Can anyone explain why exactly socialism is bad?
I came here 10 years ago after having 20 years of living in Soviet Union and 10 years in transactional system in Moldova. Coming from the older generation (my grandpa was a model capitalist. So he raised my mom to be a good capitalist as well.) I expected to see the social formation my mom was telling about. However there is no capitalism in America. It's a post-capitalism formation.The difference: in capitalism the society is ruled by the God (primarily) and in todays USA society is ruled my money.
Having conversations with well educated Americans, they made me realize, that all the critics of socialism I had were actually directed mostly to a political formation and not economical. I started to share their opinion about necessity of brining socialist elements (especially after all Europe became socialist, and seems to be happy about it). That's what Obama does and that's why we support his politics.

Valentina, I, personally, like to examine state of the things by what I can see; not statistics, news reports or campaign speeches. In Queens, NY, the situation is not improving. A person I know who worked for past years in construction, is out of a job since November. He is on the brink of losing his house. He also have heard that there were programs that Obama's stimulus was supposed to provide, but nothing applies to him.

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Хочу лето (или нормальную зиму)

Valentina, i think this would be a good example of why socialism is bound to fail:
one economics professor made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich.
professor decided to have an experiment.
all grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
after the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got B. the students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. after econd test students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
second test average was a D! nobody was happy.
after 3rd test the average was an F.

as tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings. no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
everyone failed and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
could not be any simpler than that.
remember, there is a test coming up. the mid-term election in 2010! ;-) (v)

just because the professor didn't want to fail anyone, doesn't mean heshould have given everyone the same grade... and if none of thestudents in his class thought of that, then they all deserve to fail.
wouldn't grading on a curve be a more accurate representation of what socialism is trying to accomplish?

Socialist ideas build by K.Marx have some idealistic elements: everyone shell be motivated by their high morals (that what needed students in the example described). Of course, that will not work. As everything developing, socialist model of K.Marx needs improvements. However, (taking Europe as example) I think it would be great to have free or really low cost housing, utilities, schools and medicine. And that is only can be achieved on the government level. And that is a socialist approach.
I do not mean to eliminate private businesses or having own house. I also do not mean any limitation on the income. However, there was a good capitalist practice of doing charity. Money spend on charity are tax deductible. Another good way of spending money is to improve your own educational level. One more - improve your house (which leads to hiring contractors, etc, so less % of unemployment), or start your own business. Keeping money under the pillow is not a capitalist way.

(taking Europe as example)
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dont you check the news? it is a horrible example. multiple countries need financial bailout.
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"I think it would be great to havefree or really low cost housing, utilities, schools and medicine."
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we do have all of it here. we even have free medicine - emergency rooms of most hospitals are full of people without insurance and illegal immigrants who have headaches. we have social services. just dont want full blown socialistic crap all over the place....

The end of my previous post: and that's why I support increasing taxes as a stimulus for improvement. And if after paying your taxes you thing there is not enough money left, get a better job, move up.
About a post about a man loosing his house: wouldn't it be great to have a social program to avoid such situation. The example demonstrates actually the lock of social programs, so we do need more.
The only problem will be is to keep the right balance between capitalist and socialist elements in the economy. But as I see it: USA has a long way to go, before it will be necessary to get precaution.

In US free medicine and housing are for these who are qualified. Basically for these who are deep down.
With investment money, Europe is very tight to USA economy. That's why they have their problems now. And not because they have more social programs.

Marx also wrote that capitalism follows feudalism and then in turn is replaced by socialism... the Soviets jumped directly from feudalism to socialism... which is one of the reasons why their socioeconomic system was doomed from the get-go.