Trump’s war on socialism will fail

[Lethargic Aptitude]

I understand what you're saying, but we can't ignore the people who get rich through inheritance and the fact that, although many rich people work hard, they don't work 300 times harder than their common employees.

When you attack inheritance you attack liberty. And as such the government becomes over reaching. The end result is bad, very bad. Not too mention that its directly related to Marxism.

 

[iguanaman]

What gives you the right to determine how much money someone else should make.

It's not my right. It is the Governments right to control tax rates and has been since their inception. Why is it anybodies "right" to amass huge fortunes when that is detrimental to the health of our entire economy? The high tax rates are commensurate with the damage the astronomical incomes do.

A world where a few people have most of the wealth motivates others who are poor to strive to earn more. And when they do, they’ll invest in businesses and other areas of the economy. That’s the argument for inequality. But it’s wrong.

Our study of 21 OECD countries over more than a 100 years shows income inequality actually restricts people from earning more, educating themselves and becoming entrepreneurs. That flows on to businesses who in turn invest less in things like plant and equipment.

Inequality makes it harder for economies to benefit from innovation. However, if people have access to credit or the money to move up, it can offset this effect.

Don't listen to the rich: inequality is bad for everyone

 

[braindrain]

What gives you the right to determine how much people should pay for housing?

And where have I claimed to have that right. Oh thats right. No where.

Do you have any other strawman to try and create.

 

[braindrain]

You do understand that a useless wall has absolutely nothing to do with national security right?

If it did we would have needed to build it centuries ago...

A wall that is properly watched can play a very large part in securing our borders. You disagreeing on that doesn't change the fact that it's true.

Yes because circumstances can never change over centuries

 

[braindrain]

It's not my right. It is the Governments right to control tax rates and has been since their inception. Why is it anybodies "right" to amass huge fortunes when that is detrimental to the health of our entire economy? The high tax rates are commensurate with the damage the astronomical incomes do.



Don't listen to the rich: inequality is bad for everyone

You just claimed that no one should make that much money so obviously you feel that you have that right.

And yeah let's give the federal government so much control over everyone's lives that they stay dictating how much money per year someone can make. What could go wrong

Why are you so jealous of other people's success

 

[iguanaman]

Seems we have a fundamental difference of philosophy here.

Tax rates should be set at what the government needs to fund the services its charged with providing (and not one cent more), and not as a means of overt government control of the economy.

The services the federal government should be charged with are outlined in the Constitution, and there should be very little beyond that, and should proposals be made that expand government they should be duly considered with great hesitancy exercised (clearly hasn't been in a long time, but needs to return).

The greater the power and intrusiveness of government the lesser the freedom of the electorate. As the freedom of the electorate is paramount, the government gets what's left over, and no more.

I don't believe that this fundamental difference of philosophy is something that is going to be resolved one way or another in the middle of an Internet forums such as this.

Be well.

Your 19th century thinking ignores 100's of years of history. Tax rates are not just to provide revenue, since WWII tax rates have also included confiscatory top levels that limited the incomes of the very rich. No much revenue was generated by the 90% levels of the 1950's because no one would take salaries high enough. That was the point. When those rates were slashed CEO salaries skyrocketed while workers wages remained flat. It was no coincidence.

It's not only our problem either....

 

[iguanaman]

You just claimed that no one should make that much money so obviously you feel that you have that right.

And yeah let's give the federal government so much control over everyone's lives that they stay dictating how much money per year someone can make. What could go wrong

Why are you so jealous of other people's success

Why do you think the very wealthy need your protection? What is wrong with tax rates that are good for all of us?

 

[braindrain]

Why do you think the very wealthy need your protection? What is wrong with tax rates that are good for all of us?

Why do you think punishing people who are successful is what the government should be doing.

Why do you think giving the government even more power and control over our lives is good for all of us.

Someone making millions of dollars a year is not in any way shape or form stopping you from making money on your own. No need to be jealous and hateful.

