I just saw a segment on 60 Minutes about a rich American, Ray Dalio. He grew up in a middle class family and became a successful investor. He is 69 and is worth $18 Billion. He has pledged to give 1/2 to charity. He declares that our current system of capitalism which has resulted in problematic, persistent, and increasing wealth disparity, must be reformed. He points to the unfairness in the system, such as the fact that only 14% of persons of the lower economic status will ever make it to the middle class. He predicts that our capitalist system will inevitably be reformed in one of 2 ways: 1) thru us working together to reform it, or 2) thru conflict between the haves and have nots. He unequivocally asserts that the rich should pay more taxes. He thinks the probability that we will reform capitalism thru cooperation is 35 to 40%. Thus he thinks it is more likely that it will come to conflict that will usher in the reform.
I submit that our progressives, who promote social justice, and, in some cases, identify as Democratic Socialists are offering us the option to work together, NOT TO ABANDON CAPITALISM, but to reform it, so that our distribution of wealth system (poorly regulated capitalism) is not just a funnel to the already wealthy.
My name is not Bernie Sanders and I approve this message.
What did Ray imply? That the system is broke and needs fixed. In one word, overregulated. And the only way to fix it is to make life miserable to the point we will force tax evasion, move wealth overseas and the ones that must stay will then be forced to get congress to fix the system. I think Trump has a better method in mind.
My view is, if publicly asked, every person will say the rich needs to pay more taxes. Reason. They are scared s…less of the IRS and are afraid of an IRS audit. Can’t blame them. The Democrats have use Republican donner lists that ended up on IRS target list. Just look at the Tea Party and Lois Learner for example. Here is a simple fact. If the rich believed that they should pay more. Then they can pay more. There is nothing stopping them is there? Are they giving more?
On your submittal. Wake up, why do you fall for the obvious? The term “Democratic Socialists” means, you grow the food. We eat and we decide how much you get to eat. Of course, they don’t want to abandon capitalism completely. Then they would have to grow the food. How’s the Democratic Socialists doing in increasing the food production in Venezuela? Oh, wait, in twenty years of Democratic Socialism the food production has totally crashed. They ran out of people to steal from.
I would submit that your progressives are not progressives. They need to come out of the closet and use the title “communists”. Like they do at our universities. 44% say they prefer socialism and 7% communism. And socialism is just a path to communism.
You create a straw man to knock down when you compare Democratic Socialists in the US to what happened in Venezuela. In Venezuela, the downfall for that country began with Chavez getting autocratic power. He made the fatal mistake of replacing the administrative staff of the oil industry with incompetence. And because he had the power to do that unilaterally, the country’s main source of income went down the tubes. Democratic Socialists are more opposed to Autocracy than you seem to be. They are also not interested in nationalizing the oil industry. Rather they are interested in its paying its fair share of the fantastic profits made with no apparent regard for the damage done to Earth’s atmosphere.
Democratic socialism is not about Communism. That is hyperbole, at best. Hyperbole is just another form of lying. Democratic Socialism occurs in a democracy not an autocracy. Our current POTUS has repeatedly demonstrated his desire for autocratic control, as well as his admiration for despotic leaders around the globe. If you are truly concerned about the USA meeting the same fate as Venezuela, you should be concerned about not allowing our current POTUS continuing to move closer to autocracy. He continuously pushes limits against any balance of power mechanisms in our govt. He continually rails against and defames the free press. He pushes against laws that are not in line with what he wants. He pushes limits on the already expansive powers of the Presidency, beyond tradition and without ethical constraints. He is stacking the federal courts and Supreme Court with partisan right judges.
Democratic Socialism in the USA is not about, as you say, someone growing the food, and the govt deciding who gets to eat what. It is about the extravagantly wealthy who have grown wealthier and wealthier, giving some of their wealth so that, eg. poor people are screwed over less in our society. You say this will motivate the rich to seek to avoid taxes. They already avoid taxes. They already influence the passage of laws that benefit the wealthiest. The already have a Supreme Court that upholds that Corporations are People AND Money is Speech. This means that the wealthiest have extraordinary, often overwhelming, political advantage over regular citizens.
