Why do you feel socialism is bad?

  • Thread starter Thread starter PlipPlop
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Cadellin said:
There are times when moral obligations become civil ones. As the present Holy Father points out in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate: “The Church’s social teaching has always maintained that justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs. Locating resources, financing, production consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence.”
Click to expand...
Yes, that is true.
 
sedonaman said:
:
Government has no money of its own; what it has, it gets in the form of taxes from the private sector.
Click to expand...
This is not true. It can get money from its post office operations or from its park fees for example.
 
DOShea said:
Capitalism is based on the idea that the worker who is more productive will earn more. .
Click to expand...
Why then under capitalism do executives whose failed policies lead a company to bankruptcy get million dollar bonuses?
 
Dr. Friedman had the rare talent of translating abstract economics into practical, real world ideas. His book, Capitalism and Freedom, is a classic examination of capitalism as both an economic system and as a necessary foundation for political freedom. Free To Choose (co-authored with his wife Rose Friedman) is an examination of economics and politics. It shows how our freedom has been eroded. **An explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and government spending has undermined our prosperity. ****The book makes an insightful and convincing argument for repealing most government interference in the economy. **

Milton Friedman was a strong advocate of limited government and human freedom. It is the theme of his books, Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose. In his memoirs, Two Lucky People, Friedman said, “(Our books) underlie our opposition to rent control and general wage and price controls, our support for educational choice, limitation of government spending, privatizing social security, free trade, and the deregulation of industry and private life to the fullest extent possible.”

Dr. Milton Friedman was not the typical “sit-in-the-office economist. Milton Friedman’s influence on the world has been phenomenal. He helped to initiate the change to free markets, free trade and limited government. Additionally, he strived to educate the average person from all walks of life. He was an incredible model of forward-thinking intellectualism. He was truly the greatest economist of the twentieth century. He is my hero.
 
Remember what Thomas Jefferson said. Government should be an umpire, not a participant.
Click to expand...
There’d be no need for an umpire if there were no rules against which one could be penalised. The umpire does intervene in the game, sometimes frequently.
participating in the economy in the form of minimum wage laws and social security is not a legitimate role of government.
Click to expand...
“Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics, and what is more, it needs works redolent of the spirit of gift. The economy in the global era seems to privilege the former logic, that of contractual exchange, but directly or indirectly it also demonstrates its need for the other two: political logic, and the the logic of the unconditional gift.” - Caritas in Vieritate, Pope Benedict XVI.

What the Pope is advocating is a market economy that is directed to the common good and not simply the total good.
 
sidbrown said:
Why then under capitalism do executives whose failed policies lead a company to bankruptcy get million dollar bonuses?
Click to expand...
Because it is not capitalism in operation. It is capitalism in name only. In fact, it is big capital, mixed with croneyism and rent-seeking behaviour.
 
I think that the government’s interest payments are greater than our defense budget. Interest payments are also growing exponentially. Government is a big, fat boy. When he enters the credit markets, he “crowds out” the small guy. “The crowing-out model indicates that deficits will increase the demand for loanable funds and thereby place upward pressure on the real rate of interest (Gwartney, Stroup and Sobel).”

** The Treasury market’s days for bonds are numbered!** As I see it, Government bond prices are going much lower. Long-term interest rates are going much higher. Additionally, U.S. bonds may no longer get an A rating. Who in their right mind is going to buy U.S. Treasurey bonds?
 
I don’t know much about socialism but from what I do know about it, I don’t really have a problem with it.
 
Cadellin said:
There’d be no need for an umpire if there were no rules against which one could be penalised.
Click to expand...
This is a BIG “if”. In such a case, there would be no game, only chaos.
The umpire does intervene in the game, sometimes frequently.
Click to expand...
But only when someone breaks the rules. 😃
 
sidbrown said:
Why then under capitalism do executives whose failed policies lead a company to bankruptcy get million dollar bonuses?
Click to expand...
Where is your evidence of this? If a company is bankrupt, by definition, it would not have the money to pay these megabonuses.
 
sidbrown said:
Why then under capitalism do executives whose failed policies lead a company to bankruptcy get million dollar bonuses?
Click to expand...
You’re a potential CEO. One company offers you XXX wage. Another offers you XXX wage and some bonuses. Which do you take? If you were a company and you really wanted that CEO, why shouldn’t you offer those bonuses?

