Jeff Barber[SMTP:jeffb@issl.atl.hp.com] wrote , in reply to Jim Choate, replying to William Geiger:

Many people will argue that Medicaid, Medicare and the like are not Bad Things. But they can't honestly be labeled "insurance". And they definitely *are* "socialist" mechanisms.

They're not socialist - just the welfare state. If that's all you mean by "socialist" you end up including all sorts of odd people - like Bismarck's Prussia, the arch-conservative empire which invented the welfare state. In fact you include practically all government. Even occupying armies usually try to do famine relief, if only to get the refugees off the roads. The word becomes so broad it is emptied of meaning and is only used as an insult - just like the way some peope on the left use "Nazi" or "fascist" If "socialist" means anything it has to mean social control of the supply side - as opposed to "capitialism" which is control by the suppliers of capital. Like it says in a Good Old Clause: "to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry ... upon the basis of thwe common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange..." It's possible to imagine a socialist economy in which there was no welfare system - ownership of business distributed amongst everybody, managers of each business appointed democratically; everyone starts with an equal share, but no helping hand if you don't make out. Whether many people who say they are socialists would want to live in such an economy is a different question.