Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Scot Dutchy]

Of course you are right pEv is about redistribution but also education, health and social services. A society that produces people like Gates and Trump is a sick one. Very sick.
Of course 42 came up with the old chestnut that the poor of America would be rich in any other country is completely a load of shit. Before Obamacare 40% of Americans did not have health care. Plenty did not have access to health care. Education in America is terrible. In almost all European countries everyone has health care and a standard of education only dreamed of by plenty Americans. Infrastructure is a mess. Total reliance on the car has meant other forms of transport are depraved of funding but that is capitalism because it is always reactive and not proactive. Planning is all short term because that is the market. That is valid for all sections of society. Capitalists dont plan long term.

[rainbow]

...no one ties to escape free market capitalism

The reason no one tries to escape free market capitalism is that it doesn't exist.

I have explained this to you, but there does not seem to be the brain power available for you to grasp this simple rule.

[rainbow]

Capitalists dont plan long term.

Incorrect. Capitalists do a lot of planning to avoid taxation, for instance.

[pErvinalia]

pEv..

[Tero]

What we had before Obamacare was the emergency room. And so called public hospitals. All you had to do was stabilize the patient and send them away, even by ambulance, to the the poor folks hospital.

[Alan B]

Capitalists dont plan long term.

Incorrect. Capitalists do a lot of planning to avoid taxation, for instance.

Has anyone ever carried out an estimate of what is hidden in tax havens or how much is lost through dodgy 'legal' tax avoidance schemes or downright evasion?
Probably runs into many billions...

(Or maybe even trillions...)

[Forty Two]

It depends what 42 means by "socialist countries". If he was thinking of the USSR of the past, I think he was right, to a degree - the Party bosses had vastly more wealth than the mass of the people, whose standard of living was fairly ordinary. If he means current social democracies in Europe, he is clearly wrong.

I'm referring to socialism:

China
Cuba
Laos
Vietnam
North Korea
Bangladesh
Guinea-Bissou
Guyana
India

Other than Portugal, Europe doesn't have socialist countries.

In the past, they did, and we can look at Russia/Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and other former Soviet bloc countries around the world. East Germany - obviously, much better off - the poor included - under capitalist Germany, than Communist GDR. Albania back in the day was communist, and shit. Yugoslavia before it broke up.

Sweden is a competitive free market in a mixed economy. Like social democracies in general, it is free market capitalism. Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social welfare within the framework of a capitalist economy. Norway is best described as "state capitalist" with a generous welfare state. No European country is officially socialist, with the possible exception of Portugal (and who the fuck would want to live in Portugal).

There are some European countries doing well - Germany (the biggest chunk of the EU), and the the UK, and France, Finland, Norway, of course, (little Kuwait in the north), and Sweden (although Sweden has been liberalizing its market economy lately), the Netherlands - Luxumborg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, maybe Austria and the Czech Republic (because they have awesome beer). But, much of Europe is awful, downright dreadful, overall, compared to must of the US. Look at Portugal. Greece. Romania. Moldova. Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania , Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain. And, most of the dreadful parts were the ones that flirted with socialism the most.

People tend to point to countries like Norway as an example - we should be more like Norway! Oh, sure - let's all produce 1.5 times the oil produced by the average OPEC country per day, per capita. That's more than 20 times the oil produced by the US. A country of 4.5 million people -- with that much oil production, and a massive amount of hydroelectric power, fishing/whaling, timber, mining, and other such interests.

That's what I've been saying about what the US needs - heavy industry and base materials production. That's what we would need to do to follow Norway's lead. They do it, though, with a large welfare state (which you can afford if you have all that oil money per capita), but they ain't socialist. That's not to say that they are acting in the way Milton Friedman would say was good, because he's against a lot of government intervention, even if it's not strictly socialist. What we can say, though, is that Norway is not socialist. They may be able to do "even better" if they were enacted some reforms, but one can't really quarrel with a small country that has so much money that it can basically write blank checks to every citizen.

That's the only way I can ever see socialism working. If you had a country which was in a state of "plenty" as opposed to a state of "scarcity" then socialism can seem to work. I.e., socialism works if there is plenty for everyone. Capitalism - one of the chief functions of capitalism - which is set out in basic, high school economics, is that it is the allocation of scarce resources. If resources aren't scarce (as that term is used in economics) then there is no supply/demand ratio because supply is basically infinite, so the price tends toward zero.

[pErvinalia]

Capitalists dont plan long term.

Incorrect. Capitalists do a lot of planning to avoid taxation, for instance.

Has anyone ever carried out an estimate of what is hidden in tax havens or how much is lost through dodgy 'legal' tax avoidance schemes or downright evasion?
Probably runs into many billions...

(Or maybe even trillions...)

$14 trillion was the last figure I saw. But don't worry about that, there's welfare scroungers to hound.

[pErvinalia]

It depends what 42 means by "socialist countries". If he was thinking of the USSR of the past, I think he was right, to a degree - the Party bosses had vastly more wealth than the mass of the people, whose standard of living was fairly ordinary. If he means current social democracies in Europe, he is clearly wrong.

I'm referring to socialism:

China
Cuba
Laos
Vietnam
North Korea
Bangladesh
Guinea-Bissou
Guyana
India

Other than Portugal, Europe doesn't have socialist countries.

.

Yet you reckon that Brazil is/was socialist.

[pErvinalia]

Sweden is a competitive free market in a mixed economy. Like social democracies in general, it is free market capitalism.

You've just contradicted yourself in the space of two sentences. It can't be both a mixed economy and free market capitalism. By definition it's a mix of capitalism and socialist elements.

[rainbow]

It depends what 42 means by "socialist countries". If he was thinking of the USSR of the past, I think he was right, to a degree - the Party bosses had vastly more wealth than the mass of the people, whose standard of living was fairly ordinary. If he means current social democracies in Europe, he is clearly wrong.

I'm referring to socialism:

China
Cuba
Laos
Vietnam
North Korea
Bangladesh
Guinea-Bissou
Guyana
India

Other than Portugal, Europe doesn't have socialist countries.

.

Yet you reckon that Brazil is/was socialist.

Yup, and Farty believes that India is socialist.

The only one on the list that I've been to.
An example of uncontrolled Capitalism, if anything.

[pErvinalia]

I've been to India and the markets are very free and there's no shortage of private property. Not sure where he pulled that one from.

[Forty Two]

What we had before Obamacare was the emergency room.

Did you live in the US before Obamacare? Your statement is just flat out false. Obviously, we had emergency rooms, but for the most part people went to doctors offices. And, this thread is not about Obamacare, so can you just fuck off to one of the Obamacare threads, unless you want to stay on topic.

[Forty Two]

Capitalists dont plan long term.

Incorrect. Capitalists do a lot of planning to avoid taxation, for instance.

Avoiding taxation is great. It means not paying what is not owed. I doubt you're too keen on paying more than the law says you owe, right?

[Alan B]

$14 trillion was the last figure I saw. But don't worry about that, there's welfare scroungers to hound.

Bugger! Left off the welfare scroungers.

Gotta hunt them down...