I see I edited my response to sqweels rather poorly.
That sentence should read.
If the choice is to help the poor through etc. without the “by income”
Sorry :o
cosmodan, how does your friend feel about our education system?
You know, socialised education. Accepted as the norm in all fifty states for well over 100 years now. 
We didn’t talk about that specifically although I do know that his parents are wealthy and he went to private school until Jr high and then elected to go to public school.
I think it’s fairly easy to see how education benefits all of society even those who don’t have kids. Even at that our schools are hardly equitable are they? Schools in poor districts have far less resources don’t they?
Point well taken… (btw, thanks for not simply dismissing my argument with a pithy phrase like "charles dickens arguments)
I have personal experience about Jamaica, having lived there for a year, in a small town. The government does not have much of a social safety net there, having not much in the way of resources to support it. International and local businesses are widely present in the country, from small to large. The government is elected, and the tenor is very much “free enterprise”.
There are charities, but as many of the people are not very well off anyway, there is not much money to go around to the destitute. Companies and corporations donate to charities, but not as much as one might hope.
To be poor in Jamaica is not a very pleasant prospect.
To give a specific example, one small business I know of there hired 20 - 30 people at a rate of about $5 per day, which made it very hard to live. The business owner begrudged even this amount, and was forever trying to lower the salaries or nickle and dime the employees for “expenses”. She bemoaned the fact that she could only travel to Miami 6 times/year, and was thinking of putting a 2nd swimming pool in her 5000 square foot house. She gave a bit to charities - but primarily thought that the poor deserved their fate. This was a TYPICAL attitude. Her success was built on the fact that she had chosen the right family to be born into.
In Jamaica the poor are VERY poor, and have little chance to escape from the cycle of poverty. The rich are increasingly rich, and because they think they “deserve” their fate, tend to give the minimum to help the poor.
Yes, but my point is that we have adopted as the main means of providing for properly educated new members of our society a socialized system. This is intended to show that socialised systems of accomplishing governmental purposes are not inherently bad, and, indeed, can be better than non-socialised methods of accomplishing the same thing.
Indeed, expecting government to accomplish its goals through free-market methods is to state that government is not needed, since the point to government is to force a society into doing that which it otherwise would not do on its own, despite the fact that a greater common good results.
I think you’ve distilled the disagreement here down to its basic form. There are those here (I’m looking at you, Liberal!) who strongly believe that any form of government is intrusive, and not needed, while there are others, like me, who feel that there are certain things that are good for us as a society, that governments are ideally suited to deliver. I suspect that it will be very difficult to reconcile these very different world views.
The way companies/corporations are set up at the current time, their ONLY goal is to maximize profit and return on capital. They do not have an interest in the common welfare of people in the society. If they could pay less, they would. If they could maximize profit, they will.
You could say: but a truly SMART company would recognize that it is in their own best interests to have a well educated, healthy workforce and consumer base. This is true, but:
I would argue that, in the absence of compelling measures, a company will tend to let someone else do the giving/supporting, while they take advantage of the societal benefits and maximize their own profits… Free riders if you will. If the company is not compelled to fund things that benefit society as a whole, why would they? why would any company?
(sorry if this has been hashed out ten thousand times already… )
“Supported by the majority” and “voluntary” are two different things. Slavery was not voluntary, though it was supported by the majority in the early 1800s.
A fascinating argument. Let me address the latter half first. If government exists to force society, does that not mean that majority rule is merely tyranny of the masses, and that government exists specifically to fight democracy?
AFAIK, the goal of the US government is to protect the freedoms of its people, as stated in the Constitution. It exists to make sure that the weak have equal footing with the strong, and so on. But by definition, a government is meddlesome, and therefore interferes with freedom. So government walks a fine line between providing freedom and taking it, and it must do both at all times. The “ideal” government would be one where maximum freedoms are preserved by government while minimum freedoms are taken by government. Thus, if it can accomplish the goal of freedom by using free-market methods, it should do so. If it cannot, then it should not.
Flat Tax:
People seem to have misconceptions about the proposed Flat Tax, so I’d like to clear that up. The Flat Tax is not a truly regressive flat tax, but rather a flat tax adjusted such that it has a minimum income before taxation. This adjustment makes it more progressive, though of course whether or not it is “better” than the current system is up for debate. For example: let’s say the Flat Tax was given a minimum income of $40,000 and a rate of 15%. Then, a family with a $30,000 income would pay no taxes. A family with $60,000 in income would pay ($60,000 - $40,000) * 15% = $3,000 (that’s 5% of their total income). A family with $2 million income would pay something approaching the actual 15% rate.
