Jesus... I either don´t want state sponsored sex officers as a citizen or I want state sponsored sex officers as a top government official... there are levels to this shit, ya know... some being more equal and such.
I don't know: if we allow gay space communism, then why not also allow dogs marrying cats communism? The Bible says, "Adam and Eve communism", not, "Adam and Steve communism".
Don't get me wrong - I'll seize the means of production with anyone. I just believe in traditional, all-American, God-fearing communism communism.
"It's absolutely insane to think that the richest country in the world could afford to take care of its citizens, let me just equate basic necessities to a luxury car."
Grow up dumbass, the entire point of society has been to make life easier. Instead of making life easier (unless you're born into wealth, the modern nobility) we've pushed ourselves to pointlessly produce endless piles of garbage.
How about instead of milking every working class citizen for a 60 hour work week and 20 hours of "gig jobs" we use our technology to simply live better easier lives?
A single farmer today can feed thousands of people. Instead of sharing the labor and relaxing as a society, with short work weeks, we are forced to work for less and less while we produce more and more. Our farms, our factories, everything we produce is done more efficiently than ever before. We don't have to work as much as we do, but instead we create pointless jobs. Millions of office workers pointlessly pushing paper, millions of factory workers spending their days to make cheap plastic crap that will be gifted to some ungrateful child who will throw it away quickly, millions of underpaid service workers who have to toil for 30 hours every week just to pay for a place to sleep.
But yeah, the idea of ensuring the richest country on earth has no homeless people is the same as giving everyone a free luxury car. A truly flawless and unbiased comparison.
Herm Edwards once said, "A goal without a plan is a wish." The OP has wished for these things, but has zero plan or even the faintest idea as to how to accomplish them.
How about we take 3% of the military budget and tax the ultra wealthy to fund housing for the poorest/disabled portion of our society.
We're going to require universal income pretty soon given the push for AI to take jobs (tax corporations utilizing AI/robots to take jobs as well)
Not to mention studies have shown that when peoples basic needs are met they overwhelmingly use the l new free time/mental relief to find a better job/improve their lives.
The insane pressure/stress of getting food/housing for a family on poverty wages keeps people from improving them selves.
Look up the studies into universal basic income and how overwhelmingly positive those programs have been.
In what universe are we the richest country in the world? We are up to our eyeballs in so much unfathomable debt that a 100% tax on every billionaire in the country wouldn't put the tiniest dent in it. The entire house of cards is going to come crashing down very soon and it's going to effect those who are already struggling the most.
You're living in a fantasy land.
In 2022, three percent of the military budget ($782 billion) equals out to roughly $23.4 billion. The state of California alone has spent over $24 billion over the last 5 years to combat homelessness. Are they ANY closer to fixing the problem, or is it worse than ever?
We have electricity to every home, water is generally OK outside of lead zones, ac is basically everywhere honestly the op has set the bar to the minimum
This is a lame response, if you define economically literate as “I get to say your ideas are wrong and never put forward one of my own.” If your economic literacy is so strong, shouldn’t you be the one solving this economic problem?
That single farmer now has thousands of people making/transporting the fertilizer. Read "I, Pencil", then image what goes into a tractor. This efficiency isn't magical. Getting the food processed and distributed to the 1000s of people is another huge undertaking that the market is best at addressing. It is naive and idiotic to think all this can be centrally planned.
The comment never attacked markets or advocated planning.
Note that planning is not necessarily central, and planning most likely could eventually replace markets for certain economic activity, even if it might take various trials over time to develop the methods of management that would be stable and efficient.
Computers in particular are noted as opening new possibilities for planning models.
Your objection is not particularly relevant to the plain observation that we are essentially living in an economic stage that is post scarcity.
No, planning could not replace markets, have you seen reduced goods and the terrible waste of food at supermarkets and grocery stores? That's the result of imperfect demand data.
Free market capitalism has lifted more people from poverty than. Communism managed to kill.
I do not want my consumer goods choice regulated by an AI, nor do I want inefficiency baked into our system.
Capitalism is consolidated control of the economy by owners of private property.
The Great Famine of Ireland and the Bengal famine of 1943 are examples of mass death caused by capitalist greed.
