Oppose Redistribution; Communism and Socialism
greenblue wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
Giving everyone an equal opportunity is okay. But in a system where everyone who has different abilities and strengths is allowed to pursue their own endeavors, inequality will be natural. Oppose redistribution of wealth to the parasites who seek to steal our livelihood. Let's keep Communism and Socialism where they belong. Not on this North American Continent.
I work for my dollars. I want them. I'm building my business from the ground up. I deserve the fruits of MY labor. I'll be damned if I pay a one-percent transaction tax. As a matter of fact I'll be damned if I sit down and let Social Security steal my money- the money of someone who will never retire. Giving our hard-earned money to those with disabilities, I applaud; I myself am handicapped. However, those who have no legitimate reason for not contributing to society are but leeches, and deserve none of my money; or yours for that matter. And I'm angry because that's what they think they're entitled to.
I work for my dollars. I want them. I'm building my business from the ground up. I deserve the fruits of MY labor. I'll be damned if I pay a one-percent transaction tax. As a matter of fact I'll be damned if I sit down and let Social Security steal my money- the money of someone who will never retire. Giving our hard-earned money to those with disabilities, I applaud; I myself am handicapped. However, those who have no legitimate reason for not contributing to society are but leeches, and deserve none of my money; or yours for that matter. And I'm angry because that's what they think they're entitled to.
I doubt that the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" slogan, refers to leeching from the government.
Well then, it's a good thing I never amounted that slogan to leeching from the government. But that's what it leads to and Communism, as we've seen, is either impossible to sustain, or can only be enforced through the barrel of a gun. Although Communism in China was actually Maoism and it was Stalinism in Russia. I've heard Communism hasn't actually been tried. But perhaps that's because it ignores the egoistic trait of humans. There will always be the selfish and there will always be the selfless. Any attempt to eliminate one or the other will fail and has failed.
Rosennoir wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
Taxes are necessary. Equally necessary is the regulation of their application. All in moderation I think.
mcg wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
Taxes are necessary. Equally necessary is the regulation of their application. All in moderation I think.
Now tell me how that is going to buy our country a first class military establishment complete with nuclear deterrence. How big a customer base is there for Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers?
ruveyn
mcg wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
Taxes are necessary. Equally necessary is the regulation of their application. All in moderation I think.
Good point. handn't thought of that. Do you support voluntary taxation then? And are you a Libertarian? You sound it.
Rosennoir wrote:
Good point. handn't thought of that. Do you support voluntary taxation then? And are you a Libertarian? You sound it.
Collective public goods can not be readily sold. For example National Defense. Who will voluntarily pay for a first rate modern military establishment. And there is the more general problem of the Free Riders. How do you deal with that?
Only those goods that can be produced privately and consumed privately can be sold on the market. National Defense is indivisible and collective in nature. It is either for everyone or for no one.
ruveyn
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
God DAMN public roads, public prisons, and public courts. STEALING OUR HARD EARNED MONEY SO WE CAN LIVE IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH HARD EARNED MONEY IS POSSIBLE!
Master_Pedant wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
God DAMN public roads, public prisons, and public courts. STEALING OUR HARD EARNED MONEY SO WE CAN LIVE IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH HARD EARNED MONEY IS POSSIBLE!
I hope you realize I'm talking about creating policies that can be the most efficient for the people who work and contribute to eliminate the leeches. I'm not saying paying for public infrastructure is a waste of money.
Sniveling brat.
Rosennoir wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
God DAMN public roads, public prisons, and public courts. STEALING OUR HARD EARNED MONEY SO WE CAN LIVE IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH HARD EARNED MONEY IS POSSIBLE!
I hope you realize I'm talking about creating policies that can be the most efficient for the people who work and contribute to eliminate the leeches. I'm not saying paying for public infrastructure is a waste of money.
Sniveling brat.
Your rhetoric has the implication - regardless, creating a "meritocracy" (as elusive as the state of society has been) would still require redistribution of wealth. Under your due diligence criterion, there's no reason the hereditary rich should be able to hoard wealth from the industrious.
Rosennoir wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
What do you think? SOMEONE must agree! MY money- MY choice!
Your money, your choice. Unfortunately the tax collector has a different view.
ruveyn
God DAMN public roads, public prisons, and public courts. STEALING OUR HARD EARNED MONEY SO WE CAN LIVE IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH HARD EARNED MONEY IS POSSIBLE!
I hope you realize I'm talking about creating policies that can be the most efficient for the people who work and contribute to eliminate the leeches. I'm not saying paying for public infrastructure is a waste of money.
Sniveling brat.
Describing a competent engineer or technician who was fired after 30 years on the job because cheaper help could be found in Southeast Asia as a leech is rather nauseating language. Guys over 40 who have been kicked out of a job spend months and years trying to get a decent paying job and huge numbers find no takers. These decent people could, of course on your advice, quietly starve to death or commit suicide or perhaps rob banks but that seems not a good alternative to getting some kind of official help.
Rosennoir wrote:
It should be the job of the State to ensure that they get jobs. Every person uses resources and thus every person who can should at least provide for themselves; I see no rational reason why every able-bodied person can't be employed.
