Recently the new Senator Ocasio-Cortez from New York has often been in the news. To anyone that studies history, studies economics, or just thinks long term as in actions, consequences, outcomes, etc. she appears to be clueless about what she is talking about. She is an avowed socialist, and she is good looking. These days that is all that matters to some voters.
I saw she recently proposed a progressive tax system as suggested in 1960s and that she wants a 60-70% tax rate on the wealthiest.
I haven't read the comments of anyone else on this yet. I wanted to share my thinking on this before I dive in. Thus, what you are getting here is my opinion and is a glimpse into my thinking process.
First. What happened as corporate taxes increased in the U.S.?
Answer: Businesses left the U.S. to countries without such tax burdens. This included the bulk of our manufacturing industry.
Second. What happened when the taxes were lowered last year?
Answer: Many of these businesses started coming back.
Third. The uber wealthy that she wants to hit with 60%-70% do you think they are forced to stay in the U.S.?
Answer: No.
Fourth: How does she plan to insure they stay here to pay their taxes?
Answer: She likely hasn't thought that far ahead. If she has then she just hasn't told you as it ends up requiring quite a bit of authoritarian and tyrannical approach.
Fifth: Why do many of the wealthiest people in the nation support people like her?
Answer: They know she is clueless and her path will simply lead to these wealthy people getting more power than they already have.
It is all fine and dandy to imagine solutions. Yet we also need to see if people have tried them. What was the result? If it was tried multiple times, are there any consistent results?
Socialism is evil. It is very evil.
Capitalism when it becomes crony capitalism is evil. We currently have crony capitalism.
Yet capitalism in terms of the free market is the most liberating thing we have ever come up with, and the greatest advancements in human quality of life came from it. Do some people have problems? Yes. This is called life. Equality of outcome is an impossible fairy tale. It is not possible to achieve. We can however strive for equality of opportunity and likely get very close to achieving that.
Socialism and Communism play upon our emotions and short term thinking as they sound like they are going to help everyone, and everyone will be equal. Yet this isn't the case. They increasingly back certain businesses (Socialism) to be the national businesses which gives these businesses a growing government backed monopoly. In the case of Communism the people do not own the businesses, the government does (claiming it is the people) which means it all becomes monopolies controlled by the politicians in the government. In reality, and in multiple practices the phenomena of monopoly is far more extreme under socialism and communism. It also doesn't end up with people being treated equal. It ends up with the rulers being treated stellar, and the rest of the people being treated equal in poverty.
Now why is it important to think long term?
Well socialists like to promise free education, free health care, free food, free housing, etc. This sounds great to people who are struggling, or to those that don't want to have to work, or if they do want to work keep it simple.
The problem is this. Governments don't have a product that produces wealth. They get their wealth by three ways I am aware of. They tax the citizens and take it from them, they take out debt in the citizens name usually by printing more fiat currency and thus devaluing the actual value of savings and money and driving inflation, or they steal it from other nations via war.
They cannot thus PAY for anything free they offer you. You pay for it, one way or the other.
Furthermore, you pay for services for other people that you yourself will never need.
Should this make you feel good because you are helping people? No. You are not helping people. Governments are so full of graft, and bureaucracy that they are extremely inefficient at how they spend money. If you want to help people you'd be more helpful if you just paid people that need help outright. Furthermore, to be truly compassionate means you made a choice. Compassion doesn't exist by proxy.
In the short term this free stuff will seem great. People maybe even praise it and say "see it works". I've actually witnessed this several times in my lifetime. The answer. "Just wait a little longer"
You see... socialism is great until it runs out of other people's money.
Now let's see how good you are at thinking ahead. What if you offer all of these free things that are not free, and at the same time you demand open borders and allow anyone to move in that wants to live there.
Answer: Kloward and Piven. The nation will collapse.
The thing about collapsed nations. They become a vacuum for the already powerful and wealthy to purchase the property at a very low price and seize more control.
There is a reason many of the wealthiest people push for socialism and communism. They know it will only increase their wealth and power. They know from study what it really ends up doing.
Is a free market and capitalism perfect? No. Is life perfect and free of risk? No.
Freedom is risky.
Slavery can come in many forms, and electing people who promise free things when the only way they can achieve it is by stealing from you... that is your slavery.
So let's return to the thought that if this 60-70% tax rate is imposed so Ocasio-Cortez and others can then support their insane socialist ideas. They have to pay for it somehow. I predict those in that tax bracket will rather quickly move.
Therefore we will now have FREE services and the people in the 60-70% tax bracket Ocasio-Cortez planned on robbing won't be around to pay that.
Who pays for it then? Do you seriously think your taxes will remain low? Perhaps they will. Yet that will mean they are simply taking on more debt against you.
