Guy O'Leighken wrote:
... oh, the first paragraph of my last post should have also said that in those 40 years the percentage of US revenue paid by corporations has dropped from 27% to 9%. I probably just forgot to mention that because college destroyed my mind!
Percentage of what? Are you talking about dividends as a percentage of profits? Wages as a percentage of revenue? Corporate taxes as a percentage of US Federal budget?...?
Thanks for the clarification.
One was invented by Benito Mussolini to describe a realization of the future as a romanticized but terribly false version of the past. The other three were invented by socialists, two to describe unobtainable utopias, the other to describe the world the way it is.
Question if you please wrote:
Guy O'Leighken wrote:... oh, the first paragraph of my last post should have also said that in those 40 years the percentage of US revenue paid by corporations has dropped from 27% to 9%. I probably just forgot to mention that because college destroyed my mind!
Percentage of what? Are you talking about dividends as a percentage of profits? Wages as a percentage of revenue? Corporate taxes as a percentage of US Federal budget?...?
Thanks for the clarification.
Percentage of tax revenue made up of corporate taxes.
One more comment. There's no such thing as an separating the economy from the state. The only way to have an economy separate from the government is to have no laws. That's self-evident to me, but let me know if you want me to clarify.
The Enlightenment Homie wrote:
This post exemplifies how college destroys people's minds. "Capitalism" doesn't mean "the U.S. economy" like Noam Chomsky wants you to think. Capitalism is THE SEPARATION OF ECONOMY AND STATE, i.e. a social system in which the sole function of government is to protect individual rights. It is nonexistent in the modern world, and the counties that come closest to it are Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. is rushing toward increasingly dramatic forms of government control over the economy, and our loss of prosperity is a direct result of the loss of capitalism.
Free market capitalism is better for the following reasons:
1. It is the only form of governing that honors individual property rights.
2. Because of #1 the people are freer and work harder to improve their lives.
3. Because of #2 more is produced, the economy grows, and standards of living rise for everyone.
4. In free market capitalism the economy is much more efficient because the allocation of scarce resources is determined by prices, which have embedded in them the information of millions of individuals making small decisions about where their money gets spent. Resources automatically flow to where the demand is, and therefore the wants and needs of the people are served quickly and efficiently without government intervention.
5. In a centrally controlled or highly regulated economy, the distribution of scarce resources is controlled by a relatively few number of people who CAN NOT KNOW all the information necessary to serve millions of people with the full spectrum of wants and needs. These economies become very inefficient compared to free markets, and as a result standards of living fall for everyone.
6. Free market capitalism encourages people to work together to make better products for higher margins. This results in the Invisible Hand which magically converts a society full of selfish people into a society full of people who are trying as hard as they can to make things their neighbor wants to buy.
7. The hallmark of centrally controlled economies or welfare states is corruption as different groups struggle to attain the political power necessary to protect their businesses or to outright steal from one group to buy votes from another.
8. In welfare states we see groups of people trying to be seen as helpless victims who can possibly provide for themselves so they can claim benefits from the public trough. This does not incentivize people to produce more, and provides a disincentive for those who work hard and get taxed to pay for the benefits. Again the economy slows down and the standard of living drops for everyone.
9. Free market capitalism distributes money goods among people based on merit and productivity. All other systems redistribute wealth at the barrel of a gun.
10. Communism is the most effective killing machine ever devised by man. In the last century more people were killed by their own Communist governments than were killed in all the wars. Communism is the worst form of government, ever.
Early America was very close to a perfect free market capitalist economy, and we went from a starving colony of a couple hundred people to the freest, richest world super power in less than 350 years. Free market capitalism has been proven to work, and all other options have been proven to fail.
It's really no contest at all.
Remember that the rapid increase in productivity of the US that you mention depended on the free labor of millions of slaves. Capitalism without a corresponding policies to decrease inequality has always lead to a small number of very rich people and and huge number of very poor people.Also, I think people in the US tend to think of the USSR and the countries behind the iron curtain as the main examples of socialism. Those didn't work very well. But there are very positive examples of socialism; the countries of Scandinavia especially. They have populations that are well educated and productive.
DiscoGary wrote:
Free market capitalism is better for the following reasons:
1. It is the only form of governing that honors individual property rights.
2. Because of #1 the people are freer and work harder to improve their lives.
3. Because of #2 more is produced, the economy grows, and standards of living rise for everyone.
4. In free market capitalism the economy is much more efficient because the allocation of scarce resources is determined by prices, which have embedded in them the information of millions of individuals making small decisions about where their money gets spent. Resources automatically flow to where the demand is, and therefore the wants and needs of the people are served quickly and efficiently without government intervention.
