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That's very typical of the right wingers who love to shout "SOCIALISM!" From my experience 9 out of 10 of them don't even know the definition of socialism much less what it is. They're generally just very ignorant people.
Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
Not entirely.
Consider that communism (and socialism) expressly seeks to abolish private property ownership (absolute ownership) and replace it with qualified ownership (administered by the collective).
That does not mean only "government" ownership, but includes limited ownership, subject to restrictions, regulations, codes, zoning and hefty taxes.
And when government "takes" property and does not pay just compensation, it is prima facie evidence that the property is NOT private property, constitutionally protected.
==================
Amendment V, US Constitution 1789
... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
"PRIVATE PROPERTY - As protected from being taken for public uses, is such property as belongs absolutely to an individual, and of which he has the exclusive right of disposition. Property of a specific, fixed and tangible nature, capable of being in possession and transmitted to another, such as houses, lands, and chattels."
- - - Black's Law dictionary, sixth ed., p.1217.
"OWNERSHIP - ... Ownership of property is either absolute or qualified. The ownership of property is absolute when a single person has the absolute dominion over it... The ownership is qualified when it is shared with one or more persons, when the time of enjoyment is deferred or limited, or when the use is restricted. "
- - -Black's Law dictionary, sixth ed., p. 1106
“....Private property is a legal designation of the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity; and collective property, which is owned by a group of non-governmental entities.”
A non-government legal entity can own “private property,” as distinguished from government ownership of “public property.”
Charity does not ameliorate anything because it does not treat the problem on a systematic level. Amelioration has to occur on a class basis or it is not amelioration. Treating a few members of a class does not do anything for the class as a whole. It is a feel good for the sociopaths at the top that run the economy. Welfare on the other hand does ameliorate the problem because it extends to all the people that are impoverished. It lifts people out of poverty. It has the power to end poverty by providing for basic living standards. Charity does not.
Your approach to poverty is completely wrong headed. You basically want to blame individuals for structural problems. The facts show that individuals are not to blame for their own poverty. Poverty is not an individual choice. Do you really think that people choose to be poor? The children born into poverty. They did not make the choice to be poor. Poverty is a consequence of the economic system that we as human beings choose to have. I suggest that you go volunteer at a soup kitchen or food bank and ask the people that come, “Why did you choose to be poor?' Or just ask the next homeless person you see, “Why did you chose to be homeless?”
You obviously have not been around a lot of poor people given your anecdotes about people you know who have been poor. I see homeless families out on the streets. This is a product of the so called welfare "reforms" of the 1990's. And, that is just in the USA. It did not used to be that way. Before the roll back of welfare in the 1990's it was rare to see people out on the streets. It has increased poverty as well. Poverty is back up to 15% for all people and 22% for children. Poverty in the United States: A Snapshot | National Center for Law and Economic Justice
If you think that redistribution curtails a society's freedoms, you have an absurd notion of freedom. If for example we were to guarantee people the economic rights outlined in the UDHR. That would not curtail freedom at all. It would increase it. It would provide a greater good for a greater number than people have now. I don't know how you can look at a homeless child and think to your self that you are more free because of her homelessness. There is something very cold and unemphatic about that. It does not even have to be a child. How can you say you are more free because some people are forced by the economic system to live homeless? Do you care to explain how you are more free when people are forced to live homeless? It is also absurd to say that people are “not free to enjoy the benefits of good decision making.” This is false just on the face of it. All good decisions are beneficial. They would not be good decisions, if they were not beneficial. Poverty is a choice that we as society have made. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The HDI does not address inequality in the system. So, it really does not address freedom. There is no true freedom in an unequal system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by prosopis
I do not believe I missed the point, I would say you stated your point very poorly the first time around, continuing the charity vs. welfare subject without bringing redistribution into it. I agree with you that neither welfare nor charity can solve economic inequality, but neither are intended to do so. Both are mechanisms intended to ameliorate the catastrophic effects of poverty.
Economic inequality will always exist - it exists even in the countries you think are doing things better. It exists because it is an inequality of result -- the outcome of decisions that individual human beings make. Those decisions will always vary from individual to individual, so the results will always vary, leading to some degree of inequality.
The only people I have known to go without food, clothing, and shelter in the US were all people with mental disabilities or alcohol/drug abuse problems. We should be doing a better job of taking care of them, but that is a whole other subject.
