The Road Sign

While driving into Atlanta today, I saw a road sign that said “God is not a Socialist.” I have been thinking about it for a couple of hours and I would like to comment on this road sign.

God certainly isn’t a capitalist either. He would never condone the use of child labor in factories that Nike was guilty of at one time. He would never condone taking short cuts in drilling for oil to save money. He wouldn’t take advantage of his mortgage clients to make additional profits. He wouldn’t packages junk and sell it as “gold.”

The only time that Jesus became angry was with the money changers in the temple. They were taking advantage of the people who needed to buy sacrificial animals. He taught compassion, caring for the sick, caring for the children and caring for the elderly.

Since the New Deal the United States has been moving toward socialism. The United States practices socialist policies. We provide social security, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to farmers through agricultural supplements. Title I in education is a means to level the playing field educationally for poor children. The federal school lunch program is a socialist program.

Try to eliminate social security benefits and every American who has paid into the program becomes a socialist except for those who can afford to retire because they made enough money and had enough knowledge to make wise investments. Most people I know who had their retirement in stocks, lost their large portion of their portfolios because of the loss of stock values in Enron, Worldcom and other similarly sleazy dealings on Wall Street. Even the government banking bailout only helped those on Wall Street and not those on Main Street.

While I believe we should have a free market, I believe that free market taken to its extreme hurts the average worker and there should be some government oversight. The whole nation is hurting because of bad business practice from a relatively small percentage of people.

How many people are now working but can’t afford to invest, can’t afford to visit a doctor, can’t afford to fix the air conditioner in a broken down car…. They keep on working and rely on the belief that they will be able to collect social security when they reach a certain age. While the socialism practiced in fascist countries is certainly not good and takes the role of the government to an extreme, we can practice something that provides protection and still allows capitalism to flourish.

Capitalism and socialism both have problems. Neither one is free from fault. Don’t let labels fool you. We need to watch and make sure extreme beliefs don’t take root but we also need to address issues of taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves.