Michael Moore and socialized medicine

[TomCollins]

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But one of the downsides of capitalism is that it makes huge gaps between rich and poor. Therefore I think it's important to combine capitalism and socialism in order to create wealth and growth for all people.

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Simple question for Karl Marx, I mean Karlwig.

Which of the following incomes for members of society:
A:
Everyone makes $30,000

B:
90% of people make $29,000
10% of people make $300,000

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I never said all people should earn the same. What are you trying to prove?

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Leave what I'm trying to prove to me. Which would you prefer? It's a simple question. Assume all other variables are the same.

[karlwig]

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But one of the downsides of capitalism is that it makes huge gaps between rich and poor. Therefore I think it's important to combine capitalism and socialism in order to create wealth and growth for all people.

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Simple question for Karl Marx, I mean Karlwig.

Which of the following incomes for members of society:
A:
Everyone makes $30,000

B:
90% of people make $29,000
10% of people make $300,000

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I never said all people should earn the same. What are you trying to prove?

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Leave what I'm trying to prove to me. Which would you prefer? It's a simple question. Assume all other variables are the same.

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But it's a stupid question. If everybody had the same work, with the same education, I think it COULD be fair that everybody earned the same (scenario A). But in real life people have different jobs, so it would probably be wrong. of course that doesn't make B right either.

so your "clear" question is very difficult to answer straight without more info.

Since you don't want to say what you're going to prove, and your question is very irrellevant to what we're debating, I really see no point in using more of my time on this.

[Ron Paul]

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The problem with government is that people with money can easilly make more money, while poor people rarely get richer.

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Under capitalism, all a poor person has to do to become richer is produce more than they consume and save the extra.

Government make sure this is impossible by taxing the poor so heavily that it is very difficult to produce more than you "consume" (including the paying of taxes), so that it is impossible to save, and the poor are made to be dependent on government "services". Taxing the poor outright isn't very popular though (although it is done; the 15.3% FICA taxes, for example), so it's best to do it with hidden taxes and taxes that weigh more heavily upon their standards of living, like inflation, embedded taxes in goods and services, gasoline taxes, property taxes, sales taxes on food and clothing, etc.

And the only way for a rich person to make more money under capitalism is to employ it satisfying the needs wants and desires of others, most importantly the poor; who collectively have far more purchasing power than the rich. Ask WalMart. There is far more productive capital employed producing Fords and Toyotas than is employed producing Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

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I don't quite get what you're saying. Is there a problem having a goverment?

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Yes. Government is basically an organized crime racket that has managed to trick a majority of people into thinking it is necessary and legitimate.

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Would everybody be better off if there was no tax?

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Not everyone. Just the large majority of people. The parasites that live entirely at the expense of the taxed would be worse off in the short term, until they found actual productive employment. There would be a few who currently lead extravagant lives at the expense of the governed (mostly politicians and the cronies they've made wealthy) that would be permanently "harmed", but only in as much as the mugger is "harmed" by not being able to mug anymore.

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If you think so, I'm really interessted in knowing what sort of society that would be.

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Like ours, except without a violent monopoly ruining important things like education and health care.

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Of course there would be no public schools,

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True.

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making it very difficult for poor peaple to get a real education in order to MAKE money.

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Sure, just like the lack of socialized food distribution has lead to mass starvation and the lack of socialized clothing distribution has lead to mass nudity.

Take an economics course. Market competition increases the quantity and quality of goods and services. Monopolization does the opposite. Education is not some magical thing that is somehow different. The fact that this simple piece of economics is never taught in the monopoly public education system proves what a collasal waste of time, money, and resources it is.

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There would be no police, or are you suggesting a free market-ruled police force? What about the military?

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Of course. There are already both. What magic mechanism do you propose that would prevent them, other than government outlawing the competition by legislative fiat? Every private college I know of has a private police force, as does every mall and many subdivisions. Private armies have always existed and always will.

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I really hope we agree that to SOME degree, it's important to have a goverment that controls things.

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No it isn't. Prove it. This is simply the default line that you have been fed. You have never considered the alternative. You believe that if something is monopolized by the government, then the poor retarded citizenry couldn't possibly figure out how to do it without the government to do it for them, even though the free market allows any entrepreneur that wants to to attempt to find a solution of problems, try them out, and see if the consumers agree. Whereas government arrogates to itself the task of identifying what is and is not a problem, coming up with a "solution" and enforcing it on everyone, untested by the market and cemented in place by politics and bureaucracy. How anyone thinks that a coercive bureaucratic monpoly can provide goods and services better than a freely entered competitive market is beyond my ken. More indications of the quality of public education, I suppose.

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Of course you're right in all the positive sides of a free market. Just so you know, I'm not arguing for not having capitalism. But one of the downsides of capitalism is that it makes huge gaps between rich and poor.

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Who cares what the gap is? There is a huge gap between Warren Buffet and Jimmy Buffet. Does the gap hurt Jimmy?

