No need to look "socialism" up. A system in which the government controls the major means of production. As far as I know,there has never been a successful,fully socialist form of government. I think that this type of government was first seriously introduced in Germany in the late 1880's. It however,was never completely implemented. The nazis (national socialists) combined socialism with extreme nationalism and we saw the results. Socialsim and communism were on the rise in euro-land after WWII, but the Brits jumped in whole hog. It was believed that the many government controls established in WWII in their economy recommended full socialism and the government bought out (with borrowed money...sound familiar?) all major industries. Coal, steel, power,public transportation,health care,etc. Since there was NO need to operate efficiently,the businesses didn't. Since the unions had a disproportionant voice in government (as we see here now) strikes were frequent and quickly rewarded. Why not give the workers what they want? We'll just operate the businesses at a loss. It was Churchill who said "Socialism is a great form of government until you run out of money". Strikes were very popular since striking workers got paid anyway and there were many government make-work programs (sound familiar?) There was little effort to maintain,much less improve worker productivity. Tax rates reached 94%! Why? For the same reason we will see big tax increases here. For the same reason he Obama is backing away from a 2nd stimulus bill. There is no more money. The Brits tried to operate as if the economy was 20% bigger than it was. It obviously failed and the euros learned not to "go there". We recently experienced about a 20% loss in real estate value, financial equities, and stock values,overall. Did we allow the courts to mediate the damage by allowing the companies to downsize,sell off bad investments, and demand rewritten union contracts? Nope. We took the socialsit road and we have NO reason to believe we will be more successful than the Brits. Reagan and Clinton cut taxes and spending and we boomed. Bush kept the cuts in place and we continued to boom. Then Frank and Dodd gave Fannie and Freddie away and the whole thing fell through. The Brits crawled outta their hole by floating the Pound (allowing it to be traded on the open market) even knowing it's value would be cut in half. Real money,not fake money was needed. They sold off their industries to investors. (privatization) Strikes affecting critical production/services were outlawed. We will become more familiar with those proccesses as this country,once again,elects some business savvy Repubs to do the same. But there is one problem we will have that the Brits didn't have. They could get back to work and SELL,SELL,SELL to a booming world economy led by the USA. We cannot. We ARE the world economy ,we are depply in debt, and our money is becoming ever more worthless. (Note: Thses comments were based on memory and historical facts. My interpretation,of course,but I suggest the facts support that interpretation).

Very well written Moon.