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How do you feel about socialism?
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If you have no right to any money you ever make, it logically follows that you have no right to anything you ever buy with your money, yes? And if you have no natural right to any of your possessions (except, arguably, maybe something you go and find in the woods), then wouldn't theft cease to be a violation of your rights, and simply be a violation of the social contract?
I see money - and, by extension, possessions in general - to represent, to a point, a direct conversion of physical will into materialistic form. This PS3 I bought for $400? That represents about 15 hours of work that I performed for pay. I took 15 hours of my life and effectively converted it into a PS3. If you take that from me, you are taking 15 hours of my life.
More generally, to the extent that any money earned represents one's time and energy, I think one should be considered to have a natural rights claim to that money, at least in theory. As a corollary, one would have less right to money that was not "earned" in the same manner - lottery winnings, inheritance, etc. Practically speaking, I think this would affect the moral claim of the government - or of society, really - to that money. In real world terms, the government should tax these things higher than income, all things equal.
All of this combines to create my general view on taxation - it is necessary, but it is a necessary evil. The government needs to tax your income to survive, but to the extent they are effectively taking away minutes of your life with every dollar, it should be done as little as reasonably possible.
Basically, I see the government as a noble vampire. It needs blood to survive in order to do good, but getting that blood is inherently an evil act.
Because you didn't earn it. My original post on this, two pages ago, lays this out better, but I'll summarize here. Just by virtue of your place of birth, who your parents were, where you went to school, etc., etc., you already have myriad advantages over other people. Those advantages aren't attributable to your hard work - they're just luck. You aren't entitled to 100% of your income because some percentage of your income is attributable to luck, rather than your own hard work. I'm not discounting or denying the fact that you work hard, rather I'm trying to put it into context.
Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure how to respond, frankly.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I think the best answer to this question is simply to say that you have a natural right to the product of your labor, but that not all of your income is necessarily a product of your labor. People who steal from you are taking without regard to your financial situation and without regard to your property rights. When the government confiscates a portion of your income, it takes only a percentage, which is our best approximation for the amount of your income which is attributable to luck.
I can sort of buy that, and it seems consistent with my general world-view. Basically, you are entitled to X% of the money you acquire, where X is a number between 0-100 depending on a number of factors including how much money it is and how it was acquired. Settling on this allows us to agree that taking 100% of your money is probably bad, and demanding you be allowed to keep 100% of it is also probably bad.
Right. A further advantage of this principle is that it allows for a progressive income taxation scheme. It stands to reason that those who make more were probably luckier than those who made less, and therefore, their X is somewhat lower.
Obviously, I should point out that we are engaged in approximation here. We cannot possibly know precisely how much of a person's income is attributable to their hard work as opposed to their luck, and it would be inefficient for us to attempt an individual-by-individual accounting, so we just have to do the best we can with broad categories and guesswork.
Inasmuch as the government has supplied the tools to make your hard work possible, or at least easier, I see it as a business or an investor claiming its fair due. Babe Ruth may be the greatest guy ever to swing a bat but he couldn't earn a penny doing it if someone hadn't built a field for him to play in.
True to a point, but I'd say that, moreso than the government, other free-market enterprises enable your wealth creation. I can't make good money as a project manager without the prior existence of the company for which I work. They wouldn't exist without the other businesses providing a market for their goods. It's true that the government helps to maintain the environment in which all these things are possible in much the way that, say, Adobe provided and maintains the software an artist uses to create digital works for profit.
I'd say the most pertinent part of this argument is in determining what sort of "fair share" the government is entitled to. In the Adobe example, maybe I paid $500 for PS and $50/year for technical support. Using this, I make $80k per year in revenue from the art I create. Which is entirely reasonable. And, I might note, Adobe's entitlement is pretty small as a fraction of my profit. If Adobe came up to me and said, "You know, we've run our numbers, and we've determined that we can't continue to provide support unless you start paying us $30k/year", I would probably grumble and steam but pay the money without animosity, because it's necessary for me to do my job. If they, instead, came up to me and said, "You owe us, man! Without our software you'd be nothing! Nothing! Now give us $30k per year or else!" I would tell them to get fucked. If, in the end, I decided to pay, I would be extremely bitter about the proposition.
In all, I'd say I owe much more to free enterprise, and to the creators of wealth and industry, than I owe to the government in any philosophical sense. Government provided the framework, but the creators are the ones who did something with it. The creators get their fair share from the transactions that go through the free-market. The government should get its share, too, with the caveat that anything other than a very small share had better be justified by necessity.
I am pretty much going to call this bullshit. First it is not the governments job to even out "luck", even if it is in fact "luck" and not hard work that got people where they are.
Second the WORK you do to EARN the money is the benefit to society. That is the sacrifice. Basically what your saying is i should go to work, to benefit society, in exchange i get a reward that should then be partially taken away to benefit society. The benefit to society comes in when i work, and in exchange I get money that allows me to continue benefiting society, and motivates me to do so.
