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Oh, so you're okay with socialism. Look at Venezuela and tell me how great socialism is.
I'm quite fine with a socialist democracy as you are with yours.
You wouldn't know real "socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole" if it smacked you upside the head.
You're using as an example, a country ruined by successive dictators and despots that can ruin any country, even the U.S. That is not socialism, where the PEOPLE own the means of production and control the dispersal of wealth. That is anything BUT!
There are many social democracies operating quite nicely with a QOL rating even higher than the U.S.
Of course. Why do you think they want many poor invaders to live here. Why do they want opened borders. Why do they want socialism. Put many on welfare and into slums. Why do they want to legalize drugs, opened borders to bring in more drugs to keep the weak minded killing themselves. Great to curb the population of those who are self destructive. And the rich collect the money for all those drugs being sold.
You do realize that if people have no money (due to unreasonably high COL, high insurance bills, high student loans, high rents, etc), they don't spend any money, right?
It's just like i said, once a large enough % of the population has no money/is broke the whole "system" grinds to a snail's pace... as we are seeing now in America. Once everyone is poor or broke, the system just stops "working", it sputters and stalls out just like a car engine running on fumes
It's economics 101 common knowledge that capitalism heavily depends on people spending money, but we're reaching a point where most people are tapped out/squeezed "dry" by widespread poverty and have nothing left to take (much less spend on discretionary/non-rent stuff).
This so-called economy is moving slower than even the slowest snail or laziest sloth
More money going to healthcare and the buying power goes down for all people. They can't spend money for anything else. This is what caused the great depression. No money to buy anything. People lost their jobs. I will
No counter-arguments eh? Only insult type responses?
Pointing out your disingenuousness isn't an insult, it's a signal to others that you are trying to manipulate with an irrelevant example.
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BTW, the whole point of the article was to highlight just how bad things are getting "out there"
....in the UK.
The article doesn't discuss any situation outside the UK.
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Personally i know people that have had to cut down on "essentials" such as organic food because their student loans suddenly came into repayment, or because rent suddenly went up, money is TIGHT for a lot of people.
Oh, the suffering.....they have to give up organic food.
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One of my friend's student loans recently went into repayment, so "suddenly" he has $400ish less income per month.
Repayment start dates aren't a secret. If he didn't, he should have included that date in his plans from the moment he accepted the loan.
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It might not sound like a lot, but even a $300-$500 shortfall in the monthly budget of an American family can have a BIG impact.
Since this last sentence is directly after the sentence mentioning your friend who has just started repayment of his student loan, I assume this last sentence is in reference to the same friend. You also used the word family. Kids don't materialize out of thin air, and everyone knows how they are created. Your friend knew when the loan repayment would start. If your friend indeed does have a family he 'shouldn't have done the deed if he couldn't do the time'.
Interesting article about the unusual "choices" the working class are being forced to make in 2017 as the economy, cost of living, etc keeps getting worse and worse:
It seems we are going "backwards" in this country, it seems once most of the population is poor or has no money, it's all downhill on the slippery slope to 3rd world status. Once enough people are broke or poor, it seems the "engine" of capitalism sputters and stalls out (as spending is the "fuel"). And it's even worse this time around with the prospect of robots/automation on the horizon, on TOP of the much larger (and still growing) human population.
It's eerily/strangely reminiscent of the old crony-capitalist "robber-baron era" from pre-1900's times, are we going "full circle"?
Think about how things were back then:
- most of the population poor or servants of the rich
- kids having to work to help the household make ends meet (this one probably "coming back" soon)
- no future, no "upward" mobility, no hope to advance economically... you're born poor, you die poor
- most of the population "renting" from the rich, living in subpar housing, etc
- no unions, no safety/sanitation rules, no consumer protections, no regulation
- low/flat wages, crappy jobs, and no job security at all
- no safety nets at all, you work til' you die or hope your kids watch after you
- no healthcare, if you got hurt/sick you were out of work and thus SOL
- a tiny % of rich own it all, own everything, have all the power, etc
- previously "essential" items such as cars, hygiene products, medicine, food, etc increasingly becoming a "luxury" (as the article details )
- cronyism and corruption rule the day, "pay for play" shamelessly out in the open for all to see
Of course, Trump and his right-winger supporters don't have a problem with any of this, they in-fact favor the rich over their fellow working poor and middle-classers. They're so cold/uncaring they don't even want their fellow Americans to have a living wage (forcing those low-wage workers to subsidize their $8/hr jobs with welfare, rent vouchers, food stamps, etc). They are also anti-consumer, as evidenced by the likes of Betsy Davos and that Indian tech dude that Trump put in charge of the FCC. "Great again"?? Or is it more like "poor again"?
Let me know if you live near me. I can use you to trim shrubs and rake the lawn at my mansion. I'll pay you $10/day.
I believe that free market capitalism with business regulated sufficiently to prevent monopoly and speculation in any shape of form is the way to prosperity for most with minimum desperately poor and even fewer hyper wealthy. The market will control prices using supply and demand and the investors will have to be satisfied with whatever profit the market allows.
Government can help obtain this goal by supporting small savers and investors with loan guarantees and insurance. Government can also provide universal health care and low cost education to whatever level the individual aspires. One of the ways to pay for this is a Universal Income Tax based on summing an individual's income and creating an income scale for the entire population. the amount equal to the 90th percentile (percentile not percentage) is set as the base deductible. The tax is placed in a steely progressive manner on the top 10 percent of the population.
This would effectively provide the bottom 90% with more money to save and invest while the compound interest gains of the wealthy are used to provide national defense and government services, principally health care (not insurance) for everyone regardless of economic status.
I do not see this as socialist. I consider it free markets with business regulation. This will benefit all of us not just the disassociated hyper wealth classes.
But would they actually end up saving and investing that money ?
I've "done my homework" and this is 100% false. It's scary to see that people actually think this. Kudos on those "alternate facts."
This has been a well established fact for at least a few years now. You must not be doing much homework. The reason is that they don't count everyone who is unemployed, but only those who are still receiving benefits. Many have simply given up. The "labor force" is made up of everyone of working age that should still be working. Add to that those who are still receiving unemployment benefits, and 50% of the labor force is unemployed.
This is not just something I've pulled out of thin air. This has actually been a statistic that has been out there and reported for a very long time.
But, of course, you aren't going to get that from "Morning Joke" or "Wolfman" Blitzer, or "Rachel Madcow." That's your problem. Get your head out of the purveyors of "fake news."
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Pointing out your disingenuousness isn't an insult, it's a signal to others that you are trying to manipulate with an irrelevant example.
