Imaginos1892 wrote:The E wrote:Hmmm, could this possibly be because you americans have an instinctive aversion to anything that you can label "socialist" or "communist", without understanding those terms?
Or could it be because they’ve been taught that the world owes them a living, and they don’t have to do anything to earn it? That they don't have to be responsible for themselves because The Gub'mint will take care of them no matter what they do? That nothing they do matters anyway, because 'The Man' won't let them get ahead? So most of them never try. Those cities have been ruled by big-government leftists for decades. They established and controlled the policies that made those cities what they are. If those policies had any validity, they wouldn’t have turned into third-world hellholes.
The E wrote:What does Jeff Bezos contribute to society that justifies his income?
Jeff Bezos is living proof that capitalism is open to everybody. He doesn't have to justify anything to you.
The E wrote:Get off your high horse, man.
Oh, now that’s a compelling argument.
The E wrote:To give you a concrete example of excessive, let's assume an income of ten times the minimum wage (which in the US would be around 150k USD annually) to be the upper limit of what should be acceptable for a single person.
Acceptable to
you. And you make that pronouncement, based on what qualifications, exactly? What do you believe gives you the right to decide what other people are worth?
Jeff Bezos was not born rich. His parents were not important, or connected. He was just an ordinary guy who studied, learned, improved himself, and then had an idea. He busted his ass for years to make that idea a reality, and now, after 25 years, he’s built Amazon into a huge company that provides valuable services to hundreds of millions of people, and jobs to over half a million. Just the tiny fraction of that money he managed to keep made him extremely rich.
Rather than be inspired by his phenomenal success through hard work, dedication and perseverance, you can feel only resentment, envy and greed because he has ‘too much money’ and you can conceive of no higher purpose than taking his money from him by force. Why? Because he has it, and you don’t.
Never mind that he earned that money, and you didn’t. Never mind that he put in those long years of hard work, and you didn’t. Never mind that a hundred million other people had the exact same opportunities, and they didn’t create Amazon. He has ‘too much money’ and you find that ‘unacceptable’.
What does he do with that money? You seem to believe he piles it up and rolls around in it like Scrooge McDuck. In reality, he
invests that money in various risky ventures that have the potential to create enormous value for everybody. Of course, if those ventures succeed he expects to get a small fraction of that value back as profit. Why shouldn't he?
The E wrote:That you don't see the fact that most of the tax income comes from a small number of people as something wrong is telling.
How are the unskilled workers better off if we Raise The Minimum Wage! to $15.00 and then take $7.50 tax out of it, than if they are just paid the $7.50 and allowed to keep it?
The E wrote:No, there isn't. However, being unskilled means that, under current conditions, you are likely to stay unskilled, as the simple business of surviving will eat all energy that you might otherwise have to learn more skills. Having a fulltime job should never be a poverty trap in disguise, and yet, that is the reality a lot of people are living in.
I started out in a low-paying job and went to vocational school at night. After about a year, I got a better job. After two more years I finished night school and got a much better job. I didn’t see that low-paying job as a ‘poverty trap’ but as a first step. The first step should be a small one, to prepare you to take bigger steps.
The E wrote:Please investigate the term "precariat", then come back to this discussion.
Isn’t that one of those words the communists made up because there weren't any real words that supported their totalitarian fantasies?
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Get the government involved in health care and you wind up with doctors filling out paperwork while paper-pushers play doctor.
