Quote:

Quote: Would I be more responsible for the starving kids in africa? Or the immigrant with 5 kids that can't afford healthcare?

Someone has to take responsibility for them.

Why? I'm not saying it's not true, I just want a justification.

Quote:It doesn't occur to you that your family will get the same benefits? They'll get the same health care benefits. Not just paid for by you, but by the entire country. It works both ways.

Consider a small parable: everyone knows a zombie outbreak is going to happen. I know that if I hoard weapons and food to defend against the zombie outbreak, the government will take them from me and distribute them evenly to everyone. On the contrary, if I spend that same money to buy myself an iPod, I'll get the arms and food from the government anyway, and I'll have something to listen music on while killing zombies. Therefore, nobody wants to buy weapons and food for the zombie outbreak, and everyone buys iPods instead—this is socially inefficient!

Quote:Original post by Chris Reynolds
Does anyone else see this?

Carbon Tax - paying for the amount of damage the government deems you are inflicting on the environment.
Keep in mind this hasn't worked in most of the other countries that have previously implemented it.

Universal Healthcare - Work and earn money so that the government can take it from you to pay for someone
else's healthcare. "victims".

Global Poverty Tax - Work and earn money so that the government can force you to pay for that starving kid
in africa. "spreading the wealth" not only nationally, but globally?

Marginal tax rate raise of 53% from 37.7% for people of high-income? So on each additional dollar earned, i will pay back
just that much more to the government?

Obama supports these, and wants to raise capitol gains taxes, and further tax the wealthy. again to, "spread the wealth".
And he seems to be who holds the most support on these boards.

I really just wish people could take care of themselves.

I'm working my ass off to become a pharmacist. Under these ideals, would I in turn be deemed more liable to pay for my friends
who didn't go to college? Would I be more responsible for the starving kids in africa? Or the immigrant with 5 kids that can't afford healthcare?

I want my money to go to MY kids and their families, not someone else's.

So to make this constructive, why are so many americans ok with this? How does this encourage one to work harder,
climb the ladder, and invest? Because I know this is reaching the eyes of Obama supporters.

Perhaps in an ideal world everything would be completely fair, and everyone would get what they deserve. However, we are dealing with people here, who are far from perfect, and thus you have no choice but to compromise if you wish to survive. If you are the only one with capital and the rest of the people around you have nothing, they will, in most cases unfairly, kill you and take your possessions, this has happened several times throughout history. Legislation, morals, or ethics will not come to your rescue since these things are all governed by other people, the very people who are now your enemies.

Regardless of whether it is fair or not you must be diplomatic and make sure that others are sufficiently content to guarantee your own safety. No matter how successful and rich you are it only takes one person with nothing to loose to ruin or end your life. Therefore, it is beneficial, even from an egoistical point-of-view, to keep the quality of life of the people in your surrounding above a certain threshold in order to prevent extreme actions from their part.

EDIT: Yes, basically a reiteration what has already been said by a few others, just hoping to strengthen the argument.

Quote:Original post by RedDrake
Yes social stability, and it's not about other people being jealous it's about existential threats, eg. if you get filthy rich many other people have to be poor in contrast, with high differences in a limited resource situation many people are going to be existentially threatened.

I'm not so sure about this. See, poverty in the sense "there are people with more money than I have" is not really a survival issue—that's just jealousy. On the contrary, poverty in the sense "I don't have enough money to pay for food and shelter" is indeed a survival issue.

And, in fact, no matter how filthy rich you are, you won't be eating that much food or occupying that much shelter (in fact, because you're so filthy rich, you're even going to buy luxury food and shelter of a kind that the poor wouldn't have been able to afford anyway). This means that, if someone hoards a lot of money and doesn't spend it on meat and potatoes (or some other cheap food source) then the price of food will simply go down to reflect the fact that less money is available to spend on it.

Besides, in most limited resource situations, the correct solution is not to redistribute the wealth, but to strive to create more of that resource. Only if creating more of that resource is impossible should one resort to limitation and redistribution.

This is probably the most disappointing OP I've ever read on this forum.

A guy has done OK in life, assumes everyone could do equally well if they tried, and says "screw them if they can't".

That's somewhere between grossly ignorant, immoral and amoral.

Even though you think your start in life may not have been easy - believe me, there are BILLIONS of people with a tougher start than you. For starters, you were born in the US, which in many respects (though not all) is already a pretty damn good start.

I'm damn lucky too. I was born in the UK, in London. My parents were good people, taught me to be a nice person, and I inherited a good brain. I went to Cambridge and have a well paid job. I don't winge that I have to pay tax, I'm happy that I can help people less fortunate than myself - either through tax or through charity. I don't do nearly as much as I should, but to think that I deserve more money than a "starving kid in Africa" is just rediculous, however hard it was for me to earn that cash.

I mean there are kids in Africa who "work" harder walking to school each day than I do at work. I just get paid for the priviledge.

Money doesn't always mean happiness.

Feel free to ignore me by the way, I'm not American.

[Edit] And is communism really that bad anyway? Just because it's been implemented poorly in the past...

Quote:Original post by Spoonbender
It's something Americans often seem to have trouble with. When discussing some new (to them) political proposal or idea, the last thing they can imagine doing is finding out if it's been tried before, and how that has worked out. It would be such a simple solution, but probably unamerican. Instead, let's fling the same old cliches about commies and zero competition at each others, and hope that no one realizes that what we're flaming has actually been shown to work very well in some cases.

...

Quote:Original post by acemuzzy
[Edit] And is communism really that bad anyway? Just because it's been implemented poorly in the past...

If it could work, then it would be great: everyone would get what they need, and provide others with what they can provide.

The problem is that humans are selfish, deceiving and optimizing fiends: aside from a few idealists and fanatics who would follow the general idea of communism, most people would notice the loopholes and exploits in such a system, and just get more out of the system that what they deserve (or what the system can afford to give them). Instead of being an unfair advantage to those born in a rich family, it would be an unfair advantage to those born in a widespread, well-placed, well-informed family.

Quote:Original post by ToohrVyk

Quote:Original post by acemuzzy
[Edit] And is communism really that bad anyway? Just because it's been implemented poorly in the past...

If it could work, then it would be great: everyone would get what they need, and provide others with what they can provide.

The problem is that humans are selfish, deceiving and optimizing fiends: aside from a few idealists and fanatics who would follow the general idea of communism, most people would notice the loopholes and exploits in such a system, and just get more out of the system that what they deserve (or what the system can afford to give them). Instead of being an unfair advantage to those born in a rich family, it would be an unfair advantage to those born in a widespread, well-placed, well-informed family.

I think I probably agree with most of that. I like the principle of it, but agree that it's probably never going to work well as it will always need "leaders" and will never be genuinely fair.

I think its ideals are in the right place though.