|
|
Go to page [Previous] 1~2~3~4~5 [Next] | ||||||||||
Woland Special user 680 Posts |
Hi landmark,
To take your last point first, the forced collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union is not an isolated example. It is the sort of thing that has been carried by every socialist state that had the power to do it. You want us to believe that the Soviet Union, Red China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Castro's Cuba, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam, Kim Il Sung's North Korea, Enver Hoxha's Albania, and Ceaucescu's Romania, inter alia, were all outliers, and that when revolutionary socialists finally control the United States, we'll all be living in a worker's paradise of true communism. Experience suggests otherwise, doesn't it? Your second point is mistaken. A worker's compensation, in a free market is just like the compensation of everyone else, for everything that is part of the economic life of the country, which all depends on supply and demand, and has no economic "value" that can be distinguished from that. The free market provides very accurate and very rapidly communicated pricing information. Absent the market, and in every socialist economy that has ever been established on this earth, the price of things is established by a bureaucratic elite, who assign prices to everything in the economy. That pricing is often incorrect and does not respond efficiently to the actual needs of the people in the society. The absence of accurate price information alone would be sufficient to doom socialist economies, as Hayek pointed out in 1944. The idea that there is an intrinsic value which is conferred by labor on the commodity which is worked on, is a Marxian fantasy. As to your first point, the term "capitalism" is a rather late word, and the free market was already in existence for hundreds of years when this word was first used. The realities of a free market don't depend on what it is called, and the free market is not a system comparable to socialism or communism, because it does not depend on elite bureaucrats to run it. As for your notion that "{u}nder serfdom there was a clear demarcation between work that was done for the lord, and that which was done for oneself," that only shows the superiority of feudalism to communism, since under communism, there is no work that is permitted to be done for oneself, and everything belongs to the State. |
|||||||||
Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts |
This thread is all about pie in the sky. We have a new health care plan that will fully kick in this coming January. It is the law of the land, and we would be far better off dealing with reality than trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again.
Woland We tried a square stone wheel before, and it was unsuited for our highways.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
|||||||||
Woland Special user 680 Posts |
Hi Al,
Actually, I started this thread to encourage examination and discussion of the actual results of "pie in the sky" social programs, such as the "law of the land" that you reference. In order to "deal with reality," we have to know what that reality is. |
|||||||||
Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts |
January 1, 2014 the affordable health care law becomes fully functional, and very few Americans have any idea what I am talking about.
Take the blinders off America your health insurance coverage is about to get better for EVERYONE.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
|||||||||
landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Quote:
To take your last point first, the forced collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union is not an isolated example. It is the sort of thing that has been carried by every socialist state that had the power to do it. You want us to believe that the Soviet Union, Red China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Castro's Cuba, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam, Kim Il Sung's North Korea, Enver Hoxha's Albania, and Ceaucescu's Romania, inter alia, were all outliers, and that when revolutionary socialists finally control the United States, we'll all be living in a worker's paradise of true communism. Experience suggests otherwise, doesn't it? I've long stated that, despite its successes in several areas, I don't think the Soviet Union is a model to follow. State Capitalism is no better than Corporate Capitalism. Leninist and Maoist forms of organization are not democratic socialism. That you still don't understand that says more about you than me. Quote:
Your second point is mistaken. A worker's compensation, in a free market is just like the compensation of everyone else, for everything that is part of the economic life of the country, which all depends on supply and demand, and has no economic "value" that can be distinguished from that. The free market provides very accurate and very rapidly communicated pricing information. Absent the market, and in every socialist economy that has ever been established on this earth, the price of things is established by a bureaucratic elite, who assign prices to everything in the economy. That pricing is often incorrect and does not respond efficiently to the actual needs of the people in the society. The absence of accurate price information alone would be sufficient to doom socialist economies, as Hayek pointed out in 1944. The idea that there is an intrinsic value which is conferred by labor on the commodity which is worked on, is a Marxian fantasy. What's a fantasy is that there is such thing as a free market in the real world. Knowledge is unequally distributed, capital and land is unequally distributed from the beginning, the inevitable accumulation of capital and formation of cartels and monopolies means that prices are not following supply and demand of a theoretical free market. So workers and the disabled are free in the free market system to starve. Quote:
