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A Desert Rose said:OH please..... Canada is replete with socialism. Go there. In the words of Lance, paraphrased, they are all inclusive up there and I am sure would love to have you......
70/30 said:
Hey that particular post was about 80% palatable, give him some credit. Everyone fighting for themself leaves the world in a very bad place. Unrestricted capitalism will give consumers no rights and citizens will be poisoned from pollution with zero recourse. I have little respect for strict members of the Libertarian Party and people that think California shouldn't be closely regulated. The LP's live in a fantasy world, 99% of corporations don't care about the welfare of the public. As for California, it is very crowded-it shouldn't exist considering its sparse access to fresh water. They have and will continue to have extreme environmental concerns. As America grows and turns fully into a land of concrete, California will be the model on how to slow down the inevitable.
REDWAVE said:Yeah, Desert Rose, in my last post I was trying to establish some common ground with the defenders of capitalism. Can you bend a little too, and admit that there are some serious problems with capitalism?
A Desert Rose said:
My own thoughts are that 95% or more of the population of the US can do just fine without the "help" of the federal government.
Unrestricted capitalism gives consumers all the freedom in the world. I am not sure you understand what you wrote there. Less governement regulations translates to more growth. More growth creates more jobs. And on and on it goes....... More jobs means less taxes and less entitlement programs.
What you are seeing now in the US is a challenge to that theory. There are more and more politicians striving to provide more "free services" to more and more people. Even with our robust economy such a scheme cannot stand for long.
A Desert Rose said:Start a new thread, how about gun control?
This is fucking boring. No one is convincing anyone of anything. All we are doing is posting to show how smart we are. Or to show that we think we are smarter than someone else.
And why do you suppose that is? Perchance because the majority of legislators are in the high wealth category and are protecting their wealth at the expense of us lesser beings who can't afford to buy them off?Originally posted by Aquila
Most of the economic burden of taxes is doled out to the MIDDLE class, not the upper class because of tax breaks and loopholes. is why they made more and more.. however I say more power to em. if you can make it Go for it.
Capitalism is the only economic system that will eradicate most such problems in society. I doubt any system will eliminate human stupidity, the root of such irrational ideas. You may opine that capitalism is a flawed system, but the truth is, capitalism is the ONLY system that conforms to the nature of man's life and supplies the incentives to progress and advance mankind as a whole rather than just enrich a few at the expense of others as does every form of collectivism.Originally posted by Velius
Umm...no not really. Capitalism doesn't "inherently" breed any of that. Most of the current racism, sexism and homophobia are left overs from the Christian church. Capitalism is a flawed system, but any halfwit with eyes can see that.
Doesn't a statement like that remind you of the old adage, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool . . ."?Originally posted by A Desert Rose
Jesus Christ....... Government does not produce those things, you dolt.
Tax dollars are provided for them and they are bid on by private enterprise and then contructed by private enterprise.
You are amazing.....ly dumb.
Based on what he posts, he'd make a plant look smart.Originally posted by A Desert Rose
REDWAVE, please never, ever leave and never stop posting threads.
You make me feel so fucking smart. It does great things for my self image and ego. ~smiling~
There is one significant difference: the general contractor doesn't steal the money to pay for the project.Originally posted by REDWAVE
. . . On construction projects, for instance, the general contractor farms out the work to subcontractors.
Actually, it is the mixed nature of this economy that causes the severe boom/bust cycles and the hobbling of its growth. Without the stagnating controls of government regulation, the cycles would be less severe because the economic managers would correct much more quickly than do government regulators who are subject to political influence and bear no accountability for their actions or decisions.Originally posted by Sandia
. . . REDWAVE: The US is not a capitalist state, it has a mixed socialist/capitalist economy. Programs like Medicare, social security, unemployment, worker's comp., minimum wages, etc. etc. etc. are all socialistic programs, designed to prevent poverty and alleviate the exploitation of the poor by the rich. The mixed nature of the American economy is the reason for it's success.
Actually, Ishmael is much closer to being right than are you. You commit the typical fallacy of correlating the criminal and the capitalist. The cases you cite as your examples in inequity in pay are in fact examples of theft. In the case of Enron, fraud and the MacDonald's lawsuit, extortion albeit it legalized.Originally posted by Sandia
Ishmael, the idea that people are paid what they're worth is ridiculous. I think we've been through this before, but again: How much was the CEO of Enron worth when he took half a billion dollars out of the company while guiding it into bankruptcy? How much is a tort lawyer worth (your opinion) who sues McDonald's over hot coffee* and collects several million dollars out of the settlement? How about a boy-band singer who collects millions lip-syncing and swivelling his hips at thirteen year old girls? A teacher? A firefighter? A policeman? How about a private in the US Marines? Does he get paid what he's worth? . .
Has he ever offered one?Originally posted by JazzManJim
Don't have a substantive argument, then?
Didn't think so.
