WARNING: When I started writing this I didn't know it would be so long and now I don't feel like reading it over to make sure it isn't terrible... which means it is probably terrible... I just felt the need to get it out of my brain and now I just want to put it out there into the universe... I'm sorry.
So I made the "mistake" of following a bunch of candidates in the upcoming USA Presidential election on Google+ and have been paying a lot more attention to politics and government in general then I have done since being an idealistic college student who was once described as a "long haired socialist who wants to change the world" by a girl. Namely she said something along the lines of "my father warned me to watch out for long haired socialist who want to change the world like you".
Since then I've started wearing my hair a lot shorter and decided that I don't really have time to change the whole world so am focusing on staying employed and picking out the right school for my kids. I'm still pretty darned socialist though.
One of the things that strikes me as odd in US politics is that people are so afraid of socialism... I mean... even the Libertarian wing nuts (not saying all Libertarians are wing-nuts, I am referring to Wing-Nuts who are Libertarians here) seem to have a problem with the government spending money to take care of people.
So I have decided to make this here blog post so that I can explain to everyone what should be obvious to everyone.
The first thing I am going to do is tie together some stuff so that other stuff I say becomes self evident.
Let's Start with Rich People!
Why are rich people rich? Because they have more money then most people right? ...it's kinda what the word means... lets check the dictionary to see if I'm right... ok, dictionary uses something closer to "Abundant Material Wealth" so the "more then most people" thing isn't really part of it... one could conceive a world in which everyone has "Abundant Material Wealth" and then everyone would be rich and nobody would be poor. Hurrah!
So the question then is what do we really mean when we say "Rich People"? I think most people are thinking "People who have more money then me."
How about Poor People?
Let's check that there dictionary again (I'm using the Merriam-Webster because Webster basically made up American English as we know it today so they are kinda the authority when it comes to Americans)... skipping over the whole "inferior in quality or value" bit, because these are people we are talking about, let's summarize that with "Lacking Material Wealth".
That said, I think that when most people talk about poor people they are thinking "Insufficient Material Wealth" or more directly, people who aren't getting the basic necessities they need to survive. As such, I'm thinking there needs to be a line drawn somewhere between "too poor to eat" and "too poor to buy an iPhone". I am in the latter category most of the time... I'm employed and pay my bills and am well fed and have a bit of discretionary money to spend here and there to buy new toys for the kids and the occasional board game or standing mixer or new video game and, every few years, a new TV or computer... if I save up.
...and Middle Class
Next on the list of labels is the "Middle Class" which is basically everyone between the "too poor to buy an iPhone level" and the "Abundant Material Wealth" level... OK? Let's call it the "more then sufficient material wealth" level.
What's left?
This is where the "99%" vs the "1%" class warfare argument get... sticky... essentially... above that "Abundant Material Wealth" level there is another level of wealth... these are the people we call "super-rich".
[I'm using Wikipedia for some of the sats I'm going to be quoting here... so grain of salt etc... but they are still likely to be relatively accurate]
You can see on the Forbes List of Billionaires that the top 8 have over 30 Billion dollars in net worth... the "median" american has a net worth of $93,100 while the "mean" american has $448,200. The one I care about here is that "median" there is the number that 50% of Americans are worth (the mean is like the average total net worth divided by the population... it says something that it is so much higher then the median).
So, let's play with Zeros, OK?
$30,000,000,000 vs $93,100
$30 is a nice dinner for two... maybe,
$300 is a video game system,
$3,000 is food, bills and lodgings etc for a family or four for a month
$30,000 is a car
$300,000 is a house
$3,000,000 is winning the lottery and never having to worry about money again
A Net Worth of $30,000,000 is "Abundant Material Wealth"... if you have a net worth of $30,000,000 you could put it in a bank and live off the interest for the rest of your life... you stop having to worry about bills and weather you can afford that car or not... you just buy whatever the heck you want and live however the heck you want... OK?
