RE: Bernie Sanders Has Renewed My Hope
July 14, 2015 at 1:44 pm
(This post was last modified: July 14, 2015 at 1:46 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(July 14, 2015 at 12:48 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Because a higher minimum wage, higher marginal taxes on the rich, and universal healthcare and education would improve our country. We can keep some capitalism, but there have to be things that guarantee a better life for everyone. Cutting taxes on the rich, raising taxes on the poor and middle class, and gutting things like the safety net, education, and healthcare is destroying us.
I agree that higher wages, better healthcare, and real education would improve our country. We must be realistic about how those things happen. Following the industrial revolution, the fact is that Anglo-American style capitalism has been the single most effective cause of innovation and prosperity. It has it's faults, sure. Anti-trust laws must be enforced. Worker protections need to be in place. There should be a social safety net to help people through tough times and re-enter as independent and self-sufficient citizens. I'm not concerned about someone making a boat-load of money that they earned honestly and have put back into their business to serve the public with even greater effectiveness. Good for them. But if you look at the some of the richest people alive today, many of them have gamed the system with the help of government at the expense of the general public.
The problem, as I see it, is that there is too much money in politics. Corporate cronyism that draws away money from lean and productive companies that make better products and services to everyone's benefit. Pay-to-Play contracting makes the political class corrupt and wealthy at the expense of the middle class. The social services that are supposed to go to the needy get chewed up by bureaucrats and public service unions.
When we enlarge the influence of government over how people make and spend their money, then people with influence will use government to make money for themselves and their big shot friends. Not only that but it undermines the influence of any institution it doesn't control like charities, families, churches, and fraternal organizations. Regardless of what you think about the role of those institutions in society, once they are gone, and their functions taken over by the government then government has a complete monopoly that it can enforce at the point of a gun. That is exactly what socialism has done in the past, is doing now, and will always do in the future. It is tyranny dressed up as utopia.
