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Bernie Sanders summed up his understanding of the American economy this way:
"You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country."
Just how spray deodorant money would be diverted to hungry children, short of nationalizing the companies, isn't clear. But we know what Sanders is saying, and it is this:
"I have no idea how things work. Let me run everything."
In the Latin American paradises Bernie so admires it's done this way:
- Deodorant makers are nationalized and converted into one brand, which quickly becomes known for its poor quality. Then it becomes hard to get.
- Foreign brands of deodorants show up in the black market.
- Dogs are trained to sniff out foreign brands, and deodorant dissidents are denounced, caught, and imprisoned.
Rinse and repeat using any commodity you like. In Venezuela they repeatedly run out of toilet paper. The whole country. You could make a fortune selling it in Caracas.
The situations in Cuba, Venezuela, and the USSR being what they are Bernie looks to find a new example of socialism. Perhaps Denmark or Norway. But then they are increasingly xenophobic, and they still have a lot of capitalism. And they are soooooo white.
from James Lileks, National Review
Bernie Sanders summed up his understanding of the American economy this way:
"You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country."
Just how spray deodorant money would be diverted to hungry children, short of nationalizing the companies, isn't clear.
And I might be OK with it if EVERYBODY got a haircut to do it.
But the ownership/investment class has pocketed all the "raises" for forty years now.
And nobody told anybody here that it was gonna take fifty to a hundred years for the new consumers to start pushing our wages up again.
I don't always think I am right, and know that in different knowledge bases there will always be people who know more than I. The problem with both of the majority parties is they are populated by truly stupid people who don't know how truly stupid they are, and in their arrogance think that they know best how to run our lives. I don't care how you, the stranger down the street, or anyone else runs their lives as long as they do not intentionally seek to harm others, you know best what your needs and wants are as I know best what mine are and I seek the minimum in interference. Both parties seek maximum interference and we should seek and cheer the political death of both.Yes, we've all gone egocentrically insane. We always think we're right. We think we can do anything we want.
I agree that it would probably be good to equalize wealth at birth, if this were structured correctly. The thing is that at present technology and social systems could not do this without probably doing more damage than we could afford.
Probably not feasible, no, but I'm sure some things could be done to reduce inter-generational privileges and disadvantages. Taxing inheritances and gifts from friends and family at the same rates as regular income, for example (maybe with a higher exemption levels, especially for inheritance). Capital gains, too. Add a higher top tier of marginal tax rates - income above 1 million per year, for example - and have perhaps a 60% tax rate on it.
Sanders' remarks about many rich people being out of touch with the rest of society are interesting too. Again there's probably no complete answer, but one idea might be encouraging private schools to have a quota, a fifth or a quarter say of their students from poorer backgrounds. 'Scholarships' as it were, paid for mostly by the government from all these extra taxes. Not only would it help the poorer kids out, it might help broaden the worldview of some of the rich kids too.
One place to start to reducing intergenerational disadvantages would be a) making sexual education and contraceptives more readily available and b) reducing public support for each successive child beyond the first or second, rather than incentivizing large unsupportable families.
The economic planning you seem to propose would reduce efficiency of the economy considerably. One ceetainly want to give thought to how we could increase the level of income from employment. Most measures that popularly come to mind do not work. The issues want more complicated solutions.
I agree that it would probably be good to equalize wealth at birth, if this were structured correctly. The thing is that at present technology and social systems could not do this without probably doing more damage than we could afford.
Maybe Sanders' opinions would be a little less foggy to you if you actually bothered to read (and reference) the interview, rather than a couple of cherry-picked soundbytes from a National Review hatchet job? Just a thought.
A difficult task, I know - the interview was only done 11 months ago :roll:
10 questions with Bernie Sanders | CNBC
HARWOOD: Have you seen some of the quotations from people on Wall Street, people in business? Some have even likened the progressive Democratic crusade to Hitler's Germany hunting down the Jews.
