CDZ What is socialism?

[DonaldFG]

Red:
My glasses are clear and unsmudged. I understand capitalism and what economics says about how it works. It works as advertised, both the good of it and the bad of it.

Do you truly understand the bad part? You seem to dismiss it.

Blue:
Their observations are fully in line with what economics predicts. One's not understanding economics just means that one doesn't realize that one's observations are within exactly what's expected. They don't have to like or prefer capitalism, but to say that what they observe in the U.S. economy doesn't reflect capitalism is just wrong.

In referring to what folks see in their daily lives, I was absolutely illustrating capitalism and its problems. You may think these monetary problems are good, but most people do not.

Green:
Well, what are some of them? Can you provide any specific as well as industry level examples?

I'm sorry, but I don't have the time or energy for such a comprehensive list. Actually though, I am far more interested in why people don't get equal respect in our capitalistic economy. Why is it necessary that people must become poor and get thrown out of their homes in many cases? This is not an economy that serves humanity; it serves only privileged people. It all depends on what family you were born into. You may call this an economy, but it does not really serve us sufficiently.

Long rants about each individual's price elasticity of demand not withstanding, capitalism does not serve the general population sufficiently well.

Make no mistake, however. Producers are not selling the intangible thing we call quality.

Sad. Very sad.

Quality should be our prime goal, and it should not depend on cost. I think this should be true of our service to each other as well as the products we make. Today's workers are disheartened and don't take pride in their work as they did decades ago. With so many factories closed and jobs lost, it is no wonder.

 

[320 Years of History]

Do you truly understand the bad part? You seem to dismiss it.

I don't dismiss the ills of capitalism. I simply accept them as being inherent to capitalism and deal with it/them accordingly. One can oppose or not prefer capitalism to the alternatives. That's fine. But to say that both the good and bad of capitalism aren't both property aspect of it is just wrong.

In referring to what folks see in their daily lives, I was absolutely illustrating capitalism and its problems. You may think these monetary problems are good, but most people do not.

I do not think they are good. I think they are things that capitalism creates. One has only a few choices:

• Recognize each economic model for what it is, pros and cons and work within that model.
• Aim to modify the model to some greater or lesser extent, which essentially means have government intervene and constrain the freedom the "hands" of supply and demand that drive decisions in a capitalist system.
• Discard the capitalist system entirely and advocate for a command economy managed by impartial controllers who disregard self interest when making decisions about how to deal with scarcity and choice.

Now, it doesn't matter too much to me which approach our nation takes because I'm confident that I'll be successful to a sufficient degree under any of the three. There are pros and cons to all of them. It comes down to what is it one wants to gripe about, not that there is nothing about which to gripe.

It all depends on what family you were born into.

It absolutely does not. One need only look at the literally millions of poor folks who have become middle class or better in the U.S. to see that it does not. The fact is that most people don't come from advantaged families and yet most folks in the U.S. are middle class or higher.

One see from the charts above that most folks are middle or upper income.

That's not the only thing. The quantity of folks who are upper income also grew. That's very different from the share of folks who were upper income acquiring a greater proportion of the wealth. What the difference means is that those newly upper income folks had to come from somewhere, and the only places they could have come from is middle and lower income groups. Since the middle income group shrank and the lower income group grew, it stands to reason that most of those newly upper income folks came from the middle class.

One's ability to move from the middle class to the upper income segment of the population is best enabled under capitalism, even constrained forms of it, more so than under any other system. Quite simply, it's no harder to climb the economic ladder in the United States today than it was 20 years ago. (Click on the link and also see this: "Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States")

The papers I cited don't agree with populist "hype," but it is original research into exactly the matter at hand. It's hardly the first time the facts that are differ from what folks are being told, even if there are instances of folks for whom the findings are contrary to their personal experiences. The reality is that folks like to and are more than slightly willing to assume their personal reality is that shared by most other folks, but that need not at all be so. We each have a duty of fairness to find out if our own reality is that of the majority or if it is not before committing to a course of action and thought.

I'm well aware of what the populists are saying. I'm well aware that there are a lot of folks saying it, after all, even a small percentage of the U.S. population is still a lot of people. I'm also fine with doing things to improve those folks' situation, or more accurately, helping them help themselves. What I'm not fine with, that is to say, what I'd prefer we don't do, is alter the general landscape of our capitalist system by injecting/enacting protectionist policies that weaken capitalism's positive attributes while also not head on dealing with the things that are the causes for folks not being successful in a capitalist economy.

