Jai story Is actually pretty accurate. But Ox, socialism doesn't stop at rich. Socialism will eventually take away all if the rich people's money and level the playing field. But then what? For new people you can't help because you took everyone else's money. So now what? You have to take from the average citizen. I don't give a Crap about whether or not a socialist thinks someone else needs my money. It's not your place, the government's place, or there place to tell me what my money is good for.

Edited 1/23/2016 00:49:02

Congratulations, you just provided arbitrary and hyper-politicized definitions for two socioeconomic systems based on zero historical, political, or economic analysis beyond your own puerile understanding of how things work and maybe a couple of edgy YouTube videos summarizing reddit comments that summarize Ayn Rand novellas. Would you like your diploma mill degree in PoliSci shipped to you by UPS or FedEx? (There's a surcharge of $500 if you'd like it in paper.)

TL;DR: The best compliment I can give you is that you're not actually retarded

Edited 1/23/2016 01:03:27

You say a lot of very complicated and extremely well thought insults ( you honestly have that much time? ) Yet you do not actually mention anything worth your insults and very immature behavior. Care to indulge on that?

Socialism has a record of failure. I am a meritocrat and I believe that socialism is morally unjustifiable. Stealing is stealing and if people are too lazy to produce something of value or offer a service than they deserve their fate due to their own apathy or inability. From an economic standpoint socialist economic policies such as price controls, free healthcare, rent controls and subsidization have a history of failure and create shortages, black markets, bribes for quicker service, price inflation, lower quality standards and bankruptcy. Ox, your tears, they feed me. Cry more about inequity. I recommend you read Thomas Sowells' basic economics Ox.

Edited 1/23/2016 01:11:56

But if somebody is barely surviving, and somebody else can encrust their 4 million dollar sofa with diamonds, then there is a clear problem with the wealth distribution.

Perfect equality is an unattainable utopianist vision. Economic inequality is a natural state. Life is fundamentally about differences between people - in skills, education, health, morals, and success. You can't legislate equality. And I'm not saying to let people starve. Almshouses, charities, shelters, unemployment aid, social security, medicare, medicaid, subsidized housing, tax breaks, subsidized healthcare - socialism has created enough "safety nets". The government is always asking a little more from everyone - first its just 1% and then its 10% and then its 20%.

I don't give a fuck what the constitution says... "Unconstitutional" is another word for "archaic".

You realize the extremism of this statement right? Come on Ox. A constitution is what separates a democracy from tyranny or anarchism. A constitution is what allows me to go to temple every Sunday and pray to a God most socialists I know would want to see abolished. A constitution is what allows me to even say that socialism is an unfeasible economic system. A constitution is what allows me to run for public office. A constitution is what allows me to not be at the mercy of police brutality. Don't let extremism cloud your mind. A constitution is the foundation of every nation and you should not take for granted the immense sufferings our forefathers faced to achieve the type of order, peace, and stability we've achieved under a constitutional government. A nation without a constitution would be inherently more violent and more unfair and more dangerous than the wealth gap you are against. Let me also remind you that the definition of archaic is: very old or old-fashioned. The definition of unconstituional is: not in accordance with a political constitution, especially the US Constitution, or with procedural rules. You see they are two different words with two very different meanings.

There are people who CAN'T EAT. And you will say "let them starve.

There are even greater sufferings that man inflicts on man in the course of their life. Torture, rape, murder, war...the evil conscious of humankind can produce abject horror. Hover I don't stand for poverty and I don't want people to starve. Like most conservatives and capitalists I believe in the voluntary donation of excess wealth. Give to charity and give to the poor and give to those organizations that help them up to their feet. Give! Give as much as you can give! But give voluntarily. That is the essence of our disagreement. I'm lower middle class...yet my family still pays a 20% tithe to our temple. Why? Because it feeds the poor in India. Because it provides for housing and shelter who don't have it. I'm afraid that to tax the rich means to demonize wealth. And to demonize wealth is to fall into a pit of non-effort. Wealth creators provide us jobs. Capitalism is the source of wealth...and I don't think anyone would accuse socialism of being the source of wealth.

Congratulations, you just provided arbitrary and hyper-politicized definitions for two socioeconomic systems based on zero historical, political, or economic analysis beyond your own puerile understanding of how things work and maybe a couple of edgy YouTube videos summarizing reddit comments that summarize Ayn Rand novellas. Would you like your diploma mill degree in PoliSci shipped to you by UPS or FedEx? (There's a surcharge of $500 if you'd like it in paper

I am continually concerned and shocked by the increasingly acerbic and pretentious nature of Knyte's comments. It seems that he is ever more willing to attack people and denounce them and shout insults at them without a single shred of decency or politeness. Is even simple argumentation not possible without caustic sarcasm and scathing civility?

Edited 1/23/2016 01:22:13

well, I see what ox is saying about the fact that something should be done for the poor......but that's why there's something called charity and welfare ( however, welfare is a socialist idea )

Charity can't do everything. Neither can donations. More money must be found, and taxing the rich is the way to go about this.

