@i_like_swords:
Agreed: having more money makes life easier.
Disagreed; this is an inherent flaw of capitalism.
I would understand if you said it is an acceptable flaw, but to deny it is a flaw at all? How is it not a flaw that such a system inherently produces a drastic disparity between the haves and have nots, and further perpetuates this divide? How is it not a flaw that whether you are born rich or poor has more bearing on your success than individual talent, drive, or dedication? Would not a perfect, or near perfect system be based more closely on merit and not born-into privileges?
Being a doctor is one of the hardest things you can try to do with your life across the board, and thus isn't for everyone. For a myriad of reasons. Again, not a flaw of capitalism, just a fact of reality. I didn't say anything about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
Being a doctor isn't an outlier. Higher education in general costs tens of thousands of dollars, something that many students of low socio-economic standing cannot afford. The average student loan debt in the U.S. was $37,172 in 2018, and will grow higher as interest is collected on those sums. College Board reports that a moderate college budget for an in-state public college for the 2017–2018 academic year averaged $25,290. A moderate budget at a private college averaged $50,900. Higher education is an investment, the returns outweigh the costs, but the initial investment is more than some can afford.
The flaw isn't that everyone cannot be doctors. The flaw is that whether someone can be a doctor or not is not always based on merit, but the resources available to them. In an optimal society those with the potential to be doctors would not be held back or disadvantaged by the class they are born into.
Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is a common phrase associated with the "you need to make the time you can offer as valuable as possible", all you need to do is try harder mentality that you have been displaying in this discussion.
Yeah, my options are to live in society, try to find one where I won't be taxed and earn citizenship (impossible) or go and live in the wilderness. Just because I live in society it does not implicitly mean I agree with everything I am being taxed for. It's simply the only realistic option available to me. When a piece of my paycheck is eaten into so that it can't be spent on things I disagree with even on a deeply moral basis, I class that as stealing.
According to your logic, if you live in a society, you implicitly consent to every single law, bill and decision that is passed. You consent to everything Donald Trump has done with your country thus far, even if you haven't voted him in. Trump hasn't done a single thing that has affected your life without your consent. You simply need to be living in a society, and then every political decision ever made is done with your consent. That's what we're going with, is it?
You are conflating the terms consent to and agree with. I do not agree with a lot of things that a lot of different presidents and Congresses have done, but part of being a citizen is paying taxes, whether or not you agree with what the government uses those funds for. I can guarantee you that never in the history of the country has everyone agreed with everything the government used taxpayer money for. The point of taxes is not to do what is good for each and every individual, but to provide for the common good. By being a citizen you consent to paying taxes. In return you get to vote for representatives who you believe will spend the money most closely to how you would want.
Yes, by living in a society you do consent to every law that is passed. You may not agree with a law banning marijuana for example, but by claiming the benefits of citizenship you must also claim the responsibilities, such as following laws implemented by a representative legislature and executive, as well as funding the enforcement of those laws. I do not agree with many of Donald Trump's policies, but as an American citizen I implicitly consent to the rule of law. We cannot decide to not pay taxes or follow laws simply based on who is in charge of the government at the time.
Taxes are not stealing, they are a civic responsibility. We all gain benefits through citizenship, but those benefits are also connected to responsibilities. A businessman does not start a business in a vacuum. He uses public roads for transport, emits pollution into public land, air, and water, relies on public services such as law enforcement, and fire fighting, or public courts to enforce contracts. He benefits from the social order instilled by government and the defense afforded by the military. He never pays for these things, they are paid for out of local, state, and Federal taxes.
I'm talking about property. Your paycheck, your house, your business. Something that belongs to you. I get that you're getting all teary eyed because the world isn't fair, but there's nothing subjective about what I meant.
Stooping to ad hominem shows a lack in the ability to defeat ones opponent through the validity of your argument. No one is being emotional here except perhaps you. We are debating the flaws of various economic systems. Fairness and justice are legitimate means for measuring the effectiveness or flaws in a system. I could just as easily state you are getting "teary-eyed" because having to pay taxes towards things you don't want to is unfair, but I'll refrain, because it is a pointless distraction.
Taxes do not belong to you, they are part of the system, just as you have to pay for costs such as raw materials or labor you also have to pay taxes. They are a cost of business. If you want lower taxes vote for representatives who support that agenda. Being a citizen comes with rights and responsibilities. You have a right to protection and certain services but also a responsibility to pay for these services. You have a right to vote but a responsibility to accept the result even if your party does not win.
The term "earned" implies merit. You could inherit extravagant wealth and that wealth is yours, you own it, but it is subjective whether you "earned" it. You could have done nothing and still received that wealth, so how did you earn it?
A billionaire earned every dollar through voluntary transactions. They have every right to retain what belongs to them, no matter how much they end up collecting, and they are not obligated to give it to anyone else. Stealing is not justified simply because it would be extremely helpful for the needy party and negligible for the wealthy one, unless you're telling me that you don't have any principles and the ends justify the means.
Voluntary transactions based on an uneven power relationship between them and workers. Workers, even if talented and hard working, simply do not often have the resources to control the means of production, which means they are coerced to work for as little as the employer can possibly pay them. This system is voluntary only on the surface. Workers must work in order to survive, they cannot choose to not work. If they do, someone else will simply fill that role and they will be jobless. What other choice do they have? If the option is work for a paltry wage or go without basic necessities like shelter, food, clothing, etc, that is not a choice, and therefore not voluntary.
