So do I understand Progressivism Correctly?

I understand well the theory of the capitalism. But have you ever considered the problems of this theory?

In principle it looks nice, but is it possible?

I mean, if I have a family to feed but I don't have money. I am in conditions to accept something mutually beneficial? Or I will just have to give up and accept any conditions? Think about it a moment.

If someone has the means of production, he has not advantage over the rest? The negotiations should be equal. If I have advantage, in other words, I have more force. I can force on you my own conditions.

In my opinion in the only system where the voluntary and mutually trade condition can be accomplished is in the anarchocommunism.

 

Please. Allow me to elucidate.

The federal budget is a big pot. SS and Medicare come from the same pot as DoD and Congressional salaries. When it comes time to spend the money in the pot there is no difference between the dollar spent on a predator and a dollar spent on blod pressure medication.

Medicare and SS add to the federal deficit the same as DoD and DHS and are paid for with the same money as DHS and DoD.

Therefore, to claim that a person who pays SS and medicare taxes does not pay taxes is just a lie.

Clear enough?

 

I said YOU have good reason to be disappointed in public education.

 

Change a few things...

1) it's not a matter of "unlimited" healthcare. It's basic care access to all and limited access to more advanced care as the system allows.

2) any remotely honest progressive has to admit that everyone has to pay more in taxes in order to fund these initiatives. Europeans, in general, do pay more personal taxes than Americans do -- and this includes the rich, the middle class, and the working class.

So no, it would ultimately be funded by everyone paying more.

 

Fungibility of money.....then you must also believe the federal government funds Planned Parenthood abortions.

 

Oh...a personal insult.

carry on.

 

THERE'S another reason you have to be disappointed in the public education system.

There are remedial programs available.

 

Hilarious.....so all federal revenue...income taxes, payroll, FICA, etc...goes into a "big pot" to be drawn from as needed....
but the $360 million a year that goes into Planned Parenthood's "big pot" is somehow different.

keep typing....intellectually "superior" leftie "logic" gives me a chuckle

(you wouldn't recognize "fungibility of money" if it walked up and (*)(*)(*)(*) in your cereal bowl)

 

Yes, your inability to understand the laws of this country is funny. In a sad way.

Using federal monies for abortion has been illegal in this country for more than 30 years. To do so would be a federal crime. One would think that with all the efforts your friends have put into attacking and investigating PP that your people would have come up with one instance, a single instance, of this crime but, ....NOTHING!

You can put this with the rest of "conservative truths" like "Obama is a Muslim" and "Cutting taxes raises revenues." You know, things that only uneducated fools believe.

 

This pretty much sums up the liberal mindset:



They want more... when they should've been taught this... a long time ago:



The Result? Massive, non-stop whining. The Liberal's mantra.

 

Oh, there's plenty of whining on both sides, as demonstrated by this forum.

 

Since you haven't the foggiest notion what "fungibility of money" means.....you'll never be able to grasp that such cannot be manipulated, superceded or eliminated by the Hyde Amendment, or any other "law", "act", or "amendment"

I'm bored with you now....so have a good day.

 

no.

no.

no.

no.

I can't speak for the entire progressive caucus on this last one but heck ya'! Electric trains connected to nukes? You bet I'm in. Tell terrorist oil to F'off!

no.

I hope I cleared that up for you.

 

Running from what? The big bad strawman?

 

That's not capitalism. That's bartering.

 

They don't know what it means, no one does. Progression is any change, for the better or worse does not matter. They can sell this brand to the trendies and they will hop aboard. Yeah, see, it's PROGRESS! They're taking our individual liberties...PROGRESS. They're destroying our wealth...PROGRESS. They're enslaving us...PROGRESS.

It's PROGRESS

 

Interesting....

Correct, in that for years the money has gone into the "big pot", whether needed or not, but during the process it passes through a system, where the unspent money is transferred to Government Bonds, the National Debt and/or is adding to future obligation, which is nearing 120T$ or to make the point 120,000B$. Income taxes, user taxes, excise taxes, corporate taxes, along with about 100 other taxes go directly into your "pot", to pay for Government.

