It’s pretty fascinating how on the first page the advice to not be poor is to avoid sex or alcohol, work through high school, don’t use credit, and never act anything other than perfectly professional except in complete privacy. But on page two, we’re supposed to have sympathy for those rich people who use drugs and alcohol liberally, bang away like there’s no tomorrow, and use credit like madmen if they fail to put some of their riches into safe ventures and just leave it there. Starting rich and staying rich is completely trivial, and requires far less effort than what was laid out as the ‘plan to be middle class, maybe’, but we’re supposed to believe that it’s difficult to retain riches in today’s society.
There really is a complete fantasy construction about how wealth works in the real world behind libertarian/conservative ideaology.
No they won’t. Read the OP again. The first premise of libertarian thinking is to get rid of all the means of taking care of the needy. But the first part is almost right, you just meant to say “profits will increase”.
“If you get sick it’s your own fault.”
Ah, the old “health insurance sucks because the government meddles with it”. Oddly enough, where I live, the government is the health insurance. It’s the entirety of it. And it hasn’t failed me. In fact it provides cost/benefits I’d never get under private insurance. You do seem to have a lot of strange ideas.
I believe Igor was oversimplifying slightly, though fondness for recreational drugs is, in fact, a major difference between libertarians and Republicans. But you’re right, there are are other differences. Republicans like bombing the shit out of other countries, while libertarians believe the government should not intervene in anything anywhere, whether foreign or domestic. Government should not, in fact, exist at all, am I right?
I’m not quite sure about the human rights bit. I recall that when Ron Paul was asked what an uninsured person with a serious illness should do, his libertarian supporters yelled out that he should die. Ron Paul himself was a bit more circumspect. He said that the guy’s church or his neighbors or somebody would help him, he was sure. But if not, then not. Yeah, human rights seems to rate pretty high with this bunch.
Don’t forget Hitler! Seems like Stalin and Hitler are the typical icons for “government” in the libertarian mindset. Oddly enough, neither of them are around in the democracies I know of – the places with the health care and the social services. Maybe “government” – the kind that people freely elect – doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Sowell’s point on growth is pretty worthless. It is clearly simpler for someone in the bottom 20% to increase income (from getting a job, say) than someone making $5 million a year. And no doubt those sitting at 1% fall down to 1.5% or something. Hardly becoming poor.
None of which supports your assertion that rich people fall out of being rich in substantial numbers. And especially not competent ones.
I’ve been retired for a year and a half. I haven’t chosen to get Social Security yet. I’m not anywhere near the 1%, but we have lived quite comfortably in this time and we have more money in our account than when we started. Staying well to do is not hard - not if you get that way.
BTW, also note that the decrease in mobility started in 1980. Hmm, wonder what happened that year.
Today governments do kill more than corporations, particularly if there is a war on. In the libertarian utopia of the 1880s and 1890s I suspect corporations killed a lot more - due to sweatshops, pollution, selling poison as medicine, etc. You can thank those horrid regulations for it not being true today.
As for stealing, it depends on how you define stealing. If you define taxation as stealing, sure - but that would be asinine. Otherwise we have corporate theft programs like Trump U. Probably more of those than real government theft.
That’s an even better example than you note. I lived there right after independence. The Katanga War, (the cause of the UN intervention) was corporately sponsored. (Union Minere, excuse the lack of accents.)
Of all the people killed by governments in the 20th century, most were killed under 3 governments. The Nazis in Germany, the communists under Stalin and the communists in China under Mao. Take those 3 out and the number of government deaths drops in half at least. There have been hundreds of governments in the 20th century, but only a few were total bloodbaths.
According to this, pollution kills 9 million a year. However part of those deaths are from people burning dung and wood for fuel indoors, which you can’t blame on corporations. However industrial pollution you can. I’m all for corporations, but I’m also for adding regulations to increase safety and sustainability even if it increases prices.
I don’t know how many people are killed by governments each year, but government backed conflict probably kills a few hundred thousand. According to this, the period 1985-1994 saw about 378,000 deaths a year due to warfare. The world is less warlike now than in the past, so the number now is hopefully lower.
Either way, pollution probably kills 20-30x more people than war, if not more. War seems to be by far the major cause of government sponsored death. Executions aren’t that common globally and probably only number in the thousands each year.
Voyager, I know you feel comfortable. But in absolute dollar amounts, does it bother you a little that out of the value you created during your working career, you basically were cheated? That’s what the wage : productivity gap really means. We have managed to make our economy a whole bunch more productive, and yet we are sharing all the benefits of that increased productivity with basically only 1% of the population.
And most of the actual physical ideas that make our economy better…mostly technology…were developed mainly by scientists and engineers who themselves usually don’t end up in the top 1%. Occasionally, a single person makes such a large advance by themselves that they are considered the ‘inventor’, and even more rarely still, sometimes they manage to even keep a fair share of the profits.
Similarly, you might look at a wealthy person’s estate, and realize that it’s pretty damn nice, right? But who hand-built those bughattis, crafted the 20,000 square foot mansion, who guards the place, who did the landscaping and architecture and all that?
Hundreds of thousands of labor hours (or more) from other people. All in return for…well…some wealthy people do actively lead businesses, etc, but it’s hard to say how their labor is worth what the pay rates actually are.
Technically you could take a few hundred dollars less loans out every year if you spent the minimum amount possible on food. Maybe even $1000, if you really scrounge and your school has really overpriced on campus dining options…and you aren’t just required to buy a meal plan to stay in the dorms.
Totally going to help when the school charges $60,000 every year in tuition and fees.
How on earth did you come up with THAT when I explained how the private insurance industry failed us? It was not until the GOVERNMENT forbid deny insurance based on pre-existing conditions that we were able to get insurance outside of working for the insurance company itself.
The top 1% did not start on the bottom - they either inherited all their money, or they inherited a nest-egg that they further multiplied. That’s the great fiction - that somehow the incredibly wealthy earned every penny through hard work.
Riiiiight… because dying in poverty is so damn wonderful…! :rolleyes:
It would help us understand if the Farnaby-style libertarians flesh out their Utopia a little better. Are police forces and courts of law also privatised? How are judges selected?
I just looked up the cost at my old University. The unlimited plan, which allows as many meals as you might like at dorms, fast food outlets, and coffee shops on campus runs $10 per day.
And if one doesn’t go to college, then one can work a full time job or two in order to pay bills and buy food.
College itself is pretty much a full time job. Working a full time job in order to eat as well as do all the work that is expected of you in college gets a little bit rough.
That’s a very generous plan. When I went to college 20 years ago, the plan was about $12 a day for the 2 meal a day plan, and $15 for the 3. You had to eat at specific cafeterias that were run by the college, (with some pretty sub-par food)did not cover fast food outlets or coffee shops.
I looked at several of the University of California system campuses. Residence halls include a meal plan, no option. The charge is for room and board. For student apartment housing, you can choose a meal plan but it gets paid as part of the housing cost if you choose one.