mirozBut does it? Don't the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Isn't the majority of population growth in the lower income brackets?
I see what you're saying about socialism, though I think "always" is a questionable adjective here. However, pure capitalism has a similar problem - in this case, however, it is not just the government who is greedy but BOTH the government and the rich. They get into bed together and the poor stay poor and grow in numbers. Who looks out for them?
I think what our forefathers did was truly brilliant. They imagined and implemented a system where (ideally) if the people called for the government to be more socialist, they could vote that. Ten years later, the people could change their mind and swing the other way. We have a unique balance that is being skewed by money in politics. That's my biggest gripe with our current "capitalist" mindset. Why do big companies get to influence the government? The people who work for them should get to vote, and that should be the extent of their say; they shouldn't be allowed to pour billions of dollars into politicians' pockets to buy votes. That would make our forefathers sick.
Socialism is against the free nature of the US government system. The whole idea of socialism is that the state knows what is best for the citizenry more than the individual.
Capitalism is based on the concept of individualism. I know what is best for me, and I get to choose how to distribute my resources/value accordingly. It uses the power of the individual (greed) to best distribute resources to maximize output (value).
The issue with most socialists is that they see equality as the end goal, not prosperity. Socialism has an outstanding track record of making everyone equally poor. They see poverty and blame it on wealth inequality, when it really is not. It is more due to intellectual inequality, which socialism can not redistribute. You can't fix stupid.
The poor don't really get poorer. Look at the quality of life enjoyed by the middle 80% of America (excluding the bottom 10%, and top 10%). While wealth inequality is higher than it was in 1950, just about everyone has a better life than their grandparents did. We have access to more information and technology, most people have traveled by air, people live longer and are healthier. So you don't have access to the same healthcare that the top 70% do, you still have better healthcare than everyone in 1955.
Socialism didn't do that.
It is only in the last decade when China has moved towards embracing market forces that anyone there is living much better than they did in 1955.
Socialist ideas kept the standard of living pretty flat between 1955 and 1995 in China.
Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money. When you take away their incentive to make money (like socialism does), they stop making as much and you are left with less money to take away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not so enamored with laissez faire economics that I'm blind to the benefits of my tax dollars at work. I can appreciate the value of not having a bunch of disease ridden uneducated proles walking around. Everyone benefits when we create routes for the intelligent, but poor, to succeed. I like having a corruption free police force, dominant national defense, and well maintained roads.
I doubt however, that the ideas proposed by most socialist are going to do that. They all seem more oriented towards punishing the rich, rather than bringing up the poor. Or believe too strongly in government dictation.
Would society as a whole benefit if the poorest made more money? Yes, absolutely. But why is the only solution a higher minimum wage - which directly places the cost of that benefit at the people who can make it happen - the employers - mostly small businesses that would be hamstrung by higher payroll costs. Why not an earned income tax credit - which distributes the cost among all who benefit?
Is the cost associated with higher education hurting our future by strangling a young intelligent generation with high debt right as they look to start their lives? Yes. But why is the solution government subsidized tuition loans - which take the value equation out of higher education and artificially inflate the costs? Government backed student loans have artificially increased the demand for higher education - which increases the cost. The current issue is not that there are not enough people going to college, but the wrong ones are. There are too many dumb (rich and poor) people spending four years pushing up the cost of tuition by spending four years drunk and late to liberal arts classes.
Socalism sucks cause it is not about making people better off but about making people equal. forced equality sucks ballz.