SANDERS: It's sick. And I think these people are so greedy, they're so out of touch with reality, that they can come up and say that. They think they own the world.
What a disgusting remark. I'm sorry to have to tell them, they live in the United States, they benefit from the United States, we have kids who are hungry in this country. We have people who are working two, three, four jobs, who can't send their kids to college. You know what? Sorry, you're all going to have to pay your fair share of taxes. If my memory is correct, when radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.
HARWOOD: When you think about 90 percent, you don't think that's obviously too high?
SANDERS: No. That's not 90 percent of your income, you know? That's the marginal. I'm sure you have some really right-wing nut types, but I'm not sure that every very wealthy person feels that it's the worst thing in the world for them to pay more in taxes, to be honest with you. I think you've got a lot of millionaires saying, "You know what? I've made a whole lot of money. I don't want to see kids go hungry in America. Yeah, I'll pay my fair share."
HARWOOD: In the latter part of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan came along and there was a big pivot in our politics. It revolves around the idea that we need less government and more market forces. Do you think that basic pivot was wrong?
SANDERS: Let me answer it this way, John. I think there is obviously an enormously important role for the free market and for entrepreneurial activity. I worry how free the free market is. In sector after sector, you have a small number of companies controlling a large part of the sector.
Certainly, in my view, the major banks should be broken up. We want entrepreneurs and private businesses to create wealth. No problem. But what we're living in now is what I would call—what Pope Francis calls—a casino-type capitalism, which is out of control, where the people on top have lost any sense of responsibility for the rest of the society. Where it's just "It's all me. It's all me. And to heck with anybody else." I want to see the result of that wealth go to the broad middle class of this country and not just to a handful of people.
HARWOOD: If the changes that you envision in tax policy, in finance, breaking up the banks, were to result in a more equitable distribution of income, but less economic growth, is that trade-off worth making?
SANDERS: Yes. If 99 percent of all the new income goes to the top 1 percent, you could triple it, it wouldn't matter much to the average middle class person. The whole size of the economy and the GDP doesn't matter if people continue to work longer hours for low wages and you have 45 million people living in poverty. You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don't think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on. People scared to death about what happens tomorrow. Half the people in America have less than $10,000 in savings. How do you like that? That means you have an automobile accident, you have an illness, you're broke. How do you retire if you have less than $10,000, and you don't have much in the way of Social Security?
There are a number of things that can be done if we just stopped acting like capitalism is some kind of natural law.
Its a construct.
And it is concentrative in nature. The more capital you have the more you can get. And it has concentrated now to an extent that banks are too big to fail, money can be withheld from the economy to a degree it amounts to extortion, speculators can manipulate supply and demand curves, etc.
Its not our fathers' capitalism anymore. The world "filling up" and technology have changed the game so fundamentally that I believe an overhaul is in order. A four hundred year service, as it were.
But wealth concentration would make that almost impossible. The tantrums thrown would be disastrous. Because we have allowed money to pile up in few enough hands we can be disciplined for trying to address excesses in our made up economic system.
tell that to the local under-employed former workers in the then world's most dominant textile and furniture industries
i was in the room when the manufacturer owners implored Clinton's emissaries not to sign NAFTA, because to do so would put their industries under. he did and they did
There are a number of things that can be done if we just stopped acting like capitalism is some kind of natural law.
Its a construct.
And it is concentrative in nature. The more capital you have the more you can get. And it has concentrated now to an extent that banks are too big to fail, money can be withheld from the economy to a degree it amounts to extortion, speculators can manipulate supply and demand curves, etc.
Its not our fathers' capitalism anymore. The world "filling up" and technology have changed the game so fundamentally that I believe an overhaul is in order. A four hundred year service, as it were.
But wealth concentration would make that almost impossible. The tantrums thrown would be disastrous. Because we have allowed money to pile up in few enough hands we can be disciplined for trying to address excesses in our made up economic system.
Here's how I would frame it.