And again, can you name a CEO and which specific policies of his lead to disaster, and give proof that it was apparent at the time?
 
sidbrown said:
This is not true. It can get money from its post office operations or from its park fees for example.
Click to expand...
So there’s the post office, which is out of money, and the national parks which are always asking for more funding?

The prices charged by the post office and the park system to not cover the expenses of those organizations.
 
sidbrown said:
This is not true. It can get money from its post office operations or from its park fees for example.
Click to expand...
Perhaps not the best examples to use in support of your arguments, why not throw Mediad in there, too?
sidbrown said:
Why then under capitalism do executives whose failed policies lead a company to bankruptcy get million dollar bonuses?
Click to expand...
Well, in large, part because President Clinton removed many of the regulations that would have prevented it.

Later, President Obama bailed out companies that should have been allowed to fail as a natural consequence of their abuses. It would seem that OUR money could have been used more directly to stimulate the economy and help those who were adversely effected by the crisis, rather than just giving more money to the abusers.

OK I’m no financial genius here, so feel free to comment. I’m happy to be corrected when I’m in error and always willing to learn. :yup:

Some regulation is necessary, but socialism is contrary to everything our country was built on.
 
sidbrown said:
This is not true. It can get money from its post office operations or from its park fees for example.
Click to expand...
The United States Postal Service seems to be following Dr. Max Gammon’s Theory of Bureaucratic Displacement: An increase in expenditure of money will be followed by a fall in production. Such a system acts like a black hole in the economic universe. Costs go up and benefits decline. James Miller, director of the Office of Management and Budget said, **“The Postal Service is a monstrosity. It is overstaffed, overpriced and inefficient. Postal patrons are paying more and more and getting less and less in return (Castro, 1988).” **Postmaster General Potter (2002) wants to restructure the Postal Service into “a commercial government enterprise that would operate under more businesslike conditions than currently possible." I think that Postmaster General Potter is rearranging the deck chairs on the USPS Titanic. Why do we need the United States Postal Service?
 
CPA2 said:
The United States Postal Service seems to be following Dr. Max Gammon’s Theory of Bureaucratic Displacement: An increase in expenditure of money will be followed by a fall in production. Such a system acts like a black hole in the economic universe. Costs go up and benefits decline. James Miller, director of the Office of Management and Budget said, **“The Postal Service is a monstrosity. It is overstaffed, overpriced and inefficient. Postal patrons are paying more and more and getting less and less in return (Castro, 1988).” **Postmaster General Potter (2002) wants to restructure the Postal Service into “a commercial government enterprise that would operate under more businesslike conditions than currently possible." I think that Postmaster General Potter is rearranging the deck chairs on the USPS Titanic. Why do we need the United States Postal Service?
Click to expand...
I think I posted this before from an associate:
We have a new contract union mail person who is miss delivering mail everyday since he came on the job 3 January 2010. They can’t fire him despite his errors that expose all of us to identity theft - he left the cluster mailbox open Friday two weeks ago (all our mail is delivered to cluster mailboxes up to two blocks away - to save the USPS money). He exposed 24 postal patrons to mail theft, ID theft, and loss of anything valuable like Rx’s and parcels - not serious enough to fire him - he is protected by a union member in DC who owns our mail route. What a mess, all for the USPS to save money. Contract mail carries drive their own vehicles, don’t wear USPS uniforms or IDs, and do not undergo background checks - the USPS still loses money - no wonder. The contract routes are re-competed every few years. I don’t like any of this, but there no one to appeal to who cares - I have tried several times. Think what Øbamacare would be like - no one to appeal to and no alternate sources. I might get mailbox at the UPS store, but some mail can only be sent to a street address.
Now I ask you [the rhetorical ‘you’] how someone can leave the box open. He must have more than one key since the PO has mandated clusterboxes for some time. So with all these keys on a chain with the other end attached to his belt, how does he even walk away from it while the key is still in the keyhole? Under Øbamacare, can we look for more surgical instruments to be left inside the patient?
 
What a waste and product of inefficiency the post office is indeed. It took over 100 years from 1st class postage to go from 3 cents to 6 cents (early 70’s) now in forty years it has ballooned to 44 cents. Despite all the advantages in technology, the postal rate is exploding almost yearly.

Privatized mail!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top