Now add 3 more Zeros... $30,000,000,000!!! With that much money 1,000 people could live as I just described... someone with that much money he could give 9,000 people $3,000,000 and still have enough over to buy a new yacht... he could buy 90,000 people a home without moving out of his own mansion... when we're talking about the "Super Rich" we are not talking about the wealthy... we are talking about people who have so much more money then you that you wouldn't know what to do with it all.
So... what does this have to do with socialism?
OK, so that was a huge tangent and really off the point... if you go back to that Wikipedia article I linked to it mentions that "In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. Thus, the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%." which is basically what I was trying to illustrate.
What it really comes down to, for me, is HOW does someone get in that top 20% or 1%... if I invent something that is incredibly successful and therefore valuable and then leverage that success and gains in wealth to improve my invention and invent new things... this is the system working... I started with an idea, I worked until that idea was valuable enough to support itself and then next thing you know... BAM!.. exponential wealth growth.
Because Technology Patents and Piracy are in the news and one of those there billionaires is Bill Gates I'm going to use this as an example.
If there were no patent laws and no copyright laws Bill Gates could NEVER have made that kind of money off of DOS. Who knows if there would have even been such a thing as a computer to create an operating system FOR beyond the stuff the military and universities were researching. Maybe in this hypothetical universe with no patents of copyright Bill Gates would have gotten tenure as a research scientist at a University and be making a reasonable income and DOS would still exist... but he wouldn't have gotten rich from it.
So that is my first point... the Super Rich 1% and the Very Rich 20% are, for the most part, only that rich because the laws in our country helped them get there. If stealing were legal then you would have to spend as much money hiring guards to protect your assets as you spend manufacturing them and the second they were in the wild the lack of patent law would allow anyone to immediately copy your invention... sure you could make the best version of something but the second you got too wealthy someone would kill you and take it from you because they invested in hiring more goons instead of making better gizmos... or maybe they would simply enslave you and torture your family while you worked in their factories.
The basic idea here is that the "System" is what gave these "Super Rich" an environment in which they could become "Super Rich"... and what is this system? We call it "society". Police Officers, Lawyers, Fire Fighters, Soldiers, Construction Workers, Manufacturers, Programmers, Mothers, Maids, Customer Service Workers, Farmers, Grocers, Artists and Producers... we ARE the system that's existence ALLOWS the "Super Rich" to get and stay "Super Rich".
The "Super Rich" are simply the people who have benefited the most from the "system" we are all part of. Generally people feel that these people have done something to deserve to have managed to benefit more then "the rest of us" and I'm fine with that assumption.... BUT... and this is important... they wouldn't have has a system to benefit the most from if it hadn't been for "the rest of us".
Worst Case Scenario
For me, the worst thing that could happen would be for the government to bankrupt itself and collapse... no one would be able to sue anyone, the police and the military wouldn't get paid, and as such... barring social pressure... anyone could do whatever they wanted and we'ed have gangs of former police officers and former military people setting up little mafia's all over the place and justice being meted out by the mob... there would be rampant theft and people would stop working because getting paid wouldn't matter any more because you could just steal whatever it was you wanted... obviously a bit of an imaginative overstatement but if the system breaks down a new system that favours the strong would take it's place... and as a smart weakling I don't want that to happen. The meritocracy totally benefits me.
But... Socialism?
Let's start with all the stuff that at least 80% of us can agree on (that's a made up 80%... I have no idea what the real stat is but that seemed a reasonable guess):
Central organization is more efficient and fair for certain services. "Central" can mean community, municipal, county, state, federal, co-operative or corporate leadership in this context but the thing is that roads and the justice system (including police) and utilities just don't work so well if every single person does it for themselves... sure you can dig a well and put up a fence and hire a guard for your property but it's cheaper and fairer if you pay some central agency to do it for you.
For most people the way they "pay some central agency" is by paying taxes.
Up here in Canada we added Healthcare and Education to that list of stuff that would be better organized if we just had the Government take care of it and it sorta worked out and sorta didn't... to be perfectly frank it needs to be done right in order for it to really be more cost effective to pay that extra tax instead of paying a private insurance provider like y'all get to do in the states... so, I'm not going to tell you WHAT needs to be socialized because I don't know... I just want you to realize that there is a reason for it.
