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IMO, the problem (in our country) is that the highest producers are taxed at a much higher rate than those that simply have wealth as a means of income production. There is a problem when Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. I think it’s messed up that a PA earning $100K in a hospital pays a much higher tax rate than a retired person that’s stewarded his finances and has a $2MM nest egg.
In any case, there’s a difference between the government nationalizing huge sectors of the economy a la pre-Thatcher Britain, and having a more socialist government system. You can have an economy that’s extremely supportive of free enterprise while still having huge social welfare programs (Canada comes to mind.)
Socialism seems to work best when the population looks alike, speaks alike, and worships alike, and is generally not corrupt.
Anyone who thinks job creators are taxed at a high rate have never owned a business or filed a Schedule SE.
Those reports are FOX-NEWS-PHONY. I'm shocked that ANYONE would fall for them. Actual fraud rates in SNAP are very low, and most of what does occur is carried out by participating MERCHANTS.
That is a famous quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher. But is it true?
If you can find a way to tax the poor without taxing the middle class - i.e. redistribute income upward - isn't that infinitely sustainable, since soaking the poor does not make them disappear?
We've never seen a true socialist culture. I doubt we ever will. When I studied the different economic systems, it seemed to me that socialism was the only one of the three that gave a balance between the workers, monied class, and government (which is supposed to serve both). IF people didn't have such a negative view of sharing the wealth, they would see the truth of rising tides and floating boats. The fallacy is that slackers are rewarded. In truth, slackers should never be rewarded, but those that have spent their lives in service to their community should be supported once their ability to contribute is gone.
The problem of all three systems is a human problem: greed and laziness. Both disrupt the balance of power and are why we will never achieve a true Socialist state.
Say you want to open a bakery. In a socialist government you have to first consult the government to find out if you can obtain a contract to do so. If the government thinks there are enough bakery shops, you're not going to be able to open one. You're SOL, until which time the government thinks of a need, it has to be filled.
Wrong. Do you want to open a bakery, or do you not want, result is the same: it is forbidden.
The state bakeries can be opened only, and the government makes a decision.
China is the world leader on cheaply copying U.S. products. Original design and innovation - not so much.
I certainly agree, so far. But many projects are not primarily innovation based. Like infrastructure. Massive resources utilized in a quick and centrally directed manner.
Our Hoover Dam is a good example, especially as it involves several states.
He didn't say she was illegal. You have a reading comprehension problem. He said she used five WIC cards and each card had to be checked out separately by ONE person? Don't they teach you to read in Chicago?
I am the one who had a job that let me know how illegals are robbing us. That is a separate paragraph.
Somebody needs to check her I. D. is my opinion. Why would one person have five WIC cards? My opinion is there is probably fraud involved. Stores don't care if fraud is happening as long as they get their money. I could be wrong. I have never owned a WIC card and have no idea how they work. It just seemed strange to me that one person would have five different WIC cards and have to check out groceries on each card separately. That is the point of the post.
Nowhere in that post is a separate paragraph about your job. The second paragraph is your conclusion that "we taxpayers are being ripped off and cheated into paying for illegals." You make this proclamation after describing how your husband told you about the Hispanic woman with WIC cards.
What proof do you have that:
1) The Hispanic woman is illegal?
2) The woman is incorrectly using WIC cards?
A WIC recipient is allowed to use multiple vouchers at once. And the rules are very strict on what can be bought (milk, baby formula, etc.).
Your entire argument is an assumption based on a third party report about a Hispanic woman with a few WIC cards, and then you "support" your argument with namecalling, and even more stereotypes (about Northerners).
I love all the myths I see about socialism. It's all a load of utter crap.
First, you don't "run out of other people's money." That would only happen if you only taxed everyone ONCE and then never again. What I find extremely entertaining is that this exceedingly biased and uneducated look at socialism is only used to bash the poor. Yet the American military -- which receives more money than the next highest 20 nations combined (including all of our potential adversaries from China to Iran to North Korea) -- is an entirely socialist organization. Even the pay is in line with communism. Everyone receives the same pay regardless of what your career path is. A nuclear physicist who works to keep the boomers and hunter-killers going makes the same amount of money as the guy who washes the dishes in the galley -- if they're the same rank. Of course, in communism, pay scaled with your rank in the party rather than your military rank.
YET for SOME bizarre reason, you don't see everyone who joins the military lining up to be dish washers.
No one seems to care when we spend lavishly on a socialist/communist system like the military, but when it comes to the sick, the poor, the disabled, suddenly socialism is an abject failure. Strange how it seems to work for the military ... you don't see it collapsing into chaos. How come we haven't run out of other people's money to fund warfare?
Hmm ... strange how that works, isn't it ... ?
