Socialism is about getting you to work as a slave for good of the state. Because if you complain you will be sent to the death camps.
The cold war is over, Stalinism is long dead. Give it up.
Interstate postal highways are already an approved tax under the US Constitution. You don't need socialism for the internet.. it's a corporate interest and they all meet to discuss and develop standards so their clients/customers/partners can grow via capitalism. It would have happened one way or another.. it's original intent was military use.Not so much slavery as the new serfdom. We've already got a big part of it, with Government owning a significant part of your labor (and taking its share, like a feudal lord, off the top.) The problem is that not many of us would like to live in a society with absolutely no socialism. Imagine trying to arrange an interstate (or the Internet) or national defense. Such things have to take labor either directly or in the form of taxes. So the real question is not shall we have socialism, but rather how much socialism is enough, how much is too much, and how do we manage to stay within that range.
damn, that kid is f'n ignorant.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1-QcAPiunk
Yeah!
Summary: We should be receiving free education, which we are entitled to, to get a middle class job, which we are entitled to, to eat food, which we are entitled to, and not be governed by these million dollar senators.
That's what the socialists will never understand: That the work product of one man can NEVER be the right of another. That's why not one single right in the Bill of Rights required the labor of another. Rights are individual, NOT collective. In a collective, there are NO rights. No freedom.
There is a new wrinkle this time around though. Our top leaders fully embrace these ideologies. Interesting times right now. We are truly at a crossroads. We can continue on the path of a Republic bucking a world-wide trend, or we'll go down a darker path that has been tried many times before with a 100% failure rate.
It's all down to the health care bill. It's the crown jewel of Socialism. Control over an enormous percentage of the economy and full control over the populous. We'll know soon enough.
That's what the socialists will never understand: That the work product of one man can NEVER be the right of another. That's why not one single right in the Bill of Rights required the labor of another. Rights are individual, NOT collective. In a collective, there are NO rights. No freedom.
The free market is necessarily always fair. If no resource owner will give you more than a chicken a day for your labor, your labor is worth a chicken a day. If a resource owner will give you a cow a day for your labor, your labor is worth a cow a day. Assuming that the party with fewer resources is free to walk away (i.e. is not unfree) then a voluntary transaction must indeed be voluntary. If I'd really like to have the cow but I need to take the chicken because my family is hungry, I have a greater need for the chicken than does the resource owner. That is the essence of a free market transaction, that both parties have something which the other values more - and it is inherently more fair than having some third party or external force set the value of my labor and his chicken. When we adopt socialism in whole or part, it is not in search of greater justice or fairness but in search of greater wealth at less expense or to provide a minimum return to those whose labor is worth nothing or at least less than we as a society judge acceptable.
First off, "fair" is cutting off everybody's legs because the guy with no legs wants to play.
You cannot be "fair," and free.
Secondly, "coercion" is dependent on the individual, and not universal. Not all failed farmers, etc were coerced into labor, many have, and continue to start new lives and trades. I dare say any worker who finds them self coerced into labor is simple weak minded and a victim unto himself.
Socialism caters to the lowest common denominator, and limits everyone. Freedom rewards the highest common denominator and limits no one.
Is it possible that there might be a third path? Some sort of proper mixture of capitalist and socialist elements? It's not as though our current predominantly free market system is working out real well. To hear some people tell it, all we need to do is adopt real laissez-faire capitalism and our economy will boom and it will be good for 95% of the populace. (I think it will result in defacto slavery and dictatorship-by-employer.)
Do you deny that socialized medicine has proven to be less expensive and more efficient in other nations? Are you purposely closing your eyes to the facts? I don't know how much clearer it could be.
United States:
- 17% of GDP and growing
- Tens of millions uninsured or under-insured
- Insured people living in terror of losing their jobs and health insurance
- Hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies each year, many of whom had insurance.
- Businesses burdened by insurance concerns and costs.
