Socialism (Moved from Grapes of Wrath)

I am significantly at odds with you on taxation. While I abhore the regular wasting of tax revenues I believe that taxes are the glue that holds our societies together.

I am a retired professional, the first on either side of my parents' families to complete a graduate degree. During my high-income earning years I chose to have nothing to do with tax shelters and other avoidance schemes popular with so many of my contemporaries. My reasoning was simple and, to me at least, convincing. The taxpaying public had largely footed the bill for my elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate school education. My contribution was relatively minor. All those white collar and blue collar workers made it possible for me to achieve a very comfortable station in life. It was my obligation to repay that out of the bounty I enjoyed.

I looked at it this way. I might have been able to shave tens, even scores of thousands of dollars of taxes from my assessment, year after year, but the government would simply place my tax obligation on the shoulders of others who didn't have the means to afford the tax advisors and elaborate schemes to do likewise. In other words, not only would these taxpayers have funded my education but I would be repaying them by shifting my tax obligation onto their shoulders. What person of conscience could do that?

Every once in a while the subject of tax shelters would come up in conversation and it led to a lot of boastfulness about the cleverness of this scheme or that. I learned quickly enough to just keep my mouth shut because explaining my position merely made others uncomfortable, sometimes a bit hostile.

Over the decades I know I paid many times more into the treasury than was ever paid out on my behalf but it was really never much more than a fair return on the investment made in me.

This thread is directed to socialism, an established and widely practised political philosophy. It seems some want to transform that into a discussion of anarchism, minarchism or libertarianism which fall into the realm of hypothetical political modeling.

We have been presented with a few core principles on which these hypothetical political structures would be organized but, to treat them as feasible, it seems a lot of gaps and contradictions are inevitably glossed over.

If we're going to treat these models as viable it begs the question "can we get there from here?" How would we go about dismantling our current governmental systems? What would have to go and how would it be replaced? As existing government responsibilities and powers were shed, who would step in to occupy the vacuum and how does that new power entity operate? How do we regulate it and protect the most vulnerable from its predations? Let's pick a few areas. Medicare, perhaps? Food and drug safety? Environmental standards and labor laws? I hope the answer isn't going to be "oh we'll simply devolve those powers and responsibilities to the next lowest tier." That sounds a lot like chasing one's own tail.

Yes, on the open and active thread devoted to universal healthcare I have expressed my support for a degree of tort reform to bring the American system into line with the rest of the Western world. That is based on truly compensatory damages, for actual future losses, plus a capped sum for pain and suffering. Of course it's juries of lay citizens, not lawyers or judges, who award these massive judgments so I guess having the state "oppress" them is appropriate.

Leaving aside the issue of socialism entirely, I believe some effective system of tort reform is a prerequisite to adoption of universal healthcare.

The concept of market providing security and law is fascinating. The idea of someone "owning" the law and "owning" law enforcement is positively medieval. Rest assured, if you own the courts you own the law and, having secured that incredible advantage, you'll use every ounce of its power to retain it in perpetuity. With a bit of time and any luck, maybe the owner will manage to reinstate the right to deflower virgins on their wedding night.

Who needs governments that are at least somewhat accountable to us every four or five years when we can be ruled by unelected corporations that administer law and security? Corporations would never dream of putting their own interests ahead of the public's would they? What's that you're driving? A Pinto?

I find curious your concept of revolution. Revolutions, whether British, French, American, Cuban or Russian, tend to follow a remarkably similar pattern. For a corporatist revolution, the movement would have to be effected by just whom? Revolutions are typically fomented by a middle class movement, dissidents who seek to replace the existing order with their own. How does one get these revolutionaries to oust the existing power structure only to hand over its powers to corporate entities? Unless the public chose to adopt a minimalist government system with powers and responsibilities surrendered to the private sector, surely the only way that could be accomplished would be via a truly oppressive, totalitarian takeover.

My question again - can we really get there from here?

This thread is directed to socialism, an established and widely practised political philosophy. It seems some want to transform that into a discussion of anarchism, minarchism or libertarianism which fall into the realm of hypothetical political modeling.

This thread in actuality has no real defined point by the OP, so anything even tangentially related to socialism is technically fair game.

Yes, utterly delightful - famine, plague, revolt, massacre and, of course, pottage. Sounds like we have been brainwashed.

I am a retired professional, the first on either side of my parents' families to complete a graduate degree. During my high-income earning years I chose to have nothing to do with tax shelters and other avoidance schemes popular with so many of my contemporaries. My reasoning was simple and, to me at least, convincing. The taxpaying public had largely footed the bill for my elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate school education. My contribution was relatively minor. All those white collar and blue collar workers made it possible for me to achieve a very comfortable station in life. It was my obligation to repay that out of the bounty I enjoyed.

In other words, not only would these taxpayers have funded my education but I would be repaying them by shifting my tax obligation onto their shoulders. What person of conscience could do that?


Over the decades I know I paid many times more into the treasury than was ever paid out on my behalf but it was really never much more than a fair return on the investment made in me.

Medieval_Lives-01-The_Peasant.avi

I don't wish to endorse feudalism, but this documentary by Terry Jones describes the lives of feudal peasants and often compares that to the lives of the modern day working class.

It goes a long way towards exposing just how brainwashed we are by the ideological hegemony of the benefits of modern democracy.

I have heard that statistic about the top 10% paying 90% of American income taxes rather effectively demolished. As I understand it, most working class Americans pay little in actual income taxes but are taxed through payroll taxes instead. Once you hive off those payroll taxes (which, instead of being invested as promised, are instead taken into general revenue just like income tax revenues) you emerge with a very conveniently distorted depiction of the rich carrying the burden.

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Autonomy over their lives? Only to the extent delegated to them by their masters out of convenience. Whatever autonomy they enjoyed was not held "as of right" but by indulgence of their masters. (curiously enough, we still incarcerate the criminally insane "at the pleasure of Her Majesty, the Queen").

To claim "they were generally legal experts" is to grossly overstate the case. Some, through the church, became marginally literate, enough for a few of them to be able to read what they required from the rolls.

And America endured a "great famine" just 70-years ago? A great famine clearly means a mass dying off through starvation. I'm not aware of such a cataclysm hitting America in the 30's or 40's - or ever for that matter. Please explain.

I thought I should add that, when our prairie farmers were hit by the drought known as the "Dirty Thirties," Canadian farmers and fishermen from the east donated masses of fruit and salted cod to the people of the west. Some farmers received so much salt cod that they wrote of tying them to their boots and using them as snowshoes.

MFTP, if you can't "see the difference" perhaps it's because you choose not to see. You have a pretty good grasp of the constitutionally enshrined (I believe the term Americans use is 'inalienable') rights and freedoms you and every other citizen of your land hold and cherish. What similar rights and freedoms do you think these serfs held? What was the feudal equivalent of freedom against unreasonable search and seizure or the right of free speech against the master's wishes or the right to bear arms against the master's wishes? What right protected them from being massacred by their masters after the Peasants' Revolt? To hold those who understand that distinction to be 'radical leftists' says a great deal. That's something you might care to reflect on.

Oh, and I consider myself to be the radical leftist