As to your first point, the term "capitalism" is a rather late word, and the free market was already in existence for hundreds of years when this word was first used. The realities of a free market don't depend on what it is called, and the free market is not a system comparable to socialism or communism, because it does not depend on elite bureaucrats to run it. Again, a misunderstanding of what constitutes capitalism. Yes, people bought and sold things for money long before the capitalist era. What made capitalism new was not trading in a "free market," but the buying of things not in order to live, but in order to sell them on a large scale in order to accumulate more money. Quote:
As for your notion that "{u}nder serfdom there was a clear demarcation between work that was done for the lord, and that which was done for oneself," that only shows the superiority of feudalism to communism, since under communism, there is no work that is permitted to be done for oneself, and everything belongs to the State. See my comment above re your constricted definition of socialism and communism. In serfdom, the demarcation of what was the lord's and what was the vassal's was marked clearly. The genius of capitalism's exploitation is that the worker's exploitation is mystified--s/he still has his or her labor stolen, but it appears as if s/he is being paid for what the work is worth.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
|||||||||
Woland Special user 680 Posts |
"Democratic socialism" is a pipe dream; socialism can't exist without coercion.
Why does the reality of whether freedom exists or not depend on the equal distribution of talent, intelligence, or strength? As for the "freedom of workers to starve," Karl Marx's notion that the free market system would lead to the increasing impoverishment of the workers is demonstrably and obviously false. The living standard of American workers is incomparably better today than it was 50 years ago, 100 years ago, or 200 years ago. And for the first time in at least 4,000 years, the majority of people in China are not in starving, grinding poverty only because of the free market reforms of Deng Hsiao-ping, as limited as they are. |
|||||||||
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Quote:
On 2013-05-05 12:04, Al Angello wrote: If you think it's going to get "better for everyone," you're the one with blinders on.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
|||||||||
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arch....../275364/
"The only person who should get to make decisions about your health is you*" *(Unless you don't want health insurance, or you have a medical marijuana card, or...)
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
|||||||||
landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Quote:
As for the "freedom of workers to starve," Karl Marx's notion that the free market system would lead to the increasing impoverishment of the workers is demonstrably and obviously false. Fifty years ago a union blue collar worker in the US could own a home and car on a single salary and could afford medical care. In NYC, the cost of college for many was $0. You well remember it. The current economic situation is not an improvement.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
|||||||||
Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts |
Lobo
We will drag you into the future kicking and screaming all the way if you insist, but drag you into the future we will do. People like you said that the automobile was just a fad because there were no proper service stations, nor paved roads. We are all going to spend the rest of our lives living in the future, and we have a bright future in store for us my half empty friend.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
|||||||||
Woland Special user 680 Posts |
Hi landmark,
That home and that car are not comparable to the home and the car that UAW members can live in and drive today. And you know that, too. You could probably afford a 1955-sized home, without central air, and a 1955-equipped car, on a single salary today. |
|||||||||
landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Yes, perhaps for union members (although even that I doubt--the pay per hour even for union members has been drastically reduced) but union membership has been driven down to its lowest percentage in 100 years. Non-public union members, who the right loves to demonize, now make up a whopping 7% of the workforce. But it's good to hear you putting forth the successes of unions as the exemplar of the robustness of capitalism.
Quote:
You could probably afford a 1955-sized home, without central air, and a 1955-equipped car, on a single salary today. Yes, perhaps if your single salary were $100000 annually. Unfortunately the median wage for 2010 in the US was under $27000.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
|||||||||
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Quote:
On 2013-05-05 19:27, Al Angello wrote: I pay for my own private insurance. My premiums have gone up about 20% since the ACA was passed (which they certainly might have done anyway). Here's a simple and direct question for you: In what way do you think my health care coverage is "about to get better"?