- Wealthy insurance executives
Nations with Real Socialized Medicine:
- Much smaller percentage of GDP
- 100% coverage
- Zero medical bankruptcies
- Often more doctors per capita
- A more content populace
- Businesses not burdened by insurance concerns
- Fewer wealthy insurance executives (oh noes! Whatever will happen to the yacht industry?)
United States: leading the way in modernized medicine with the whole world reaping the benefits for cheap...
You don't realize who pays the taxes in this country. We've got a growing slice of the pie being zero-liability voters that receive more back than they put into the system. Tens of millions. The bottom 50% of wage earners contribute to only ~3% of total federal taxes paid. The top 25% wage earners pay over 85% of the country's taxes, with the top 1% paying ~40% of the nation's taxes.
Actually, real socialized medicine is LESS EXPENSIVE than our current system. We would SAVE money by having it while eliminating a great many of the problems in our current system. How can we afford not to have it?(Income tax figures for tax year 2007) The middle class falls between the top 25% and top 5%. In order to pay for such programs, you either are completely going to rape all the top wage earners who create the jobs.. thus driving them out of the country if they haven't left already.. or you're going to aim at the middle class and completely rape them on taxes.
I agree with you that we are fucked because collectively we are a nation of irrational morons.You certainly aren't going to rape the bottom 50% wage earners. Anyhow, to pay for all our debts and proposed programs racked up since just 2008, there isn't enough money if you took 100% of everyone's income over the next decade. Over $11T (over 20 if you want to count foreign entities in the equation) in bailouts.. over $1T for just the startup of the "healthcare" overhaul.. etc. Sorry to break the news, but we're fucked. Oh, and did I mention we expanded the defense budget and are expanding the war on terror? Hypocrisy at it's finest.
Medical and scientific research occurs in other nations, too. Whatever extra expenses we suffer as a result of research is dwarfed by the massive amount of inefficiency in our current system. Do we really need to pay insurance companies and insurance company employees, medical billings specialists, company benefits plan managers, and insurance brokers? No! They contribute almost NOTHING to the actual provision of health care. That's where the waste and expense is. Those people and entities are not actually producing any wealth; their employment in those fields constitutes a huge amount of economic waste and their productive ability could be put to better use producing actual wealth.
Obviously not, since you think free trade works better for agrarian societies (where currency is largely an accounting mechanism) than for the modern societies which were largely created by free trade and its attendant specialization of labor and potential rewards for risk taking and innovation. I suspect this is just another symptom of our "gimmie your stuff" entitlement mentality.We all understand the free trader principle.
The problem is that while it may work well (or maybe not) for agrarian societies when dealing with chickens and grain, it might not work very well for modern industrialized societies with complex goods and services and much more complicated social arrangements. In other words, perhaps it just doesn't scale very well. Maybe instead of contemplating what is ideal and what works well for 18th century agrarian societies we should contemplate what works for modern industrialized populous societies.
This, in spades. We have almost reached the Democrat goal of 50%+ of the population paying no taxes (or more properly, convinced they pay no taxes, not understanding that taxes on corporations are passed on to the consumer) and receiving government largess. from that point we will have a small, very wealthy class that makes the rules and largely self-selects its new members, and a very large poor class (that largely thinks it is middle class) which is equalized by oppressive taxes and government redistribution. At that point progress largely stops because starting new businesses will become difficult and self-defeating. Only education and working for government will offer any real prospect of improvement in one's condition. Only large corporations and those individuals favored by government will start new businesses. We are going to be Greece within a decade, two at the most. Except we'll be fatter and even more spoiled, if possible.You don't realize who pays the taxes in this country. We've got a growing slice of the pie being zero-liability voters that receive more back than they put into the system. Tens of millions. The bottom 50% of wage earners contribute to only ~3% of total federal taxes paid. The top 25% wage earners pay over 85% of the country's taxes, with the top 1% paying ~40% of the nation's taxes. (Income tax figures for tax year 2007) The middle class falls between the top 25% and top 5%. In order to pay for such programs, you either are completely going to rape all the top wage earners who create the jobs.. thus driving them out of the country if they haven't left already.. or you're going to aim at the middle class and completely rape them on taxes. You certainly aren't going to rape the bottom 50% wage earners. Anyhow, to pay for all our debts and proposed programs racked up since just 2008, there isn't enough money if you took 100% of everyone's income over the next decade. Over $11T (over 20 if you want to count foreign entities in the equation) in bailouts.. over $1T for just the startup of the "healthcare" overhaul.. etc. Sorry to break the news, but we're fucked. Oh, and did I mention we expanded the defense budget and are expanding the war on terror? Hypocrisy at it's finest.
