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Everyone in this country has the opportunity to get out of poverty. Whether they choose to or not is on them.
Which brings us to desire. If the government will pay someone to sit on their rear all day, and still have food and a roof, what would be the "desire" to change?
We NEED to get rid of welfare altogether. Welfare does NOT make it possible to escape poverty. It provides incentive to remain in poverty.
Cause and effect. That which is rewarded becomes a habit.
The bolded statement above is the point of dispute.
Genuine socialism is an utopian dream. It's fine to learn it as science fiction but people should move on to the real world. The vast majority of times "socialism" is just an excuse label to justify whatever and however many injustices, violence, and advantage taking. There is nothing genuine about strategically creating a dependent class, nothing genuine about pathetically taking advantage of others in the name of the "greater good". Your social democracy is good for the rich and bad for the middle class.
When you mix the recipe of socialist thinking and human nature, each time you get misery. The left then march to complain about humans not doing what the left dictate. It goes like that to no end. Those in the left bring out the worst of them while singing beautiful nouns and adjectives. They try hard to act just but hatred and prejudice are used intentionally and sometimes unconsciously.
It's no surprise that left wing rhetoric sounds great. It is supposed to be full of great words. In reality this "genuine socialism" is nothing but ignorant. At most, it expresses the speaker's wishful thinking and explains what he or she would do. But we have to risk assuming that the person is honest and genuine and Even that is just one person. It has no controlling power in regulating other peoples behaviors. It's no even a prediction. Just wishful thinking. And even if this poster himself or herself is genuine about genuine socialism, it literally means nothing.
The part that people miss is this: they think the key is to explain how social democracy or even socialism works better in theory, when everybody wants to know how it works in reality. This system is almost always presented with nearly no flaws. It's a "wouldn't it be nice" argument. It's almost like the left think that the more flawless their system sounds the more we the people subscribe to it. I say it's actually the total opposite. Most systems and most people are terribly flawed. They have limits. They are hypocritical. They are full of politics. Their deliverables often pale compared to their promises. It's just one on those human patterns that left wing ideologues never seem to get. Dot get me wrong. The right wing makes the same mistake. Their religious doctrines also ignore human nature. In fact communism was a system heavily borrowed from Christianity's ways of doing things. The political left in the west today is just yet another church.
You haven't addressed the points very specifically.
Is the issue that you don't believe poverty traps exist, or that you think poverty traps are acceptable and not something to be minimized?
Once again, I agree with you (my goodness, we're on a roll!). There ARE good and bad people in every class, and I absolutely do not glorify poverty or the poor. But I don't glorify the rich, either.
See, for a democratic country, the US is a VERY class-conscious society (as well as a socially stratified one), and therefore, class warfare permeates political discourse in this country. The REAL beef and concern for most upper-middle, middle and lower-middle income people in the US is socioeconomic status, though they might not realize and, even if they do, won't ever admit it (America class-conscious?? Good gawd, no! We fought against, and won independence from, our economic oppressors!). But it's true.
Ultimately, Americans fear the poor, because in the US, the economic stakes are very high for almost everyone. In the blink of an eye, the average hard-working middle class person can lose EVERYTHING, and just like that, become a member of the poor.
You don't necessarily represent left wing thinking. Just take a look at some of these other posters. Their opinions are different.
I would say that humans are class conscious. That is true even in communist countries where class differences are supposed to be eliminated. In any human system, the managerial class get more financially among many other things. Power is in the hands of the few and it rules the masses. To say that the US is class conscious is sort of redundant, as nearly everyone is. Take a look at some of the left wing organizations. Unions are highly hierarchical that protects seniority not merit. Tenure is highly hierarchical. The intelligentsia is culturally elitist and often hostile to blue collar people. The internal systems are highly discriminatory toward new comers, people of color, people of blue collar roots, etc. trust fund guilt babies singing the Internationale. Oh yeah, clinche. Are you kidding me? The US is class conscious because nearly everyone is.
And you seem to say that a democratic society somehow should not be class conscious. I do not subscribe to that view. Democracy is a balance of selfishness. It is often the tyranny of the masses. And if the left gets their way because demographics goes their way, it is due to counting heads, not reasoning. Democracy is a word way too misinterpreted. People think of romantic images, the Disney version of democracy taught by public schools. That is just not what democracy is. It's what people think it should be. In America today, democracy is increasingly going toward mob rule.
