we tend to honor the “self-made” person who has made her own fortune and achieved success through her own hard work

We rightly honor those persons not because they did everything themselves but because the created something not they inherited something.

Most so called Socialist countries are also Capitalistic. Capitalistic just means that individual are allowed to own things like a home or factory or a car. These things belong to the individual not the state. Even the U.S. is a Socialist state with government (collective) ownership of much land and infrastructure. The U.S. is also Capitalistic in that it does allow almost unlimited ownership of personal property but it does retain the rights to almost all land through the right of eminent domain.

While the Federal, State and Local governments don’t provide as nice a package of social services as some other developed countries it still is a socialist country. Both the Republican and Democrat parties are Social Democrats at their core they just disagree about the amount and kind of socialism that the each jurisdiction should be providing and what kind of regulations we should have on Capitalism and Markets.

TEK