Someone else posted this video in a similar thread, but it's a good view.
http://fora.tv/2008/06/12/Gabor_Steingart_The_New_World_Disorder
The gist of this guy's argument is that we aren't currently living in a world where free trade is fair. Back in the '60s when we had free trade amongst equal trading partners, free trade worked... but now that we have free trade between us (very rich) and dirt poor peasents in LatAm, Asia and Africa things aren't fair anymore and that exerts downward pressure on us. That's not to say free trade isn't working, but it's just much less beneficial for the majority of middle/low class westerners.
Your reply to me is respectful and I will attempt to reply in kind although it may not seem so.Is it possible that there might be a third path? Some sort of proper mixture of capitalist and socialist elements? It's not as though our current predominantly free market system is working out real well. To hear some people tell it, all we need to do is adopt real laissez-faire capitalism and our economy will boom and it will be good for 95% of the populace. (I think it will result in defacto slavery and dictatorship-by-employer.)
You've got all the talking points of socialized medicine there. It's been talked to death. I'm not going to bother going into any detail.Do you deny that socialized medicine has proven to be less expensive and more efficient in other nations? Are you purposely closing your eyes to the facts? I don't know how much clearer it could be.
United States:
Nations with Real Socialized Medicine:
- 17% of GDP and growing
- Tens of millions uninsured or under-insured
- Insured people living in terror of losing their jobs and health insurance
- Hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies each year, many of whom had insurance.
- Businesses burdened by insurance concerns and costs.
- Wealthy insurance executives
- Much smaller percentage of GDP
- 100% coverage
- Zero medical bankruptcies
- Often more doctors per capita
- A more content populace
- Businesses not burdened by insurance concerns
- Fewer wealthy insurance executives (oh noes! Whatever will happen to the yacht industry?)
I'd disagree that free trade isn't fair - it is the definition of fair, that both parties have the unfettered opportunity to trade something they personally value less for something they personally value more. I would certainly agree though that free trade is not smart for us in the USA, in the long run. Ideas, capital and even production equipment are all fungible, so unfettered free trade will always tend to drive production to the lowest labor cost per unit of production. We get cheap goodies in the short run, but lose our wealth producing jobs (and therefore our wealth) in the long run.
Confiscatory taxation is theft. Pretty soon all the people just move out that have all the wealth. We've been witnessing that over the past several decades with all the outsourcing of jobs and hiding of money in foreign accounts.Funny thing is, the smaller percentage of people at the top own most of the wealth. It doesn't seem like they're suffering paying all those taxes.
Maybe what we need to do is to fix our nation's economy so that a larger percentage of have jobs that are good enough and pay well enough that they too could pay taxes? But what if that meant that many of the people paying high taxes now had less income as a result of their having to pay more money for American-made goods and services?
Actually, real socialized medicine is LESS EXPENSIVE than our current system. We would SAVE money by having it while eliminating a great many of the problems in our current system. How can we afford not to have it?
I agree with you that we are fucked because collectively we are a nation of irrational morons.
If we were rational we could solve our economic problems, but then again we wouldn't have many of our current problems to begin with. We wouldn't have allowed American jobs to go overseas, and we wouldn't have imported foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas to displace Americans from jobs that Americans should be working. We also wouldn't have imported tens of millions of poor people to displace the working poor from their jobs and to put downward pressure on their wages while also exploding our nation's population.
You know what my prediction is, of course. We're going to transform into an overpopulated, impoverished third world country. The rich will still be rich and they will still live well, but the other 95% of the populace will be poor.