Stop your scare tactic about supposed “Communism”. It is a lie. That is what Trumpists inevitably do, following the lead of their cult overlord. The guy is up to 22 lies a day, now. Next on his agenda toward autocracy appears to be getting control of the Fed (the monetary system) by trying to appoint partisan and/or unqualified stooges, such as Herman “awww SHUCKEY DUCKEY!” Caine.
You say our capitalism is over-regulated. Here is one example that that is a lie. The mobile home industry shows that our capitalist system allows the financial exploitation of poor people who try to have something like their own home. 1st off they are exploited by high interest loans for purchasing a home that WILL go down in value. For the most part, these typically low income people, rent the ground (the only thing that WOULD appreciate in value) that their home sits on. It is a growing industry for predatory corporations or individuals to buy mobile home grounds, and then increase the rent, to and beyond, the point that the mobile home owners can pay. The mobile home owners are typically also unable to move elsewhere because of the prohibitive costs. They are captives of the exploiting capitalists. If they abandon their home, that works out even better for the predatory capitalist.
My view is, if publicly asked, every person will say the rich needs to pay more taxes.
Polls put this more around 70% or so, depending on how the question is asked. Even if it is that high, they are still voting for rich people who want to lower taxes on the rich. So, does it matter?
"My view is, if publicly asked, every person will say the rich needs to pay more taxes."
So, in a democratic place like the US, doesn't that mean rich people should pay more taxes?
Even when using real data instead of his fabricated numbers, he’s obviously very anti-American and anti-democracy if he’s arguing to not do what the vast majority of people want.
Tim - You create a straw man to knock down when you compare Democratic Socialists in the US to what happened in Venezuela.
No, I did not create the comparison. Venezuela has been touted by this site for many years as one of the examples of how good socialists’ ideas are. Now that they have tanked. You don’t want to use Venezuela any more. I have no problem saying what is wrong with socialism. History tells us it is the human factor. Socialism doesn’t work because of the caste and greed. And never will for more than a few decades.
Pete Buttigieg made an interesting comparison yesterday on Meet the Press when asked about the regulation of capitalism. He said if you don’t, you end up with what we see in Russia, Crony Capitalism. They have capitalism, but it’s only benefiting a few at the top, who agree to share capital, if you also agree to not care about the citizens, the workers, or the future of the country or the world. (I added that last bit)
Lausten – when taxes started, the rich paid 90% tax rate. High taxes did nothing but created a lot of tax loopholes for the very rich. It was the working man who always ended up getting stuck. When they raised taxes on the middle income it was justified by the higher taxes on the rich. The fairest system for a capitalist system is the flat tax. You really don’t need much of a tax system for the communist system. There is not enough money to tax. Look at France today. The average worker gets all these socialists breaks from the government and pays a 60% tax. So, what they thought was free benefits, they really end up paying for. The rich have left the country. And the working people are not wanting to pay anymore taxes. They are now in the 21st week of consecutive protests. The government is wanting to carbon tax the people. And if it comes from the EU or France the people don’t want anymore tax. France’s corporate rate was 33% and they are lowering it in 2020 to 28% to try and stop more companies from leaving.
France is a Capitalist and socialist system combined. It has really helped the poverty levels drop. What has saved France so far is its industry. But I see that as the big question as what is going to happen to France. Today the employers and employees are battling for control of company wealth. All the cards are with the workers to win this battle. This is going to be interesting. Germany is most likely not going to sit by and not do nothing as France becomes a populist run government. A major test for the new EU. The UK did is doing the right move by getting out.
The US had the same problem when we entered the Industrial Era. If Russia does not have a good constitution and independent Justice System, they are in trouble.
The US had the same problem when we entered the Industrial Era. If Russia does not have a good constitution and independent Justice System, they are in trouble.
