What is the bottom line?

Yup. That's Yamhill. We looked there but couldn't find what suited us. I wish we could have.

 

California is filled with incredible beauty, and incredible idiots.

If you want to live there, you have to balance the beauty with the idiots, and if you do decide to live there, you have to accept the idiots.

 

Trickle down always works.

Of course the goal is the redistribution of wealth UPWARD and in that regard it has "worked" really well

 

You only see that because you don't believe in private property rights. There is no redistribution of wealth via taxation if you believe in private property rights.

but you are incapable of seeing that, so.... my only question is, why would anybody bother debating with somebody who doesn't believe in private property? You don't even agree that you own your own underoos.

So what use is it to debate somebody like you if we can't even agree that you own your own damn underwear?

 

The only trickle down that does not work is where wealth goes from the people up to the government via taxation and then the government sees fit on how to redistribute the money back down to the peasants.

That's the true definition of trickle down.

 

I only see it because it's reality

 

The only trickle down that does not work is where wealth goes from the people up to the government via taxation and then the government sees fit on how to redistribute the money back down to the peasants.

That's the true definition of trickle down.

 

Lovely that you consider people not as well off as yourself to be "peasants".

That government that you so decry is what keeps those peasants from coming after you with torches and pitchforks

 

Who else is going to pay for social programs? What happens to people who are too young, too old, or too sick to care for themselves?

Everyone can't make the same--there has to be an incentive for people to work hard and make more, and for smart people to produce.

Underlining the laws of supply and demand is a belief in private property. Capitalism, not socialism (collective production), is the natural order. We can an should redistribute income and wealth to those too young, too old, or too ill to care for themselves. We should also remember that some people don't have the smarts they need to do well in a modern society.

There are conservatives who don't want to starve people out.

 

Right. For example, we let crooks steal trillions of dollars from people leading up to the 2008 economic meltdown.

What do you mean by "socialized functions?"

Socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) has a track record of not working.

 

That's absurd.

 

We are all peasants that are controlled by the government. Wake up!

 

So what?

 

I am in complete agreement with most of your list. . . . AM I A SOCIALIST???

But I am also not a big fan of the stock exchange, which gives big business an unfair advantage, contributes to uneven distribution of wealth, and adds artificial volatility to the economy. . . . Why should businesses that are too big to fail be a burden to the public???

 

I agree with everything you said.

 

Lack of EFFECTIVE regulation.

“Socialized” as defined means “to make fit for life in the companionship of others”. Hence, to eliminate all socialized elements from society we would necessarily need to eliminate government completely.

 

My wife could learn a thing or two from you.

 

The bottom line? I think that you have answered that question yourself because its very simple i.e. exploitation, or to put it another way, profit. Nothing is sold for the actual cost of producing the item. The amount of profit added is in addition to the basic cost. But before the product reaches the consumer other amounts of profit have been added to the basic price, the distributor and the shopkeeper for example.
So we have a situation that the worker, or groups of workers will have to pay twice or more for the product that they themselves have produced.

While you can say that the person through hard work etc has set up the business and deserves the rewards, fine but that has nothing to do with how capitalism works. Also the original person who set up the business has often passed away leaving it to their siblings who have done nothing except by having the luck to be born in the right bed.

Profit and the amount of profit we can squeeze appeals very much to the greed that is prevalent in most of us to a greater or lesser degree. We give it different names but strip away the gloss and its still individual greed. Most better forms of government have fallen against the barrier of individual greed. I don’t see that anything man can come up with will do much to remedy the gulf between the haves and the have not’s. It will come but by technology that will make all of most human labour redundant, that’s if we can still breath the air on planet earth.

 

From 1620 to FDR, the U.S. had very little federal government involvement in the economy and trickle down allowed us to go from nothing to the most powerful nation on the planet.

Now we're just another country, a face in the crowd.

 

Gosh, I hope so! You are if you want to see an expansion of WSDEs. I should add that to my list.

Gosh, you MUST be a socialist! Under an economy with all businesses being WSDEs (which could only happen gradually over many decades), all business stock would only consist of what workers hold, which would follow the principle of "one worker, one share, one vote". Stocks would no longer be traded publicly for gains. Shares would only serve the purpose of granting one vote to a worker. No one else would be able to own shares and workers could not own more than one share per worker.

But now let me add two more items to my list:
1. Treat guns as being as dangerous as explosives, i.e. ban advertising, promotion or them on websites or other publications, and license/register gun owners, which would effectively shut down the NRA.
2. Pass laws (a fairness doctrine?) that would effectively ban the fake news of intentional lies and promotion of false divisions, and require every story with political relevance to present the facts of both left and right, but facts in any case. That would effectively shut down Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax, etc.
Rachel Maddow and such left-leaning shows would have to present supportable facts of the right of course.

 

-and to have "Robber Barons" who ran sweatshops employing children resulting in their injury and even deaths, accumulated great wealth while paying workers low poverty wages and cheating them out of wages when possible, produced outrage among workers and families which business owners ruthlessly suppressed by hiring Pinkerton armed guards who gunned down unarmed workers who dared strike.... yup, it was a great economy. Only a hopelessly biased, uninformed, right wing extremist could hold up those years as model years.

 

It appears that way now doesn't it with all the judge shopping going around by Eric holder, and how Obama tried to go around Congress

 

Does this include the reporting of lies or misrepresentations by politicians and their advocates???

This could lead to heavy censorship of virtually all speeches by political figures, especially our President, and the gray areas of interpretation of such a law would instigate violent protests by First Amendment supporters. . . . I like Fact-Check.

Would censorship of lies also compromise the availability of the truth???

 

Yet you believe corporations will trickle down to the floor employee.

 

Hmmmmmm. Good question. Do you think it should? Maybe it would be best to assure equal time for an equally qualified opposite viewpoint to expose lies and misrepresentations. Fox wouldn't like that but that's the point.

My words of "banning the fake news of intentional lies" may have been a bit strong and "over-the-top". But some appropriate and effective means needs to be found to deal with it. Maybe a law saying that political commentary must be labeled as such and not as "news", and that real news must follow a new set of guidelines sort of like the fairness doctrine is the way. What do you think?