Hey, Rose, honey, you neglected to point out that corporations don't pay taxes. They are the unpaid middleman who collects the taxes from their customers who see the taxes in the form of higher product/service costs. The greatest benefit the collectivist has is the ignorance of his victim.Originally posted by A Desert Rose
I am guessing darling, that you do not work in the private sector. Wealthy companies produce jobs for people. The less money companies have (as in heavy taxes) the less money they have to pay employees so, they have to cut back or lay off people.
How do companies get wealthy? They provide goods or services that consumers purchase. If their products are substandard or not competitive in the market place, that company will fold.
Same is true of wages. If a company provides competitive wages, comparable with other companies, they will attract the best employees.
It's a market driven society that we live in. No one is romantising capitalism. Especially me. I personally find it to be the best system developed up to this point.
Yes, but let's not point out that the reason it's going tits up now instead of in thirty or forty years is because the politicians you worship stole the money collected which was supposedly invested and pissed it away on other of their socialistic fantasies. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. The same money invested in the stock market, even in consideration of the drop over the past year would yield 3-10 times what social security is offering. It's the collectivist system you laud that has swindled the people for whom it was touted as a savior. Just more lies.Originally posted by REDWAVE
. . . At any rate, Social Security provides a mere pittance, and is woefully inadequate. It should be called "Social Insecurity."
First, GE is looking at a market appraisal and planning to meet the market demand, pure and simple. Their experience gives them a basis on which to project but no certainty that their projections are correct.Originally posted by christo
. . . I mean, General Electric doesn't take a vote of its employees and shareholders to decide whether they should build 1000 or 1500 jet engines . . . but capitalism is much more complicated than supply and demand. The idea that the market should be allowed to operate without any govermental supervision is wrong, as is the idea that no regulation means a more efficent, stronger economy. If you don't have rules, you have anarchy. The trick is, how many rules should you have? How intrusive?
Actually, it was precisely because of givernment bureaucracy and regulation the Enron, Global Crossing and others were able to perpetuate their frauds as long as they did and hence to cause the economic damage they did. Bureaucratic inertia and political meddling prevented timely government detection of the problem.Originally posted by christo
Cycles of regulation and deregulation come and go just like boom and bust cycles. The Enron and WorldCom disasters never would have happened (or allowed to become so huge) had there been proper legislation governing financial reporting, conflicts of interest among stock analysts, and oversight of accounting firms who also do consulting work.
Government does not and has never nor will it ever produce anything. Government steals extravagant sums of money from the rightful owners and squanders it on outlandish pie-in-the-sky projects for the benefit of some politican's constituency to get the politician reelected. Government projects are always underestimated on cost to get approval and always run over budget and often yield an inferior product when all is said and done. Private enterprise will always give you a better project at a cheaper price.Originally posted by christo
. . . People bitch about taxes and government, often with just cause. There is too much waste, too much inefficiency. That's what's shameful, the waste, because every dollar lost in pointless bureacracy is a dollar that could be used to renovate schools, provide health care to the elderly, or build aircraft carriers. But bureaucratic waste isn't limited to government, as anyone who's every worked for a large corporation can attest.
Redwave was right when he said that government has produced great things. The national highway system, the Apollo missions, the Manhattan project were all funded and run by the government. Government DOES produce these things. General Dynamics didn't just decide to start building F-15's in the hope that someone would buy them. The goverment decided it wanted a new fighter, looked over the bids from different aerospace companies, and picked the one they thought was best. Government created the demand and provided the funding. No government leadership, no sexy fighter planes. Or men on the moon. Or Head Start programs.
You can lead a man to knowledge but you can't make him think.Originally posted by A Desert Rose
Start a new thread, how about gun control?
This is fucking boring. No one is convincing anyone of anything. All we are doing is posting to show how smart we are. Or to show that we think we are smarter than someone else.
Dick thick said:I bet you suck cock better than understand politics.
I referred to the post you cited (REDWAVE's post). Yours was quite sanguine, I thought. And my PM box os no longer full.Originally posted by A Desert Rose
Could you please clarify your statement about corporations not paying taxes?
Also, which won of us is the fool? Me or REDWAVE? Or both?
And by the way, your pm box is full.
Coolville said:Anthropologists have determined that man is inherently communist. Not in the nasty Soviet way, but as a group of people working together for the common good and taking care of each other along the way.
The individualistic elements of captialism go against our inherent genetic instincts as flock animals.
Which explains why socialism, or democratic socialism as it is called, flourishes in the western world in every country apart from the States.
It's in the genes.
See the BBC documentary.
Unclebill said:
(Re: Discrimination)
... Capitalism is the only economic system that will eradicate most such problems in society. I doubt any system will eliminate human stupidity, the root of such irrational ideas.
Sandia said:
Aquila: the rich pay most of the taxes in the US, which is fair, since they have most of the money.
Sandia said:
I'm self-employed.
Corporations get rich by paying their employees as little as possible while charging as much as possible for their products.
REDWAVE said:
However, early capitalism also had its dark side. Huge numbers of people were forced off the land, and they flocked into the new, rapidly growing cities, where the only work available for most of them was in the capitalists' factories. People worked twelve, fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week, for bare subsistence wages. And the technological advances, while in many ways making life easier for people, also had negative side effects, mainly pollution and environmental devastation.