5. In a centrally controlled or highly regulated economy, the distribution of scarce resources is controlled by a relatively few number of people who CAN NOT KNOW all the information necessary to serve millions of people with the full spectrum of wants and needs. These economies become very inefficient compared to free markets, and as a result standards of living fall for everyone.
6. Free market capitalism encourages people to work together to make better products for higher margins. This results in the Invisible Hand which magically converts a society full of selfish people into a society full of people who are trying as hard as they can to make things their neighbor wants to buy.
7. The hallmark of centrally controlled economies or welfare states is corruption as different groups struggle to attain the political power necessary to protect their businesses or to outright steal from one group to buy votes from another.
8. In welfare states we see groups of people trying to be seen as helpless victims who can possibly provide for themselves so they can claim benefits from the public trough. This does not incentivize people to produce more, and provides a disincentive for those who work hard and get taxed to pay for the benefits. Again the economy slows down and the standard of living drops for everyone.
9. Free market capitalism distributes money goods among people based on merit and productivity. All other systems redistribute wealth at the barrel of a gun.
10. Communism is the most effective killing machine ever devised by man. In the last century more people were killed by their own Communist governments than were killed in all the wars. Communism is the worst form of government, ever.
Early America was very close to a perfect free market capitalist economy, and we went from a starving colony of a couple hundred people to the freest, richest world super power in less than 350 years. Free market capitalism has been proven to work, and all other options have been proven to fail.
It's really no contest at all.
Go back to high school.
Guy O'Leighken wrote:
Remember that the rapid increase in productivity of the US that you mention depended on the free labor of millions of slaves. Capitalism without a corresponding policies to decrease inequality has always lead to a small number of very rich people and and huge number of very poor people.
Also, I think people in the US tend to think of the USSR and the countries behind the iron curtain as the main examples of socialism. Those didn't work very well. But there are very positive examples of socialism; the countries of Scandinavia especially. They have populations that are well educated and productive.
Nope. Read De'Toqueville. The slave based economy in the South was much poorer than the free economy in the North for the very reasons I gave. The US was not built on slave labor. It was built in spite of it.
In the eighties all the leftists were promoting the "Swedish Model of socialism" as a model that worked. So in the mid nineties I decided to research Sweden to see how they did it. Well the first book on Swedish economics I could find was called "Turning Sweden Around", written by Swedish economists.
Here's a quick summary:
1. When Sweden went socialist they were in the top 4 countries in per capita production.
2. By 1992 Sweden was ~17th and falling fast.
3. They were falling for all the reasons I gave above.
The Swedish Model worked because they were so strong to start with. It took two generations to destroy the work ethic, but it happened.
What I got out of this is that socialism is parasitic. It consumes a healthy economy and will look very good while the underlying economic engine can continue to produce things under the strain. But eventually the engine slows under the weight of socialism revealing the truth that free market capitalism was really what created the prosperity in the first place.
That's simply not true. Sweden's government has been controlled by the social democrats since the end of World War II, except for a brief period during the "stagflation" of the '70s when a party further to the right (but still far to the left of US democrats) took over. Norway, Denmark and Sweden have democratic socialism deeply ingrained over many decades.De Tocqueville, the French philosopher from the 1800s? I'm skeptical about the amount of hard data he had at his disposal! As far as the economic development of the U.S., I think the bottom line is this: you be very hard pressed to find evidence of a capitalist economy where government intervention was low and wealth inequality did anything but increase. That's what capitalism does, and has always done. With government protections that can be avoided, like it was in the US between the '40s and '70s.
DiscoGary wrote:
Nope. Read De'Toqueville. The slave based economy in the South was much poorer than the free economy in the North for the very reasons I gave. The US was not built on slave labor. It was built in spite of it.
In the eighties all the leftists were promoting the "Swedish Model of socialism" as a model that worked. So in the mid nineties I decided to research Sweden to see how they did it. Well the first book on Swedish economics I could find was called "Turning Sweden Around", written by Swedish economists.
Here's a quick summary:
1. When Sweden went socialist they were in the top 4 countries in per capita production.
2. By 1992 Sweden was ~17th and falling fast.
3. They were falling for all the reasons I gave above.
The Swedish Model worked because they were so strong to start with. It took two generations to destroy the work ethic, but it happened.
What I got out of this is that socialism is parasitic. It consumes a healthy economy and will look very good while the underlying economic engine can continue to produce things under the strain. But eventually the engine slows under the weight of socialism revealing the truth that free market capitalism was really what created the prosperity in the first place.
