I was told growing up that I won’t like socialism once I have to start paying taxes. I pay taxes, but would much rather pay way more taxes to have socialism. Including paying for social programs I wouldn’t use like welfare, free tuition etc.
Once I qualified for work pharmacare that was great! But I remember how much it sucked not having any health insurance. Yeah I bootstrapped it, but I’d hope we would grow up as a species and not have to have so much bootstrapping, since there are better ways at this point.
Socialism is the idea that means of production are owned publicly with how and why people work being decided democratically. Creating a social safety net via taxes while the means of production are privately owned is still capitalism.
The fundamental question is what is the purpose of work, and why we work in the first place. Some work is necessary work that makes our society function. This is what we were referring to as essential jobs at the start of the pandemic. These jobs produce direct value such as food production, creation of housing, education, healthcare, and so on. This is known as production of use value.
However, there is a whole other set of jobs which only exist for the purpose of producing capital with any social value being largely incidental. These jobs don’t have any purpose beyond that, and can often be harmful to society. An example of such a job would be a corporate lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. This job is a net negative for our society, and we’d all be better off if these people could just stay home and do nothing at all. There’s a great book called Bullshit Jobs on the subject.
One of core problems with capitalism is that it primarily optimizes for creation of trade value, and use value is largely produced incidentally. The reason most people have to work is not because it’s actually necessary or useful, but because it creates value for the capital owning class. Most of the people end up being treated as nothing more than resources for wealth creation. This is especially clear in US where health coverage is tied to employment. This is basically explicitly saying that human life has no value beyond creating wealth for the business owners.
Companies are also run as totalitarian dictatorships where the company decides when you work, where you work, how you work, what you’re allowed to say, how you dress, and so on. Many companies even monitor everything you do while at work. So, people are spending majority of their waking lives in an Orwellian nightmare.
I highly recommend reading this article explaining the relationship between socialism and communism.
While not completely socialists, countries like Sweeden pay very high taxes and seem to be happy about it as they dont have to worry and plan for the next catastrophe that may or may not arise.
I have heard discusions where people talk how their pay is less then those of us in the US, but they can spend more. That sounds good to me.
Somehow it’s ok to spend 100s of billions of tax money on military hardware that no one needs or wants for the sole purpose of keeping those factories going and the towns employed, but spending half as much on a basic income for those people with no middleman taking a cut is wasteful and unreasonable.
No I wouldn’t be okay with paying high taxes I don’t think the government should take any more of my pay than is necessary to provide roads, police, courts , firemen and workfare. Taking of your health is your personal responsibility you should bear the consequences of any decisions you make regarding your body if you wilfully choose to neglect your body then society shouldn’t be forced to shoulder the cost with one exception that being if you’re having a rough time through no fault of your own I believe some state care should be provided. The government is not your personal caretaker it should provide an environment where everyone is provided with the tools that is needed to provide for themselves but it shouldn’t provide everything for you.
I hate ayn rand as much as I hate marx they’re both the definition of Dunning Krueger to me. I find most of the communists annoying like if you’re one that realises that all countries calling themselves that aren’t communist at all and are just oppressive regimes then I think you’re ok even if i still think you’re stupid to think a real communist society can exist same with anarchists we both agree that governments are the greatest source of oppression mankind has ever known but we disagree over property rights and I think a few other things as well
While I would not have formulated it this way, I agree that government run social welfare programmes run a high risk of introducing a form of serfdom through the backdoor (with best intentions of course /s). Especially when coupled with “reforms” that try to force people back into work when they become unemployed.
If the majority of your income is directly deducted at source and what you have left you need to pay for food and rent, how exactly can you claim to be a free person and not a serf in a neofeudal society? But this is the reality for many if not most people in Europe.
The reality in the whole developed world is that of having a strong social welfare service while having a military spending that’s just the bare minimum needed. Priorities I guess.
How can Americans claim that their capital slavery is freedom is beyond me; but I find amusing that they look at Europe claiming they are living in a feudal society while not seeing how dependant they are on the capital.
I’m happy to live without the risk of going bankruptcy for going to the hospital. Can you say the same?
I happen to be European, so not sure why you assume this is a viewpoint only US Americans would have?
Regarding health insurance… I agree the American system is insane, but the same time I would rather pay less for basic health insurance that covers emergency needs than being automatically enrolled in a mandatory comprehensive insurance scheme that eats up a significant portion of my total income (and the service still kinda sucks).
Thanks to that significant amount, if you happen to be diabetic, you don’t have to pay hundreds for a single insulin dose. Just to talk about a single thing. But there are many others. What do you consider “emergency needs”? A car accident? Good, but what about a long term illness? Like cancer. Or what about paid sick leave?
The problem is that you are assuming that you will never need the system. And that is a very risky stance.
Besides, considering US Americans pay hundreds in insurance anyway (and then they still have all the misery of their system), are you sure you’re paying too much for your public healthcare system?
I think those things should be covered by a non-mandatory supplementary insurance.
Yes it is a certain risk, but I would still prefer if people had a choice. Not having any financial resources for other things is also a big risk and might even cause health issues that you would not have if you could afford a more healthy lifestyle instead of being forced to pay into a mandatory insurance scheme.
