Are we there yet?

[rich_t]

1. "Nationalization of our natural resources, beginning with the coal mines and water sites, particularly at Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals."

2. "A publicly owned giant power system under which the federal government shall cooperate with the states and municipalities in the distribution of electrical energy to the people at cost."

3. "National ownership and democratic management of railroads and other means of transportation and communication."

4. "An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation."

5. "Immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all public works and a program of long range planning of public works ... All persons thus employed to be engaged at hours and wages fixed by bona-fide labor unions."

6. "Loans to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works and the taking of such other measures as will lessen widespread misery."

7. "A system of unemployment insurance."

8. "The nation-wide extension of public employment agencies in cooperation with city federations of labor."

9. "A system of health and accident insurance and of old age pensions as well as unemployment insurance."

10. "Shortening the workday" and "Securing to every worker a rest period of no less than two days in each week."

11. "Enacting of an adequate federal anti-child labor amendment."

12. "Abolition of the brutal exploitation of convicts under the contract system and substitution of a cooperative organization of industries in penitentiaries and workshops for the benefit of convicts and their dependents."

13. "Increase of taxation on high income levels, of corporation taxes and inheritance taxes, the proceeds to be used for old age pensions and other forms of social insurance."

[cavegal]

None of the above

[thundley4]

4. "An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation."

Only in a very limited sense.

[rich_t]

None of the above

All of the above currently exist.

[Freeper]

10. "Shortening the workday" and "Securing to every worker a rest period of no less than two days in each week."

I've had jobs before where I wished that was the law. 

[JohnnyReb]

10. "Shortening the workday" and "Securing to every worker a rest period of no less than two days in each week."

 I've had jobs before where I wished that was the law. 

I had a cushy job like that once....then I became self-employed.

[Eupher]

4. "An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation."

Only in a very limited sense.

I agree, in spirit. But I always come back to the very real problem of government bureaucracy, inefficiency, waste, fraud, and corruption.

*Sigh.*

[DumbAss Tanker]

There's about four or five that make sense as Government issues:  Flood control etc., limited unemployment insurance benefits, child labor laws (Excepting family-owned businesses, and with room for age-appropriate part-time work as well), and preventing actual brutality toward and abuse of convict labor.  I'd also have to say that on balance Social Security is a good thing, if certainly not without warts in both concept and implementation. 

Given the failure rate of small businesses vs. their share of the labor market, and the fact that real life at the employee's micro level is entirely different from life as a Sim in the macroeconomic models of theorists, the well-off, and larger businesses on issues like mobility of labor and freedom to contract for your services, it's just unrealistic and self-righteous to claim the individual worker is in a real bargaining position in the labor market, and able to reliably plot a course to a safe retirement, even if they were all smart enough to do that, which of course they aren't...and even smart people get burned through no fault of their own.

There are a couple of others that I can see some valid reason for Federal support or involvement, but not Federal control, like transportation infrastructure maintenance because of its overriding strategic and macroenomic value.   

[rich_t]

All of those are listed in the 1928 Socialist Handbook as desired objectives.

[LC EFA]

1-3 No
4 - Ensuring that things like publicly owned roads and bridges are flood proof should be a part of the QA process for their construction. While it's nice to think that people are prepared to pay usage directly or invest in the construction of major interstate and intrastate road systems;  in places like where I am it's naive to do so given the sparse population density.
5-8 No
9 - Old age pensions paid out as proportional to paid in and only on a voluntarily basis.
10-11 No
12 - Brutal can be an ambiguous term . I think convicts should all work for their keep in whatever role they're most profitable in, and that much like other domestic livestock should be kept in good health so they are more capable of working at maximum efficiency.
13 No

[DumbAss Tanker]

All of those are listed in the 1928 Socialist Handbook as desired objectives.

Doesn't make it 100% wrong just because an adversary is all in on it.  'At least Mussolini made the trains run on time' has a common element with 'Commodore Vanderbilt's NYC trains ran on time.'  The motives and means to get to the same end state did not have much in common at all.

America was not a world power in the age of laissez-faire capitalism, that only occurred with the addition of the Government to the labor vs. capital equation.  None of the three can really be allowed to be dominant, and the Government has a valid role to play in weighing the effect of what one of the others might want against the effect on the country as a whole, especially since the other two invariably deal from a position of their short-term interests and damn everyone else.

For instance, the transcontinental railroad wouldn't have been built for decades, if ever, without the massive subsidies given to the UP/CP joint venture.  Speaking of railroads, prior to Government intervention on behalf of labor in the industry in the early 20th Century, 20.000 railroad workers a year were killed on the job, because it was cheaper to hire new brakemen and switchmen than to refit the fleets of a hundred railroads of all sizes with air brakes and automatic couplersm in pure Capitalist economics.  That kind of abuse was the background of drafting the document in 1928.

It's not necessarily bad just because Socialists like it too, but there are huge differences in the 'how much' and 'why' parts of the picture.       

[rich_t]

Doesn't make it 100% wrong just because an adversary is all in on it.  'At least Mussolini made the trains run on time' has a common element with 'Commodore Vanderbilt's NYC trains ran on time.'  The motives and means to get to the same end state did not have much in common at all.

America was not a world power in the age of laissez-faire capitalism, that only occurred with the addition of the Government to the labor vs. capital equation.  None of the three can really be allowed to be dominant, and the Government has a valid role to play in weighing the effect of what one of the others might want against the effect on the country as a whole, especially since the other two invariably deal from a position of their short-term interests and damn everyone else.

For instance, the transcontinental railroad wouldn't have been built for decades, if ever, without the massive subsidies given to the UP/CP joint venture.  Speaking of railroads, prior to Government intervention on behalf of labor in the industry in the early 20th Century, 20.000 railroad workers a year were killed on the job, because it was cheaper to hire new brakemen and switchmen than to refit the fleets of a hundred railroads of all sizes with air brakes and automatic couplersm in pure Capitalist economics.  That kind of abuse was the background of drafting the document in 1928.

It's not necessarily bad just because Socialists like it too, but there are huge differences in the 'how much' and 'why' parts of the picture.       

I agree completely with your post.

Just cuz a socialist likes it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
But it does make me take a closer look when they do.