Jai you seem to think that I would believe in constantly taxing the people at the top, and constantly giving to people at the bottom. I believe in a steady slope from bottom to top. But I am disgusted by the wealth difference from the very bottom to the very top. If we just manage to find something, beyond charities and donations (because they're NOT WORKING ALONE), that allows us to have people aren't starving, who aren't just barely scraping by in a 1 bedroom flat, who aren't homeless, who aren't dirt poor. Then most socialists would be happy. Socialism isn't communism, and there is a point where we stop taxing the rich. But we've not reached that point yet. For now, fuck the rich.

Edited 1/23/2016 01:29:58

Well said ripper. It is really very simple. No matter how much you socialists bitch about rich people having more than poor, the rich ALWAYS create the jobs and opportunities for the poor; without the rich, no one else could become rich. Maybe they don't use all the money for good causes, maybe they got a couple million dollar cars, but without their money, the poor would have the square root of jackshit. Zero-sum economics (the idea one person getting richer means another getting poorer) is idiotic. It is simply WRONG. As the rich get richer, they use some (if not all) of that money to make themselves and the poor even richer. As soon as you confiscate 50% or so of investments and 50% of income and 50% of business spending, they stop investing and stop doing business. That means less people making jobs and getting paid. Socialism furthermore is, by nature, fundamentally opposed to freedom, and encourages the growth of the state. And as the state grows, it requires even more money. Eventually, the money runs out, and everyone gets fucked over. If you took all the money of the Forbes 400, you would have.......*drum roll*.............................$2.29 trillion. The federal governments budget for 2016 is............$3.3 trillion. So, if everyone on the Forbes 400 gave all their wealth - not money, but all their wealth, including properties and investments - we couldn't even operate the government completely for a year. High taxes have, and this is a fact, slowed economic growth in the past. And while much of that money went to the rich, much of it also went to the poor.


In short,
Wealth creation results from low taxes, and wealth creation, even if uneven, benefits society as a whole.

Oh dear god, another American. I don't know if I should kill myself, or you, with my huge rocket launcher. Oh wait, I can't buy that here in Scotland, because we have some fucking sense!

"Oh dear god, another American. I don't know if I should kill myself, or you, with my huge rocket launcher. Oh wait, I can't buy that here in Scotland, because we have some fucking sense!"
Nice comeback. Refuted all my points with logic, facts, and clarity. Oh, wait..........nvr mind.

Thank you General. Ox you can't buy rocket launchers here either. taxing the wealthy has been shown to hurt economies because people simply setup operations elsewhere or they stash money in tax havens. Just look at all the businesses fleeing Canada because of their high tax rate. Now instead of getting a little bit of money they'll get nothing. NOTHING! Also communism is a form of socialism. You're lying by saying communism isn't a form of socialism. Socialism is an umbrella term. There are lots of different types of socialism and communism is one of them. You're going to have to specify your form of socialism or I'm going to call you a commie or a nazi. Your pick.

Edited 1/23/2016 01:40:33

Instead of attacking each other and the rich let's focus on some solutions for the "people barely scraping by". Higher Productivity.

In order for people to enjoy more goods and services, we have to produce more goods and services, and that means more capital — both physical and human. Faster computers, more efficient machines, improved delivery techniques, and more efficient methods for synthesizing drugs all enable each worker to produce more wealth than he could otherwise, and businesses need no encouragement from the government to pursue any of those strategies. Thanks to the profit and loss system, businesses have an automatic incentive to do more with less, because in the short run this will increase their profits. However, as their competitors also adopt the same innovations, those profits are competed away and instead translate into both higher wages for workers and lower prices for consumers, which also contributes to an increased standard of living.

It's important to note that this process of maximizing efficiency in order to produce more with less is a positive-sum game, unlike the zero-sum (or negative-sum) game of redistribution through minimum wage laws or unions. That means that new wealth is created where there was none before, rather than simply moving existing wealth from one person or group to another. Only through this kind of positive-sum activity can the standard of living increase throughout society over time. There are policies that government officials can pursue that help to maximize productivity gains, but there is no magic wand that they can wave to make everyone richer by fiat. Economic growth is a dynamic process that cannot be planned or controlled from the top down.

hen most socialists would be happy. Socialism isn't communism, and there is a point where we stop taxing the rich. But we've not reached that point yet. For now, fuck the rich.

Ox my main question is why not communism? What makes you so eager to have a partial redistribution of wealth but not a complete redistribution of wealth? In other words what (to you) makes socialism correct but communism incorrect? There must be a logical reason why you don't want communism but you do want socialism. I don't think I understand that dividing line for most socialist thinkers.

+1 Jai

because they're fundamentally opposed. Its like saying why not radical islam and a representative republic?

Personally, I think a mixed system of both works well. That's actually what America is, we have parts of both socialism and Capitalism in our Constitution and laws

Where's socialism in the constitution?

Jai, one of these days I am gonna take all of your massive posts and create a lecture series for my future students at IU or Harvard XD

America is becoming more and more Socialist by the Generation

there is no pure socialism in the constitution. The Concepts however can be found sometimes just like with capitalism. actually, modern socialism cant be found in the constitution, i should have said that