Bill Meecham wrote:

>Comment below that over production caused the great depression; correct.
>More generally over production is the fatal flaw in capitalism, thus panics
>recession crashes, depressions.  One aspect of this is automation.  Clearly
>leading to large scale unemployment; and this can be averted only as in
>France: reduce the work week at the SAME pay.
>
>Incidentally, socialism is alive and well , socialists now run the government
>alone, or in coalition of: Finland Norway, Sweden Denmark, Holland,
>Belgium, Austria, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Luxemboug, France and
>England.  Yes
>England: Blair : an excess profits tax, funding jobs for young unemployed
>smaller school classes, joining the protocal in Europe to protect workers,
>a minimum wage, and freeing Scotland and Wales.  This position is clearly
>FAR to the left of Clinton's.

I am not convinced that is socialism. It still walks like a duck and talks
like a duck, the artificially produced eggs you speak of turn out to be
plastic when you examine them. For instance the "funding jobs for young
unemployed" you mention turns out to be mickey mouse training schemes whose
chief object is to police the poor. They are really no different in effect
than the 19th century work-house, designed to "test" the willingness of the
unemployed to take non-existent jobs. In the 19th century it was called the
"work-house test", applicants for Poor Relief were offered the work-house
and if they accepted they were deemed "deserving". The logic was that
anyone who was willing to subject themselves to the degradation and
humiliation which the work-house represented, MUST be desperate.

The modern equivalent continues this tradition, although with somewhat less
candour. These days it is supposedly done for the good of the unemployed
while in the 19th century (and modern USA I believe) such a pretence did
not occur. The training is useless - but that doesn't matter because the
jobs don't exist anyway - and the pay is usually equivalent to the dole.

I take great offence from your allegation that socialists run the
governments of Europe, they are no more socialists than was the government
of the USSR. You seem to be taking the word of a bunch of politicians. As
for Clinton - inasmuch as he has a position on the politcal spectrum at all
it is to the right of Reagan.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas.