Originally posted by Newjak
They advantage of supply and demand of certain items lol.Even without a tax code the rich will eat the poor inna free market.
They do that anyways.
Isn't New York City and LA supposed to be Left Wing strongholds? Yet the inequality there is just insane?
The tech sector of NYC alone dwarfs Silicon Valley, so I hear.
My point being, Democrat controlled states/industries have plenty of opportunities to shrink that income gap. They can be more generous with contracts in Hollywood or book publishing, if they chose, or forsake pure profits hiring more, or raising up standards of living.
I mean, I understand politics is about the government doing something, but you don't need someone to force you not to live like a king while everyone starves. You can just do that on your own.
Originally posted by BackFire
True. I was referring to western semi functional democracies.
Same basic principles though.
Everyone always asks "What do the people think?" As if countries are either a monolithic entity, or a place where the minority vote has to live by the rules of the majority.
I'm more a libertarian, in terms of how people should be allowed to live their lives.
The war on drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are things I'd ideally just leave to people's individual discretion.
Same with other "sins". If you want polygamy, go have polygamy. Want to do one of those bizarre Master/slave setups, where one person has all the power and the other can't even wipe their bum without permission, have at it.
The fact is, you'll always get people enforcing social norms, so why not make it a social norm to just not have them?
Originally posted by cdtm
Same basic principles though.Everyone always asks "What do the people think?" As if countries are either a monolithic entity, or a place where the minority vote has to live by the rules of the majority.
I'm more a libertarian, in terms of how people should be allowed to live their lives.
The war on drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are things I'd ideally just leave to people's individual discretion.
Same with other "sins". If you want polygamy, go have polygamy. Want to do one of those bizarre Master/slave setups, where one person has all the power and the other can't even wipe their bum without permission, have at it.
The fact is, you'll always get people enforcing social norms, so why not make it a social norm to just not have them?
Great post 🙂
Originally posted by Klaw
So we all agree that income and wealth inequality is fair?Good.
Its not fair or unfair. Its just the way it is.
Cant force equal wealth on everyone. But the mega wealthy should pay the same proportion of their income in taxes as the rest of us.
And if they dont want to redistribute a proportion of their enormous wealth to the less fortunate then we should call them out for the POS they are.
Originally posted by Darth Thor
Its not fair or unfair. Its just the way it is.Cant force equal wealth on everyone. But the mega wealthy should pay the same proportion of their income in taxes as the rest of us.
And if they dont want to redistribute a proportion of their enormous wealth to the less fortunate then we should call them out for the POS they are.
Why do you think taxation is legitimate ?
Originally posted by ilikecomics
Why do you think taxation is legitimate ?
Because we all need essential services and benefits without having private companies in control of even those.
Originally posted by ilikecomics
Poverty is ugly and destroys people, good think free trade has acted against poverty more than any other force.
Tis a beautiful thing.
You just made that up.
Slavery was built on free trade.
Free trade is a misnomer anyways, what we call free trade is certain rules hat are applied to trade to eliminate some tariffs. But the relatively recent free trade boom, things like the WTO, have been detrimental to the eradication of poverty, they have slowed the growth rate in developing countries and have accelerated the wealth inequality in developed countries.
Originally posted by Darth Thor
Because we all need essential services and benefits without having private companies in control of even those.You just made that up.
Slavery was built on free trade.
Hmm why wouldn't you want a private company to provide services ? Wouldn't they have a higher incentive?
because without providing goods or services to consumers they would shut down right ?
That's pretty different than how the state handles, say, the mail.
It loses billions of dollars a year, and yet remains.
This is because it's life force is the work citizens put, wouldn't vyou agree ?
You think I made it up ? You think the the enormous explosion in wealth and standard of living in the 1800s is from slavery ?
Interesting, because as far as I know slavery is one of the oldest human institutions, and yet for the hundreds of thousands of years humans have existed they've never experienced material wealth like the post industrial age.
Chattel slavery in the American colonies certainly played a big role in the immense wealth creation in Europe and later the United States. But of course the industrial revolution, scientific advancements, colonialism and the capitalist market system played a huge role as well in the creation of the wealth. The capitalist market system also played a big part in the inequality created though, but social programs and market interventions can alleviate some of those downsides.
The mail is a good example of a good that is important but won't be provided by the free market, having every part of the country connected is a value that goes beyond what the individual customers will or can pay, so a social spending creates a great social good. Modern delivery companies in part jumped off of the investments we made in the mail, or are able to cover some of the more profitable aspects, which is fine as long as we don't pretend that comparing the public mail service and a private delivery company are comparing apples to apples.
Originally posted by Artol
Chattel slavery in the American colonies certainly played a big role in the immense wealth creation in Europe and later the United States. But of course the industrial revolution, scientific advancements, colonialism and the capitalist market system played a huge role as well in the creation of the wealth. The capitalist market system also played a big part in the inequality created though, but social programs and market interventions can alleviate some of those downsides.The mail is a good example of a good that is important but won't be provided by the free market, having every part of the country connected is a value that goes beyond what the individual customers will or can pay, so a social spending creates a great social good. Modern delivery companies in part jumped off of the investments we made in the mail, or are able to cover some of the more profitable aspects, which is fine as long as we don't pretend that comparing the public mail service and a private delivery company are comparing apples to apples.
There's still a thriving slave trade in the middle east, why isn't everyone rich there ?
A service provider is a service provider is a service provider. The idea of a public good is a myth so the state can monopolize mail delivery
Originally posted by ilikecomicsThe slave trade is thriving everywhere. In many ways people in poverty or mentally vulnerable or convicted of a crime are susceptible no matter the location some societies encourage it more than others. Sweatshops, chain gangs, it's all slavery.
There's still a thriving slave trade in the middle east, why isn't everyone rich there ?A service provider is a service provider is a service provider. The idea of a public good is a myth so the state can monopolize mail delivery
Originally posted by ilikecomics
There's still a thriving slave trade in the middle east, why isn't everyone rich there ?A service provider is a service provider is a service provider. The idea of a public good is a myth so the state can monopolize mail delivery
There are people in the Middle East who are rich in part because of slave labor. Slave labor doesn't make everyone rich, it makes people who use slave labor on an industrial scale rich, especially if they can use the slave labour to harvest or create valuable commodities. That was the same in the US, where there were still very poor whites living alongside the unfathomably wealthy slave holders.
Still though, not all slavery is the same kind, the US and Caribbean, race based, generational slavery was a particularly heinous type, and also very profitable for the owners in the colonies or the empires.
There are things that are good for people and good for a society that don't naturally arise in a market because certain shortcomings that markets can have, that's why certain interventions or restrictions are valuable to have.
Originally posted by Artol
There are people in the Middle East who are rich in part because of slave labor. Slave labor doesn't make everyone rich, it makes people who use slave labor on an industrial scale rich, especially if they can use the slave labour to harvest or create valuable commodities. That was the same in the US, where there were still very poor whites living alongside the unfathomably wealthy slave holders.Still though, not all slavery is the same kind, the US and Caribbean, race based, generational slavery was a particularly heinous type, and also very profitable for the owners in the colonies or the empires.
There are things that are good for people and good for a society that don't naturally arise in a market because certain shortcomings that markets can have, that's why certain interventions or restrictions are valuable to have.
So you acknowledge slavery makes slave holders rich, but free trade makes everyone richer, or no ?
There were poor whites because slavery was legal, making the division of labor less necessary. This would be an example of state power influencing free trade, or no ?
Why is north american slavery particularly heinous ?
As I understand it slaves had a higher marriage rate than they do today, post welfare state.
Also alot of slaves in north america lived relatively long lives, and eventually some were freed and became land owners.
Can the same be true of slaves in the still active slave trade in the middle east ?
Weren't slaves in the middle east systematically castrated resulting in death in 2-4 years ?
Wasn't north america and the uk some of the first nations to end slavery, sometimes at a cost ?
The U.S. was not one of the first countries bro abolish slavery.many countries were doing so decades before the U.S. did.
What a lot of people try to give North America credit for is not having slavery for as long as other countries. When you consider how new a nation we were though it's not much of a boast.
Originally posted by ilikecomics
So you acknowledge slavery makes slave holders rich, but free trade makes everyone richer, or no ?There were poor whites because slavery was legal, making the division of labor less necessary. This would be an example of state power influencing free trade, or no ?
Why is north american slavery particularly heinous ?
As I understand it slaves had a higher marriage rate than they do today, post welfare state.
Also alot of slaves in north america lived relatively long lives, and eventually some were freed and became land owners.
Can the same be true of slaves in the still active slave trade in the middle east ?Weren't slaves in the middle east systematically castrated resulting in death in 2-4 years ?
Wasn't north america and the uk some of the first nations to end slavery, sometimes at a cost ?
Slavery makes slave holders richer. Free markets as they are defined today make the people in charge of the means of production (or patents or things like that) richer. And they may sometimes make people generally richer, but they can also make the poorer poorer, depends a bit on the situation.
No, there were poor whites before and after, people are generally poor because they are born into poverty and don't have many options of advancement, a lot of this has been alleviated somewhat by communal, social and state efforts, like compulsory schooling and things like that.
For a lot of reasons, because the slaves were ripped from their homes and removed from their culture, they were made into subhumans based on their race, their children were equally enslaved, in some parts especially the Caribbean they were worked to death, families were torn apart at the desire of the owners, etc. It was a very bad situation, and a lot of things like the marriage idea, or that a lot of slaves were freed in the south and became land owners are really propaganda by the south afterwards, with little contemporary evidence of this on any meaningful scale. Of course the time after the war wasn't great for black people either, racism continued or was even actively made worse, and the destruction of unions from the 50s on has been incredibly detrimental to black communities as well.
The US was incredibly late in outlawing slavery, much later than the UK as well, which was already relatively late. Certainly in terms of European or colonial powers. I'm not interested in arguing for any other kinds of slavery, but there has been a lot of whitewashing of the incredibly brutal institution of racism in the United States.