Capitalism doesn't harm the poor; on the contrary it helps them. The only way the rich get rich under capitalism is to provide what people want so they will voluntarily give you money to get it. Help ten million poor people becomes a little bit less poor, by selling them the goods they want and need at a lower price than the competition, and you will become rich. That's what capitalism is. The gap is irrelevent. In fact, if it weren't for large capital accumulations (i.e. the capital owned by the rich), productivity would be far lower, as would standards of living, especially for the poor, whom most of that capital is employed to provide for. THAT is why Africa is poor and stays poor; there isn't enough capital, and it cannot be accumulated, because populist socialist tinpots come along in every country every decade and tell the poor that the rich are "exploiting" them, and targetting the capital stock for plunder. What isn't plundered flees for fear of being plundered. No capital = low productivity, low productivity = squalor. The west was squalid too, by modern standards. But then we accumulated capital over hundreds of years achieving a high level of productivity and standard of living. Now socialists like you use the "gap" between the rich and "poor" as an excuse to target accumulated capital for plunder. People like you want to Haitianize the first world, not elevate the third.

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Therefore I think it's important to combine capitalism and socialism in order to create wealth and growth for all people.

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You don't even know what "capitalism" is.

On Capitalism.

[PLOlover]

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maxtower, you wrote:
I don't know what country you are from with socialized health care, but I would be willing to bet that you pay more in taxes than I do.



I'm from Norway. In 2006 I worked full-time and payed 25% of my income in taxes. Is that much more than in the US? Of course here you pay more tax the richer you are, and I'm not very rich. I'm happy to pay my share though, and of course I take it for granted that people with more money also should give more to the society.

Still, nobody pay more than 50% in taxes maximum. So it's still plenty of room to get rich and follow your dreams. I don't know about you, but I think a guy earning $1.000.000 a year would have plenty of money left to spend on fun after paying his taxes.

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Most americans pay at least 50% in taxes. social security 15,income 25, sales 10, thats 50 right there.

[PLOlover]

to everybody who believes in health insurance, but hates socialized medicine,

what would be the difference be between the two if everyone in the country had health insurance?
I guess you could say that the government is not good at administering stuff and the private sector would do a better job.

given the clout of the medical industry and the insurance industry, I wouldn't be surprised if they lobbied for the federal government to pay for health insurance for everyone. I mean the insurance industry has already pushed through mandatory auto insurance and mandatory seat belt laws.

[bluesbassman]

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Sure, just like the lack of socialized food distribution has lead to mass starvation and the lack of socialized clothing distribution has lead to mass nudity.


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Well, what about North Korea? They really do have socialized food distribution, and unlike the freer mixed-economies such as the U.S., they, uh, never have a mass starvation problem.

[tolbiny]

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One of the biggest problems with socialized ___________ is the difficulty (impossibility) or performing economic calculations well. Think about how complex medicine is. How long should doctors be in school/residency? How much training do nurses need? How many ways should each specialize? How many of each are needed? How much do we pay them to get the number and quality that we need? How do you decide between doctors who specialize in organ transplants, and foot surgeons? There are millions of questions to answer when discussing how to go about figuring out quality and quantity needs. Profits and losses are used as a way to figure out if you are providing enough of service X or to much of product Y.


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A lot of those questions could be answered by epidemiologists.

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No, they can't. Its not just about saying we need X number of doctors its about opportunity cost. Every guy that goes through medical school isn't being something else during those 4-10 years. He isn't a teacher, or a farmer or a musician or a plumber or an engineer or a hundred thousand other jobs that people do that "society" benefits from. How the hell is an epidemiologist supposed to know how many teachers a school needs and whether or not "society" would be better off with more doctors or more teachers? It has historically been an impossible calculation to make without profits and losses to use as a guide for what goods people value in relation to other goods.

[bluesbassman]

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Who cares what the gap is? There is a huge gap between Warren Buffet and Jimmy Buffet. Does the gap hurt Jimmy?


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But it's not fair! Bill Gates has much more than me and I demand some of his money!!

If only the government had socialized the computer & software industries 30 years ago, we wouldn't have this huge "gap" problem of men like Gates and Steve Jobs, who made fortunes by making computers widely available and easy to use.

Sure, in my job as an aerospace engineer, I might still be doing engineering computations using LED calculators or slow and unwieldy (by today's standards) mainframe computers, but at least there would be no gap and everyone would be equally poor.

[karlwig]

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Sure, just like the lack of socialized food distribution has lead to mass starvation and the lack of socialized clothing distribution has lead to mass nudity.


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Well, what about North Korea? They really do have socialized food distribution, and unlike the freer mixed-economies such as the U.S., they, uh, never have a mass starvation problem.

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North Korea is a dictatorship. No one is arguing for a complete socialist society in the terms that the goverment controls everything anyway. We all know it doesn't work out so well.
Still I believe people should be able to argue for socialist ideas like free health care, public schools and other stuff we have in a lot of countries in europe, without being compared to communists and dictatorships.

[tolbiny]

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Sure, just like the lack of socialized food distribution has lead to mass starvation and the lack of socialized clothing distribution has lead to mass nudity.


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Well, what about North Korea? They really do have socialized food distribution, and unlike the freer mixed-economies such as the U.S., they, uh, never have a mass starvation problem.

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North Korea is a dictatorship. No one is arguing for a complete socialist society in the terms that the goverment controls everything anyway. We all know it doesn't work out so well.
Still I believe people should be able to argue for socialist ideas like free health care, public schools and other stuff we have in a lot of countries in europe, without being compared to communists and dictatorships.

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I have a question. If the government can concoct better scenarios for health care (ohh, and please stop calling it free), education and other things, why can't it concoct better scenarios for ALL things? Why shouldn't we turn to a fully socialized society?