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Where are these dogmatic left wingers? As far as I can tell they don't exist in any significant numbers except as strawmen.
Redistribution has never been perilously high in the US, anyway. I'm not sure it has ever been that high in any country. Considering wage boosting in addition to public benefits, the Scandinavian countries have at least 2x the redistribution that we do, and they are doing quite well compared to the US and their neighbors.
The peril with redistribution isn't that it is too much, but rather that it is done poorly.
The dogmatic left-wingers are the people that will do anything no matter how costly in the name of helping "struggling middle class families".
One example is insuring mortgages for houses that have 4 bedrooms even if a family only has 2 kids, and at taxpayer expense. Same with vacation homes - WHY should they even get a tax break? Utterly ridiculous.
A common selling point for you people is that you want to spread the wealth/money so that more people can have more. Ok, but you do realize that it's the actual production of good and services that creates the real wealth correct? Money itself is worthless, it's just a method of making the trading of goods easier. The actual production of goods is what makes us rich. As technology grows more advanced the production and distribution of goods and services becomes more advanced which lowers prices and raises the overall wealth of society. This is the reason for why we are living better than earlier generations of humans.
However, I almost never hear people who are in favor of left-leaning economical views actually mention or discuss this. They are always focusing on the actual money/wealth itself, as if it is somehow the true valuables. It's not. If you want to make people better off, then you need to find a way to make the production of goods and services more advanced. That is the ONLY way standards of living can become higher. As as always been the case in history.
Let's say you have your way and that starting today the rich pay a 90% tax and everyone else way less, that the minimum wage is way higher, and that welfare/social programs are used to give people more of the rich peoples money.
Now what? How will this make the economy stronger? How has doing this contributed to increased production and distribution of goods and services? What is the economic magic behind your wealth distribution ideas???
Productivity doesn't do anybody any good except the employers. US productivity per worker has increased over 80% in the last 30 years while wages have been flat. Productivity is not our problem, compensation is. Wal-Mart made $30 billion profit last year. They could pay every worker $40k a year and still make $15 billion a year. Instead, we have to provide food stamps because their employees can't afford to eat.
The change came with the 1990 recession. The job market and employment just did not bounce back. Same thing happened in the 2000 recession. It took years to get back to the employment level prior to the recession. Now we are still just below the employment level way back in 2008 SEVEN years later.
Politicians called it jobless recoveries in 1990 and it got Clinton elected in 1992. But there is something going on in the economy now with jobs that never happened before the 1990 recession.
My guess is that it has to do with unlimited immigration. But nobody really knows.
It had nothing to do with either recessions or immigration. What changed was a big jump in worker productivity, which allowed businesses to lay off whole sectors of their employees. It was very frustrating for me in 1990 that my employer still insisted that I dictate my correspondence to a stenographer, who then typed up, gave me a draft to edit, typed it again, returned it for my signature and then prepared an envelope and mailed it. There wasn't a keyboard in my office. I brought my OWN computer to work to streamline the process (I type 80 wpm) and was told to take it home. When I address envelopes I just cut and paste from the letter header and print an address label. By 1998, the world was doing things that way. Sending a business letter went from 4 hours to 30 minutes, and eliminated one whole employee.
Carpenters were still pounding nails with hammers. Plumbers were still sweating copper fittings. Now it's air nailers and PEX. Now you don't fly to other cities for business meetings, you just Skype them from your cell phone. The phone company replaced all their directory assistance operators with voice recognition 20 years ago, and now it's easier just to look up the number online.
Employees were not the only ones eliminated. Whole companies bit the dust. It didn't matter that they were profitable, they could just be more profitable if dismantled and driven into bankruptcy. That's what happened to companies like Simmons mattress and Motorola, purchased by vulture capitalists, raided for their pension funds and saddled with enormous debt, then driven into bankruptcy. The name was worth money and sold, but neither one is an American company any more, they just sell under than name here.
A common selling point for you people is that you want to spread the wealth/money so that more people can have more. Ok, but you do realize that it's the actual production of good and services that creates the real wealth correct?
I'm an economic liberal and goods and services must be discussed separately. Produce more goods and you produce more wealth? Without demand for those goods all that you have is unsold inventory. As far as services are concerned without the demand they get laid off. No one in your Utopia pays people for doing nothing.
You right wingers swear by trickle down. Trickle down is a sad joke on the middle class and the gullible.
I'm an economic liberal and goods and services must be discussed separately. Produce more goods and you produce more wealth? Without demand for those goods all that you have is unsold inventory. As far as services are concerned without the demand they get laid off. No one in your Utopia pays people for doing nothing.
You right wingers swear by trickle down. Trickle down is a sad joke on the middle class and the gullible.
Are you producing goods people actually purchase or one off novelties? If you manufacture over-sized red sofas you produce a novelty.
If you manufacture clothing people actually wear you produce real consumables.
Make what the people want and you are in business.
Are you producing goods people actually purchase or one off novelties? If you manufacture over-sized red sofas you produce a novelty.
If you manufacture clothing people actually wear you produce real consumables.
Make what the people want and you are in business.
You're missing the point. For demand to exist consumers must be able to purchase what is produced. With consumers not increasing in their income as they did in the past (pre 1970) we're unlikely too increased demand as we did back then.
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