Quote:
Originally Posted by sperbonzo
Apparently you don't see the contradiction in your own statement.... .  |
There is no contradiction in that statement. The cows do remain yours... their productivity is divisible. Straight up socialism doesn't work... and neither does straight up capitalism. What does work is Capitalism with strictly enforced socialistic limitations for things like safety, security and the good of society overall.
We don't allow anyone to build their own nuclear bomb... though some people in our society have the money, machinery and knowledge to do it. From a purely capitalistic perspective, making a nuclear bomb would be the single most profitable thing you could do with your time. As a matter of security we don't allow it... and that is socialism at work. We don't allow people make their employees work 115 hours per week in non-ventilated factories without enough fire exits. That's more socialism. You should not be able to make billions of dollars in our markets which benefit from the work of our society and then pay 0 taxes on your profits calling it 'pure capitalism' as if that is a good thing.
6 of the top 400 earners in our society during 2009 (the last year reported) paid 0 personal income tax taxes according to research done by Warren Buffet. That is not a good thing. As he said, that puts those 6 people in Mitt Romney's theoretical 47%- pure capitalism would allow people to pay 0 back to society for all the benefits they gain from it... socialism would ask too much in return. The answer is in the middle... and watching people avoid that eventual truth is like watching people try to claim Jesus is going to help them win the next Powerball drawing.
We are a mixture of capitalism and socialism... a pendulum swings back and forth between the two... in recent years it swung too far one way and now it is swinging back the other way. The top 400 incomes have gone up more than 500% in the last ten years. Meanwhile employee productivity has more than doubled and employee wages have remained stagnant, not even keeping pace with inflation.
The asshats on the bottom who abuse the social safety net AND the asshats at the top who feel their success does not require them to add equity back into the economy that allowed them to prosper are the problem. As a simple test, ask yourself... what did you MAKE last year. Not how much money... what was your work product. If you created nothing, supported the creation of nothing, and extracted profit without adding equity back into the system... you aren't worthy of protection or admiration.
There is a huge difference between a factory owner who employs people at quality jobs while producing something, and a hedge fund manager who bilks investors and juices employee pensions while profiting from the company's ability to create debt and paying a tiny fraction of what an actual producer would have had to pay on the same dollar amount.
When the producers (employers and employees) align against the parasites (at the very bottom AND very top) the country will finally attain the balance it has been missing for over a decade. The wealthy asshats are telling you to hate the poor asshats... neither is doing you any favors.