Those are communist, not liberals learn the difference. Anytime you take extremes to make your point, you make yourself an asshole.

@glennlab

@BD66 you just proved my point

@glennlab They may have good intentions, but the policies of the left are a disaster. People are fleeing blue states by the millions and moving to red states:

[travelness.com]

If you continue down the path that Stewart and the liberals want to take us down, you end up in a totalitarian state like these:

61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
1,072,000 Murdered: Tito's Slaughterhouse
1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea

because that's the only way you can keep people from fleeing the consequences of the disastrous economic policies.

@glennlab There are some roles for a limited government. I will address each one you have raised:

the post office: This is more of a "pay as you go" service where you spend money in proportion of the amount you use it. If the post office was gone, UPS and Fedex would step in to fill the void.

the internet: This is a myth. The government did the initial proof-of-concept, but it was capitalist corporations that invested the money to make the internet available to everyone. Companies like Cisco Systems (my former employer) built the fast routers. Companies like Netscape built the web browsers. Companies like AOL and Hotmail rolled out email on a mass scale. The capitalists deserve much more credit for the internet than the Socialists.

highways: This is another "pay as you go" service which is funded by gasoline taxes and tollways. Here in Illinois, our socialist government puts out the road cones in April and keeps them out until November, and you hardly ever see any work being done. We would get much more bang for the buck if we privatized travel on our interstate highways.

schools: I would be fine getting all the property taxes back I pay to fund schools each year. However it would hurt many poor people, and the costs of an uneducated population is much higher than the cost of funding public schools, so this is one that should stay.

social security: I have been paying in to social security for 38 years. I expect to pay in for another 14 years, and I don't expect to get much out of it after the Baby Boomers have bankrupted it. I would love to have all those Social Security payments back in inflation-adusted dollars. On the other hand, my autistic son will likely get Social Security payments from age 2 (when his mother passed away) until the system goes bankrupt, so it's probably a wash for my family.

FDIC: Banks engage in reckless lending. Individuals engage in reckless borrowing. After 5 boom and bust cycles between the Civil War and 1929, Congress finally figured it out and put insurance in place. History has shown this is good government policy.

SEC: The world is full of scammers, and it's also full of fools who will easily lose their money to the scams. History has shown this is good government policy.

military: The US military (along with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security) are the main culprits bankrupting our country. We need a military, but we don't need to spend $800,000,000,000 per year on our military. We would be much better off if we scaled this "Socialist" program down by a factor of 10.

@BD66 So you are not willing to give up ALL your socialist programs, and even say that some are good, why do you always go to bullshit first before you even attempt a reasonable discussion. While I am sorry about your son, without the socialist programs, you would probably be bankrupt.

The highways, most of the funding is from the general fund at the Federal, state, and local levels.

You obviously do not understand how social security works, it is an insurance program. You have a life insurance policy that will pay for your dependents until they reach maturity, you have an accident policy that will pay if you become disabled and you have old age policy that pays if you stop working due to age at 62. The system was not designed for you to receive your money and the only reason there is currently a surplus is that my generation agreed to pay for our parents retirement and our own in order to keep benefits for everyone.

@BD66 As far as the internet goes, I was involved in the early part of the development. Had it not been for the joining of efforts of the military and academia, it would never have gotten off the ground. In fact it had failed miserably in it's prior efforts. It took the brain trust of the universities and the discipline of the military as well as the federal governments ability to direct the utilities to allow the use of their lines to finally make it happen. The government is the one that built the microwave relay stations. At the time of conception, no business had the capital to finance such an effort or the desire to do so. The fact that they were willing to sit back after rollout shows that they delivered a product that others wanted, but could not afford to do the research on.

On the PO Fedex and UPS charge $10 for what the PO charges $.55 and still makes a profit. The PO is not bloated by greedy leeches that siphon off every spare cent for their luxury lifestyles. Yes they would fill the void, but the price for a first class stamp would jump to $10 and they would only deliver to 90% of all US addresses. Private industry in this case is obviously wasteful and corrupt with little concern for all but the most profitable customers.

@glennlab

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

[facts.usps.com].

WTactual F does this have to do with the OP?????
You seem Very confused.... not one of the governments you cite was ever, or ever will be, accused of being "unselfish".
Do you equate Communism with Unselfish, or what, exactly?
Did you fail to pay any attention whatsoever in HS?
Geebus H.........