You know you're a left-winger if...

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I have backed it up. A whopping 2% of the Israeli GDP last year was foreign aid--and it was spent on the military. Still, Israel has an educational system on par with Europe, better medical treatment and a household income that puts most other countries to shame. What other Middle Eastern country have achieved this? While the country isn't as capitalist as it was a few years ago, it's still one of the most capitalist countries in the Middle East (check the Heritage Foundation if you do not believe me).

Also, stop believing that weasel words like "integrity" gives you the upper-hand. Using Israel alone as an argument would be post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, so you might want to check out what happened to Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong after they made the transition to capitalism. Botswana and Zimbabwe was on the same level 30 years ago; the former chose socialism, the latter chose capitalism. Today, Botswana is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and has six times the GDP per capita as Zimbabwe.

The fastest long-term economic growth ever meassured, was the growth in Japan between 1950 and 1973; the fastest growth in one year happened in Iraq in 2004, after the oil was made private.

No you did not back it up. You made a statement, I challenged it, you tried to ignore it.

Israel is in a unique position and you held it up to be the leading example, not me. All of the examples you provide should be looked at individually to see where they have succeeded or failed. You have now rolled out your own argument, ignoring mine, and at the same time complaining about attempts to enforce ideas on others and being hypocritical.

With the constant drive for growth, what is the inevitable next step? Recession and the little people getting screwed over again. Maybe you are only young, I've experienced this enough times now to be more than a little pissed off with it.

I think that incitement shows a lack of integrity.

You didn't exactly back it up. All you did was to point out that Israel was in a constant state of war, which does not explain the household income today, nor the standard of living. Israel has not been given any chances that Pakistan wasn't given in 1947 or Zimbabwe was given in 1980. ISrael chose European style communism over socialism and would reap the benefits of this. If anything, being in a constant state of war would stall the development and not accelerate it.

The market economy moves in waves (always has done, always will do), but in the long run, it's still growing. What's peculiar, is that the countries in Europe that struggle today (Italy, Greece and so on), are the least capitalistic countries in Europe apart from the post Soviet states.

If you say you don't understand my post and I make an effort to clarify it for you and their is no response I can only assume you are deliberately avoiding the subject. It seems like you were just interested in creating friction.

I can not be bothered to reiterate my opinions if you choose to not respond directly, and avoid the parts you do not like. I'm not going to waste my time on a discussion with a question ducker. Is that better than lacking integrity?

Yes cyclic patterns exist everywhere in the natural world, usually the larger the rise, the larger the fall.

People have predicted the fall on capitalism since before the civil war. It never happened, and despite the fact that know-it-alls during any economic recession (no matter how insignificant) predict the fall of the EU, Japan and the US, it never seems to happen. The US has the 3. highest HDI in the world today--and only capitalist countries have a higher standard of living.

Capitalism didn't fall during the economic recession between 1870 and 1890, it didn't fall during the depression between 1927 and 1942 and it didn't fall after the oil crisis in 1973.

Cyclic - as in sine wave - as in rise and fall - as in it goes up and it goes down.

Nothing against earning money the old fashioned way, by fair earning for fair working. But my jr. chief, never did that. ^^ He delivers absolutly no benefit to our company, but on the other hand wants to receive money that others than him earn, by working hard for our company. Being son, has nothing to do with hard working. So we both agree, that it should be the ones, that are hard working, that should earn the money, and not the ones, that are lazy and are not willing to work hard.

Nothing against a chief, working hard as an idol for his workers, and having the risc if the company fails and gets into depths. But when I sit at 21:30 with the workers of our junior chiefs building sites, in the company to find ways to "conjure" money out of his building site, so that the project wont be a total loss and debts for our company, while he is since 10 hours swimming, ignoring that his buildings sites are running into catastrophy because of him swimming instead of doing what is needed to be done from an building site chief... thats not hard working. In no way. And senior chief agrees with me, but simply doesnt have the guts to throw him out.

Statistics prove that the poor work harder then the rich. Most of the poor have 2 or more jobs. I think it would be a good program to have the poor brought to wealthy neighbourhoods to teach the wealthy the value of hard work.
Work (both manual and creative) is valued less by our society then gambling (Wall Street etc). I find it tragic and yet comical that those that created the financial crisis (Wall Street) are called job creators. In fact, the elite in our country favour high unemployment as that keeps wages low.

The OP seems to think that's just unavoidable collateral damage.

Somewhere in this mess are the people who invent new technologies (and most of them do not work for the government!). These are the true job creators and true wealth creators. Thomas Edison was worth 10,000 dishwashers who "worked harder" than he did.

ruveyn

This is an indication of a failure of central planning rather than socialism or communism.

Ruveyn,
That is why I specifically mentioned creative as well as manual labor. (scroll up and reread my post).
The modern elite invent nothing. They merely bet on other's creativity.
Also, I was responding to the erroneous assumption that one succeeds in modern America thru hard work. That was once true (the 50s,60s,70s). However, to be a success today is more dependent on inheritance, the social status you were born with and luck.

Last edited by wittgenstein on 05 Aug 2013, 6:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Feudalism took a while to fall too.

Actually, Capitalism did fall. It was replaced by Corporatism. We (USA) are no longer a Capitalist country. We are a Corporatist country.
Corporatism, unfortunately, has many definitions. I am using it in the sense that the government and corporations are unified. Government gets its orders from international corporations.
I can sympathize with some anti-government folk because almost all the government's policies are exclusively concerned with the well being of corporations. However, being anti government is like hitting the puppet and ignoring the puppeteer. In other words,absurd.
Most anti-government people hate government, not because it interferes with our freedom but because they have the delusion that government interferes with corporate interests.

Hwo many jobs you have, is not necessarily an indicator of how hard you work. I've worked as a forklift operator in the past; most of my colleagues spent more time chatting, eating junkfood and hanging outside the entrance smoking cigarettes rather than working. Compared to what an engineer, a lawyer or a physician has done to get his/her degree, they're getting of very easily.