Ocasio-Cortez is young and impressionable. She obviously hasn't studied these things very carefully, and she definitely doesn't think long term. She is not alone. These ideas are popular, even if they are naive. Thus, why people like her are elected.
These champagne socialists crack me up, they haven’t got a fucking clue have they?!
If these ridiculous taxes are imposed you’ll end up with the exact same situation they have in Rothschild puppet controlled France....
Check it out...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4932482/Wealth-tax-forces-12-000-millionaires-YEAR-France.html
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I wonder if I should comment at all...oh,I guess I just did...
You can drop your business tax to 0%,and they will still get a better deal outside US..so stop the tRump kind of barkin ..it's a desperate sound..
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Sorry, taxes do make a difference, but not the way you think. Corporations do NOT pay taxes. If I am making thermos bottles, and you raise a special 4% tax on thermos bottles, I simply raise my prices by 5% to the customers. When I decide to move off shore, it is to lower that price to increase sales volumes.
I have been in these meetings...so this is how it actually Works, in the real world!
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In the real world you won't be able to have competitive prices unless you move where the energy and labor is cheaper...
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Actually, I was in medical manufacturing, and our single largest expense was government regulation. I still consult on compliance with FDA regulations.
Moving off shore removes about 90% of those regulations, and significantly reduces the product costs. The nail in the coffin of medical R&D was the ACA. The added regulations, combined with price fixing, and added taxes on medical equipment (which oddly included hunting equipment and coal production) was a 100% kill on all medical R&D. What little remains is now overseas.
We were growing by about 35% a year, by using lean manufacturing, and by making technological superior equipment, which we sold for 3 times as much, because it WORKED!
I have several dozen patents for that type of equipment, and I ran the Engineering department, so I have a reasonable understanding of the process. I built automation that allowed us to compete, and win against foreign imports, even with the disgusting regulatory loads.
I am still doing this type work for manufacturers today, and making them cost effective against imports, so I can tell you it can be done, with a little work.
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You mean I should just keep barking the same drivel that has failed and decimated every country it has been tried in in the past? Sorry. I like learning from mistakes, not repeating them.
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Yes , please...keep barking..
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Sorry if barking is above your comprehension level. :)
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Re: Your use of the term "Socialism."
You use the terms socialism and communism interchangeably as if they are synonyms. However, they have different meanings and largely different practices in the real world. This makes your overall argument a bit hard to follow because some of the things that you are saying are valid in regards to communism but then not to socialism and visa versa. With the two concepts being used interchangeably, its a bit confusing.
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I accidentally hit a key on my keyboard and submitted... I wasn't done. Rather than editing and continuing and you possibly missing what I wrote I'll continue on this second reply.
The interesting thing about Stalin and Hitler for example (Communism and Socialism) is that their approaches were very similar. The only difference was who they allowed to control the businesses.
I use Socialism and Communism in the same discussions frequently as while they do differ in some ways truly I see Socialism as simply a stepping stone to Communism/Marxism.
I also see them both playing upon the same emotions to convince people they are good ideas. They are similar in far more ways than they differ.
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I am very well aware of their different meanings.
In practice (and yes it's been tried many times) they are very similar. All that really differs is who controls the property. Or at least on face value. Socialism does it via partnering with private entities, and thus is why it is what fascist nations embraced. Communism doesn't allow these private entities. The end result though still is that the rulers of the government dictate how they businesses work.
They sound great in theory. In practice they fail. Communism does work well in small commune sized groups, with limited needs and common interests. It simply does not scale well at all.
The interesting thing is that people have operated Communes inside of capitalist nations. How? Capitalism does not restrict it. You are free to work in combines and operate how you want. You are simply not free to dictate how everyone else must work. It is voluntary.
Communism on the other hand if practiced to its purist extent claims to not support capitalism. There is no private property. This hasn't been tested anywhere that I am aware of all Communist experiments to date still had Capitalist elements.
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Socialism is a broad term that encompasses a variety of political spectrum's. As such, "socialism" is a relative concept, in that nations are either more (or less) "socialist" than others, depending on where they fall on the political spectrum. It really all depends on the comparison being made. Socialism cannot really be used in such a definitive fashion as to say things like "socialism is evil" or "in practice they fail." These arguments are basically meaningless as they are simply, an over generalization.
Socialist nations can encourage "free market" and/or they can be against "free markets." Many nations have adopted "socialist" principles and many of them do very well.
China, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands...etc. All of these nations are considered to be "socialist" when compared to the U.S. However, they are not communist nations.
I am not arguing that one political/economic ideology is superior over another. Right wing, left wing who cares. Believe what you want. But when you say that socialism doesn't work, what exactly do you mean by that? Plenty of countries in the world are demonstrating that socialist principles do work.
When people bring the term socialism into an argument when they are talking specifically about communism, all that does is make things convoluted. It seems that the overall goal of using the two terms "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably, is to make things confusing for the lay public, so that it is easier to push a specific agenda.