 

[molten_dragon]

The trend in the US is toward more support of socialist policies, not less. The biggest opponents of socialism are the baby boomers who grew up during the cold war. To them, socialism is the enemy who might nuke them. But they're starting to die off in greater and greater numbers now. On the other hand, millennials who reached adulthood right around the Great Recession have a rather dim view of unrestrained capitalism, because it treated them pretty badly. That, combined with the fact that they're too young to remember the cold war, makes them much more likely to support socialist policies.

It seems pretty inevitable to me that we're going to see a steady gradual shift toward more socialist policies in the US over the next 10-20 years.

 

[Taylor]

There's TWO articles and they both place the blame of this unprecedented income inequality on REPUBLICANS.

One article, one opinion piece. The article doesn't blame it on Republicans. It quotes a Democrat that blames it on Republicans (in addition to others that blame it on other factors).

 

[Taylor]

Did poor people get poorer or did rich folk get richer?

False dichotomy.

 

[Bum]

“We socialists are trying to save capitalism, and the damned capitalists won’t let us.”

Of course you are; No parasite wants to kill off its host completely.

 

[apdst]

Bull****, my daughter was refused an emergency procedure when I had just started a new job and I was a couple days away from the insurance kicking in, and because it was in the morning and there ER was considered urgent care until five, so they could refuse patients without insurance.

The next closest hospital is seventy miles away...

What was the procedure?

 

[Xelor]

....

Don't listen to the rich: inequality is bad for everyone

So, I clicked on the link to the study referenced in paragraph two of the article you cited and got this message: "Sorry, the page or file you are looking for was not found (error 404)"

Accordingly I reference the following study: "The Impact of Inequality on Growth."

The review of the evidence suggests that while some of the traditional channels by which inequality affects growth have solid theoretical backing, empirical evidence is elusive. Intuitive and historically verified growth-accounting methods predict that if inequality, through its impact on diminished educational opportunity, leads to a less-well-educated workforce against a counterfactual with less inequality, growth will be diminished. But for a number of reasons stated in the text, there is no correlation, even with the requisite lags between trends in inequality and trends in labor quality.

Nor is there evidence, at least not a first blush, linking higher levels of income concentration to reduced consumer spending as theories of marginal propensity to consume or save would predict. One explanation for this seeming contradiction, however, is that sharply rising household equity and its wealth effects offset this effect, leading to far stronger consumer demand than would have otherwise prevailed.​

The short is that while there are reasons to attenuate income inequality's increase, none of them is macroeconomic. From a policy making standpoint then, the way to address income inequality's impacts is not with economic/fiscal/tax policy but with other policy measures. Those measures need to be things that, rather than making wealthy folks, compared to their current wealth/earnings increase rates, less wealthy/high-earning, facilitate folks who are insufficiently wealthy to enjoy a "decent" lifestyle wealthy/high-enough-earning so they can purchase for themselves a "decent" lifestyle.

Far and away the most efficient and effective ways to do that are (1) boosting access to education and boosting the standards students must meet to earn documents attesting to the nature and extent of educational content they've mastered, and (2) focusing federally funded investments in research of innovative "stuff" that is, in turn, freely shared (save for national security/defense research findings/lessons learned) with private sector innovators and investors who convert the research into productive capacity and jobs for the thus better educated workforce.

I repeat what I've elsewhere stated:

I don't care that my "neighbor" is far wealthier and higher-earning than I. I care that I'm wealthy and high-earning enough to enjoy a decent lifestyle. If my "neighbor" can enjoy a "more decent" lifestyle, well, good for them. That's about their contentment, not mine.​

It is with that ethos that I find ridiculous the current nature of rhetoric about income inequality.

 

[Xelor]

It's not my right. It is the Governments right to control tax rates and has been since their inception. Why is it anybodies "right" to amass huge fortunes when that is detrimental to the health of our entire economy? The high tax rates are commensurate with the damage the astronomical incomes do.