How does one become successful in a capitalist economy? By being a capitalist. I'm certain that many folks don't know what that really means or how to be one. And why should they if they grew up in the U.S? The U.S. used to be the nation of "go to school, get a job and work for someone, collect a paycheck and enjoy life." That model does not and will not show folks how to be capitalists. The model that does, and the one seen by folks all over the world is "go to school, go into business for oneself." That is why so many immigrants come to the U.S. and make it. They "get it." They come here because for folks who want to be capitalists -- buyers of land, labor and capital -- the U.S. is the easiest place on the planet to do so.

Why did the "old" model work for so many folks in the 20th century? Quite simply because existing capitalists had huge demands for labor. The whole rest of the "first world" was about to be in a war and in need of fighters not laborers, or they were in a war and in need of fighters not laborers, or they were recovering from a war and needed the materials/goods to rebuild their countries. The U.S. was by far the best place from which to get the goods they needed, be it prosecute a war or to rebuild. During all those years, the U.S. made and exported the stuff that everyone else needed, and because a major war was "just around the corner," the price didn't matter.

These days, who needs the stuff the U.S. can make at the prices we must pay domestically to make it? The answer to that question is U.S. citizens because the whole rest of the world is happy to buy it from makers who can make it less expensively, like those watches I describe, and do so at sufficient quality to meet their needs.

What does the U.S. today have that it overall produces more efficiently (less expensively) than the rest of the world? Intellectual capital, not the physical capital that was it's "edge" in the 20th century. Now the laborers in the U.S. may not like hearing that, but that doesn't make it not so. So what that means is if one insists on working in the U.S. and earning a good living, and one has only physical capital (physical labor) to offer to capitalists, one has little choice, because the system is capitalism, but to tighten one's belt and obtain some intellectual capital, that or find a way to be a capitalist.

I began this section of my post by saying that the family from which one comes doesn't matter. I have to retract that somewhat. I am part owner of my firm. My father is a business owner. My mother was self-employed. Everyone in my immediate family was self-employed all the way back to my first American ancestor who was a fur trader and merchant. So, perhaps being in a family of people who understand what it means to be a capitalist and that will show one how to be one too matters. After all, one can't teach to one's kids what one doesn't know oneself.

Today's workers are disheartened and don't take pride in their work as they did decades ago. With so many factories closed and jobs lost, it is no wonder.

• Assuming one has a job in a factory, what does taking pride in the labor one produces have to do with this topic?
• Why do you say that folks who have those jobs don't take pride in the quality of work they perform?
• What, no matter how high quality be the worker's personal performance, does that worker's work quality have to do with the quality of goods the company has chosen to offer?

 

[sakinago]

Red:
My glasses are clear and unsmudged. I understand capitalism and what economics says about how it works. It works as advertised, both the good of it and the bad of it.

Do you truly understand the bad part? You seem to dismiss it.

Blue:
Their observations are fully in line with what economics predicts. One's not understanding economics just means that one doesn't realize that one's observations are within exactly what's expected. They don't have to like or prefer capitalism, but to say that what they observe in the U.S. economy doesn't reflect capitalism is just wrong.

In referring to what folks see in their daily lives, I was absolutely illustrating capitalism and its problems. You may think these monetary problems are good, but most people do not.

Green:
Well, what are some of them? Can you provide any specific as well as industry level examples?

I'm sorry, but I don't have the time or energy for such a comprehensive list. Actually though, I am far more interested in why people don't get equal respect in our capitalistic economy. Why is it necessary that people must become poor and get thrown out of their homes in many cases? This is not an economy that serves humanity; it serves only privileged people. It all depends on what family you were born into. You may call this an economy, but it does not really serve us sufficiently.

Long rants about each individual's price elasticity of demand not withstanding, capitalism does not serve the general population sufficiently well.

Make no mistake, however. Producers are not selling the intangible thing we call quality.

Sad. Very sad.

Quality should be our prime goal, and it should not depend on cost. I think this should be true of our service to each other as well as the products we make. Today's workers are disheartened and don't take pride in their work as they did decades ago. With so many factories closed and jobs lost, it is no wonder.

And what are the areas that government provides quality, and even better yet at a good cost?

Before capitalism, what was the percentage of humanity that was in utter poverty compared to after capitalism?

In the socialist countries you wish to emulate, what is the average home size compared to the average home size in the US? What is the number of Nobel prizes gained in those countries compared to the US? What are the necassary amounts of exports to avoid collapse in those countries compared to the US? What are the cancer survival rates in those countries compared to the US?

How did Hollands tax plan, a tax plan very similar to Bernie sanders, play out in France? How did Russias, a one trick pony economy largely based on oil, flat tax play out? And what happens to their tax receipts after the institution of the flat tax. How did the eishauer or carter tax rates and economy compare to the JFK or Reagan tax rates and economy? Why did the Great Depression last so much longer than a recession 10 years earlier that should've been by ever metric worse? What was swedens rank in the global economy before socialism compared to its rank now?

