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Originally Posted by PureX
That's just not realistic. You may be happy with the "let 'em die" approach to human fallibility, but the rest of society, thankfully, is not. So that when some people come of retirement age and have no money, we don't really want to just let them starve to death under bridges, like they do in some other countries.
Social Security was started for very good reasons and should be continued for those same reasons. We just have to keep the politicians from stealing the money so it's there when we need it.
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Social security was started because Americans refused to take care of their future. So it comes back to you again - how much additional social security are you willing to have withheld form your pay to pay for the retirement of others? Switzerland is socialist. Do you know how much each person pays in taxes? 50%. Are you willing to take half of each check and give it to the government to administer?
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Originally Posted by PureX
No, the question becomes how viable are these failing cities in the 21st century? If they cannot sustain themselves, then the answer is that they are no longer a viable human endeavor. If that's the case, then let's stop wasting time and money trying to prop them up. Let's find some new solutions.
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Whole states are going bankrupt, should the feds, who are to all intents and purposes already bankrupt, go in and take the states over?
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Originally Posted by PureX
That's up to the individual officers and their particular circumstances. It's something they would have to decide. Some would leave and some would stay, I suppose.
They are making the state pay for the city's policing.
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That's nice. I asked you what you are willing to do.
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Originally Posted by PureX
If the state has to pay the bills, then the state should be allowed to control the policies. Normally, when a city goes bankrupt, the state steps in and pays the bills, but they also take over running the city. Sounds to me like the city politicians wanted to fob their bills off onto the state without having to relinquish power. Typical.
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What happens when the state, a state like California, cannot pay the cities bills either, then what would you do withthe failing city?
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Originally Posted by PureX
That's what tariffs are for: evening that sort of thing out.
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They don't even things out, they become tit for tat very quickly. We had tariffs in the early 70's and we got rid of them because it killed the ability of US companies to export to the rest of the world.
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Originally Posted by PureX
Also, we should perhaps look at how they are doing this. Maybe they have something to teach us. In Germany, for example, they treat their workers exceedingly well, because the companies they are working for understand that labor is their most important asset. They pay to train their people, and to train them further for advancement, and they pay them high wages to keep them. And the result is that the German economy is doing very well, especially in industry, AND their workers are very happy. Amazingly enough, these two things go hand in hand. Try teaching THAT to a capitalist!
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I agree. It has been proven time and time again that rising tides raise all boats. That is what happened when Clinton was in office, we had an economy that was churning money through the system and everybody was better off. Sadly, it was a false economy and when the bubble burst, well, here we are today. There is a lesson in there about sustainability.
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Originally Posted by PureX
That's just the corporate cool-aid talking. Socialism doesn't take away any incentive. It simply forces commerce to serve the people involved in it, instead of just those who manage to "win" the transaction.
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Social equity enforced by a government doesn't work. Governments, in their effort to be fair, become notoriously unfair.
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Originally Posted by PureX
You shouldn't. But no one said anything about people getting paid the same for doing different work. Socialism does not mean everyone gets paid the same.
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No, it means that I have to give more of my income to support those who don't make as much. It can work as Switzerland seems to indicate. But is the mind set of the average American able to adjust to the mind set of Socialism?
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Originally Posted by PureX
There is no such thing as "pure socialism". All economic socialism means is that we place the well-being of the people involved in the economic enterprise above the profits of individual investors. Just because you start or buy a company, for example, doesn't mean you have the right to run it into the ground just to milk it for all it's worth (*cough, cough*, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, *cough, cough*).
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Are you advocating that failing companies should be propped up at all costs just so people can work? That is a recipe for disaster. I agree that the business practices of the 80's have left this country worse off overall, but businesses should be allowed to fail.
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Originally Posted by PureX
Did God say that?
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God is remarkably quite about economic systems. Within the church, the economic model seems to be communism. The pure form, not what the USSR and Chine call communism (which is really fascism).
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Originally Posted by PureX
I don't see any reason why we would have to do that, at all. I think we have all the talent and resources we need to take care of ourselves very well. And I feel quite sure that if we make things other people in the world want, they will be willing to buy them. And I bet they will be willing to sell us whatever we want to buy, too.
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The world will only buy our products if they can afford them. I think the best car in the world is a Mercedes Benz 300C. I can't afford it so it makes little difference how good it is, I drive a Ford. If the US cannot compete in a global market, we will collapse as a nation.
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Originally Posted by PureX
The whole tariff-bogey-man thing is baloney. In fact, we SHOULD be making our own stuff. It's better that way.
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How much are you willing to pay for an iPhone? Its manufactured in Chine because Apple did the research, If it was manufactured in the US, few would be able to afford it. The cost of the resources that go into each phone is small. The cost of labor drives the price of the phone. Raise those labor costs and the price of the phone goes up. Add on a nice benefit package and the price goes up even more.
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Originally Posted by PureX
Capitalism is an inherently antagonistic system. It divides us all into winners and losers. That means the winners become the wealthy overlords and the rest of us become their servants. And that's EXACTLY what you are seeing happening. Right before your eyes.
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The capitalistic system faces the same problem that every other system faces as well - human greed. Some systems do a slightly better job of regulating that greed, but in the end, greed wins.
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