these super rich people were busy counting money. Some companies actually made more profit during the slow down than before and they eventually managed to push in some of their senior executives into key positions at the Federal government positions.

While the recession affected most of the other nations including Canada and EU, they did not have to suffer a major change in the Human Development Index and wealth distribution. This as mainly due to the ability of their governments to exert control on the events that might have led to collapse of some of the key institutions in their country. Most of these governments follow a welfare state model, so that any changes to the macro economic condition will have lesser impact on the public life at least for the basic needs of food, health and...