BF2S Forums Redistribution of wealth

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Pug wrote:

You are aware that universal health care would not be available under your suggestion as the wealthy old folks would have more benefits than the younger tax brackets.

Do you read any of my other posts in this section?

You and CameronPoe are making it not work by making an assumption that the society must look similar to modern western society. You are making assumptions that you can't make in context of the question.

Pug wrote:

10% of someone making $25,000 is a massive hit on someone's standard of living compared to a millionaire.  Therefore, it becomes tiered.

You can't make that assumption.

CameronPoe wrote:

Another thought: given that capitalism demands unemployment in order to cope with fluctuations in markets/demand/etc.

You can't make that assumption.

As an aside I think most people would differentiate between unemployment benefits (that CP outlined) and welfare.

No I haven't read your other work.  Is is pay-as-you go?  That would be the only way I can see it completely flat in terms of healthcare.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on why the assumptions are bad, and how you believe a flat tax system would work in whatever gov't system you are talking about.  How would it be implemented?  Thru sales tax?

If sales tax...someone making $25,000 is most likely using the entire check on necessities, while a millionaire it's mostly luxuries.  So will a 10% cost of living increase for necessities means more to the unwealthy.  No?

CameronPoe wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

CameronPoe wrote:

Another thought: given that capitalism demands unemployment in order to cope with fluctuations in markets/demand/etc.

You can't make that assumption.

As an aside I think most people would differentiate between unemployment benefits (that CP outlined) and welfare.

Pray tell how do capitalists acquire additional labour if everyone is employed?

/immigration aside

Companies that can't afford higher labor costs lose employees to other companies who can.

In any case I kind of misread your question in the first place. More directly to the point there is little reason to pay people for frictional unemployment - it is by nature temporary. If someone cannot find a job in a reasonable amount of time then clearly the system has no need for their skill set.

The simple answer is yes. Capitalism is inherently self destructive, unsustainable and it is like a phoenix. Its burns hot and then collapses on itself in an ash pile. then has to be remade. The rise of the welfare state blunts the efects of the inevitable crash while at the same time it reduces the peak wealth generation. "wealth redistribution" acts to moderate the economy.

You know that if we had a true laisse faire economy and true freedom of contract that we would have slavery and obscene concentrations of wealth and property. As people fell below the level necessary to sustain them self they would fall into slavery and lose their property rights over their own bodies.

As it stands now, with the welfare state we have debt slavery or perhaps something a little less than indentured servitude, if you are a 9 to fiver then you are one of these whether you are making minimum wage or $500k a year. But its enough freedom for most people go about their lives with out the thought of revolution. In fact, the ownership of real property is the hallmark for creating a stable society because you are less likely to go out and loot, pillage and burn if it might mean your property is destroyed. Look at gangs or race riots I bet a factor in having race riots is that the people participating in them don't own property. And look at looting, if the govt does not provide for an orderly mechanism for some redistirbution of wealth, then people are just going to do it on their own. That's the simple fact, if someone is hungry enough they they are going to go and rip that silver spoon right out of your mouth, and perhaps replace it with a couple pieces of lead. So restributing wealth to a level that pacifies a majority of people is the goal of any society that doesn't want to crash and burn.

Yes. Something like:

Tax system based of % of family/personal salaries < Therefore the rich pay more than the poor, but the percentage is the same < a portion of those taxes get redistributed based on % of earning yet again.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Diesel_dyk wrote:

The simple answer is yes. Capitalism is inherently self destructive, unsustainable and it is like a phoenix. Its burns hot and then collapses on itself in an ash pile. then has to be remade. The rise of the welfare state blunts the efects of the inevitable crash while at the same time it reduces the peak wealth generation. "wealth redistribution" acts to moderate the economy.

You know that if we had a true laisse faire economy and true freedom of contract that we would have slavery and obscene concentrations of wealth and property. As people fell below the level necessary to sustain them self they would fall into slavery and lose their property rights over their own bodies.

As it stands now, with the welfare state we have debt slavery or perhaps something a little less than indentured servitude, if you are a 9 to fiver then you are one of these whether you are making minimum wage or $500k a year. But its enough freedom for most people go about their lives with out the thought of revolution. In fact, the ownership of real property is the hallmark for creating a stable society because you are less likely to go out and loot, pillage and burn if it might mean your property is destroyed. Look at gangs or race riots I bet a factor in having race riots is that the people participating in them don't own property. And look at looting, if the govt does not provide for an orderly mechanism for some redistirbution of wealth, then people are just going to do it on their own. That's the simple fact, if someone is hungry enough they they are going to go and rip that silver spoon right out of your mouth, and perhaps replace it with a couple pieces of lead. So restributing wealth to a level that pacifies a majority of people is the goal of any society that doesn't want to crash and burn.

You've got everything ass backwards.

Ass backwards? that's true my view on this is bottom up.