Our founding fathers were keenly aware of the danger of democracy. They defined us as a constitutional republic with solid foresight and realistic understanding of humans. They were not bitter, cynical, or anything like that. They were not as childish as many people today. They were realistic and responsible in designing a system that actually works.
The bolded statement above is the point of dispute.
Please justify the claim.
The proof is the scores of people that HAVE made it out of poverty. Proving that it CAN be done.
We have public education through age 17 or 18. We have low interest, government-backed loans for college. Government grants to go to school.
If people born and raised in this country can't rise above poverty, but immigrants who don't speak the language and arrive with pennies to their name CAN, then there is no dispute. Those that remain in poverty are choosing to stay there.
Everyone in this country has the opportunity to get out of poverty. Whether they choose to or not is on them.
Which brings us to desire. If the government will pay someone to sit on their rear all day, and still have food and a roof, what would be the "desire" to change?
We NEED to get rid of welfare altogether. Welfare does NOT make it possible to escape poverty. It provides incentive to remain in poverty.
Cause and effect. That which is rewarded becomes a habit.
I just agree that everyone has the opportunity to get out of poverty. I think the word "everyone" is to absolute. However that is not to say that the welfare programs and the entire left wing package of social programs is not out of control and off reality.
People don't just want truly needed welfare. They want more than that as more doors were opened and commonsense gave way to greed. This is exactly what invalidates much of the left. For people who think it won't get out of control, it is already gone so far. What was considered in this country and is still in other countries common way of life is regarded as inadequate unless additional incentives provided by taxpayers. What a shameful privilege.
The proof is the scores of people that HAVE made it out of poverty. Proving that it CAN be done.
We have public education through age 17 or 18. We have low interest, government-backed loans for college. Government grants to go to school.
If people born and raised in this country can't rise above poverty, but immigrants who don't speak the language and arrive with pennies to their name CAN, then there is no dispute. Those that remain in poverty are choosing to stay there.
Okay, yes, SOME people can.
But can everyone? Or is there an element of luck perhaps?
This is a very important question - surely you realize that merely having someone who has done something is not sufficient to demonstrate that not doing it is due only to a lack of effort and not to adverse circumstances.
By analogy, consider athletics. Yes, some people can do "X", "Y", etc. But that alone doesn't tell you whether the others didn't do it because they didn't try, or because their bodies weren't fit for the task.
You can argue all day long that anybody who doesn't score 3 home runs was not trying hard enough, but that doesn't make it so. Maybe someone doesn't have the body for it.
Similarly, you can argue all day long that anyone who doesn't pull themselves out of poverty without assistance was not trying hard enough, but your argument is still wanting.
In the agorist sense, or in the sense of levying charges in some other way?
In my opinion you could do it either way and it would produce a system vastly superior to what we have now. In the agorist sense, you could fund government via private donation. I look at it like this- if any of the 'services' that we supposedly need government to provide were really worth it, you wouldn't need to use violence and/or the threat of violence to compel people to participate in them.
Of course, that answer doesn't really address the most fundamental of forced participation, which is that the current system relies upon a fraudulent monetary system (federal reserve, fractional reserve, fiat currency, et al). So even voluntary participation with dishonest money is still a form of a tax- actually the worst type of tax, which is the inflation tax. So most importantly I would advocate for an honest monetary system without compound interest of any kind.
All that being said, if we simply did away with taxes of all kinds and just allowed the government to print the money to pay for services, it would be far better than what we have now.
In my opinion you could do it either way and it would produce a system vastly superior to what we have now. In the agorist sense, you could fund government via private donation. I look at it like this- if any of the 'services' that we supposedly need government to provide were really worth it, you wouldn't need to use violence and/or the threat of violence to compel people to participate in them.
Of course, that answer doesn't really address the most fundamental of forced participation, which is that the current system relies upon a fraudulent monetary system (federal reserve, fractional reserve, fiat currency, et al). So even voluntary participation with dishonest money is still a form of a tax- actually the worst type of tax, which is the inflation tax. So most importantly I would advocate for an honest monetary system without compound interest of any kind.
All that being said, if we simply did away with taxes of all kinds and just allowed the government to print the money to pay for services, it would be far better than what we have now.
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