Obviously, bashing socialism isn't about objective truth at all but the same tired whine about using taxation to help our nation's most vulnerable. Just think how much extra business the Cayman Islands would get if we just said "to hell with the poor" and let businesses and the wealthy keep the money they pay in taxes to fund social programs -- because that's where the money would go, not back into the economy.
Businesses don't create jobs because they care about you and want you to have a nice, comfy life. No. They only create jobs when demand exceeds their ability to provide for it. Meaning you can lower their taxes down to literally nothing and they still won't create even a single job unless they have to. All of that extra money would just go to CEO and board member bonuses and offshore tax havens like the Caymans.
Meanwhile, the poor would be rising up in numbers exceeding a hundred million.
Yeah, it's easy to say they should get a job, but keep in mind that jobs available for the bottom half of the IQ pool are disappearing as fast as snow melts in July. Even now, some 7 million low-paying jobs are expected to disappear within the next few years due to advances in automation. In fact 600 of those 800 jobs Trump supposedly saved at Carrier disappeared due to automation.
Not everyone -- in fact, very few -- have both the aptitude and the intelligence to go to college at all, much less to become an engineer, a computer programmer, or other high tech vocation.
Eventually, the only jobs available for these people will be a handful of those vocations whereby people want to deal with a human being and not a machine. Yet even those vocations risk being automated; if all companies do it, consumers won't have a choice but to deal with machines whether they like it or not. A good example: electronic phone trees. ("Press 1 for English ...")
As for socialism de-incentivizing people to want to succeed -- or work at all -- is just bogus. You're thinking of communism where everyone receives essentially the same salary no matter how difficult the job. That's not what socialism does.
Despite that, however, capitalism as it stands now is completely unsustainable. Those nations that have adopted socialistic policies are actually doing the best in just about every measurable way, from literacy rates to life expectancy to crime to happiness quotients. America, which used to have the best standard of living in the world -- is now ranked in 11th place. Odd how those nations with a good dose of socialism hold the 1st through 10th place slots.
I'm not saying that socialism is the answer to poverty, either, but without it, those who ARE impoverished would simply become homeless and hungry -- including a lot of people who actually work.
As I said, that quotation attributed to Thatcher is both factually and fundamentally wrong -- it's a stupid meme invented in the 80's during the Cold War when we were still battling the evil, "Godless" socialists in the Soviet Union. Six decades of that has made a lot of people heavily biased against anything involving socialism -- and no matter how many times one tries to point out the many and varied successes of socialism, people in this country would rather stick their heads in the sand and scream, "I'm not listening!"
Unless we come up with an alternative to the standard economic model of getting a job, earning a paycheck, and using the paycheck to survive, we will end up regressing back to a feudalistic state with a tiny group of super-rich folks constituting royalty, a slightly larger group that Citibank called the "managerial aristocracy" and hundreds of millions of impoverished peasants, many of whom will be literally starving and living on the streets.
I know dire warnings like this are rarely ever heeded, but think about it -- with jobs disappearing while the human species adds another billion people to this planet every 11 years, where else do you think we'll end up?
Finally -- if socialism is such an abject failure, why is it that America is the ONLY nation in the world that does not have a universal (socialist) health care system? We're also the only society that, when diagnosed with a life threatening illness, worries more about how they'll afford the treatment rather than whether or not they'll DIE or if it will keep them from doing the things they love. What a flagrant cruelty that a person in this country is more afraid of their illness wiping them out financially and destroying the lives of his family than he is of actually dying of his illness. It's a burden someone who is seriously ill shouldn't have to contemplate.
In any event, the rest of the world -- I literally mean every nation -- wouldn't have moved in that direction if it didn't have merits; if it always fails.
People need to stop spreading myths and using anti-socialist rhetoric when it becomes convenient in a topic about the poor. It's funny how, when socialism suits them (such as a taxpayer funded police force) it's perfectly fine. But when socialism helps someone ELSE, it's a total failure and should be eliminated.98
I have nothing, but all agreements and huge, tremendously huge, BRAVO for this post.
I just hope (actually I can only wish) that all impoverished are aware of this and would make a move.
Historical events are giving me right to hope, because, no power will last forever.
The nation that cares only for top 1.0%-2.5% has no future. Sadness that could bring the madness out of less fortunate.
Fortunately(?), the USA basically has a limitless supply of dollars, they can electronically-allocate trillions in the blink of an eye.
So can every government that is monetarily sovereign.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tickyul
QE 1-2-3 had a price-tag of, well, nobody really knows....so there you go!
Quantitative easing was simply an asset exchange program and the details of it were regularly reported to the public. In the end of course, the Fed made very large profits off it, most of which were simply turned over to the Treasury.
BTW, I started my first business in my 20s and was broke and homeless for awhile, but I grew from the experience.
Really? I thought you were 12. You know, from THIS...
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCUBS1
Doesn't matter... I was 12, had a business license, and sold enough lemonade after only one Cubs game to travel to California that summer. My goals were met. Now I am on to bigger things.
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