Now... Back to those Folks with an "Abundance of Wealth"
So... assuming you agree that the "system" is worth maintaining... doesn't it seem "fair" for those who have "benefited more then their fair share" from the "system" to contribute "more then their fair share" back to the system?
A lot of people talk circles around this issue but it comes down to a very simple concept. Taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor doesn't hurt anybody but the rich.
Let's say there is a person who is "too poor to eat" because they don't WANT to work and you give him food... sure it makes that poor person doesn't have to work in order to eat so he doesn't get a job and stays "too poor to eat" forever. So? How is that guy's full belly and comfortable spot on the pavement hurting you? Who cares if he spends all day doing nothing while you work... you were going to work anyway because you want a house and a car and want to be able to feed your family and buy a new TV and maybe get an iPhone if you really work hard and succeed. You haven't lost anything but some food... assuming there is 1 guy out there who doesn't want to work for every 10 guys who do want to work... that guy who doesn't want to work and is happy to not work get's to live another day for 1/10 of your personal food budget... that's like $200 a year... it's pittance.
... but the best part is that your not even being ASKED to pay for the guy who doesn't want to work. If you don't have a legitimate reason to not work you don't get welfare moneys. We're not talking about lazy people here were talking about people who are too busy taking care of their children to have a job, or people unemployed due to a dip in the economy in their area of expertise, we're talking about people who are having trouble finding a job so they went back to school... so the worst case scenario is that someone is cheating the system... to me, if you don't support welfare because people abuse the system you are essentially telling me we should throw everyone is jail to make sure they don't commit a crime.
In my ideal option anyone who is (or is unable to be) a productive member of society would get a living wage. Which brings us back to the "Taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor doesn't hurt anybody but the rich." thing again. I've seen a lot of noise over this Florida "drug test for welfare" thing... but let's right down to it... if someone who is on welfare legitimately (they are willing to work but unable to do so for some reason) then who are they hurting if they spend their food money on drugs and alcohol? Well, themselves... right? The glitch is that the people making this rule seem to be missing out on the whole "you die if you don't eat" thing... also the "if you are an addict you will get drugs no matter what" thing... the fact that these people are getting Welfare from the government instead of a paycheck doesn't make them any more or less likely to spend that money on drugs... and if I spend money at Walmart to buy something made in the USA there is a good chance SOMEONE in the supply chain is going to use some small percentage of that money for drugs... it's totally the same thing except that in the case of Welfare the person receiving the money in unable to work.
Fairness
One more topic to touch on here is fairness... we live in a Democracy (at least for the most part) and as such it sometimes happens that the "Majority Rules" which is actually a good thing... it means that the 80% of us who AREN'T "Super Rich" can simply pass a law to tell them to give all of it to us... except for the whole constitution and bill of rights thing... I guess with enough popular support we could repeal that too but as it is right now it's still in place and that's a good thing... because it's means that in addition to the Majority getting to decide everything we have this great little chunk of the law that says that we need to ensure that they Minority don't get bullied... and right now the most visible minority is the Super Rich so it wouldn't really be "fair" for us to take all their stuff... no matter how much it would help.
But I've got a bunch of questions for you, my non-existent readers, that are essentially the reason that I wrote this whole mess down... so:
If you work hard and smart and get Super Rich should your children be treated better then the children of the "too poor to eat"? Even if you believe that anyone who wants to work can earn a living wage and therefore the only people "too poor to eat" are those who don't want to... can you really say it's fair that the Super Rich guy's kid get's healthy food, a tutor and an education at the best private schools and universities (and on daddy's dime to boot) while the "too poor to eat" guy's kid is malnourished and goes to a public school that doesn't have a budget to buy computer or tutors... or even books and has to work 40 hours a week while attending community college and still end up in dept until he's 40 himself and has to help his own kid go to school?
I'm not saying the Wealthy shouldn't be able to give their own kids every opportunity in life but maybe they should also pay more then the rest of us in tax so that my kids can go to a good school too?
It might not be "fair" for them but it's "fair" for society as a whole.
So, what are we to take from this?
I have no freaking clue. I just wanted to get this stuff out of my brain.