There are many problems that I see with the Flat Tax (most important to me is the ease of tax dodging), but I applaud the idea of doing something different. In my opinion, it is unethical to have the huge tax code we have and expect the average person to understand and abide by it. A newspaper once did a study where they sent their tax records to 49 different professional tax preparers. They got 49 different responses. Even the people who are experts on the subject cannot agree.
It depends on how you’re defining the terms. If you think of government on a scale between totally free-market (zero taxation and zero govt programs) and totally controlled (100% taxation, many govt programs) and label the ends “Free-Market” and “Socialist”, then any program taking a nation closer to total control is “Socialist” while any program taking a nation closer to lack of control is “Free-Market”.
To the OP:
Is Obama likely to make the country more socialist, and if so, is this bad? Well, if Obama does what he says he will do, he will implement programs that give the government more control. This is socialist, so yes to that part. Is this bad? Well, that’s a question of whether or not socialism is bad. Before we go there, I’d like to mention that Hillary would also make the country more socialist, and that I doubt any Republican candidate would have made the country significantly less so (except perhaps Ron Paul). So the choice is essentially “status quo” or “socialism”. Thus I don’t understand the earlier statement about socialism needing to be fought for.
IMHO, a complete “Free-Market” government cannot work. Among other things, with zero taxation you have no police and no army. A nearby country with any military able to overcome unorganized militia will destroy this one.
Also, IMHO, a completely Socialist country cannot work. 100% taxation and the idea of a “free ride” robs the people of any incentive to work (aside from “or go to prison” I suppose, but that’s no longer any kind of freedom, it’s slavery).
The solution must lie somewhere in between.
I’d like to point out that nobody including me, claimed they were.
perhaps they can be, but nothing you’ve presented shows that they consistently are.
The question is about what the governments goals and responsibilities are, so, no I’m not suggesting it’s not needed or that the governments proper goals should be accomplished through free market methods.
Wow!! Please explain how this is* the point* to our government and where you got this notion. Who gets to decide what the greater common good is?
I understand your point. No doubt their are wealthy people who are reluctant to share their good fortune. That does not justify taking their money simply because they have more.
I think under the proper role of protecting it’s citizens a government can set reasonable regulations for business such as a minimum wage. Even there we must find the proper balance so that the workers can earn a living and the business can prosper. Not enough profit and the business closes , people are out of work. Not enough regulation and workers can look like indentured servants.
I just watched a documentary about WalMArt While their adds speak of opportunity many of their employees have to seek programs to supplement their low wages. This is directly encouraged by managers, who are the same people who encourage or intimidate employees to work extra for no pay, or illegally change their hours to avoid paying overtime. That means my tax dollars are not only helping the less fortunate {which I don’t mind} but subsidizing WalMarts profits {which I mind very much}
Wouldn’t it be better if Walmart raised their wages a bit, made a few less billion , and their employees could earn a living wage and didn’t need my tax dollars?
Watch your generalizations. I don’t believe anyone indicated government is not needed. Also , believing governments are* ideally* suited to deliver certain things sounds a bit naive. Real life is often a balancing act of the Yin and Yang of actions. Helping the poor is good but making them dependent or unmotivated is not. The innovation and determination that can lead to wealth are good things. Industrialists employee people. The lust for wealth at the expense of others is not.
I agree that too many large cooperations are able to hide their lack of social conscience under the guise of thinking of their responsibility to their stockholders. Remember my WalMart example. The other side of that coin is that the people who support Walmart by caring only about their low prices and saving a buck are contributing to the downfall of their neighborhood businesses and jobs being shipped overseas. Funny how that works ain’t it?
BTW, some companies are content with reasonable profits while maintaining social responsibility.
When you say that it would be better for people to take “personal responsibility” and provide for themselves, how exactly do you propose they do that?
Are these jobs and markets just going to miraculously appear?
Two ways. We have to be better citizens when it comes to participating in our own democracy. You know, the government of the people and for the people and by the people. I count myself as guilty as one of the citizens that has been too complacent for too long and allowed our country to get where it is. We’re paying more attention now because the country has gotten to such a bad place. Perhaps we can spend a little more time staying informed about what our “leaders” are doing and a little less time being entertained.
That means throwing out the lobbyists and stop looking the other way as companies buy policy. I’m no kind of economist but I think with the right policies, trade agreements, and regulation, put in place by a congress actually looking out for our interests, more jobs will be available, prices will be more reasonable.
I’m no extremist or idealist. There’s no perfect system solution. I do think in “the land of opportunity” personal responsibility has to stressed along with compassion . Help the less fortunate is a great concept but in the real world we have to make specific decisions about how that functions.
