Letters: Nov 28/13

Nov 27, 2013

The difference between socialism and capitalism

Capitalism promotes equality of opportunity to acquire wealth and socialism promotes equality of standard of living by redistribution of wealth by overtaxing the rich to give to the poor. Taxes should be fair to all, rich and poor, not the overtaxing of the rich to give to the poor. Capitalism promotes

hard work to achieve desired goals, but socialism promotes entitlement and dependency. Everyone does not deserve the same standard of living. It's common sense that the ones who work harder, longer and smarter should be rewarded for their efforts. In socialism the lazy are rewarded and the industrious are punished.

A caring society voluntarily helps relieve the causes of poverty and many benevolent capitalists do their part by providing jobs, paying employees fair wages and benefits and making large contributions to hospitals, libraries and universities. In contrast, the greedy capitalist deprives his workers of fair wages and benefits, so he can live in luxury. Unfortunately, many socialists rant about the greedy capitalists as the cause of all poverty and fail to give credit to the benevolent capitalists.

A socialist government who pays the lazy who refuse to work is buying their votes for the next election. No one bites the hand that feeds him. Most socialist governments believe they

know better than we do of how to spend our hard earned money, will extract high taxes from us, give back about fifty percent in benefits we may not like, and spend the remainder oiling their bureaucratic machinery. Socialists are known for big governments, tax and spend philosophy which results in entitlement, dependency and high taxes. Most Canadians like to keep their money in their pockets and spend it their way.

Socialism will not stand the test of history: In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the triumph of capitalism over socialism and the recent near bankruptcy of many European socialist countries should convince us of the bankruptcy of socialism. Margaret Thatcher summarized it very well by saying, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend."

Joan Wallace