Poll of the Day > Socialism > Captialism

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

Turns out weve been drinking the Capitalism Kool-Aid, Kapital-Aid if you will, from the start. Even I have passionately defended our current system.

why work if money will be shared?

Krazy_Kirby posted...

why work if money will be shared?

That's the same as normal capitalism... why hire more people to do the same job when you can just pay superior employees?

HornedLion posted...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

yeah Im not reading all that

I read it.

The study itself doesn't assert that socialism is better than capitalism, but rather just compares the outcome of various socioeconomic measurements of different countries with differing policies.

Looking at the categorization of countries, it seems to me that the comparison basically boils down to most of the world compared to a good chunk of eastern Europe and some parts of Asia. You could say that the 'socialist' countries are doing better by the metrics of the paper, but that leaves out a lot of the history and context for some of the countries listed under 'capitalism.' For example, would a country like Nigeria or Jamaica become more 'successful' if it decided to switch their government policies to be more aligned to socialism? I'm more than willing to bet money it wouldn't because the problems countries face are more than just socioeconomically.

Moreover, you shared a paper that was quite literally published over 35 years ago. I think if you wanted to make a better case that socialism > capitalism, you would look for something more... recent.

If anything, I think this paper showcases the success of capitalism more so than socialism! Or at the very least, it's a bad example of how socialism > capitalism. If you look again at the categorization, you would notice that N. Korea and S. Korea are are both sorted in lower-middle income... wonder how those countries are doing today. And likewise with USSR and East Germany. Last I checked one of those two countries broke up and now the remnant's army is out shitting on some poor Ukranian dude's body. The other joined forces with the evil capitalists... oops!

Krazy_Kirby posted...

why work if money will be shared?

to have more of it, duh

No.

I feel like there is a way to take the positive aspects of both and come up with a way that is fair and works for everyone.

DeSantis2024 posted...

I feel like there is a way to take the positive aspects of both and come up with a way that is fair and works for everyone.

It's called modern first world countries.

Lokarin posted...

That's the same as normal capitalism... why hire more people to do the same job when you can just pay superior employees?

Normal Capitalism says to just hire superior employees. It is easily fixed by not paying for sub-par work, but Socialism demands you pay for all, even if they're not working at all. Capitalism addresses the problem.

VampireCoyote posted...

to have more of it, duh

Yeah, I've never understood that rationale. Whether 0% of your cheque goes to taxes or 70%, you're still going to have more money working than not (provided whatever welfare system you have doesn't actively discourage working by paying more than work would and stopping as soon as work starts, which is why UBI is generally a better idea than unemployment benefits).

A mixture is the obvious solution, and also avoiding a form of capitalism that focuses on the wealthy and corporations, ensuring that money is distributed based on work/effort and not power/wealth).

A baseline of income for everyone who is working, those who are disabled and those who are retired makes sense, and can still allow for a wide range of incomes and wealth levels. Socialism can simply mean that we, as a people, work at least in part for the betterment of our nation as a whole, and to ensure everyone has a baseline of care/resources to live on.

Many simple ideas such as universal healthcare (and enough hospitals to provide it), a good education system (that doesn't put people into life long debt to obtain), and affordable housing can be implemented without totally scrapping capitalism. A portion of taxes can be used to provide the above, but more importantly, the above should be considered right and NOT used as a means of creating profit for individuals.

Nobody should be making Billions of dollars a year on education. Rent should be regulated, allowing for a profit, but controlling the amount people can charge based on available properties. There are so many places to live right now in this country that nobody is using, that if you divided the rent costs by all the available places to live it would be less than half (maybe even 1/3rd). Property taxes need to be constrained as well, and not based on the "value" of properties which can be (and currently are) seriously inflated (often by banks/corporations etc by not selling homes, or leaving them empty etc).

Taxes would not even need to change much to provide a semi-socialist setup that makes life better for everyone. In addition, base pay should increase along with a % of all pay under a "living" wage line (say 50k a year at this point), both hourly and salary. You can not just keep raising minimum wage and throwing more and more skilled jobs into the minimum wage pool as you go along. That just makes more and more people live on the bare minimum poverty level wages while increasing the cost of everything so their lives are harder.

Simple, quick solutions (longer ones could be enacted later).

Increase the base tax deduction per year from 12.5k to 20k single (40k married).

Set taxes on properties based on the lowest value of a home in the last 10 years. It only increases as that number does (so currently lowest value on a home since 2012).

