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| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
The reason for this is that 5% of the world's population is responsible for 95% of the world's production. So under those circumstances, yes, they do deserve it, and the inequality in wealth is matched by an inequality in contribution.
What your political sect also fails to realize is that the government is not a transparent entity. When your taxes are up at over 65% (including income taxes, consumption taxes and all the other crap we get taxed for), then when you stop to consider that (a) 95% of the wealth is in the upper tax bracket and (b) the upper tax bracket is taxed at about 50%, then it follows (c) that the government in fact controls about 70-80% of the wealth.
And given that the government is a very small elite, less than 1%, then under heavy Socialism you have 1% of the population controlling 70-80% of the wealth, which is hardly any less of an inequality than what you'll get within a free market. The government may choose to redistribute that income in some way but it does not change the fact that they control that immense wealth - and unlike a free market, the government does not produce anything for that wealth (they simply take it) and they are not accountable for it. The government is performing voluntarily redistribution of wealth, same as the corporate sector would do in a free market; the only difference is that the government has no incentive to do a good job of it.
The best economic policy the government ever implemented was the tax-deductible charitable donation system, because it encourages wealthy people to VOLUNTARILY donate their money to the "less fortunate" instead of allowing those less fortunate people to steal the money from people who rightfully earned it.
With your precious socialism, you're taking 70-80% of the wealth and making it "stale" - that is, it's spent in such a way that there's no return on the investment. The other 20-30% could be invested but is more likely to be spent simply on living expenses because socialism creates a state of working poor. So you're maintaining an effectively static and finite amount of wealth on a growing population, which inevitably leads to any or all of three things: bankrupt social programs, lower wages and PPP, and higher unemployment.
For an economy to function correctly, the tax burden has to be low enough to support population and foreign market growth (that is to say, the rate of "capitalism" has to be equal to or greater than the rate of consumption growth). The issue isn't equality, it's SUSTAINABILITY. In general we should have a tax burden of 40% or below, and Canada and most of Europe is WAY above this mark - which means that even if the economy is doing great now, it can't last. |
Social programs get shit on way more in a free market society than they would in a socialist society. I fully understand that socialism has it's faults, I just like to point out the problems that our capitalist driven world has.
The current government, although not perfect, does put a fair chunk of our tax money back into social programs. Taxes are paid for the benefit of the nation, although not practically cause of government irresponsibility, but in theory.
Corporations these days are demanding tax relief or threaten to leave. The government becomes cornered, virtually told what to do, and makes the sacrifice, giving corporations much lower taxes, limiting the cash flow into government hands, in turn limiting the flow into social programs. Social programs fail. Interestingly, corporations create these "social programs" of their own to "give back to the community" (ronald mcdonald house, TimHortons camps, etc.), but ironically, their charitable expenditures are only a fraction of what would otherwise be spent if they paid full taxes. It's nothing more than a publicity grab to give people the impression that these companies are righteous. This is all mentioned in the movie Corporation. These "tax deductable charitable donations" have become a joke amongst the corporate world and they'll continue to laugh all the way to the bank at the expense of the social programs. As corporations grow, so do their power to control our government, and I'd much rather have the people control than corporations.
Another note against free markets, I'm very much against privatization. Since companies are simply driven by profits, they would not operate at a loss no matter what, even if their service is very much needed by the population. Profits come first, the service gets cut. Public sectors would maintain operations, even if they were at a loss, simply to provide the public the goods they need. I feel there's no way that Canada's social welfare would be better if we let it run laissez-faire.
The government can still promote growth in many ways, but for some reason, the current government doesn't promote internal growth by letting in and allowing all this international competition to take over our markets. How many big box strip malls have you seen spring up in virtually every suburb across Canada? How many of those stores are purely Canadian? Canada's biggest Video Store chains (Rogers and Jumbo Video) are struggling because of Blockbuster. Hell, Labatt breweries is now owned by American investors, and Tim Hortons makes money for Wendy's. Canada's money is filtering itself out of our country. Taxes are not the only thing a government can do to change the shape of Canadian markets.
Karim
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a baby seal walks into a club....
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