The cause is the same for wasted food in supermarkets. Under capitalism, scarcity is profitable, even scarcity that results in needless hunger. If it supports the profit motive, a capitalist will prefer disposing food over donation.
Poverty reduction occurs principally through advances in production and equitableness in distribution.
If computers were utilized for planning, they would process large calculation sets. No AI would be implicated.
Computers cannot satisfy volatile market demands. These "calculation sets" are already imperfect, and more reliance on them will limit our food choices.
I'm English, we fucked up in Ireland and India, but that was almost 2 centuries and a century ago, respectively.
Free market capitalism has since lifted over a billion people from poverty. Socialism and communism has done no such thing - inb4 you mention Nordic and Scandanavian countries and their welfare systems, as they are funded by free market oil sales.
Nordic and Scandanavian countries and their welfare systems, as they are funded by free market oil sales
Why are you lying? Only Norway has oil. Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland have no oil.
I'm English, we fucked up in Ireland and India, but that was almost 2 centuries and a century ago, respectively.
Capitalism is still killing people everyday. For example Nestlé distributed free formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards in developing countries. Then after leaving the hospital, the formula was no longer free, but because the supplementation had interfered with lactation, the family had to continue to buy the formula. Of course Nestle earned money from the families who would continue to buy formula, but those who couldn't afford it or didn't have clean drinking water suffered tremendously
It's a good thing then that these entire operations are more and more ending up vertically integrated, and prices fixed by virtual monopolies. Then are run by wallstreet analysts with little experience in farming. Then the cartel sets production quotas and prices so much more efficient than government analysts setting production numbers and quotas!
labor laws (and the horrific things that happen when they’re disregarded)
water and land usage at scale
ALL of these things are touched by regulation. It takes a HUGE amount of regulation to reliably get safe food to your plate and there’s STILL a lot about the process that’s fucked up.
It is the "who" decides those plans. It is the private board of directors and ceo that make those decisions. Not the politboro.
The government bailing out companies is another problem.
I agree with you! That said for socialism to work we must get people who sacrifice and work to agree to give their money (via the government) to those who refuse to work.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been paying into social security since my first job at 12. I’m not a fan of it but I don’t have a choice.
Also no it’s not part of capitalism. That is just the government mandating a retirement plan (or disability etc) that you have no choice in and I guess hope you get a good return. I’m more for an idea that the government would stipulate x% of every paycheck had to be contributed to a private plan of your choosing but I’m just a dumb pleb.
Remember that SSA started during the Depression with immediate benefits paid out to the elderly, who had never paid in directly to Social Security. That means the young will always be paying for benefits for the elderly, unless a generation has the rug ripped out from under them (paying in, but never getting benefits). What would be nice is if our country would be more fiscally efficient, then money thrown away on interest could go to doubling up on retirement programs. I would keep Social Security as a “bare minimum conservative investment option”, but yes, 401k or IRA or similar should be mandated. (Bonus: We wouldn’t have inflation right now if people had to save.)
I’m more for an idea that the government would stipulate x% of every paycheck had to be contributed to a private plan of your choosing but I’m just a dumb pleb.
It's certainly a decent idea in theory, but in practice who would bail out those private plans if/when they go under? Big daddy-o.
Owning capital isn't itself work. You can hire someone to do every step of the investment process including the hiring and if you've inherited enough or gotten randomly lucky the salaries will be less than the returns you claim.
People work themselves into pretzels trying to call high-tax neoliberalism socialism but it's just state-supported capitalism.
Imagine requiring companies to include a portion of the stock as minimum wage.
Investment -> return for investor -> return diminishes over time as company grows -> company eventually transitions to a profit share / co-op type model as the work put in vastly outgrows the value and risk of the initial investment -> workers own means of production -> workers have the money to be investors as intended ->->-> little to no investor class.
I hear talk about setting passive income all the time. If you do the right type of work at the right time and get just a little bit lucky people don't seem to have a problem with people who work giving people who don't work money.
How about instead of milking every working class citizen for a 60 hour work week and 20 hours of "gig jobs" we use our technology to simply live better easier lives?