Good comparison (for once). And what did we do? Did we look the other way when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory blew up? No, regulated the clothing industry. Did we do nothing when people got their limbs cut off by machines? No, we regulated factories. Justice is what I’m talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lausten – when taxes started, the rich paid 90% tax rate. High taxes did nothing but created a lot of tax loopholes for the very rich. It was the working man who always ended up getting stuck. When they raised taxes on the middle income it was justified by the higher taxes.....
It's amazing how many sentences in a row you can be wrong. Do you have google?
"It’s amazing how many sentences in a row you can be wrong."
Very nicely put.
Unfortunately, Google isn’t the solution: he can scrape up crud that supports his position from many thousands of sites where ‘journalistic integrity’, ‘fact checking’, and ‘unbiased thinking’, play no role in the stories they fabricate.
Tim: – You create a straw man to knock down when you compare Democratic Socialists in the US to what happened in Venezuela.
M Yohe: - No, I did not create the comparison. Venezuela has been touted by this site for many years as one of the examples of how good socialists’ ideas are. Now that they have tanked. You don’t want to use Venezuela any more. I have no problem saying what is wrong with socialism…
Tim: I have been off of CFI for well over 2 yrs, until recently. I don’t remember anyone lauding Venezuela as a model of Socialism. If someone had, it logically, could only have been early in Chavez’s reign when things were going well, before his autocracy lead to disaster, as it so often does. Democratic Socialism in the USA will not lead to autocracy. Trumpism might. The other difference that makes Venezuela style socialism completely different than what USA Democratic Socialists promote, is that there is absolutely no promotion of the govt taking over wealth producing industries and running them to make profits to use for social programs. So, again, the making of Venezuela into a straw man, is just a more sophisticated way of lying.
What is functional about USA Democratic Socialism is that it promotes means to repair or ameliorate the abuses of poorly regulated Capitalism. Our current capitalism continues to exacerbate wealth disparity, funneling more wealth to the wealthy, while the middle and lower economic classes are getting no-where. We need our middle class to grow like it did in the days when the taxes on the wealthiest was 90%. We need to end the stagnation of wages for the mid and lower economic classes, that the persistent Bullcrap of “trickle down economic” has provided for decade after decade after decade.
$15 minimum wage, affordable healthcare for all, affordable childcare, affordable quality education. These are not extremist policies that in some conspiracy theory kind of way will lead to communism. It is a pretty mainstream policy direction, imo. What seems extremist to me is the profitization of our educational system, of prisons, and even to some extent of our military. Profitized healthcare is, I think, the primary reason that healthcare costs WAY MORE in the USA than in other industrialized countries that have healthcare for ALL of their citizens, as well as BETTER health outcomes. (If we pooled all of the money that we currently spend on healthcare from all sources, we could finance healthcare for all AND have better long term outcomes AND have money left over.) These are not some heinous, insidious ideas that you can honestly demonize by naming it Socialism-that-is-Communism. Of course you can DISHONESTLY do that and all the righties and Trumpists will be trying to do that until the 2020 election.
Lausten, I agree with you and Buttigieg. I would go further and say that Russia has become a kleptocracy, with kleptocrat #1 (and some say that he is secretly the wealthiest man in the world from stealing from his own country). Their system of govt is a virtual crime syndicate, a sophisticated and extraordinary mafia governing Russia and gradually extending its influence all over the world. Putin aims to re-establish a powerful Russian Union. It will not be the USSR - but, more likely, something along the lines of “Union of Despotic Nations for Russia”.
Never heard of this guy before, but I’ve gotta say after briefly looking over a few articles about him, he doesn’t seem to be saying anything particularly groundbreaking.
The economic inequality we see today can’t accurately be investigated without looking at Globalization’s destructive effect on the middle class imo.
They want free medical. Strong unions. And at their own political machine. Looking at taking over the Democrat Party.
The definition: Communism and socialism are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes. The two are interchangeable in some ways, but different in others. In a communist society, the working class owns everything, and everyone works toward the same communal goal.