To head off additional unnecessary sarcasm I’d point out that I’m talking about long term solutions involving our government. I agree with helping the less fortunate. I prefer a way that provides opportunity and requires effort when that is applicable rather than simply foots the bill for them .
Public education has been mentioned. I think public education benefits all of society. It does still require personal responsibility. Students and parents choose how to take advantage of it. That’s providing opportunity and still advocating personal responsibility.
I’ll give you three examples:
- Common defense: One of the most basic reasons for some sort of national government is to provide a common defense against people from outside. Now, the idea that you, me, and our friends and neighbors don’t want to be subjugated by others is quite easily understood. I’d say it’s pretty much common to most people that they prefer to be self-determinative. Yet, left to themselves, without some centralized co-ordination of effort, with imposition of methodology upon us, we simply won’t manage to band together effectively to repel the peril from outside. Some of us will feel we have more important things to do, some of us will assert that we shouldn’t shoulder as large a component, or cost, and some of us will disagree that there even is a need for common defense. So, to avoid this from resulting in being taken over, we put some entity (government) in charge of the common defense, and authorize it to acquire funds, equipment and manpower to accomplish its goal.
Note well that the main reason for the confederation of the Swiss cantons, the American states, etc., was to provide a more effective defense, despite the fact that each group of individual entities could theoretically accomplish the same thing without forming some central governmental structure. And one of the main arguments in favor of the Constitution of 1787 was that the looser structure of the Articles of Confederation made a successful defense of the new country less likely (see, e.g.: The Federalist, No. 4).
- Police power: There are humans who, sadly, do not like to live within the boundaries of activity that exist to allow people to live in communities without such friction as to preclude a peaceful co-existence. Thus, society prefers we don’t steal, but some do. Arguably, this should be able to be dealt with without some centralized organization. Someone steals, everyone bands together, figures out who stole, and then wrecks society’s punishment upon the perpetrator. But, of course, this doesn’t work in practice, for two main reasons. First, there may not be an agreement reached upon what to do with the perpetrator, resulting either in inactivity, or in the potential for activity too harsh for most of society’s members to accept (hang the thief!). Second, the criminals of society may band together, overcoming the ability of society to easily police itself (the strongest get to make the rules, as it were). To this situation, the same sorts of difficulties interpose: some won’t want to devote time or effort to resolving the situation, others won’t agree it needs to be done at all, while still others will be happy to deal with it, but in ways society in general will find difficult to stomache (a bigger band of thugs, as it were).
So we set up a government to set rules for us to follow, and give it power to police us, maintaining those rules, capturing those who violate them, and punishing them according to pre-established methodologies accepted by society. We establish a police force, we create a judiciary, and we determine rules for how they shall work in advance (some form of legislative organism). This reduces the possibility of simply having the strongest band of thugs be the ones who get to do whatever they want, while allowing the individual in society to choose just how (s)he wants to contribute to the effort, monetarily, if no other way appeals.
- Education: here is the function I started with. Arguably, a society should not need a government to educate itself. People who wish education could seek it out from those who have the knowledge they desire. Some who wished to make knowledge available for common good would agree to teach, either in schools, or in trade societies. Each person would be able to achieve whatever education they wanted and needed, without some central agency determining how this would work, and forcing anyone into action on behalf of the system.
But we had this system of education and we found it severely lacking. By the mid-1800s, we realized that such a system rewarded only those with substantial means. Although there were those willing to contribute to the overall growth of society, not enough were willing to do so for so low a price that the ability to be educated existed for enough of the people in society who needed it. As we stopped being a primarily agrarian society, with its members being born, living and dying within a few miles, doing the sort of labor for which education was not needed, and as we became a more egalitarian society (see Jacksonian Democracy), wherin it was understood that education itself had a value, even for a farmer who might never make use of it in his fields, we found it necessary to address education through some collective centralized means. So, we socialized education.
Now, that’s not the only possible way we could have dealt with the problem. But it is instructive to note that, again, to solve a problem that we ourselves could not resolve without government intervention, we turned to the mechanisms of government. This, of course, is the theme.
Now, you assert: doesn’t this mean tyrrany by the majority???
In answer I give you the following: governement is by its very nature tyrrany by SOME group, and such tyrrany is absolutely necessary to a society that wishes to survive. In our country, that tyrrany happens to be the tyrrany of the majority (since we are democratic in our institutions), which is why our federal constitution is littered with checks on such tyrrany (e.g.: the Bill of Rights). But the absence of tyrrany is chaos. The trick is deciding just how much tyrrany you need, and from what source. Finding this balance has fascinated us from the dawn of human society, and the answers are so plentiful, that a complete study of them is almost impossible.
I won’t address these because they have very little or nothing to do with the thread or the conversation that was underway.