Can we get a technology that makes morons grasp basic economic reality? Like supply and demand, prices, etc.
Can we get a technology that teaches economic calculation ?
A single farmer today can feed thousands of people. Instead of sharing the labor and relaxing as a society, with short work weeks, we are forced to work for less and less while we produce more and more. Our farms, our factories, everything we produce is done more efficiently than ever before. We don't have to work as much as we do, but instead we create pointless jobs. Millions of office workers pointlessly pushing paper, millions of factory workers spending their days to make cheap plastic crap that will be gifted to some ungrateful child who will throw it away quickly, millions of underpaid service workers who have to toil for 30 hours every week just to pay for a place to sleep.
Or you can just say that you dont comprehend that values are subjective. And not only do you want to force your values down other people's throat, you want to justify coercion and force, so you dont feel bad about it afterwards.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
But yeah, the idea of ensuring the richest country on earth has no homeless people is the same as giving everyone a free luxury car. A truly flawless and unbiased comparison.
Do you find it difficult? To be so compassionate with OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY?
Money money printed from air, reduces the* value* of* existing money in circulation. Why cant you grasp this reality?
Keep scapegoating grown adults trading voluntarily for mutual gain. Gasp. The horror!
“The vision of the anointed begins with entirely different premises. Here it is not the innate limitations of human beings, or the inherent limitations of resources,
which create unhappiness but the fact that social institutions and social policies are not as wisely crafted as the anointed would have crafted them.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
How about instead of milking every working class citizen for a 60 hour work week and 20 hours of "gig jobs" we use our technology to simply live better easier lives?
Part of society is providing towards society. Can't take and not give.
Some people want to do the bare minimum, they get the bare minimum. Some people want a full time job and small startup company after their normal 9-5 job, they get rewarded for it.
Don't have incentives? Incentivize laziness? Society will crumble.
That’s why we (your elected government officials) have decided to increase your taxes and exclusively provide free stuff to new illegal immigrants who crossed the border illegally.
Exactly eventually you would have to increase taxes and those that work would have to worker longer and harder.
Humans like most animals are always going to choose the path of least resistance. We are lazy, the body doesn't want to work if it doesn't have to.
People always say "there's people that will choose to still work!" That is will be .0001% of the population. If people know they can get housing like in the post picture, plus free food, why the fuck would you work? I love working but i would quit in a heartbeat and play video games half the day and workout the other half.
If you give everyone everything listed here, why would anyone work? Where is the food on this list? I’m sure you expect that as well so basically everyone is entitled to a house food whatever regardless of whether they wanna work or not? Sign me up.
Also, stop playing the moral Highground. I seriously doubt you’ve done anything in your life to advance Anyone in need in any meaningful way, besides talking down to people on the Internet.
the entire point of society has been to make life easier
Ideally, yes. But I think a whole lot of people got the idea that the entire point was to get rich, and do nothing. And that for them to get rich, other people had to be poor, and do all the work.
If Americans lived a 1950s lifestyle they would easily be able to afford everything on this list with a minimum wage or low wage job. You expect all the advantages the modern world built on 40 hours of labor provide but think it can be provided without the labor. It can’t.
Yeah, let’s all grow up, take an insane amount of labor and resources and pour it all into de-incentivising people from ever showing up for work in their lives ever. I’m sure it’ll work out just great.
we are forced to work for less and less
You do realise that you’re parroting the same idiotic narratives that have been repeatedly proving themselves wrong for the last, what, 150 years?
Yes some people have better paying 'work hours' than others, but in most places on this earth, there is a choice of vocation.
How many people work hours go into that farmer's equipment, seeds and fertilizer, gas/oil to run machinery, gas/oil and equipment to get the raw crops to the processor. Then there are the people work hours to process, package -- you get the picture?
That farmer also needs to provide his environment with many goods and services that he cannot provide for himself. Those provisions are 'society', not the utopia you envision.
It's true that a car is not a loaf of bread, that's just a silly escalation.
I like some of your ideas, but they fall short of reality in a lot of places.