Your argument hinges on the premise that paying taxes is stealing, which I've already refuted. It cannot be theft if you receive something in return, such as the many benefits that companies receive that I have already pointed out as well as the many others that exist. Not only do companies (and private citizens) benefit from government goods and services, they also get a vote in what those goods and services are and how they operate. There are a lot of things that we all as citizens do not consent to, but we are bound by anyways.
The comparison is valid, and can be set to scale. I could spend my disposable income on new clothes, or a netflix subscription, or some other luxury, or I could go out and buy tons of dried rice and beans for poor families and feed them for weeks. But I don't. According to your logic, that makes me a bad person, along with everyone else here.
You assume that no one else here spends time, talent, or money on charity.
No one is saying that all disposable income should be taken from someone. The argument is that the more disposable income you have, the proportional obligation you have to the less fortunate, particularly when your wealth is often a product of a system that produces and reinforces their lower position. When the labor of people who barely make enough to scrape by despite working full weeks, often at more than one job, makes you rich, there is an imbalance. Money has to come from somewhere. If you cannot pay your employees a livable wage you will have to pay it other ways, like in taxes.
Nah, sorry, not gonna let you type up a mammoth paragraph strawmanning one sentence from a much more extensive post. We were discussing what causes people to become poor. I did not ever say "those who earn the most are the most valuable to society" - case in point, I think medical professionals contribute a lot more to society than they are compensated for in the UK, because the NHS is an inefficient trainwreck.
You said "these people are not capable of producing enough value to society that they would be compensated for it". The logical conclusion from this claim is that compensation is based upon value to society. Your assertion is that people are poor simply because they do not provide enough value to society, which I countered. This is not a strawman because it gets at the exact heart of our conversation. It is precisely your argument that people are poor because they do not provide value, you say it multiple times throughout your post. Therefore, if people are poor because they do not provide value that means that conversely people are rich because they do provide value to society. So, as you can see, your claim that " I did not ever say "those who earn the most are the most valuable to society"", is not congruent with the logic of your own argument.
If the research isn't producing anything of economic value, and if the teacher is either 1. not teaching anything of value, like history, and 2. terrible at their job, as many are, or 3. operating under an inefficient curriculum, then no, they are not more economically valuable than an NBA star.
Economic value =/= value to society. Teaching people biology, horticulture, or life skills may have minimal economic value, but may have important social value.
If you truly believe that history has no value then I can only respond by saying that is not an objective belief. Value is subjective and your evaluation of history tells more about personal biases than the actual value of history as a subject of study.
They do not provide more economic value, not by a longshot, apart from the very best teachers who can reach the most amount of people as efficiently as possible. Hence why we learn more from videos, podcasts and books than we ever will in the education system, with a few obvious exceptions.
Again, you are changing terms mid-debate. You first said "The issue is, these people are not capable of producing enough value to society that they would be compensated for it." Value to society is not equal to value to the economy.
Evidence?
Pretty sure we both know this is wrong economically, and is such a multi-faceted comparison that simply attempting to tug on my heart strings is hardly a compelling argument. I wonder if you'd say the same about Lord Obama?
My comparison was particularly referencing Trump the real estate tycoon and businessman, not Trump the President. I would say the same about Obama if he were a real estate developer if that makes you feel better.
I was not intending to "tug at your heart strings", this is not an emotional argument. I am basing my statement in pure logic. A human life is worth more than a building, therefore someone who saves lives on a nightly basis is logically more valuable to society than someone who builds hotels and casinos, though the hotels and casinos obviously produce more money.
And here lies one of the greatest flaws of capitalism, one that you demonstrate through your argument. You equate value to society with value to the economy. You are making my point for me. Economic value is based on an artificial market that gives commodities (including labor) a price, but a price is not necessarily it's value. A movie star may produce more economic value than a farmer, but the farmer produces more value to society. If the entire entertainment industry were to disappear, people would be disappointed, but nobody would die and the country would be fine. If farmers disappeared there would be mass death and societal collapse. Price is an artificial construct, only given value by the system that creates it and perpetuates it.
Okay, under what metric?
Under the metric that their work produces safety and security for the nation ( in addition to other things such as furthering the nation's interests and securing economic/natural resources), whereas Brad Pitt's work produces entertainment. Again, losing the entertainment industry would not be nearly as damaging to society as losing the military.
Remind me what this has to do with capitalism being bad.
I'm not saying capitalism is purely bad, I'm saying it has flaws. The point was further explaining how value to society and value to the economy are not the same thing. The most basic and fundamental needs of any society, which would hold the most value to said society, are not often the most well compensated. When measuring the effectiveness of a system you would expect a perfect, or nearly perfect system to better compensate those who provide the most important functions to that society, if as you claimed compensation is based on the value you produce. A better system would more closely correlate compensation with value to society, instead of inflating the compensation of certain workers based on artificial markets.
Unless these breakthroughs can generate a profit, and increase the overall GDP of the country, then no, they are not providing more economic value to society than someone who is generating a profit.
Exactly, and that is a problem with capitalism, everything is considered in terms of GDP/profit/money. It takes no consideration to externalities, such as the environment, people's health, Everything, including value to you is measured in monetary terms, not the practical value it provides people. Take life-saving drugs like insulin for example. The cost of such a drug can fluctuate, but the value of that drug remains the same to the millions who depend upon it. The drug that can save the lives of countless people does not get more or less valuable simply because it was overproduced or the patent on it expired for example. However, by your outlook, you can only measure it by the amount of profit made, not by the amount of lives saved. Therefore, even if insulin became drastically cheaper and saved more lives because it was more readily available, you would consider it to have lost value because it would not garner as much economic profit.
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