Once the unions control the economic and political structures, we are communism. They don’t have to own the companies themselves. They only need to control the companies by law. And there are laws that will allow them to do just that. What is slowing up the movement is the far-left itself, by opening borders and allowing illegal workers into the country. This is allowing many companies to keep the unions at bay.
Let me ask you where you got your communist thinking? I bet it long before you got TDS.
When you use your mobile home example, you forgot to compare that the government housing projects. Yes, the country is over-regulated. Just go to the big cities that are highly regulated and you will find the poor. Look at the companies today. They are mostly led by people with law degrees for a reason.
Here’s my counter example. Over 2,500 water districts in California that are not controlled by cities. They are controlled by lawyers. Over the years the water districts kept getting the laws changed little by little until the water rights belonged to the water districts. So, without water, what is the land worth? You have to pay these lawyer groups if you want water. The last court case was where the water districts admitted that they own the water. The water belongs to them and not the farmer or land owners anymore. The state took the water from the land owners and gave it to the lawyers. The lawyer for the farmers told the water district if the water was theirs, then they needed to remove their property from the farmer’s land or to start paying storage. To have cases like this is only because of over regulation. Over regulation can be just a form of legal theft. Take this issue and apply it to thousand of other business issues. That is over-regulation.
Communism is in a way just a form of over-regulation of democratic laws. Once the tipping point is reach it is impossible to back out. Just like the California water rights. And it comes about a little at a time, just like the stealing of water rights did.
Using the boogeyman of the pejorative label of “Communism” for Democratic Socialists is a blatant lie. It is also nonsense. There is zero chance of the USA becoming Communist under the likes of Bernie and AOC.
No one is seeking to eliminate the uber-wealthy and upper economic class. What is sought is to re build the middle class and to support the poorest so that they have a reasonable chance thrive economically. The wealthy have thrived and will continue to do so. The poor and middle class have not. For profit healthcare will not destroy wealthy families, but it can and has destroyed middle class and poor families. The wealthy families will not be destroyed if they can’t get a job or can only get a $8 an hr job. The wealthy are not going to be economically destroyed by the cost of childcare or the cost of education for themselves or their children. AND the wealthy will still be wealthy AFTER they pay high taxes, if they ever do.
So BS on your equation of our Democratic Socialists to Communism. Also BS on your statement of strong Unions bringing on Communism. In the past Unions were MUCH stronger in the USA than they are today. (Where is the Communism?) Is it in the better working conditions and working hours and pay that American workers got because of strong Unions? Is that the horrible Communism of which you speak?
You accuse me of having Communist thinking. I don’t. I have progressive thinking. If you’re asking where I came by that thinking. I would say, originally, or orangely if you prefer, that I got it from the last few words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America.
TimB: If you’re asking where I came by that thinking. I would say, originally, or orangely if you prefer, that I got it from the last few words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America.
Actually, I bet you think the way you do simply because you care about people. You have empathy and care about others, so you naturally think we, as a society, should work towards doing more for those who need help the most.
Anyone who needs the concept of a society where we all work together to improve the quality of life for everyone, explained to them, won’t understand it- they have decided other things are more important than people, so using people as a measuring stick is useless.
In my opinion, the best way of creating a society is to continually measure the quality of life of the lowest citizens. Once there is no one suffering needlessly, you have a good society. We are far from that society. Bizarrely, an insane number of (insane?) people want to drag us even further from that society.
Anyone who needs the concept of a society where we all work together to improve the quality of life for everyone, explained to them, won’t understand it- they have decided other things are more important than people, so using people as a measuring stick is useless.
In my opinion, the best way of creating a society is to continually measure the quality of life of the lowest citizens. Once there is no one suffering needlessly, you have a good society. We are far from that society. Bizarrely, an insane number of (insane?) people want to drag us even further from that society.
The basic idea of this is probably right, it doesn’t scale well though. Not to mention we don’t really create society.