Both invest in low income housing across the nation to provide cheaper rental values, and set max rent prices by square feet to something reasonable. It should not cost more than 1k/month anywhere in the US for a 1 bedroom apartment, with the possible exceptions of beachfront property or other major reasons for a higher price.

Build more hospitals while expanding free healthcare to everyone (stop making it be a for profit buisiness), and more schools while paying teachers more, providing security and teachers aids/supplies. Education should be a priority in this country. Stop making education for profit at all, and provide higher education for a baseline cost (IE how much it costs to actually pay the teachers a decent wage). If that was the ONLY cost for education (which it should be), it would be a tiny fraction of the current cost to get a degree.

Those changes alone would have a HUGE impact on the daily lives of most Americans and other than a very few extremely wealthy ones, all positive changes. Many of the changes just cause billionaires to stop milking americans for health and education, and it would restrict how much of a profit landlords could make as well (but also reduce the taxes gained from properties so help them (especially those who were not renting and struggling to pay extremely high property taxes at this point).

Taxes would need to change a bit, but not drastically, becoming more like many European countries, where you get taxed on income over a living wage, but by a larger amount. Getting rid of loopholes so the wealthy actually PAY 30% or more, instead of somehow paying 8% while average americans pay 3-4x as much (percentage wise) would be a huge deal.

If you actually taxed the top 20% of US citizens over 30% (Say 33%) of their total profit per year, that would probably more than double our current taxes and easily pay for everything above (with money left over).

That is still a capitalist, money focused society, but one that is fair, gives value for work performed and prevents vultures from profiting on the health and education of our citizens.

VampireCoyote posted...

to have more of it, duh

But that's the thing, under socialism everyone gets the same no matter how much they do or don't do. Work 0 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. Oh you worked 80 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. EVERYONE IS EQUAL!!! And when those that work 80 hours realize they can work 0 and get the same and just stop working. Guess what you have? economic colipase and country fails. Isn't it grand! There will be no workers if they get the same if they work or don't work. This is why socialist programs such as welfare, while their hearts are in the right place, the end result isn't actually helpful. When welfare ends after 3 months they found that those on it would start to look for work quickly. When it kept getting extended and extended they sat on welfare longer and only started to actually look for a job once it was going to end. So you drain from the economy longer the longer you have socialist programs propping people up. So they are GOOD for a SHORT term help, but they aren't made to have people living off them, which is what some people do.

DeSantis2024 posted...

I feel like there is a way to take the positive aspects of both and come up with a way that is fair and works for everyone.

Don't let DeSantis hear your commie talk

Decoy77 posted...

But that's the thing, under socialism everyone gets the same no matter how much they do or don't do. Work 0 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. Oh you worked 80 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. EVERYONE IS EQUAL!!! And when those that work 80 hours realize they can work 0 and get the same and just stop working. Guess what you have? economic colipase and country fails. Isn't it grand! There will be no workers if they get the same if they work or don't work. This is why socialist programs such as welfare, while their hearts are in the right place, the end result isn't actually helpful. When welfare ends after 3 months they found that those on it would start to look for work quickly. When it kept getting extended and extended they sat on welfare longer and only started to actually look for a job once it was going to end. So you drain from the economy longer the longer you have socialist programs propping people up. So they are GOOD for a SHORT term help, but they aren't made to have people living off them, which is what some people do.

People that want to work should get bonus perks

I would really like to see this study repeated today.

Decoy77 posted...

But that's the thing, under socialism everyone gets the same no matter how much they do or don't do. Work 0 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. Oh you worked 80 hours? Great you get $500 for the week.

No. What the hell? Where did this myth come from? Is this some pervasive American anti-socialist propaganda?

Socialism means that the workers own the means of production, and get all the profits. In theory, this would mean that working hard gets you even more money than in capitalism. In practice, in the Soviet Union workers' wages were directly based on how much they produced. This rewarded hard work even more than usual wage labor, but led to an inefficient bureaucracy and managers fudging the numbers out of compassion.

The Soviet Union also had a strong social safety net, but that's not really an inherent part of socialism, and is something capitalist countries have to varying degrees.

I just want to look at flower and look at water and eat chicken from a can and dance

not work

Einstein has a kickass essay on socialism, read it up people, if you are into knowledge of course

Decoy77 posted...