Nobody was discussing if government was necessary or desirable.
You said
None of your examples explain it to me.
Perhaps it’s the phrasing I don’t understand, in particular “the point of government is to force a society”
The examples you’ve given do not show this. Our government was formed to a large extent by mutual agreement. We were a new nation deciding what type of government to have and how it should be structured. We’re still working on it. The system of laws we have are constantly under scrutiny and changing with certain basic principles held as a constant. The police , the army, and education are an exercise of our democratic principles in that we as a society agree. The government isn’t forcing us. We are exercising our own volition.
no, I haven’t asserted that so I won’t be addressing this either.
I think you misunderstand what I meant. Government is the mechanism by which society forces itself to do what it needful, and won’t be accomplished without such mechanism.
For example, you want to sell goods (let’s say, shoes). You don’t need government to do that. You simply make the shoes, and then tell people, if you pay me $X, I’ll give you a pair of shoes.
But someone steals a pair of your shoes from you. Now you have two choices. First choice, you can go get five of your friends, (big strong strapping dudes) with long sticks and find the person who stole the shoes and beat him sensless and take back the shoes. Doing so gets you your shoes back. But society doesn’t want people running around in groups enforcing their own private causes of unhappiness, and you don’t want to take the risk that, when you and your posse find the guy, he pulls out a gun and shoots all of you. So you choose option #2: you appeal to the government to track the guy down and subject him to the judicial process. This makes society much happier, and you are willing to go along because it’s better for society, and it also might be better for you.
But if government didn’t exist, to whom would you turn for option #2? You couldn’t. Oh, you might try seeing if there were fellow members of your community who would help you out, but they’ve already heard that the guy with the shoes has a big gun, and dares anyone to come and get the shoes from him. So you are out of luck.
This is my point. In our case, yes, we set up our governement (though I will point out that YOU did no such thing; it was in place already when you were born and you’ve simply gone along with what was already there). This is as opposed to, say, a monarchy where the government was established by force of might. But the essential reason for the existence of the government hasn’t changed: if it doesn’t exist, we as people in society will not be able to accomplish the greater goods we see desirable. This is the reason we enter into the pact of government.
You state that my concepts aren’t a part of the thread. I assert that they most certainly are. For example, you want the issue of poverty to be treated through some non-governmental approach. But you fail to assert how this will happen, given the realities of a free-market society. In an ideal world, sure, individuals would band together in sufficient numbers so as to eliminate poverty, thus putting the greater common good over individual benefit. But that simply doesn’t happen in sufficient numbers. Thus, if we as a society wish to eliminate or reduce poverty, we need to have some mechanism for doing that which accomplishes things we ourselves won’t do otherwise (like, for example, transfer wealth, or spend money on institutions that help reduce the bases of poverty, etc.).
That mechanism is government. Which is my point.
This just shows that even the proponents of the flat tax understand that a dollar to a person making $20,000 a year is worth more than a dollar to a person making $200,000. But the psychological value of a dollar keeps on diminishing as you go up in income. I make a nice income, but Bill Gates could give away my entire salary and it would be in the noise. If we use the principle that people should pay taxes so the pain is roughly equal, we get a progressive system.
This has nothing to do with the complexity of the tax code. You could have a very nicely progressive system and throw away all the deductions and other special cases. That stuff comes from politics, and eliminating it is just as infeasible as cutting taxes in the expectation that Congress will throw away programs benefiting their constituents to make up the money. But it sure could use a cleaning up, that I agree with. Still, most people don’t have to worry about the special cases, and those that do benefit from them, which is another reason reform is not likely. I think tax software is hurting also. Before I used it, I spend a long time filling out worksheets for special cases that wound up to not apply. Now TurboTax tells me AMT doesn’t apply, and I happily go on my way.
What I understand is that we don’t need to start with a lengthy anecdotal explanation of what a government is to discuss the OP. I think we have a basic grasp of that already. There’s a good chance our posters here aren’t in grade school. I don’t agree with your choice of words but it doesn’t matter. There’s no need to discuss this
because it doesn’t really move the discussion forward. We were already past that at the OP.
Once again, nobody is claiming that a modern structured society can exist without a government. I don’t see this as helpful to the discussion.
No that’s not my point.
You are mistaken. I’ve made several suggestions.
Yes I get that you think government is the proper and perhaps better mechanism. You could have said that with a lot less rambling. The problem I have is that even with long posts you have offered nothing to support your opinion as accurate.
Yes, as a society we* can *choose to establish welfare programs that are tax funded. Already knew that. I never implied that was all bad because I recognize that the subject is a bit more complex than that.
Can we take it as established, at this point, that Obama is no socialist and an Obama Administration would not portend socialism in America?