They did an interesting experiment on what people consider choice.
They put Americans in a room with several different Soda brands, and Americans saw that as a choice.
They did the same thing in former Eastern Bloc states in Europe and found that they did not see that as a choice at all, Coffea, Tea, Apple Juice, Soda, Water, that was seen as a choice.
As an example of Healthcare in the American context, I don't understand the Conservative argument of "Give the consumer choice", when the prevailing industry practice was to provide less care for higher premiums and kick people off plans for pre-existing conditions etc.
To me that's simply a choice between crap and more crap if they're all engaged in those practices.
In Canada, sure, for my basic provincial insurance for primary care I don't have choice per-say (although I'm not obligated to get it), but I have choice for additional insurance after that for things not covered :shrug: and it works.
To deny people a choice because you don't understand it is stupid and more than a little totalitarian.
There are many different brands of cola drinks, and I will tell you this: they are not the same.
To want the government to control your choices,
In Canada your baby was thrown out with the bathwater and you won't be able to get him back.
Deodorant examples aside, if a country makes a choice to serve its people on a silver platter to money grubbing companies who's priority is Shareholders and not actually providing life saving healthcare, I don't see dismantling that system as an act of totalitarianism.
But is is all sugary filled crap at the end of the day, much like HMO's :shrug:
Government doesn't actually control my healthcare choices nearly as much as an HMO would :shrug:
What the living hell does this mean?
There are 19.3 Million White-Americans with Annual Incomes below the poverty line.
There are another 28.7 Million White-Americans with Annual Incomes in the Lowest Percentile of the Income distribution.
There is another 70 Million White-Americans who are above the poor, but certainly are among the "Low" income bracket.
That's around 120 Million White-Americans, or 39% of the Nation who are Poverty-Poor-Low Income, and they don't "Qualify" for Bernie's redistribution based on their "White-Privilege".
Hey Bernie!
We're not WITH YOU!
As long as the Left practices Racial Pandering Preferences, ..... F* YOU!
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Irony defined: complaining about "racial pandering" in a post that drags race into a thread that has nothing to do with it and panders to whites.
The Lefties want to Buy Votes with Other People's Money... only, you don't give to EVERYONE, White-Poverty doesn't "Qualify" on account of our White-Privilege.
Well, Bernieonomics fails the test, because 60% of those in need are "Disqualified" by RACE.
Until the Lefties STOP with the Freak'in Official Racial Differential Treatment, EVERYTHING is about RACE!
Live by the Race-card, Die by the Race-Card.
Sorry Bernie!
We're Not With YOU!
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The only one playing the race card, or even discussing race, in this thread is you. You are dying by the race card. Irony defined...
Tell that to Bernie, when Millions of Poverty-Poor-Low Income White-Americans Refuse to vote for him or any Candidate of the Democratic Party.
There is NO SUBJECT not related to RACE in America, Post-Obama! He made SURE of it!
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So your racial fixation is Obama's fault now? :lol:
No. The Democratic Party, and Left's Problem is they have broke the camel's back.
Too Long they supported Institutionalized Racial Discrimination, and racial double standards!
White Americans no longer TRUST or Respect you!
Look at the above posted list of links, showing how it is far, far, more than just Kurmugeon who is put off by the Racial Pandering.
Face it, the Left, has Lost Working Whites...
... And you cannot Hope to win without U.S.
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That's real Marxist-Leninist jibber jabber right there.
You dismiss the value of everything in bad faith, I think. There's a lot more value and advantage in choice than you seem to realize.
That's an astonishing statement. I'm surprised that you'd even try to make it. If you don't like your HMO then choose another, or maybe a PPO or something.
Oh, but you're in Canada. No such choice.
Your government controls your health care,
you'll never be able to get those choices back,
and you're even ignorant of the value of those choices.
Well, even the Cubans, as long as they have suffered, are patriotic.
I never said I supported Sanders. I said his support comes from frustration with status quo politics.
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