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.

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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.

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I gave you the info you need. All situations are exactly identical in terms of jobs held, quality of life. Except how much everyone gets to take home. The doctors of society A are the same people in B.

It's a shame you won't answer, because you know you will contradict your basic beliefs, and refuse to do so. Refusing to answer keeps you from thinking about it.

[TomCollins]

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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.

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Is there any state with a 10%+ sales tax? It's fairly high here, I think its 8.25% (on top of the cost), so it comes out to 7.6% of any of my purchases are taxed (I pay $8.25 tax when I spend $108.25). If you are paying 25% of your income in Federal Taxes, you are either making a ton of money or don't know how to file a return. I don't think my effective rate has been above 15%, and I'm making above the median income in the US (esp. when I was playing poker). SS+Medicare. Property taxes came out to about 6% of my income last year. Total to about 44%. Plus all the hidden taxes and fees (gasoline taxes, corporate taxes passed off to the consumer, etc...).

[Nonfiction]

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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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...why do you keep saying its free?

[PLOlover]

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Total to about 44%. Plus all the hidden taxes and fees (gasoline taxes, corporate taxes passed off to the consumer, etc...).

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yeah about 50%. I guess income I lumped in everything besides s.s. thats taken out of your check. also s.s. 15 I added the half your employer pays that doesnt come out of your check because well you know.

[75s]

Ideas like this are great. Unfortunately, an inneficient infrastructures are already in place. No one is gonna tear it up and start again. Firehouse example, if every house were built fireproof with sprinklers and other technology, we wouldn't need fir departement.

[karlwig]

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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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...why do you keep saying its free?

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oh jesus christ. you know perfectly well what i mean.
insert "tax payed" as much as you want.

[Nonfiction]

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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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...why do you keep saying its free?

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oh jesus christ. you know perfectly well what i mean.

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Then why do you keep using free? Its the opposite of free, as I am actually paying more and recieving less than if I did not have the "free" health care.

[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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

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I gave you the info you need. All situations are exactly identical in terms of jobs held, quality of life. Except how much everyone gets to take home. The doctors of society A are the same people in B.

It's a shame you won't answer, because you know you will contradict your basic beliefs, and refuse to do so. Refusing to answer keeps you from thinking about it.

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Oh believe me, I thought about it. And I would have answered if it was an intellegent question. As it is clearly not, I made some assumptions and gave you an answer based on that.

What amount of money people in a society have the right to get paid for their jobs is not an easy issue. It's not what we're discussing though.

I made a comment where i said that i think it's fair that people with a higher income pay more in tax.
this has nothing to with what people should earn for their jobs in the first place. it's not a thing i have a strong opinion about, nor is it something that has been debated here. you just asked me a question from the clear blue sky, which has abselutely no relevance.

let me ask you: should some bussiness guy earn $30000 or $50000 a year?
Now look at how stupid this question is. It has nothing to do with politics. People get paid what they get paid.

Taxes on that income is, of course, a completely different thing.

[TomCollins]

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Oh believe me, I thought about it. And I would have answered if it was an intellegent question. As it is clearly not, I made some assumptions and gave you an answer based on that.

What amount of money people in a society have the right to get paid for their jobs is not an easy issue. It's not what we're discussing though.

I made a comment where i said that i think it's fair that people with a higher income pay more in tax.
this has nothing to with what people should earn for their jobs in the first place. it's not a thing i have a strong opinion about, nor is it something that has been debated here. you just asked me a question from the clear blue sky, which has abselutely no relevance.

let me ask you: should some bussiness guy earn $30000 or $50000 a year?
Now look at how stupid this question is. It has nothing to do with politics. People get paid what they get paid.

Taxes on that income is, of course, a completely different thing.

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I'm not going to push you any further since you clearly won't answer. I don't blame you. You knew you were about to get owned hard.

I can answer your question. I would much rather have $50,000 vs. $30,000 provided all other things are equal.

I would also prefer to live in a society B, provided all other things were equal.

Anything you don't want to answer is a stupid question. Actually its not. You stated that inequality was a bad thing. I'm just asking how bad you think it is in a concrete way. Socialists are great when you talk about feelings and vague things, but any time you actually have to make a stand with some numbers that prove the rediculousness of your ideas, you either have to answer in a way that makes no sense, but supports your ideas, or give up on your ideas.

[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.

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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?

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The same reason why it would be bad if a country turned to a fully capitalist society without ANY tax or goverment control.

BALANCE. You need both. We need capitalism, we need the free market and the freedom. I would never give away that.

In my opinion it's good to have SOME degree of welfare for all though, which the goverment should be responsible for. For example police, military, schools (in addition to privat ones of course), and health care, among other things.

And I'll give you my reason for calling it free. In my country we can often choose between privat and public (schools, some health care etc). So since the privat ones costs money, and the public ones don't, public ones are "free" since you pay your tax no matter what you choose.
Still I agree it's a misleading term to use, so thanks for pointing it out. I'll stop calling it free from know.