Societies are organic, they exist and function they way they do because it works and its sustainable. If you look at failed communist countries where everything was planned, they failed because their plans ran contrary to the way that their societies' actually work; top down views don't work or they are very hard and expensive to maintain. In most western democracies, redistribution of wealth works because it prevents horrible things from happening. Its definitely not because some uber socialists hatched an evil plan, in fact you could say that Karl Marx saved capitalism by highlighting its pitfalls which gave rise to the welfare state. Another example of orgainc societies, look at Sadam hussan, he was brutal dictator because that's what was necessary for that country to hold together three warring factions, its not planned, its organic, he was rose to rule because his ruling style was what was necessary. Or look at Tito and Yugoslavia. No one could have planned for that.

And I forgot one other thing, if we had a truly laisse faire economy we would also have child labor. Yet, preventing things like that so that kids can go to school and be trained for more productive jobs seems to work pretty good too. If it didn't work then society would have disgarded child labor laws long ago. It continues to exist because there is a net benefit for society.

See, its not ass backwards, its organic and it exists because it works, the only thing left to debate is the level of redistribution, not the fact that its necessary. And the more that wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the few, the more necessary it is for wealth redistribution, not for egalitarian reasons but for reasons of keeping society stable. That's the reason why wealth redistribution works, the only other solution for stability would be by coercive force.

IMO its better when people police them self. Give them property, and when they have something to protect they are more likely to stay home and protect it. And economically speaking, maintaining order through coercive force is more expensive that self policing which is a reason why capitalism couple with democracy is a highly efficient system of resources allocation.

Strip a man bare and he is either going to lay down and die or he's going to get up and do something about it. I don't think a society can survive with the latter en masse and I'm pretty sure history proves me right on that.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Companies that can't afford higher labor costs lose employees to other companies who can.

In any case I kind of misread your question in the first place. More directly to the point there is little reason to pay people for frictional unemployment - it is by nature temporary. If someone cannot find a job in a reasonable amount of time then clearly the system has no need for their skill set.

Reality generally happens to represent a significant departure from theory FM. How long can the more than 10% of the American labour force that are unemployed remain unemployed because credit markets are burned out and capitalists don't want to venture any of their capital atm? Should we just incinerate them? Ireland maxed out on employment in the early '00s. It drove salaries through the roof, which in turn curtailed economic growth - it had hit a ceiling. Then hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czech and other eastern Europeans flooded the country to remove that ceiling.

CameronPoe wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Companies that can't afford higher labor costs lose employees to other companies who can.

In any case I kind of misread your question in the first place. More directly to the point there is little reason to pay people for frictional unemployment - it is by nature temporary. If someone cannot find a job in a reasonable amount of time then clearly the system has no need for their skill set.

Reality generally happens to represent a significant departure from theory FM. How long can the more than 10% of the American labour force that are unemployed remain unemployed because credit markets are burned out and capitalists don't want to venture any of their capital atm? Should we just incinerate them? Ireland maxed out on employment in the early '00s. It drove salaries through the roof, which in turn curtailed economic growth - it had hit a ceiling. Then hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czech and other eastern Europeans flooded the country to remove that ceiling.

Forcing capitalism to be a solution to problems due to the failings of a non-capitalist system is silly.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

You are saying we should pass out something of value to everyone, so they can sit in their caves and defend it in fear of someone else raiding their cave.

I'm saying that that is what is being done already, and it works, people are at home watching football eating chips and drinking beer, even the poorest of the poor can do this. We are all domesticated like sheep, fat, lazy and cow eyed. Its so successful that we are getting too fat and too lazy. its a sign that our society is very sucessful. And you know what, no one planned for that to happen, it happened because it works, if it didn't work then society would look like something else. Take away the redistribution of wealth already present in society and see what happens, I guarantee you that unless you are wealthy enough to afford a rocket to the moon that you will be negatively impacted.

What I don't get is that people are not able to see it in present day society and what benefit it brings to them as a stabilizing effect. They just can't seem to see how it benefits them, all they want to see is how it seems to disportionately benefit others. May be its the domesticating effects or brain rot from TV, who knows.

CameronPoe wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Forcing capitalism to be a solution to problems due to the failings of a non-capitalist system is silly.

Due to the failings of the capitalist system, get it right. And society will force whatever it wants to force in seeking solutions to problems, either wisely or unwisely.

Capitalism has been and always will be a boom and bust system. It has to offer a solution to 'getting by' in the lean times because by and large the great unwashed masses, which it relies upon, are too short-sighted and ultimately will force matters with their votes.

The credit crisis/bailouts/current financial clusterfuck would never happen in a capitalist system. I am not saying that equally or worse economic situations would arise, but the situation we are in makes no sense at all in a capitalist context.

Votes don't radically alter change a constitution. That is where capitalism would have to be inserted in to a government.

Of course it is.

Unless you miss having a serf class of citizenry.