Don't listen to the rich: inequality is bad for everyone

From your referenced article:

If wealth is concentrated among only a small group of people, it actually increases demand for imported luxuries and handmade products.​

Tell me you realize how ridiculous a remark that is.

It's not endogenously ridiculous for the remark merely encapsulates what it means for goods to be income elastic. It's ridiculous because nobody in their right mind is going to cry about not being able to purchase "imported luxuries and handmade products." I mean really:

• Just how concerned are you if you can't buy your wife a marten coat?
• How sympathetic is anyone about the fact that millions of folks cannot easily afford the wares of Pagani or A. Lange & Sohne?

In my earlier post whereof I wrote about "living a decent lifestyle," no such accoutrements and gizmos were what I had in mind. Simply put, a "decent lifestyle" entails more than food, clothing, shelter and transportation, but not so much more that it consists of buying "imported luxuries and handmade products."

 

[Keridan]

There isnt anything wrong with it. Its a ploy meant to imply how unfair life is that THEY have so much and others have so little and how REALLY the rich SHOULD have their wealth stolen and given to the poor...because after all...its not FAIR....

Leftists look at wealth as if it is a zero sum game. There are only so many pennies and the rich have them all. Its a lie, but one far too many people buy into.

I've noticed a lot of this. I've also notice the stat always seems to be given on it's own. I kept wondering if people thought it meant something else or led to another point, but again and again I see people mention inequality as if that alone explained why it was bad.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I'm just curious, do Socialists believe that someone starting with a basic education can enter the workforce and achieve financial success on their own or is government intervention necessary for them to achieve financial success? Also, do Socialists believe that the individual bears any responsibility for their economic success or lack thereof?

As someone who leans Democratic Socialist, I'd answer yes to both questions. That is, yes, it's possible for someone with a basic education to enter the workforce and achieve financial success, and yes, it's certainly the case that individuals bear what I would identify as a necessary condition in terms of responsibility for their success; for success to come about, it is necessary for an individual to try.

However, these are not the only factors, and right now--increasingly since the 1980s--other factors are overcoming the power of the individual to determine their own level of success. I have seen these forces in detail, up close and personal, behind the scenes. Back when I was an employer within a larger corporation (I was the #3 guy in a corporation of about 500 people), I regularly had discussions with the President and CEO about wages, and part of our calculation was making sure that our employees had to take on debt to live, and stay in debt. What I mean by that is that this topic was a regular explicit part of our conversations about labor costs, and we did what it took to make sure that this situation became a reality. We understood that not only were we doing those things, so was everyone else, to create monopsony power so that we'd never have to worry about labor costs. We'd always be able to find someone to fill a job if we needed them, and we'd always be able to pay a fairly low price for that labor. The entire point of our labor policy was to remove as much power from workers as possible.

We contributed to politicians at all levels of government who would implement policies that helped us in that goal. And over a period of decades, that kind of program, executed in the public eye but away from public attention, has worked. Workers have very little power, and employers almost all the power, and the interest of the employer is to pay little for wages.

I finally came to the realization that what I was doing was evil, and was basically making evil men rich while people who worked hard and earnestly were just going deeper into debt and living lives of fear. So I spit out the kool-aid and decided to do something else with my life.

 

[sangha]

"Centralized Government planning, that's the ticket Comrade!" "The electorate should live by the benevolence of that state!"

How positively Soviet (and look where that ended up) :roll:

Has history really taught you so little?

Yes, it's positively Soviet...

...because the Soviets were known for being fairly elected, following a constitution, and taxing their incomes at 70%

 

[sangha]

And growing every day. Sadly people like you confine yourself to the notion you are ‘enslaved’ and it’s someone else’s fault.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Umm, the top 1% will always be one in a hundred

It's called "math"

 

[Lutherf]

As someone who leans Democratic Socialist, I'd answer yes to both questions. That is, yes, it's possible for someone with a basic education to enter the workforce and achieve financial success, and yes, it's certainly the case that individuals bear what I would identify as a necessary condition in terms of responsibility for their success; for success to come about, it is necessary for an individual to try.

