Saying socialsm is American is very disingenuous to history and the truth. Irresponsible Keynesian policy hasn't even been proven one way or another it is why campus Econ departments still have such division. At the gatton school of business it was all the profs that came from the private sector were Austrian and all the professors that were always in the public sector that were keynsians I won't go into my theories of why but you get my point. Democrats used to be sane when Kennedy was in office he was a true thinking person that wouldn't of stood for any of the hogwash sanders is proposing. Guess that is probably why he got killed...
It was kind of sloppy for Sanders to make those statements in this past about being a "socialist" if he now wants to run on a democratic socialist platform. Because he is
not pushing a socialist agenda (a la the classic examples of socialism from history that have failed miserably) in this election, but a democratic socialist one (a la Scandinavia and such), which is a different animal from actual socialism. For example, the latter can work alongside capitalism but the former logically would not. And ya, perhaps Sanders' own words set up his own smear campaign. And he's in a tough spot with Hillary accusing him of not being a real Democrat, because he's not (neither is she, though), yet he could lose support if he openly states that.
There are semantic issues all over this campaign. People confusing democratic socialism for socialism, confusing the Democratic Party with an entity that must behave democratically in its primaries. It's confusing until people actually sit down and do some reading for a couple minutes.
Droppersneck, nobody here is trying to take away your right to your political opinions. People are just saying that you're using terms incorrectly and that with a bit of reading, you could improve your own argument and make it more respectable. If you can understand the difference between Keynesian and Austrian Economics, I think you can grasp how democratic socialism (a la Scandinavia) differs from pure socialism (a la the historical examples that have failed miserably).
What America has right now as an economy is neither Keynesian nor Austrian. It's not really Keynesian partially because though the government does collect a ton of tax dollars, it does not spend them in a Keynesian way (this is the Sanders platform mainly, to redistribute the tax money in a way that will create a bull market). And it's not really Austrian partially because the oligarchy relentlessly tries to legislate the economy and true Austrian markets are unregulated and free to breathe. We can debate over and over which is better, Austrian or Keynesian, but if you look around the world at the most successful economies, it's not that they are all Austrian or all Keynesian, but they all tend to practice a pure form of one or the other. As a libertarian/anarchist, I personally prefer Austrian economics, not least because of the behavioural factors you mentioned, but I'm interested to see what Keynesian economics would do for America. I say this largely because every other candidate, including Trump, would only lead our economic mess forward and nothing would get better. With what we have now as a basis, I think Sanders actually could make it better (at least in the short-term).