The people I've known who had to live in their car for a bit while they got back on their feet financially did so in a relatively short time frame. Our standard of living in the US, even for the poor, is vastly better than countries like Mexico.
I will further state, that redistribution can only work as a means to eliminate poverty at the expense of freedom of the society's citizens. It can only work in a society where people are not free to suffer the consequences of poor decision making, and they are likewise not free to enjoy the benefits of good decision making. In the past, these societies - or the closest we have had to them - have always failed due to a lack of productivity, a lack of optimism on the part of the citizenry, and the tendency for them to be taken over by a strong dictator who uses the redistributive state to enrich himself.
I don't find economic inequality to be a huge problem, and the reason is that I think people should be free to succeed or fail based upon their own efforts. We do require a safety net for this to work, and we do need to improve the function of that safety net.
The writer does not appear to know the meaning of 'socialist.' Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
That's very typical of the right wingers who love to shout "SOCIALISM!" From my experience 9 out of 10 of them don't even know the definition of socialism much less what it is. They're generally just very ignorant people.
Except that this writer is pretty clearly coming from a left wing perspective, trying to make red states look dumb, and succeeding only in making himself look dumb. And you want to cite this as an example of right wing ignorance? LOL.
So why do the most conservative of the "Red" states in this country receive far more money from the Federal government than they pay in Federal taxes and most of the liberal "Blue" states the exact opposite. How would you conservative state residents feel if Federal money was limited to the amount collected on a state level? For instance instead of building Aircraft Carriers in Texas we built them in Massachusetts or California?
Charity does not ameliorate anything because it does not treat the problem on a systematic level. Amelioration has to occur on a class basis or it is not amelioration. Treating a few members of a class does not do anything for the class as a whole. It is a feel good for the sociopaths at the top that run the economy. Welfare on the other hand does ameliorate the problem because it extends to all the people that are impoverished. It lifts people out of poverty. It has the power to end poverty by providing for basic living standards. Charity does not.
Disagreeing with your point is not missing it, though I'll agree it's easy to miss given how disorganized your argument is.
I do not agree with your use of the word "ameliorate" for one thing. The word, as typically used, does not require universal effect or permanent effect. Feeding a few for one day is ameliorating their hunger, but it is not ameliorating everyone's hunger, and being that hunger returns, it is not permanent. When you used this word originally, I assumed you were using it in the conventional sense - as in the way a dictionary defines it.
I also do not think you can correctly state that welfare does lift people out of poverty in a way that charity does not - the difference is that welfare has been attempted on a much grander scale since the 1960's. I would suggest that it's intended goals were and are unrealistic, but the scale does guarantee a greater effect than charity could have.
Other than scale and choice, I don't agree that there is much difference between them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinoza 1454
If you think that redistribution curtails a society's freedoms, you have an absurd notion of freedom. If for example we were to guarantee people the economic rights outlined in the UDHR. That would not curtail freedom at all. It would increase it. It would provide a greater good for a greater number than people have now. I don't know how you can look at a homeless child and think to your self that you are more free because of her homelessness. There is something very cold and unemphatic about that. It does not even have to be a child. How can you say you are more free because some people are forced by the economic system to live homeless? Do you care to explain how you are more free when people are forced to live homeless? It is also absurd to say that people are “not free to enjoy the benefits of good decision making.” This is false just on the face of it. All good decisions are beneficial. They would not be good decisions, if they were not beneficial. Poverty is a choice that we as society have made. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
You need to read what I actually wrote and take it quite literally. I was not referring to our current economic system because it is not redistributive enough to function in eliminating economic inequality. I said that a system that does achieve that end would necessarily have to be extremely restrictive, so restrictive that it eliminated inequality of results between individuals. There would have to be no failing and no succeeding in such a society.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinoza 1454
The HDI does not address inequality in the system. So, it really does not address freedom. There is no true freedom in an unequal system.
There is no true freedom in a system that requires equality of result. I can only suppose that you live in a world of theory, not of practice.
You seem very fixated on the idea that conservatives "blame" the poor for being poor. When we talk about choices its not because anyone thinks the poor choose to be poor - it is just a recognition that some choices lead to desirable results and others do not. This is not assigning blame, it is just being aware of the cause and effect nature of the world.
In my experience, guilt and blame are the coin of the liberal realm - saying that conservatives blame the poor for being poor is just a symptom of your inability to understand the conservative's worldview.
Though that too is hardly surprising when you think there are "sociopaths at the top"... good grief!
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