Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Honestly that is one of the best ideas I've ever heard. 

Thanks but it would never be acceptable to the majority and I can't think of a practical way to increase participation in primaries so we are left with the current situation where the primaries on both sides are largely controlled by the wingnuts.  

Businesswoman.

Ahhh. 

Suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree on how much one of those things ties to the other. 

It is much more complex but I try to think more in % of Governmental control because there aren't any Pure Socialisms anymore than there are Pure Capitalisms. 

You can do that by looking at the percentage of GDP that the Government spends but that doesn't really tell the whole story either because regulatory socialism* moves you more toward a socialist economy without technically increasing the % of GDP spent by the Government. 

*Regulatory Socialism:
Here is an example of what I mean:  In Ohio, Public Utilities are technically privately owned but they are highly regulated and cannot shut anyone off for non-payment during the winter.  This was done for public welfare (socialist) reasons but it doesn't show up as a tax nor as government spending.  Instead, the expenditure shows up on the books of the "private" utility company and the revenue necessary to cover the expenditure shows up as higher utility prices paid by Ohioans to the "private" utility. 

Reverse can be true as well, where private businesses get subsides from .gov and tax breaks and the like.  Much is decried about EV tax breaks but there are plenty for O&G as well.  

I find the broad concepts of "socialism" to be fairly prevalent among younger college educated folks.  I prefer the term "central planning".  They deride how citizens make their economic choices (like spending at Walmart and buying beer and large TVs etc.) and think broadly government could make better decisions for "us".  AOC is clearly in this camp.  They also think Europe is socialist, which is not true in my opinion, using the normal traditional definition of the term.

I'd concur, insofar as the Scandinavian countries are concerned.  A few years ago I kept hearing young people talk about how we needed to be a socialist country and they cited the Scandanavian nations as examples why.  So I performed a cursory look at their economic and governmental histories, and how they operate today.  They have a lot of government benefits, but that doesn't equate to socialism, which I gathered is what the young people I heard actually wanted....for the government to do more stuff and pay for more stuff.  But those countries, I found, were actually more capitalist than the USA.  Fewer restrictions on businesses, that type of thing.  Also, their tax plans are not at all what the young people were calling for here.  Those countries give massive tax breaks to the wealthy, and hit the middle class and the poor pretty hard.  It's because when they tried to eat the rich back in the 70's, the rich took their money and drove economies elsewhere, so to their credit, the countries abandoned the idea of taxing the wealthy into leaving. 

I'm generalizing, not the least of which is because I'm lumping together three different countries I looked at, and their histories and policies are obviously all a bit different.  But in general, what they've got going on there and what the young people seemed to be calling for here are actually pretty different.  

The right in the U.S. routinely refers to social benefits like government run health care paid for by taxation as socialism. So...if we could all agree on what terms like that mean, then political mudslinging would be a lot less fun.

I think I would be fine with healthcare paid by Government - but not actually run by Government. They suck at it.

Nearly half of us health care expenses today are paid for by government.  The Brits have "national health care", the French have private health care paid for (usually) by government.  I hear a lot of complaints about it.