The Enlightenment Homie wrote:
Capitalism (the separation of economy and state) is good because it's the only social system based on the principle of individual rights and leads to unparalleled prosperity and a continuously rising standard of living for everyone who is willing to work. All the other social systems am you named are evil because they violate the rights of individuals and lead to declining standards of living and bloody dictatorships.
Capitalism would not function without poor people who do the work valuable to society in manufacturing working for a pittance. The rest of us do the important work of sending emails or playing the markets and produce nothing worthwhile
The poor people on the bread line in the USA have been replaced by poor people in China who make everything If their economy reached the level and esp. pay level of the US the system would fall apart
I see you're emotional about this one, but in practice socialism is better for the masses. Just travel through Europe spend some time there and talk to people. They have a much better work life balance, enjoy more benefits and are just happier. EOT
DiscoGary wrote:
4. In free market capitalism the economy is much more efficient because the allocation of scarce resources is determined by prices, which have embedded in them the information of millions of individuals making small decisions about where their money gets spent. Resources automatically flow to where the demand is, and therefore the wants and needs of the people are served quickly and efficiently without government intervention.
5. In a centrally controlled or highly regulated economy, the distribution of scarce resources is controlled by a relatively few number of people who CAN NOT KNOW all the information necessary to serve millions of people with the full spectrum of wants and needs. These economies become very inefficient compared to free markets, and as a result standards of living fall for everyone.
These are the key points missing from the first page. Capitalism allows resources to be freely allocated to their best uses based on an open market system. The other three systems, by varying degrees, try to direct or limit or control the flow of these resources - always with disastrous results..
As previously mentioned, the USA is not an absolute capitalist society - in truth, very few of us would want to live in that kind of system. But as you inch towards the other end of the spectrum, and the State starts to think it can tamper with the incentive mechanism, you start to run into some serious issues (housing bubbles, income inequality, failed retirement savings of a generation of people, etc).
Where a lot of people get confused is when they point to systemic inefficiencies and breakdowns (say the burst of the housing bubbles in 07/08 and probably 16/17) and say "there! that's a failure of capitalism!" but what they don't realize is that those market failures are built on layers and layers of central planning decisions.
What we have today is a mix somewhere in between but it is moving left because of the ignorance surrounding what our current systems is comprised of and the bad mouthing of the capitalist system that has given us so much.
Were our economic incentives out of whack in the '50s? People talk about these as the good old days of US capitalism. But the top marginal tax rate was 90%, corporate taxes made up a big percentage of US revenue, and union membership was way higher than today. The result was, unlike any period in the last 40 years, that inequality decreased and social mobility decreased.
krispy kremlin_ wrote:
DiscoGary wrote:4. In free market capitalism the economy is much more efficient because the allocation of scarce resources is determined by prices, which have embedded in them the information of millions of individuals making small decisions about where their money gets spent. Resources automatically flow to where the demand is, and therefore the wants and needs of the people are served quickly and efficiently without government intervention.
5. In a centrally controlled or highly regulated economy, the distribution of scarce resources is controlled by a relatively few number of people who CAN NOT KNOW all the information necessary to serve millions of people with the full spectrum of wants and needs. These economies become very inefficient compared to free markets, and as a result standards of living fall for everyone.
These are the key points missing from the first page. Capitalism allows resources to be freely allocated to their best uses based on an open market system. The other three systems, by varying degrees, try to direct or limit or control the flow of these resources - always with disastrous results..
As previously mentioned, the USA is not an absolute capitalist society - in truth, very few of us would want to live in that kind of system. But as you inch towards the other end of the spectrum, and the State starts to think it can tamper with the incentive mechanism, you start to run into some serious issues (housing bubbles, income inequality, failed retirement savings of a generation of people, etc).
Where a lot of people get confused is when they point to systemic inefficiencies and breakdowns (say the burst of the housing bubbles in 07/08 and probably 16/17) and say "there! that's a failure of capitalism!" but what they don't realize is that those market failures are built on layers and layers of central planning decisions.
What we have today is a mix somewhere in between but it is moving left because of the ignorance surrounding what our current systems is comprised of and the bad mouthing of the capitalist system that has given us so much.
* social mobility INCREASED. Decreasing would be bad.
Guy O'Leighken wrote:
That's simply not true. Sweden's government has been controlled by the social democrats since the end of World War II, except for a brief period during the "stagflation" of the '70s when a party further to the right (but still far to the left of US democrats) took over. Norway, Denmark and Sweden have democratic socialism deeply ingrained over many decades.
De Tocqueville, the French philosopher from the 1800s? I'm skeptical about the amount of hard data he had at his disposal! As far as the economic development of the U.S., I think the bottom line is this: you be very hard pressed to find evidence of a capitalist economy where government intervention was low and wealth inequality did anything but increase. That's what capitalism does, and has always done. With government protections that can be avoided, like it was in the US between the '40s and '70s.