And, of course, the establishment of a huge bureaucracy to see to it that each person gets work will itself employ a huge number of people and require taxes to support it. Assuming private industry cannot absorb all the unemployed at a wage which will see to it they have a decent living new enterprises supported by government taxation will have to be established and this in itself will require further taxation. This system was envisioned in the Russian Soviet system and is popularly called communism. It was not noted particularly for its efficiency nor the quality of its output.
Sand wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
It should be the job of the State to ensure that they get jobs. Every person uses resources and thus every person who can should at least provide for themselves; I see no rational reason why every able-bodied person can't be employed.
And, of course, the establishment of a huge bureaucracy to see to it that each person gets work will itself employ a huge number of people and require taxes to support it. Assuming private industry cannot absorb all the unemployed at a wage which will see to it they have a decent living new enterprises supported by government taxation will have to be established and this in itself will require further taxation. This system was envisioned in the Russian Soviet system and is popularly called communism. It was not noted particularly for its efficiency nor the quality of its output.
Well then it seems the only system which can truly eliminate unemployment is Fascism if what you say is true. We also have computers; I'm sure there could be MANY automated systems in place to automatically correspond with businesses and corresponding local areas with job offerings for potential employees.
Rosennoir wrote:
Sand wrote:
Rosennoir wrote:
It should be the job of the State to ensure that they get jobs. Every person uses resources and thus every person who can should at least provide for themselves; I see no rational reason why every able-bodied person can't be employed.
And, of course, the establishment of a huge bureaucracy to see to it that each person gets work will itself employ a huge number of people and require taxes to support it. Assuming private industry cannot absorb all the unemployed at a wage which will see to it they have a decent living new enterprises supported by government taxation will have to be established and this in itself will require further taxation. This system was envisioned in the Russian Soviet system and is popularly called communism. It was not noted particularly for its efficiency nor the quality of its output.
Well then it seems the only system which can truly eliminate unemployment is Fascism if what you say is true. We also have computers; I'm sure there could be MANY automated systems in place to automatically correspond with businesses and corresponding local areas with job
offerings for potential employees.
The assumption here is that private industry is in desperate need of employees who somehow are terribly ingenious in avoiding work and are living luxurious and carefree lives on unemployment insurance and some sort of welfare which is dispensing billions of dollars to anybody who happens to take the trouble to apply.
People in deep debt and not receiving earned wages do not spend much beyond absolute necessities. This means there is no market for producing a great deal of goods with no purchasers. That means that industry is capable of producing more than can be sold so they don't produce, or they produce outside the country where the wages do not contribute to the market consumers. Also, automation has made a good many manufacturing employees surplus and they are not needed.
How do you solve that?
Sand wrote:
Good point. handn't thought of that. Do you support voluntary taxation then? And are you a Libertarian? You sound it.
I support people's right to voluntarily give their money to whomever they choose. I like to describe myself as a voluntarist, because it has nicer connotations than anarchist (I think less government is better government with none being best). When it comes down to it, government is just a monopoly backed by force. A free market could provide all the same services, and because people would only voluntarily exchange their money for a solution that is acceptable to them, all kinds of people (all with different wants and needs) can all get what they want.
ruveyn wrote:
Collective public goods can not be readily sold. For example National Defense. Who will voluntarily pay for a first rate modern military establishment. And there is the more general problem of the Free Riders. How do you deal with that?
Only those goods that can be produced privately and consumed privately can be sold on the market. National Defense is indivisible and collective in nature. It is either for everyone or for no one.
ruveyn
I would pay for a certain amount of defense (nothing nearly the scope of what we have now, though). If no one is willing to pay for something, then I would be highly skeptical as to whether the benefits of that thing actually outweighed the costs. I imagine national defense would also be much cheaper if privatized. Only those goods that can be produced privately and consumed privately can be sold on the market. National Defense is indivisible and collective in nature. It is either for everyone or for no one.
ruveyn
I hear people bring up this "Free Rider Problem" when talking about reducing the scope of government, but I can't think of a single example of this situation making a service unavailable for those willing to pay. Public radio and privately funded research universities are good examples. Maybe the market will find a way to prevent people from riding for free, maybe it won't, but if it doesn't then a free ride is not necessarily bad. If I plant flowers around my house, that benefits all my neighbors, but it doesn't entitle me to a sum of cash from each of them!
Sand wrote:
Describing a competent engineer or technician who was fired after 30 years on the job because cheaper help could be found in Southeast Asia as a leech is rather nauseating language. Guys over 40 who have been kicked out of a job spend months and years trying to get a decent paying job and huge numbers find no takers. These decent people could, of course on your advice, quietly starve to death or commit suicide or perhaps rob banks but that seems not a good alternative to getting some kind of official help.
Unemployment is caused by minimum wage laws, which are imposed on us by the state. Think about them for what they really do: there are two people, both who chose voluntarily to engage in business because each will benefit from it, and then the state says "No, this transaction cannot happen." We could have 0% involuntary unemployment, and all the people who are currently making above minimum wage would be unaffected by the change. A good first step, which I think would even be politically feasible would be to eliminate the minimum wage and give social security to all the people who make below the minimum wage. As these people who were once dependent on welfare would receive valuable training and experience in the form of their jobs, many would likely become more self-sufficient.