But that's the thing, under socialism everyone gets the same no matter how much they do or don't do. Work 0 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. Oh you worked 80 hours? Great you get $500 for the week. EVERYONE IS EQUAL!!! And when those that work 80 hours realize they can work 0 and get the same and just stop working. Guess what you have? economic colipase and country fails. Isn't it grand! There will be no workers if they get the same if they work or don't work. This is why socialist programs such as welfare, while their hearts are in the right place, the end result isn't actually helpful. When welfare ends after 3 months they found that those on it would start to look for work quickly. When it kept getting extended and extended they sat on welfare longer and only started to actually look for a job once it was going to end. So you drain from the economy longer the longer you have socialist programs propping people up. So they are GOOD for a SHORT term help, but they aren't made to have people living off them, which is what some people do.

No that's communism. Socialism just makes sure everyone is taken care of.

We are the dead

Only if you are a fan of watching people die or killing people. Socialism has killed so many innocent people and I don't want to see this happen in the US.

FatalAccident posted...

yeah Im not reading all that

You can pretty much safely assume anything Horned posts will be biased nonsense if not outright propaganda. And a grand sweeping statement with one link to back it up -- where he likely didn't even read the link -- is usually just straight-up trolling.

joemodda posted...

I read it.

The study itself doesn't assert that socialism is better than capitalism, but rather just compares the outcome of various socioeconomic measurements of different countries with differing policies.

Looking at the categorization of countries, it seems to me that the comparison basically boils down to most of the world compared to a good chunk of eastern Europe and some parts of Asia. You could say that the 'socialist' countries are doing better by the metrics of the paper, but that leaves out a lot of the history and context for some of the countries listed under 'capitalism.' For example, would a country like Nigeria or Jamaica become more 'successful' if it decided to switch their government policies to be more aligned to socialism? I'm more than willing to bet money it wouldn't because the problems countries face are more than just socioeconomically.

Moreover, you shared a paper that was quite literally published over 35 years ago. I think if you wanted to make a better case that socialism > capitalism, you would look for something more... recent.

If anything, I think this paper showcases the success of capitalism more so than socialism! Or at the very least, it's a bad example of how socialism > capitalism. If you look again at the categorization, you would notice that N. Korea and S. Korea are are both sorted in lower-middle income... wonder how those countries are doing today. And likewise with USSR and East Germany. Last I checked one of those two countries broke up and now the remnant's army is out shitting on some poor Ukranian dude's body. The other joined forces with the evil capitalists... oops!

I applaud you putting in the effort to debunk Horned's obviously bunk claim, but... I mean, why put in that much effort?

ZeldaMutant posted...

No. What the hell? Where did this myth come from? Is this some pervasive American anti-socialist propaganda?

Socialism means that the workers own the means of production, and get all the profits. In theory, this would mean that working hard gets you even more money than in capitalism. In practice, in the Soviet Union workers' wages were directly based on how much they produced. This rewarded hard work even more than usual wage labor, but led to an inefficient bureaucracy and managers fudging the numbers out of compassion.

The Soviet Union also had a strong social safety net, but that's not really an inherent part of socialism, and is something capitalist countries have to varying degrees.

There's just the major gap of defining what someone has produced. When someone does the CAD model for a series production car, what is the value of that production? The concept was okay-ish in an industrial age where physical goods were the vast majority of productivity in a given country. In the modern era, there's a hell of a lot more in the software side. In a film production, how much is produced by the actor? They're the one actually doing the show, but then what value is the camera man? The director? The editor? The marketer? A large amount of the value of a given product is derived from these additional services that are difficult to quantify.

Just as all those jobs are productive work, so is being a business owner, being the manager of your assets. It is extremely hard to quantify the value that anybody's individual work brings to the end product, particularly when it's work that produces value long after it is done (like creating a film that's watched over and over again for decades). Capitalism settled this long ago by having people negotiate their own value since everybody's contribution is subjective anyway. Socialism simply tries to quantify value by its own standard, and accordingly makes some work less valuable to be done than its skills demand, it lacks the flexibility of the market to assert that those in demand have their productivity to society compensated.

We do socialised Capitalism for a reason. The government can't determine the value of product to society, but it can determine what people it wants to keep running if they can't produce sufficiently, since all people are a tax benefit to the government and so all are valuable to its production. Capitalism is the most productive method for a society to operate, it is socialised so that all people can find a way to be as productive as they are capable of being for society.

Unchecked Capitalism sees the less fortunate die due to failure to produce, unchecked Socialism sees the economy stagnate and in turn the living standards of all stay low. The better the country's economy is, the better chance there is for Socialism to provide a lifestyle that benefits all sufficiently.

socialism
communism
capitalism...

all Command Economy

Hop103 posted...

Only if you are a fan of watching people die or killing people. Socialism has killed so many innocent people and I don't want to see this happen in the US.

capitalism is the reason there are so many guns in the US and why all the school shootings are happening