I know Sweden went socialist around 1947, that's why I said it took a couple of generations to destroy the work ethic. It takes a long time to destroy a culture of hard work and honesty, but socialism eventually destroys all the foundations of civil society. Socialism neither produces nor creates, it consumes what others have produced and then buys the votes of others while convincing them that they are victims. It's bad policy.
The 1950's you talk about is a perfect example. After WWII the US was in a great position economically, so everyone started thinking we could burden the golden goose with high taxes and government protected union demands, and that somehow the goose would just keep laying golden eggs.
It didn't, and when Kennedy got elected he had to cut taxes to get the economy rolling again. Reagan cut taxes and regulations and got the same results in the early 1980's.
Let's try an experiment. Let's split a country in half and let one half be run by free market capitalists while the other half is run by Communists/socialists. Oh wait! That's been done! The results are in. Look at what happened:
http://conservativehideout.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/north-south-korea.jpgTHAT's why you should choose capitalism over communism.
Notsofast3 wrote:
I see you're emotional about this one, but in practice socialism is better for the masses. Just travel through Europe spend some time there and talk to people. They have a much better work life balance, enjoy more benefits and are just happier. EOT
I did better than just travel in Europe. I lived and worked there. England, for 16 months when I was in my twenties. The grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean.
Here's a couple of anecdotes from that experience.
1. I went to a real estate agent to look for a place to live, and after having several discussions with the woman who ran the agency she asked me "Do you have any friends back in America who want to work here? None of the young people here want to work. I want an American with energy and a good work ethic." When you get past the sneering condescension, THAT's what they really think of Americans in Europe. Culturally unpolished perhaps, but hard working and honest.
2. The young guys I worked with made half as much as I was making and they all knew it (making my stay there very uncomfortable at times). When a nice young woman asked me if I would ever consider staying in England, I hesitated. Then a very smart Scottish coworker of mine jumped in and said "Oh sure! He's gonna stay here and cut his standard of living in half for the rest of his life!" I had never spoken to him about it, but he nailed it.
3. ...
4. ...
5. ...
The stories go on and on, and many of them are very entertaining, but the basic idea is that the romantic vision we have of the good life enjoyed by Europeans isn't necessarily shared by those Europeans once you get past the tourist mode and get to know them better.
Good or bad? Its all relative.
A spectrum of the efficient use of resources:
not efficient ........................ efficient
...........fascism.........communism........socialism................................capitalism.....
A spectrum of the amount of freedom experienced by citizens:
very little .................................. a lot
...........fascism...........communism..........socialism.................capitalism......
Sweden's students are vastly better than ours; is it only adults that get lazy under socialism?
Reagan's tax cuts are still in place; would you say our economy is rolling now? Well, for a few people it is...
No would give England or North Korea as examples of effective approaches to socialism, so neither of those two examples is very convincing.
Guy O'Leighken wrote:
But you're wrong that pure capitalism increases prosperity for average citizens. That hard lesson was repeated in many locations in the 1800s as the industrial revolution moved around the US and Europe. Whether or not economic freedom is helpful to people who need to work all the time to make ends meet... I'll let you think about that one on your own.
You must be defining prosperity extremely narrowly. Today's poor in capitalist countries (I'm defining Capitalist rather broadly) enjoy a standard of living that would have been unimaginable throughout the vast majority of human history. Damn near every technology that currently makes modern life so comfortable, air conditioning, the automatic fan, the washing machine, the dishwasher, was either invented by capitalists or made widely available to the masses by capitalism. This is not to say unions, social safety nets and government regulation cannot be greatly beneficial to the society as a whole, but self-described Democratic Socialists all too often gloss over how much capitalism has helped mankind, rich and poor alike.
I totally agree with that. I think the main reason democratic socialists in the US downplay the importance of the private sector is because there are already so many people cheerleading for free markets. That's not going away. But the progressive tax code, unions and regulatory ability of the government-- things that have helped capitalism be successful-- have been going away for the last 40 years in the US.
bigtool05 wrote:
You must be defining prosperity extremely narrowly. Today's poor in capitalist countries (I'm defining Capitalist rather broadly) enjoy a standard of living that would have been unimaginable throughout the vast majority of human history. Damn near every technology that currently makes modern life so comfortable, air conditioning, the automatic fan, the washing machine, the dishwasher, was either invented by capitalists or made widely available to the masses by capitalism. This is not to say unions, social safety nets and government regulation cannot be greatly beneficial to the society as a whole, but self-described Democratic Socialists all too often gloss over how much capitalism has helped mankind, rich and poor alike.