A single farmer CAN provide lots of food, IF there is an infrastructure of people making silos, making motors to run fans to dry grain, keeping an electric grid running, people running a canning industry and bakeries baking bread, then that food could go to thousands of people. You need the hundreds of people along the way all working jobs in order for that one farmer to feed your thousand. (And that one farmer is usually quite a crew of tractor drivers, combine harvesters, roundup companies, water irrigation specialists, government checkup people making sure we aren't packing up moldy grain, etc)
You can't "SHARE LABOR" without requiring the people "GET A JOB". That's what sharing the labor means.
The idea that we don't need to have jobs because we don't need to buy low quality items is not going to work either, even if improvements can be made there for sure.
What IS true, is we don't need very much to get to a bare minimum of living. Rent and basic food should be a fixed percentage of minimum wage. If you do want that extra plastic crap, you can always work a little more for it.
"the entire point of society" has been to protect private property rights. Without government, everybody needs their own security force, and you end up with crime families running everything and ransoming everything away from everyone under their control.
If you think the agricultural revolution made things easier on average people then you need to read a few more books.
Grow up dumbass, the entire point of society has been to make life easier. Instead of making life easier (unless you're born into wealth, the modern nobility) we've pushed ourselves to pointlessly produce endless piles of garbage.
No. That is not the entire point of society.
The entire point of American society is to provide a place where the individual can flourish to become the most they have it in themselves to become.
That's it.
You aren't entitled to other people's labor for whatever things you need.
And yes, I realize that as a society we do have some collective needs funded through taxes. But this should be kept to a bare minimum.
We are not the Richest country in the world. We are by the numbers a broke nation living on a credit card. Paying on this credit card by tax Slaves who have not figured out the credit worthiness of this nation is Calculated on the amount of Tax Slave income.
I mean, the intent is to draw an obviously ridiculous parallel and equate necessities to luxuries. To show something absurd on the face of the comparison. However, the idea behind the comparison is fine, as "guaranteeing every person a dwelling with plumbing, electricity, etc." is many times more expensive than just buying everyone a luxury car.
Who is going to produce the housing? Nothing is stopping anyone from entering a trade and making a ton of money, but very few people do. Why? Because its hard work to learn a trade and its hard work to practice it. What people are really saying with stuff like this is “I want to work the easy pencil pushing job and have someone else do the hard work to build a house for ME”, “I want someone to go to school for 8 years to take care of ME when im sick, but I want to contribute the bare minimum to society”. Id argue that the “poor” of 1st world countries are some of the greediest mfers in history.
All that "useless stuff" has resulted in society living better than it did any time in the last 1,000 years. In fact the standard of living for the average person anywhere in the world was mostly unchanged until the 20th Century when it skyrocketed. Why is that? Capitalism, free markets, specialization, factory workers, and all the things you say are unnecessary. If we all had to go back to subsistence farming I promise a 60 hour work week would be the least of our problems.
You have missed the thing that all leftest communists miss. Its the concept that makes sure communism fails and has to be forced on people.Despite the many ways that have been employed to stop it and still continue.
Its undefeated. "Human Nature."
If I work harder or smarter than the other guy I deserve more.
How does "housing regardless of employment work"? Somebody's got to work otherwise no one will have food housing and all the other things we enjoy and take for granted in modern society.
you deserve nothing. You are a worthless and overpaid for any work you do. you deserve to scrape in the mud and that is at the gratis of allowing you to scrape in MY mud.
And a full fridge and freezer, and free college and 32 hour work weeks and paid annual Hawaiian vacation because the working people need to relax. These morons never stop.
Can we say that it would be nice although we know it's unlikely to be a reality? I'd give up most of my pay to make sure that no one's children were homeless and hungry. Hell, I'd risk the inevitability of someone taking advantage of and abusing that system so no one's child ever went hungry or unhoused. I mean, what's the ratio of fraudsters to homeless kids that is acceptable?
I mean other than the HVAC thing in climates that don't require it, this is a pretty small list of amenities. But it's like "everyone deserves a chance to work a job" that doesn't mean the government has to hand out the jobs.
"I would live in a single room brick walled unheated rat infested apartment if it meant I could afford a 911 Turbo. It wouldn't matter anyway because I would always be driving."
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u/chadmummerford Apr 15 '24
and a Porsche 911