Correct, only because the money has already been spent for other things, referred to as "kicking the can". Even in the real world, the money had been invested, current obligations would soon equal payroll income.

I think you know, most people in some manner, collect more than they pay in "payroll taxes" and very, very few ever collect anything of what they paid in "income taxes", even if that amount is zero.

Clear enough?

 

Yeah, I'm not afraid to admit that this is way out my boundaries.. LOL

But let me see if I get the jist... and hopefully not sound as foolish as I think I probably will


I agree, and have a said on other boards, that the purely capitalistic society is a Utopian dream...I just never knew if there was one somewhere that failed due to what I think will always make that society fail, Greed. Greed cannot exist in Capitalism OR Socialism for that matter. Nor in Collectivism or Individualism...Since I assume those societies would be made up of humans and humans to a fault, have Greed, no pure society can ever exist for long.

I disagree that any society could exist without a hierarchy tho..If we are talking a society of producers, it would follow that the man producing the most and best widgets in that town would become the de facto leader of that town... Just by being successful, it would make others less successful than he, defer to him and his wishes since they might rely on his business for their own success... It would take a truly strong person to not fall into that and begin to take advantage... but say he didn't, the next guy might.. and so on. Then it's not a far leap that this most successful widget-man, would tilt the town to his benefits so as to keep the 'King-like" status his success has given him.He might not like Johnny-come-anew and his smaller, better made widget,so original widget-man drops a statement to the local mercantile that he does a lot of business in that store, it would be a shame to have to go to someone else.. so now Johnny can't sell his widget at that store because the proprietor is afraid he'll lose the business of the successful man...and once that tilt happen, pure capitalism is dead.The individual is no more... .. and thus is born the hierarchy the collectivist started out with.

The constant in every social, political, and economic experiment since the beginning of time is Human greed. It will corrupt the collective... it will corrupt the individual... it will corrupt the socialist as fast as it will corrupt the capitalist..

until we eradicate greed... there is a need for some form of structure... a gov't.. hierarchy, whatever..

but that eradication comes with it's own costs... it's a conundrum.. and hopefully I haven't embarrassed myself too much..

 

Mostly correct.....eliminate the one little word I bolded, and you'll have it...I think.

Generally, individual humans are inherently self serving animals who will ALWAYS SEEK and ALWAYS TAKE the path of least resistance to achieve ends...the primary variables are the degrees of an individual's morality (derived from "natural law") in social constructs based on individual "natural rights"...

and the degrees of control an authoritarian, government-centric society lords over its citizens.

This inherent "greed", variations in morality and "beginning" levels of control ensure no society will ever escape increasing levels of authoritarianism...which always lead to dictatorships, then ruin....

The quote below...which has been attributed to Alexander Tytler (perhaps incorrectly)....is one of my favorites, and it sums up the reasons for the rise and fall of (most, in my opinion) social constructs nicely;

 

Why don’t you follow your own advice?
Clearly you must be aiming for perfected example of hypocrisy with that statement! LOL!

Here’s the problem, I’m in the top 25% and I wouldn’t mind paying extra taxes if it were made a fair system to make sure people like Mitt Romney also paid the same percentage of his income as I do or President Barack Obama does.

Romney paid less than 14%, and maybe less than that if we could find out how much he is stashing away in his off shore bank accounts.

The President paid 20% of his income last year, that’s more than I did! Heck, that’s more than most people who make around 30K pay, (around 18% from what the lower workers at my company get,) so I say every wealthy person should be able to pay at least as much as the President did.

Now let’s look at the income inequality issue. Since the 1970s the average middle class income as gone up about 40%. People making minimum wage have seen a whopping increase of 18% in their wages.

People in the top 2% have seen a wage increase of over 240%!!! That means if they were making a million dollars in the ‘70s, they’re are making well over 2.4 million today!

But wait it get’s better, the top 1% wealthiest U.S. citizens are now worth MORE than the bottom 50% of the ENTIRE U.S. population!
A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

Now, given that basic information, if we could just get a flat tax out of everyone at 20%, where is most of the money to pay for the government safety nets going to come from? That’s right, The WEALTHY who have $27 MIL +! They can afford to pay that 20% and have enough to live on far better than the people who make $31K or less.