However, these are not the only factors, and right now--increasingly since the 1980s--other factors are overcoming the power of the individual to determine their own level of success. I have seen these forces in detail, up close and personal, behind the scenes. Back when I was an employer within a larger corporation (I was the #3 guy in a corporation of about 500 people), I regularly had discussions with the President and CEO about wages, and part of our calculation was making sure that our employees had to take on debt to live, and stay in debt. What I mean by that is that this topic was a regular explicit part of our conversations about labor costs, and we did what it took to make sure that this situation became a reality. We understood that not only were we doing those things, so was everyone else, to create monopsony power so that we'd never have to worry about labor costs. We'd always be able to find someone to fill a job if we needed them, and we'd always be able to pay a fairly low price for that labor. The entire point of our labor policy was to remove as much power from workers as possible.

We contributed to politicians at all levels of government who would implement policies that helped us in that goal. And over a period of decades, that kind of program, executed in the public eye but away from public attention, has worked. Workers have very little power, and employers almost all the power, and the interest of the employer is to pay little for wages.

I finally came to the realization that what I was doing was evil, and was basically making evil men rich while people who worked hard and earnestly were just going deeper into debt and living lives of fear. So I spit out the kool-aid and decided to do something else with my life.

You tried to figure out ways to insure that your employees had to take on debt to live? That was part of your planning? That seems like a rather odd thing to shoot for. Unless, I suppose, you were in the lending business. I mean, most of the time management tries to figure out ways to be more efficient, more productive, more attractive to the consumer, etc. They generally try to attract higher skilled employees and develop the skills of their employees. They try to grow instead of preserve a golden road to the basement.

Why did you continue to work for people like that? Did you not have the self respect and/or respect enough for your employees to try to put a stop to that kind of thing?

 

[sangha]

Hmm... you seem to define the problem as politicians being for sale (corrupt) yet advocate giving much more power to those very same politicians. It would seem that the solution is to reduce the power of corrupt politicians not to give them ever more power.

The solution, as The Framers understood, is not to eliminate powerful people and institutions, but to ensure their powers were balanced so that none could overwhelm all the others

 

[Moderate Right]

Trump’s war on socialism will fail



According to The New York Times, the richest 1% in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%.

Americans have grown tired of this absurd inequality. The Trump/GOP Party exacerbated this inequality via the 2017 TCJA tax-cut bonanza for the wealthy.

Socialism has always been a failure but I think it is hilarious to say that socialists want to save capitalism. By the way, a recent NBC poll clearly showed Americans don't want a socialist for president.

 

[sangha]

The problem is that insurance is for the rare, unexpected and expensive events in life and is typically funded by premiums of varying amounts based on actuarial risk factors. What you (and the DSA) seem to want is for "the rich" to pay (by very progressive taxes on income and/or wealth) into a public fund making medical care have no out-of-pocket-cost for folks such as yourself.

No, the problem is the simple minded belief that 20th century solutions based on mythical free market forces will solve the problems created by 20th century solutions based on mythical free market forces

 

[VanceMack]

Umm, the top 1% will always be one in a hundred

It's called "math"

No ****. And as the population expands, more people are becoming millionaires...the members of the top 1%...and more people are becoming...well...you.

 

[ttwtt78640]

The solution, as The Framers understood, is not to eliminate powerful people and institutions, but to ensure their powers were balanced so that none could overwhelm all the others

That was clearly their intent by trying to strictly limit (rather than to simply balance) the powers of the federal government via the Constitution. To get around that limitation, congress (with the aid of the POTUS and consent of the SCOTUS) simply deems that whatever it finds to be "important" can become a new federal power (department, agency or program). My main complaint is not with the occasional violation of the Constitutionally defined separation of powers (within the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government), but with the constant and relentless increase in the scope and expense of the federal government powers.