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
|||||||||
Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts |
Lobo
How could you think so small when 40,000,000 uninsured Americans will be able to afford coverage. When senior citizens will pay less for drugs, and after the 2014 laws kick in health insurance for most people will go down. I know that you are a member of the me generation how about the rest of us?
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
|||||||||
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Quote:
On 2013-05-05 23:45, Al Angello wrote: All you had to say was you didn't really mean it when you claimed that healthcare was going to be "better for everyone."
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
|||||||||
critter Inner circle Spokane, WA 2653 Posts |
Quote:
On 2013-05-05 13:27, Woland wrote: Both of them
"The fool is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
~Will Rogers |
|||||||||
Al Angello Eternal Order Collegeville, Pa. USA 11045 Posts |
Lobo
I can tell you for sure that the poor and elderly will have it much better in the future, and we will have to wait to see what happens to everybody else, but having a plan is a lot better than every man for himself.
Al Angello The Comic Juggler/Magician
http://www.juggleral.com http://home.comcast.net/~juggleral/ "Footprints on your ceiling are almost gone" |
|||||||||
tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
The Government gets what it pays for. If it turns out to be good or evil then that is what they wanted. Good luck!
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
|||||||||
R.S. Regular user CT one day I'll have 184 Posts |
Re the ACA, check out the Patient's Bill of Rights and the consumer protections that are part of the bill:
http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheet......hts.html Also, see how Obamacare PROTECTS the free market: http://www.policymic.com/articles/10565/......ocialism _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Prior to the Affordable Care Act the costs of uninsured free riders skipping their medical bills were socialized. Rather than going bankrupt, hospitals increase the prices for the insured. Hospitals split the losses with the government. The government then taxes you higher to socialize the losses. For example, uninsured diabetes patients were showing up in costly hospital emergency rooms for insulin when health crises arose rather than going to cheaper primary care doctors. Many couldn't pay those bills. Before the Affordable Care Act, the system was socialistic, and losses were distributed throughout America. Repeal of the Affordable Care Act is a call for a return to that socialist system. The costs of free riders nails your wallet in more than one way. Your insurance premiums are higher because the costs are embedded in the services you use that your insurance company covers. Your taxes are higher because the government pays for a portion of these unpaid bills and you and all tax payers are the only source of government money. The ACA removes this socialization of costs and will save you money. How much? Annually, you, or your employer pays about $1000 more in insurance premiums to pay for losses that free riders brought to the system. You pay about $1000 more in taxes today. So, in total around $2000 a year comes out of your wallet because of the socialist system of the past that the Affordable Care Act replaces. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And don't forget, Mitt Romney implemented this system in Mass. where currently 98% are insured. Last I looked the sky isn't falling there. Ron
"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry." Thomas Paine
|
|||||||||
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
1) the long-term cost estimate of the ACA was increased by about 80% almost as soon as it passed. There's no good reason to think it will be the last such increase. As the wise man sad back in the day, "if you think healthcare isnexpensive now, wait 'til you sees how much it costs when it's free."
2) speaking of swimming pools and guns ERRRRR apples and oranges. The system works in Massachusetts partly because it's federally subsidized. I agree that if an outside agency kicks in enough money, it may work just fine. The federal government does that for the state of Massachusetts; who's going to do it for the USA as a whole?
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
|||||||||
The Magic Cafe Forum Index » » Not very magical, still... » » What are you getting for your money? (0 Likes) | ||||||||||
Go to page [Previous] 1~2~3~4~5 [Next] |
[ Top of Page ] |
All content & postings Copyright © 2001-2024 Steve Brooks. All Rights Reserved. This page was created in 0.06 seconds requiring 5 database queries. |
The views and comments expressed on The Magic Café are not necessarily those of The Magic Café, Steve Brooks, or Steve Brooks Magic. > Privacy Statement < |