In fact, Taxing the super wealthy a little extra could pay for even more, like every meal in the country, but taxing the bottom 90% get’s pocket change by comparison! And it just adds to the already strained burden of people who are just barely scraping by on a day to day basis.

A progressive mind can look at this and see how totally out of balance the income and lifestyles of the economic classes are and say it can be fixed by simply expecting those with the most to be able to share with EVERYONE else. They got wealthy on the back of those people so it should be their obligation to GIVE something back to the system that made them rich in the first place.

If you can’t see that, you have defined the term “heartless economic bigot”.

 

The claim that people who pay SS and Medicare taxes do not pay taxes is simply a lie.

Clear enough?

Once you set aside that lie we can discuss with clarity how much is the "right" amount.

 

Half the "tax filers" in the US, do not pay income taxes directly*, where all the revenue goes to operating the Federal Government. What they do pay into "payroll taxes" intended to support programs that directly effect them, including dependents, in some manner, no less than any insurance program. In fact most employers, according to State regulation pay an additional amount for "Unemployment INSURANCE", which is part of any employee's pay package.

*If you want to argue, poor folks or those that fall into the lower "brackets" and pay no "Federal Income Tax", use the indirectly argument, which I'd agree with. People who rent, for instance pay the owners tax burden on that property, which includes many taxes, including local, State and Federal taxes.

It's not polite calling folks liars, when disagreeing with your vision of reality and I really don't care what you think of my opinions, but any further discussion will be based on your comments and I'm getting the feeling, anyone who does disagree with you, is a liar....

 

Thank you for the kind reply.. I was beginning to wonder if that was even a possibility on here when two people are on opposing scales of the political/economic spectrum.. It's funny to me that we both see the same ending for our respective preferred types of government.. and maybe that's they key to staving off the inevitable end your quote foretells...

Maybe that's the key.. You and I disagree politically and we are not alone with our views..But I don't think either conservatives or liberals have an overwhelming majority behind them to rule the system without checks.. and maybe that's the key to our survival..Take this instance in time, I would guess that you see a tilt too far over to left that will topple us if we don't correct it... You may be right, but I see it as a tilt too far to the right, that will topple us just as quickly..Maybe I am right. So we each, with our respective 'camps', do everything we can to fight the opposition, thus keeping the country on a pretty centric course, with slight left or right corrections here and there.

.

That's probably one of the most accurate and appropriate quotes I've read. It pretty much sums it up doesn't it.. I don't know if it's coming from an individualists point of view or not, but IMO it applies to every political,societal, and economic societies that ever were or will be.. and kinda makes you wonder "why bother".. HA! But, as I said above, maybe the butting of our ideological heads will ensure that this experiment called the United States, lasts a while longer..

Thanks for that chat! Just when I was wondering if constructive dialogue with someone of the opposite ideology was even possible...It's helped me decide to hang around a little longer

 

I'm quite capable of non-confrontational discourse....unfortuantely, opportunities to practice such are far and few between on anonymous message boards...especially between adherents of opposing ideology.

I try to anchor most of my political positions on the psychology surrounding human nature, and the philosophy surrounding natural law and natural rights...

and see "government" as engaged in interminable, yet fruitless efforts to socially engineer such out of the equation with outcome based, forced "equality" and social/economic "justice"....and I also see "collectivists" (both left and right) employ the "victim/oppressor" dichotomy to those ends....which, in my opinion, only expands the scope, authority and expense of central government....ultimately hastening our deliverence back into "bondage"

Anyway, I'm glad to have maybe inspired you to stick around.

 

When ideology informs someone's argument that's okay but unfortunately ideology is an emotional thing and not easily changed. Hence the discussions become bogged down in emotionalism. Facts are forgotten, opinions take on the appearance of statutes and we end a thread none the wiser, unfortunately. It would be refreshing to see ideas discussed without resort to the warm protection of ideology. Sloganeering isn't thinking.