Diesel_dyk wrote:

Shahter wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

You are saying we should pass out something of value to everyone, so they can sit in their caves and defend it in fear of someone else raiding their cave.

he also says that there were "communist countries" that supposedly failed because of their planned economy, when those weren't communist in the first place and that type of economy was the only one that could work in those countries. the dude has no idea what he's talking about.

Yah yah, those weren't true communist countries... because we all know that a true communist country is a eutopian dream that has existed for precisely zero seconds in the history of the earth. What, I'm talking about are the countries that were referred to with affection as the communist block countries from the cold war... in case you didn't know that already.


Sorry but those countries did fail because they had planned economies. Planned economies are ineffcient and inflexible and when they couldn't keep up with the pace of change, black markets sprung up and eventually market systems took over. China learned from these mistakes and began to open up markets shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Anyway, dude you explain to me why these countries shrugged off their planned economies, like I said its organic. These planned economies failed to provide a benefit to those societies so those socties shrugged off those structures. Even with all the authoritarian might that the Soviet Union had, it couldn't keep that structure in place.

And I guess that's my point, if you try to replace the redistribution of wealth that exists in our society with some other system like a police state, or high tech survellience or some other type of authoritarian measures, eventually society will over throw it and return to a more efficient system of resources allocation and that system will balance efficiency with stability just like our society does now.

We have what we have because it works, if it didn't work we would have something else.

May be in the future high tech will bring us a more efficient system of resource allocation and when that day arrives, I do believe that we will see a change because that is what an organic society will gravitate towards. My only fear is that high tech will be used to make authoriariansm more cost effective and be used to over throw society in which case we will look more like the Soviet Union than Athens.

You seem to be a true believer. I have a few questions for you...

Say I want a new cell phone under your system. I understand that since there is no money and no private property I need to put in a request to the correct committee in order to receive one. My need is then debated and if I qualify as needy they will provide one for me. Who's making the cell phones? If we're living in the utopia that you suggest without centralized government directing the economy and we've done away with money and greed, hasn't everyone devolved down to subsistence communities where they are isolated from one another and live in harmony? Everyone is working, yes? They're all out in the fields working or they've invented machines to do it for them and they're all sitting there playing their fifty year old xbox games, yes?

There are just so many millions of holes in Marx's theories that I could sit here all night driving semi-trucks through them. A long long time ago people realized that Marxist economies just don't work, that there is no such thing as democratic socialism where everyone ends up equal and everyone ends up with the same amount of money etc. It's not because capitalism is evil and at fault for the failures of communism, it's because the system itself is a fairy tale and frankly, pure idiocy. If I could invent a time machine and go back and change one event in history I wouldn't end the Crusades, or see if Jesus was real, or kill Hitler or any other such thing. I would go back to shortly after Karl Marx was born and smother him with a pillow so that I wouldn't have to listen to otherwise intelligent people prattle on with his stupidity coming out of their mouths.


Edit - I picked the last thing you wrote to quote. After reading what you actually wrote in your paragraphs here what you are describing with people deciding organically what they want is capitalism. It's the free market. There's nothing socialist in there. There's also been no organic manifestations of desire for a socialist system among the 'proles' that you are so fearful of. Every single program has been implemented top down by 'progressives' so even there you fail. No one rose up and said they wanted Social Security, it was a wealthy man with a bleeding heart who implemented it. Same with all the other crap. Face it, you really have no fucking idea what a poor person needs, you just think you do.

Last edited by JohnG@lt (2009-11-08 15:47:42)

CameronPoe wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

The credit crisis/bailouts/current financial clusterfuck would never happen in a capitalist system. I am not saying that equally or worse economic situations would arise, but the situation we are in makes no sense at all in a capitalist context.

Votes don't radically alter change a constitution. That is where capitalism would have to be inserted in to a government.

America is the most capitalist nation on the surface of the planet earth. And it did happen. You can thank the trading of collateralised debt obligations under a deregulated financial system for that one, along with a healthy dose of stupidity and short-sightedness from all corners. I don't agree with the government bailing out your car industries but the financial sector had to be bailed out or you would have had a hungry thirties all over again.

And as to your second point - ever heard of Latin America? Ever heard of the implementation of the free market in post-soviet Russia, which failed miserably and turned the people into the hands of 'strong leaders'.

American is not fucking capitalist. Just because it is the closest doesn't even mean it is close. The whole system is so ass-backwards from anything that could be compared to capitalism it's stupid to be trying.

A system where any massive government bailouts are necessary to keep the whole thing from circling the drain doesn't resemble capitalism in the least. The idea of companies or whole industries asking for bailouts from the government in a system that could reasonably be called capitalist would be a joke.

Fractional reserve banking at the ridiculous ratios used, risky loans, and ridiculous repackaging of risk is shit you get in a society of consumption and greed, not of personal responsibility and production - key ideals of capitalism.

To the second point no constitution is going to last when people are starving in the street. Not that the system they went to made them any more well-fed, but the promise of food from a dictator tastes a lot better than fend for yourself.