Life is not fair. It is not the governments job to attempt to arbitrarily start enforcing fairness.
That doesn't sound very fair, does it?
Well, you know what they say about that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Then the fuck is the government for? 'Cause if you want to just let the dude with the biggest stick be in charge, you don't need a government for that.
Look at it this way:
The money you pay into the system is money you will be taking out if, through no fault of your own, you find yourself in hard times. That security is to your benefit.
And even if you, personally, never take that money out, said security provides a stability to the economy as a whole that definitely benefits you. So either way, for a given level of taxation, you are directly benefiting from the money taken from you.
I mean, it'd be great if a laissez faire economy was stable and perfectly meritocratic. But it's not either. Not even close. And thus we pay the government to make it so.
Really? What drives property rights, then, aside from a sense of basic fairness? Why should the government intervene when I steal your stuff, if not because of fairness? And don't say that it benefits society broadly, because you can make that same case for welfare.
Not really.
Yes, there is a need for people to do low-skilled jobs. Of course there is. But that doesn't mean that there needs to be an "underclass". The term "class" implies low economic mobility both within a person's lifetime and between generations. This doesn't need to happen, and in many countries it doesn't.
If you look at the recent OECD report on inequality, you will see that some countries have very low intergenerational mobility, like the US. Other countries have high intergenerational mobility, like Denmark, Sweden, and Australia.
Because we do need roads, the trains to run on time, police to enforce the laws, and various other services to keep things functioning. That is unless you want people like me in charge. However what we do not need to is sit down and start micromanaging people to decide who needs more than others. Provide services to all, and let everyone who wants to use them, use them.
How about as opposed to the government taking money from me under the assumption i might someday need it back i just keep that money and invest it? That way i can provide for my own rainy day without having to pay for government overhead to oversee when and if i need my money back.
So when someone screws the system, thats perfectly fine?
What if the hardships occur before you've had time to save? What if they last longer than you've allocated for? What if everyone else isn't as smart and wonderful as you, fails to save adequately, and their collective misfortune drives the economy into a ditch?
I mean, do you really think the Great Depression only affected people who were too stupid to save their money for a rainy day?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Then i either adapt to the changes in life, find other means of survival, or die. I do not expect a hand out from the government. I expect them to create the infrastructure so that the economy can allow me to provide for myself. Sadly they seem to think that making policies that allow people to get things they cant afford and then apologizing with money is a sound fiscal policy.
You really seem to not understand that people dying because they can no longer take care of themselves, and are a drain on society is not a bad thing.
And your really going to have to be a bit more specific on "screwed by the system".
I wish I was on my home computer so I could link my "First I was all
Do you use public services like Highways, the Post Office, etc.? Because under the current United States system that is a "government hand-out" since they pay for all those services. Heck you don't even need the Post Office yet we pay taxes to support it. There is not, in other words, a clear line between what is "government infrastructure" and what is a "handout." Are schools infrastructure? What about free college textbooks for poor students? What about treatment of obesity and treatment for alcoholism? These are clear examples of how "government handouts" are often pretty nessessary.
If you are referring to individual citizens when you say "policies that allow people to get things they cant afford and then apologizing with money" then your assumption is wrong. Historically the United States Government has supported Corporations consistently and with ridiculous amounts of money. In the end such "bailouts" do not benefit the citizens working for that company due to the innate design of American Corporations and capitalism in general.
I do support euthanasia in some cases, I must say Capitalism is probably one of the worst ways to decide who wants to live and who wants to die. the ability to collect green pieces of paper is a terrible way to measure mental and physical health since the individual has so little control over their situation. Sure they can make choices but their choices are dictated and limited by where they live and by the people around them. Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc. are all flawed systems. Socialism works well for the Swedes but on a global scale it might not work for a myriad of reasons. And global capitalism isn't working either. "The movement of small green pieces of paper," to paraphrase Douglas Adams, is not solving any of our long-term problems. We need to move beyond to a new system where people's needs are met, where we are free of greed, and where people have an opportunity to pursue what they want to do for the mere sake of enjoying it.
Because we tried that shit already.
We used to leave people to die if they couldn't look after themselves. We used to view people outside our group as enemies to be beaten. We started co-operating because it works.
Co-operation. This shit is basic enough for Sesame Street.
Why don't you get it?
Because cooperation is great, until the other guy stops doing shit and suddenly your expected to do the work and the other guy gets to continue reaping the benefits. There is a big difference between tax dollars creating jobs, to build roads, police our communities, provide services to everyone, and the government writing people checks to live.
I stand by welfare, if it is going to exist, should be an absolute last resort. Any medium wage paying job should provide a better quality of life than welfare.
The average welfare payout is around $600 for a family of four, or around $300 for an individual person. (I don't know what the maximum is.) The maximum food stamps payout is about $180. The maximum SSI disability payout is about $800 (but they will reduce that if you're also getting welfare).
It doesn't take a math whiz to see that a minimum wage job gives more money than that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I know I set off fireworks every time someone's grandma dies.
