Capitalism vs Socialism

[Konduktør]

I am a nerdfighter who like politics, and I am a socialist. I have recently wondered why not more countries are socilistic, since this have turned alright for Norway. I would love your views on this case :)

[Eystein,]

"Private schools create elitism, and destroy social mobility"    Where's the proof.

 

How would it not? If you were a store assistant or a floor mopper in a pure capitalist society, your salary wouldn't be more than whatever society could manage to press it down to at any given time. 

Without public schools, how would you ever be able to provide a decent future for your children? How could you afford spending time with them? How could you ever earn enough to own a home? You would get stuck down there, and so would your children. Doomed to provide cheap services to those above the fallout line. It's a fucking black hole down there. A smart kid would turn criminal.

 

Btw love to talk about Norway. We should all do it more often ;)

[Latch33570]

One word about public schools VOUCHERS. Public schools suck. The govt should provide the standards for each year and vouchers for the tuition and books. I believe schools including higher education should be free. It is in the best interest of society.  Same thing with medical care. We should have govt healthcare and vouchers to go private if needed.

[Eystein,]

You'd still need to pay taxes if the government are to afford those vouchers though and that is socialism. There is nothing dictates that you can only have but one stately approved school in a socialist system. I favor private schools, and think diversity in elementary education would be a good thing, so long as they're not religious or ridiculously expensive. Sadly we do have religious schools in Norway though... Everyone must at least be offered the same opportunities even if the elite will still be better at taking advantage of it, can't factor out parental ineptitude completely.

[Latch33570]

That is why I think vouchers are a good idea. By the way are you back. Did you get tired of the rednecks in Texas. How did you like the states?

[Eystein,]

Loved it. I don't know if I'd have wanted to stay there any longer though, it was a pretty shitty town. But yeah, could definitely like to study more in the states some day, hopefully soon. Your campuses are completely a different world from here. Guess, that's why you pay so much more also.

[Matthew McLoughlin]

I'm a little left wing when it comes to politics but i can see how capitalism shapes our economies. Ideally, we wouldn't be limited to a political ideology and we'd live in a world were big companies could still makes companies while small companies still have the opportunity to grow and replace those big companies one day. Sadly, this seems like a dream that will never be achieved unless we became more civilized creatures

[Eystein,]

Too much socialism is definitely not a good thing. The Scandinavian approach though is a fair mix of socialism and capitalism which seems to be working quite well. We have nothing, not to my knowledge anyway, to be ashamed of as far as individual freedom goes either. I don't know if that makes us more civilized creatures, you decide, but I'm pretty sure, unfortunately, that Norwegian companies aren't that much nicer than others once they conduct their business beyond the transparent and fairly regulated realms of Social-Democracy.

[Latch33570]

"Too much socialism is definitely not a good thing." "  We have nothing, not to my knowledge anyway, to be ashamed of as far as individual freedom goes either. I don't know if that makes us more civilized creatures, you decide,"   Those two quotes pretty well sums it up. We agree some socialist things like school and healthcare and infrastructure but not too much that it interferes with progress. 

[Latch33570]

I am with you on that.   The American tax system needs to be redone.  That is why I am for a flat tax.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

The flat tax is very unfair.

But where this "brilliant" idea falls flat on it's face is when you realize what is left over and what can be afforded with it. It turns out that this "fair and flat" tax actually turns out to be regressive, not in that it puts the burden of funding the government on the poor but those hurt most by it, are the lower income.  So poor people have less money then wealthy people, this is obvious. Though they are not rich, they still have to live: buy food, pay for electricity and phone, pay for medical bills, and yes taxes.  Because these less fortunate people make less money, a greater percentage of there income goes towards those necessities.  So what this means is that if the poor are paying the same as the rich, the hit being taken by them is still much greater then it is for the wealthy. When you take $7,500 out of $50,000 you are left with $42,500. In some parts of the country this is ample, and allows for a good middle class life. But in other parts of the country (where I live in NJ is a great example of this)  this amount would not pay for groceries and a mortgage let alone trips and college tuition. Now on the other hand if you take $750,000 out of $5,000,000 you the wealthy individual is left with $4,250,000 dollars. More then enough to pay for almost any extravagance. Now I know, these people are entitled to their wealth they worked hard... BLAH BLAH BLAH. But lets remember here so did the poor man, and yet they are the ones who suffer from taxes.

http://open.salon.com/blog/njredsox/2010/04/21/why_the_flat_tax_is_...

[Eystein,]

Exactly. I'm not anti prosperity, but however much more rich people hypocriticallying could spend with this kind of approach, I don't see it boosting and/or carrying the economy. You only end up reducing the purchasing power of the less affluent and it's after all limits to how much more the very rich actually can consume. Sure they could always build a grand ass yacht or burn off 100 grand a day at the fines suites if the wallet grows unseemly large, but the ripple effect of such grandiose indulgences has fairly limited impact on the overall economy (i.e. few people involved).

[Eystein,]

There is one area in particular which I feel that the Norwegian socialist-capitalist marriage has failed miserably, and that concern housing prices. You see up until the late 80' I would say Norway was socialistic to a retarded degree, with stately owned monopolies in almost every sector ranging from telecommunications to pharmacy. For instance we had only one national broadcaster, featuring just one television channel (can you believe it?!), nothing else was allowed. But then after a right wing surge we kind of loosened up a little by deregulating most stately endeavors, including real estate markets. I'm not quite sure what they did with it before that, but whatever it was, it kept the prices down at a healthy, sane level...

However after the deregulation, housing prices have sky-rocketed 400% in just two decades. This is of course great for anyone who already owned a home back in 1988, or otherwise those who joined in on the fest during the 90'. Not so great for those having to pay up $170'000 for a shitty one room apartment in Oslo anno 2012. Needless to say this causes problems for those on the lower end of the income scale (Not to mention that white collar runned Oslo sold off most of it's public housing in pursuit of easy cash a little less than a decade ago...).So what does the socialistic nanny-state do? It's not like it can take this amazing cash machine away from people and reset everything to a more reasonable level; the debt is already out there and have to be payed one way or the other. So to help out the poorest and first time buyers they pour money in through various subsidiaries, tax gymnastics and favorable loan conditions. Half of which benefiting real estate investors also, allowing the prices to go up perhaps even further than what an unregulated market would have allowed for in the first place. However the unregulated market peak would most likely have ended with crack anyways and somehow we've avoided that for now... We had a small bump when yours went haywire, but if anything is gonna fuck us over it this...