 

[320 Years of History]

In the socialist countries you wish to emulate, what is the average home size compared to the average home size in the US? What is the number of Nobel prizes gained in those countries compared to the US? What are the necassary amounts of exports to avoid collapse in those countries compared to the US? What are the cancer survival rates in those countries compared to the US?

??? Are you trying to have a mature discussion about the matter? Just how much oversimplification is too much for you? The simple empirical answers to every one of your questions cannot be legitimately used as evidence that capitalism is better or worse than any other economic system.

• What is the average home size compared to the average home size in the US?
  The average home size is going to in meaningful part be driven by the physical quantity of land that's available on which to build houses within a nation's borders.
• What is the number of Nobel prizes gained in those countries compared to the US?
  Population size alone is going to play significantly into the quantity of Nobel laureates a country may have.
• What are the necassary amounts of exports to avoid collapse in those countries compared to the US?
  And what are you going to say about countries that like the U.S. have a net trade deficit and nonetheless enjoy a high standard of living, one that is comparable to that in the U.S. What matters isn't whether one is a net exporter or importer, but whether one, within the scope of the economic system under discussion, efficiently uses the resources (land, labor and capital) one has.
• What are the cancer survival rates in those countries compared to the US?
  The answer depends on they type of cancer; therefore the answer again isn't indicative of much, if anything, about capitalism.

 

[sakinago]

In the socialist countries you wish to emulate, what is the average home size compared to the average home size in the US? What is the number of Nobel prizes gained in those countries compared to the US? What are the necassary amounts of exports to avoid collapse in those countries compared to the US? What are the cancer survival rates in those countries compared to the US?

??? Are you trying to have a mature discussion about the matter? Just how much oversimplification is too much for you? The simple empirical answers to every one of your questions cannot be legitimately used as evidence that capitalism is better or worse than any other economic system.

• What is the average home size compared to the average home size in the US?
  The average home size is going to in meaningful part be driven by the physical quantity of land that's available on which to build houses within a nation's borders.
• What is the number of Nobel prizes gained in those countries compared to the US?
  Population size alone is going to play significantly into the quantity of Nobel laureates a country may have.
• What are the necassary amounts of exports to avoid collapse in those countries compared to the US?
  And what are you going to say about countries that like the U.S. have a net trade deficit and nonetheless enjoy a high standard of living, one that is comparable to that in the U.S. What matters isn't whether one is a net exporter or importer, but whether one, within the scope of the economic system under discussion, efficiently uses the resources (land, labor and capital) one has.
• What are the cancer survival rates in those countries compared to the US?
  The answer depends on they type of cancer; therefore the answer again isn't indicative of much, if anything, about capitalism.

Im sorry, what empirical evidence is coming from socialist/leftist countries that suggest capitalism is not the answer?
-America has barely scratched the surface on its available land. Despite the day and age of increased technology in communication and transportation, for some reason we still like to pile up on top of each other in our cities and suburbs. And are you pretending like these other countries do not build bigger houses because there simply isn't any available land? Or is it that it isn't affordable to own land and larger houses in these countries, therefore no market for it. Not only is there no market, but some European govts are creating laws to be rid of any new construction of single family homes for climate reasons. China certainly does not have a land problem. And every person on the planet could own a single family home with a yard in an area the size of Texas...but I guess mostly it's a land problem, not a disposable income problem.
-The United States has gained more Nobel prizes than most other countries combined. There are more of them than there is us. So...I count that as pretty relevant empirical evidence. Not to mention that the entire human history had not seen such a incredible jump in technology since the conception of the patent, which is an capitalistic idea from Ben Franklin. And it protected the individual from the lords and ladies who would often take credit for anything a mere serf was able to come up with. So the mere thought of being able to own something as simple as your own ideas was enough to revolutionize the entire planet, and take us from shitting into buckets and tossing it out the window to probably one of the biggest technological advances within 100 years which is plumbing. From amputations for what we consider minor infections to anesthesia within 100 years. From fire to electricity within 100 years. Mostly thankful to the individualistic idea of the patent. The best inventions of the previous 1000 years were few and far between, the printing press, gunpowder, and the triangle sail.
-my point about the exports in Europe was that Europe, who on average spends much less on military thanks to us and has more governmental money to throw around (which I disagree with), is in for a world of hurt. Economically they are far worse than us than we are, and we are not in the best economic spot.
-what cancers are different between the countries and why? And what are the statistics of those who die from sepsis related complications from these other countries compared to ours? And since the institution of ACA, what has become of medical related errors? Since the increased involvement of government in the medical field, where are the improvements in quality and costs?