I think you would be well served, at this juncture, to step back from everything for a second, look at what you're writing, and engage in a serious inner dialog about whether the x% missing from your paycheck is really worth appearing to be either utterly lacking in human feeling or hilariously insensate to how real life actually works.
FOX once had a special on how Mr. Rogers and such were bad for children because they taught children "you're special."
Because self-esteem makes children activist and rebellious in nature.
But FOX News is evil, so that makes perfect sense.
And I think Detharin had to do too many group projects in middle school where the other people slacked off and had him do all of the work.
I tend to take the long view and file people who lack the ethics to make them useful citizens along with those who are not useful due to physical or mental handicap or lack of education.
At the end of the day, I'd rather spend 20K a year feeding and housing a useless person than 100K a year on sending them through the justice system.
I save money, and they get to be useless but happy, so everyone wins except the prison guards who wanted one more dude to beat.
Some people just cannot reform. But hopefully they're also lazy.
Yeah. Socialism, or related thing-a-majigs are not just about altruism, its also about making sure that the settled classes don't have to deal with so much in the way of poverty induced violence or crime. Small price to pay really
1048 a month gross. Your going to lose a bit of that due to taxes vs 600 a month + 180 for food stamps and you get to stay home. That is pretty damn close especially when you start getting assistance on your bills. That is assume one worker, two kids, and one person watching them.
It is great that some people have this "moral obligation" to force others to help their fellow man whether they are really actually helping them or not. That is all well and good. Others however do not really care about our fellow man. Some feel the government should take care of us, which requires more overheard, expense, and loss of freedoms. Others feel the government should stay out of our lives with corresponding less overhead, less expense, and less loss of freedom. You could break if down based on issue by issue and get a broad spectrum of what people want from the government, the cost, and what you gain or lose. Personally I find quite a few issues become much clearer when you remove emotion from your decision making process.
Well happily the tides of history seem to be against you - all civilised OECD states have been progressing towards a nicer form of society and government this last 100 years, with occasional blips. I much prefer my actual freedoms/quality of life i have today than some sort of idealised state of nature that never existed.
Well, that's why many counties are shifting from welfare to workfare (at least where the long-term unemployed are concerned).
I have two words for Ayn Rand: pompous bore. :P
These embarrassing examples emphasize the truth that a dictatorship is an unacceptable form of government for a socialist economy. There must be democracy. Anti socialist political parties need to have legal equality with socialist parties.
Socialism has not failed in a permanent sort of way any more than it will eventually replace capitalism. Both systems are destined to rise and fall in a hostile balance in which either benefits from the failures and excesses of the other. The tendency of socialism is toward governmental tyranny and economic inefficiency. The tendency of capitalism is toward growing income inequality and insecurity. We are seeing those tendencies right now.
In the United States socialism was never a popular ideal. Nevertheless, it was fashionable in educated circles during the 1930’s, and again during the 1960’s and 1970’s. It may again become fashionable, and perhaps even popular, if our capitalist economy continues to decline.
Fine, yes, individualism uber alles and all that rot.
What about the part where if everyone else fails, it drags you down, no matter how wonderful you are? If everyone else on your block winds up unemployed, you are going to be boned. Doesn't matter how you prepare, you are going to be boned. Maybe really hard. I suppose you could argue that the really awesome people are so prepared that no amount of economic turmoil could ever bring them down, but they'd be wrong. As I said (and you conveniently ignored), the Great Depression hammered a lot of people who did everything as right as possible, and were simply taken down by bad luck. The current economic shit storm is taking down a lot of people who did everything right, and were just taken down by bad luck.
So let's be clear on what you're advocating. You are saying that people who do everything right and are targeted by such a string of bad luck that they wind up jobless and potentially homeless deserve it because rah rah social Darwinism. That is what you are saying, whether you realize it or not. It's not just the stupid and lazy who get fucked by serious economic downturns. It's the unlucky, as well. It's people who work damned hard and save and plan and still manage to wind up in the toilet because sometimes life likes to fuck you in the ass.
Now, you may argue that I'm wrong and that bad luck doesn't exist to the extent that it can drive people into homelessness and permanent destitution when you yank away the social safety net. You may argue that the sufficiently awesome people exist in an economic bubble that protects them from the wide-reaching effects of others' misfortune. You may argue those things. But then you are completely wrong. I mean, like, way the fuck wrong. You are so far from right that you can't even see it anymore without the goddamned Hubble and even then you better hope it's a really fucking clear night.
What we're left with, then, is basically "fuck everyone who has bad luck." And I guaran-fucking-tee that if you were ever the target of such luck, you would change your tune right-quick. And if you have any kind of soul, that change would last even after society is kind enough to get you back on your feet. Or you could pull a Limbaugh.
No, none of that other shit is worth paying attention to. This is fundamentally wrong.
People dying because they can no longer take care of themselves is like the definition of a bad thing.
Even the freaking Neanderthal took care of their helpless members.