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It is amusing you refer to China as Socialist. :) Since they themselves refer to themselves as Communist. I guess that makes it easier to see why I stated Socialism is simply a stepping stone to Communism.
Here is my simplified rapid fire interpretation of Socialism:
Advocating the government provide services for citizens rather than the citizens doing it themselves. Generally moving into a mode where for those services providing any outside of the government controlled is discouraged or prohibited.
It is always born from an emotional seed of people wanting to right a perceived wrong. Famine. "The government should feed people!". Poorly educated. "The government should give education!". Healthcare problems. "The government should provide healthcare!"
The problem is that governments are inefficient, full of graft, and bureaucracy.
We have the tech now that the same thing people are advocating for could be done without asking the government to do it. Crowd source it. If you don't want to do it yourself then join a crowd sourced group. Voluntarily.
The problem with demanding the government do it is they can only accomplish it via involuntary means. They cannot pay for it. Thus they must steal from citizens, put them in debt, or attack other nations to steal from them to fund these things. Then because of the graft and bureaucracy it actually will require more funding than if it was done outside of the government. The key though is it is involuntary. Thus, by my definition evil.
EDIT: As to why it is doomed to fail. It is inefficient and it operates by draining fund from others. With human nature corruption of the politicians controlling it the graft generally makes it worse. You can point at "socialist" countries and depending upon where and when you point at them they can be doing quite well. I recall people pointing out how awesome Venezuella was doing about 10 years ago. That was one of them that I said "Just wait". They had accrued wealth. So until they drained that wealth it seemed great.
Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money.
As to Sweden... Here is an article I read years ago which is informative and quite an eye opener How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich.
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That depends upon you definition of evil.
My definition is not based upon any religion.
Evil as I define it is simply FORCING someone else. If it is not voluntary then it is evil.
With that definition I can indeed say it. :)
That of course doesn't mean you have to agree.
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China may be communist. My understanding is that the government is gradually relinquishing control over many state run businesses and moving towards a free market economy, thus moving from a communist nation to a socialist one over time. However, I could be wrong in that, so perhaps it was a bad example.
Re: Evil.
It helps knowing that you are using your own personal (and seemingly random) definition of the term evil. Oxford dictionary defines the term as "profoundly immoral or wicked" and Websters defines it similarly - relating to "moral repulsion."
I actually agree with some of what you are saying (not all), but nonetheless hopefully you see the issue with arguing definitively about something, based on your own interpretation of a very broad term. To put it into perspective, if I were to define concepts such as "capitalism," "free markets," or "democracy" myself, based on my own personal interpretation and biases, I could easily find examples in the world that support my definition and thereby develop some compelling argument as to why they are wrong, harmful or evil. I do not have an issue with those concepts, but my point is that anything can be argued if its done willy nilly.
I personally do not take issue with an individuals political ideology but I do take issue with over generalizations based on seemingly non-existent facts and confirmation biased examples. That is why I mostly hate the news and try not to watch it. Its just a large institution that manipulates the public and pushes it's own agenda.
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A five decade time frame doesn't make it a successful principle, especially when combined with fiat money....
It's been a five decade con.
Socialism necessitates using force - the state - to take off others...
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@leaky20 Socialism IS communism, that is just a little bit pregnant. Given time, it will get there, if it does not destroy itself first. When unproductive people, that could be productive, decide to vote themselves money from their government, that country begins to die!
Both are a cancer, and both are fatal. Sometimes faster, and sometimes slower; but always fatal. It took the better part of a century to kill the USSR, because it was so large, but that death was inevitable.
@dwinblood You nailed it! Most people miss the fiat currency portion of this cancer, good job! I am following you!
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Low IQ politics...
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it's a binary solution set.
either she doesn't understand the Laffer curve...in which case she's an idiot
or she does....in which case she's a traitor.
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Generally it's two type people who advocate socialism:
Controllers who actually believe they will be near the top and stay there.
Retards who believe they are on the bottom because somebody else has something they don't, and don't understand that equality of outcome is basically impossible.
I'm uncertain which one crazy eyes Cortez is...
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I think Cortez is just naive. She is sure she has it figured out, and actually is clueless to how little she actually knows. She is acting on a plan without knowing anything about the actual pieces. It FEELS good to her so she doesn't need to truly think it out, do mental scenario, think about what it would truly take, what the likely outcomes would be, or even look seriously at past examples of nations doing the same thing.
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"Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism."
...
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
...
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law, 1850
Ocasio-Cortez just puts a pretty face on an ugly old idea that we need central planners and administrators to control our lives. Partisanship is just bickering over who should be "in control."
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Well said, and thanks for the quotes.
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Curated for #informationwar (by @thoughts-in-time)
Ways you can help the @informationwar!
FreezePeach
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