Can you have utopia (as described) without socialism? (wages, attorneys, ideologies)
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Just stumbled upon this conversation. ReachTheBeach has brought up an interesting topic and the responses have predictably gone off track. Here is a recent article from The Atlantic that might help. Hopefully the link will work without a subscription.
I live in the DC area...Do you realize how many in the 3 percentile work for the federal government?
I"ve said that the DC area was doing very very well financially way back during the election while Obama claimed he needed to raise taxes and got hammered by the left.
You are confusing wealth with income and dollars with people. I posted a link to figures that clearly show that the figures I am using are correct. I am barely in the top 3% of wage earners. Again, it was not to brag; it was because I was being accused of wanting social democracy out of greed. It would reduce my take home income. I support it out of common decency.
The link you posted speaks to the problem that results from a long history of having such a large income disparity. In the article, it says 41% of wealth is controlled by millionaires. If you subtract home equity (static wealth that doesn't really play much of a part in the economy), they control over half already. And if you scroll down to the percentages, in the US only 5.6% of the population are millionaires (and no, I am not one of them; this is wealth, not income) yet they have almost half the money. This is what people are justifying with unbridled capitalism.
What would really be interesting is a further breakdown to see how much is controlled by people with over 100 million and how few people that is.
How long have you been at 3% of income? Did you have time to build wealth. What about the young kids just climbing into the 3% of income. You advocate reducing their income before they have a chance to build wealth. Common decency? Take a look around, there are people who think nothing of taking other people's money, in fact, they are "demanding" more. They show no signs of common decency yet you expect someone just starting out, just starting to do well for themselves, high income not rich yet to just hand over their money to them.
This is what people are justifying with unbridled capitalism.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the middle class.
You don't get it do you? Our society is already socialism for the rich. The banks, too big to fail so the government takes tax payer money to keep the rich big banks afloat. Obama's tax increase was not on the big bankers, it was on the middle class funneling even more money to the rich.
Just stumbled upon this conversation. ReachTheBeach has brought up an interesting topic and the responses have predictably gone off track. Here is a recent article from The Atlantic that might help. Hopefully the link will work without a subscription.
Yes, the link works for me and I really wish I had that to link to when I started this. The discussion really has gone off the tracks and has become a debate about socialism versus capitalism in general, where I was originally hoping to discuss it in the context of what is detailed in the article. It doesn't really push a particular solution but I think it does a pretty good job of explaining the "problem". The Europeans seem to be doing a better job in general (not just the Nordic countries) of scaling back hours instead of putting so many people out of work.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the middle class.
You don't get it do you? Our society is already socialism for the rich. The banks, too big to fail so the government takes tax payer money to keep the rich big banks afloat. Obama's tax increase was not on the big bankers, it was on the middle class funneling even more money to the rich.
I do get that we already do have safety nets and we do seem to keep the ones for businesses and the wealthy in better shape than the ones for the poor. In many respects we are a social democracy but we do it with a patchwork of programs that creates a mountain of red tape. Consider this:
Quote:
Among the 108,592,000 people who fit the Census Bureau’s description of a means-tested benefit recipient in the fourth quarter of 2011 were 82,457,000 people in households receiving Medicaid, 49,073,000 beneficiaries of food stamps, 20,223,000 on Supplemental Security Income, 23,228,000 in the Women, Infants and Children program, 13,433,000 in public or subsidized rental housing, and 5,854,000 in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Also among the 108,592,000 means-tested benefit recipients counted by the Census Bureau were people getting free or reduced-price lunch or breakfast, state-administered supplemental security income and means-tested veterans pensions. The 108,592,000 people who were recipients of means-tested government programs in the fourth quarter of 2011 does not include people who received benefits from non-means-tested government programs but not from means-tested ones. That would include, for example, people who received Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, or non-means-tested veterans compensation, but did not receive benefits from a means-tested program such as food stamps or public housing.[ref] In short, there are more working-age people in the United States receiving some form of welfare than there are working-age people who do not.
I do get that we already do have safety nets and we do seem to keep the ones for businesses and the wealthy in better shape than the ones for the poor. In many respects we are a social democracy but we do it with a patchwork of programs that creates a mountain of red tape. Consider this:source:Basic Income: Why and How Should We Build a Basic Income for Every Citizen? by Marshall Brain
Yes, I am a supporter of basic income. I am sure you are shocked.
- How much income would be required to actually give everyone a basic standard of living? $15K - $20K per person?
- What’s the fiscal impact of that? Sending out checks to the tune of $6 - $8 trillion a year?
- You would have to zero out all the poverty programs and instead provide everyone basic income? What about special needs?
- Are America ok with their taxes doubling.
The other problem of course is that some people will not work, if you can live without working, some people will choose not to work. The tax base is going to be shrinking at the same time that the number of payouts has to go up.
Everyone should be contributing except for those who "really can’t work". A society that a significant fraction of the population, say that my job is just to take, and other people go out and make that money is morally wrong.
Public schools? Are we not going to guarantee that every child gets educated?
Redistribution programs because wealthy people don’t get nearly as much out of the system as they pay into it. What's going to make them continue to want to contribute if they are taxed so high at what point do they say, it's not worth it? I'll take my basic income and live off what I have. They become non-contributors shrinking the tax base.
Are you going to take away health care benefits for people who are too sick to work to buy insurance on $30,000 a year? Elderly or disabled and telling them... Here’s $10,000 a year, just like that healthy 20-year-old down the street, you get the same as he does.
The greatest poverty reduction program that the world has ever seen has been the U.S. That's why immigrants keep coming here.
The government can't even keep it's own house in order, in fact anytime the government gets involved in the name of helping the poor they make it much worse. Look at the housing, and school loans, all in the name of helping? And you want more government intervention? The only people and institutions that benefited are banks and colleges (liberal breeding grounds).
Welfare / Basic Income:
If you can't or unwilling to work you can already get basic income called welfare. Welfare is in the form of EBT cards and subsidies. If someone on welfare works then government takes money and benefits from them discouraging them from working i.e. keeping them poor.
Middle Class Workers:
T progressive tax code is a disincentive for the middle class. If someone wants a better life and opts to work more to make more money, the government takes more, some even move into a higher tax bracket where a higher percentage is taken. The higher your income the more government owns you.
15% of your labor is owned by the government
28% of your labor is owned by the government
35% of your labor is owned by the government
39.6% of your labor is owned by the government
Standard Deduction / Basic Income for Workers:
If you work, the government allows you to deduct a standard deduction for each person. That is.. they allow you to keep money you worked to earn... a basic income they deem you need to live on, after which they government takes more and more from you depending on how much income "you earned". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deduction
petch751,
I think one reason you and I are not seeing eye to eye on this is that you don't accept the basic premise. Did you read the Atlantic article that Senor Slick linked? It supports what I believe, making a much better case for what advances in technology will do to the labor market. You keep making arguments that only work if there will be enough jobs for every one. I do not think there will be and I don't mean I lean that way, I mean that I have seen overwhelming evidence to support that assertion (especially after reading the Atlantic article). The people who work the jobs that will be eliminated (or have been; this is already happening) are at the low end of the economic scale. The people who own the technology that is eliminating the jobs are already rich. This is kicking the concentration of wealth into overdrive. Yes, the tax base is shrinking; every day the money is becoming more concentrated in fewer hands. That is what unbridled capitalism does.
Anyway, do you believe that there will be jobs for everyone well into the future? If you do, it is silly for us to argue about our politics, because that is the very undoing of unbridled capitalism and if you don't think it is happening, there is no point in trying to discuss why we need changes.
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