>>>>>http://www.gallup.com/poll/147881/Americans-Divided-Taxing-Rich-Redistribute-Wealth.aspx.
>>>>>
>>>>>I'll admit it's not 100%, but 71% qualifies as an overwhelming majority.
>>>>>
>>>>>;)
>>>>
>>>>Since when do americans understand the word socialism? :)
>>>
>>>Looks like trolling. Nothing but sarcasm or insults, please instead justify your view with a definition of what it is and what is wrong with so-called Americans' view of it. As an American, I'd like to know what you believe I think it is.
>>
>>If you really want to know it. The word 'socialism' is missused and abused in the mudd slinging from the republicans to the democrats. It has been abused in many american debates and esspecially during the elections. The americans litterally have redefined the word socialism like they earlier did with communist and liberal, which in effect has driven the american political arena to the right for the past few decades.
>>
>>Do you know the difference between a social democracy and the proven failed implementation of socialism in the USSR? Perhaps you do, but the gross of the american public does not. It became clear in the recent discussion here about social healthcare that even people that I value as intelligent really don't have a clue what they are talking about when they take the word 'social' out of context.
>>
>>Pointing to the USSR as to to prove why the word 'social' is a bad word, does ignore the fact that there are very succesfull social democracies on this globe.
>
>I am asking for the definition as you understand it and the definition you think Americans give it. You still haven't done that. You have only thrown insults with nothing to back it up. You may be correct (I'm really not arguing that you are not), but you haven't substantiated your insults yet.

In short, socialism is a political/economic ideology where the production means are publically owned and controlled. Wealth is to equally spread. It is about the direct opposite off unregulated capitalism and therefore is regarded as the ultimate evil by believers in of the latter.

The socialism and later communism that stood model for the USSR has been proven to be a catestrofic failure and it does not pay off to work harder than absolutely neccesary.

However social democracies are different in the way that they don't advocate an economic model based on socialism, but instead embrace capitalism for the core of the economy. However they do advocate to run certain services under the constrol of the state to create a safetynet for the ones that fall off the economic scale, because of bad luck, decease or otherwise. It is geared toward making sure that everyone contributes to the society to the best they can, and if they can't they will be taken care of by society itself.

In practise you'll see that social democracies, are not that much different from your society. Both have aspects of both capitalism and socialism but vary only, by what one could argue, on the small difference in the ratio of those aspects within their societies. Many european countries are considered, by US standard, social democracies (a few would ignorantly argue socialistic) are much more simular to the US then one would think. European countries have privatised a lot of the government owned industries the past few decades. The energy market, the communication market (Phone/mail) and even aspects of healthcare (e.g. insurances in the Netherlands) are privatised. OTOH, the US hold the two largest social programs in the world: MedicAid and Medicare.

The biggest difference I think is the way that the governments in social democracies are stronger in regulating markets to avoid the devastating consequences of unlimited greed.