US Americans pay hundreds per month on their health insurance. And it doesn’t mean they have “free” healthcare after they pay those hundreds. In fact, they usually have to pay thousands in case of need (the difference is that with insurance they pay few thousands instead of hundreds of thousands). The reason our system is cheaper is because it doesn’t operate for profit.
If we had a system in which people doesn’t have a mandatory, they would need to pick too: between health insurance (that would be more expensive than the mandatory) or healthier lifestyle. And many would still pick the insurance because the alternative is what we see in the US. People would simply end up paying more than they pay now for the mandatory plan.
The US system is uniquely bad, not sure why you keep going back to that as the supposed alternative.
There are many countries that have basic government run insurance (Canada for example) that don’t cost an arm and a leg in monthly payments and still cover the most important stuff.
Yeah I wish there was an offer like that in my home country. 130€ does not even cover half of the monthly payment for mandatory health insurance there (but it depends a bit on your income).
When i was a kid i’d always hear that communism was when: what everyone had was the same, and was nothing. I’d always been confused by this because it seemed to me like that would give people a common incentive.
To the naive question of cost, i have told people that i’d gladly give the government my entire paycheck if they genuinely took care of all of my needs. I’m not much of a consumer and i never have been, and i’d likely have a much higher quality of living if that were the case.
Fortunately if you look at the real world nothing like that is necessary, any sort of actual socialist economy takes care of its own needs practically automatically. But I’d still do it, if it worked like that.
We already pay enough taxes to support such a system.
Unfortunately… governments spend the money on military instead of social-services.
Personally, I’d love if it were possible to choose where my taxes go as well.
Healthcare, Education, Transit, etc. all of which could be improved upon.
Yes, but waste not. Many government programs utterly fail in bringing any help for the people who need it. Some even outright prevent help.
I have no issue with paying taxes if they are allocated right. For a long time they were paying for two unlawful conflicts.
Socialism is the idea that means of production are owned publicly with how and why people work being decided democratically. Creating a social safety net via taxes while the means of production are privately owned is still capitalism.
The fundamental question is what is the purpose of work, and why we work in the first place. Some work is necessary work that makes our society function. This is what we were referring to as essential jobs at the start of the pandemic. These jobs produce direct value such as food production, creation of housing, education, healthcare, and so on. This is known as production of use value.
However, there is a whole other set of jobs which only exist for the purpose of producing capital with any social value being largely incidental. These jobs don’t have any purpose beyond that, and can often be harmful to society. An example of such a job would be a corporate lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. This job is a net negative for our society, and we’d all be better off if these people could just stay home and do nothing at all. There’s a great book called Bullshit Jobs on the subject.
One of core problems with capitalism is that it primarily optimizes for creation of trade value, and use value is largely produced incidentally. The reason most people have to work is not because it’s actually necessary or useful, but because it creates value for the capital owning class. Most of the people end up being treated as nothing more than resources for wealth creation. This is especially clear in US where health coverage is tied to employment. This is basically explicitly saying that human life has no value beyond creating wealth for the business owners.
Companies are also run as totalitarian dictatorships where the company decides when you work, where you work, how you work, what you’re allowed to say, how you dress, and so on. Many companies even monitor everything you do while at work. So, people are spending majority of their waking lives in an Orwellian nightmare.
I highly recommend reading this article explaining the relationship between socialism and communism.
While not completely socialists, countries like Sweeden pay very high taxes and seem to be happy about it as they dont have to worry and plan for the next catastrophe that may or may not arise.
I have heard discusions where people talk how their pay is less then those of us in the US, but they can spend more. That sounds good to me.
It’s naive to talk about more or less taxes.
Somehow it’s ok to spend 100s of billions of tax money on military hardware that no one needs or wants for the sole purpose of keeping those factories going and the towns employed, but spending half as much on a basic income for those people with no middleman taking a cut is wasteful and unreasonable.
There’s literally a war happening right now. Are you not at least a little bit glad that the US spends more on its military than Russia does?
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Is the US participating in the war?
Their economy sure is.
No I wouldn’t be okay with paying high taxes I don’t think the government should take any more of my pay than is necessary to provide roads, police, courts , firemen and workfare. Taking of your health is your personal responsibility you should bear the consequences of any decisions you make regarding your body if you wilfully choose to neglect your body then society shouldn’t be forced to shoulder the cost with one exception that being if you’re having a rough time through no fault of your own I believe some state care should be provided. The government is not your personal caretaker it should provide an environment where everyone is provided with the tools that is needed to provide for themselves but it shouldn’t provide everything for you.
An Ayn Rand (libertarianism) fan on Lemmy.ml? Srs question, do you find all the communists and left-anarchists here annoying?
I hate ayn rand as much as I hate marx they’re both the definition of Dunning Krueger to me. I find most of the communists annoying like if you’re one that realises that all countries calling themselves that aren’t communist at all and are just oppressive regimes then I think you’re ok even if i still think you’re stupid to think a real communist society can exist same with anarchists we both agree that governments are the greatest source of oppression mankind has ever known but we disagree over property rights and I think a few other things as well
Very interesting!
While I would not have formulated it this way, I agree that government run social welfare programmes run a high risk of introducing a form of serfdom through the backdoor (with best intentions of course /s). Especially when coupled with “reforms” that try to force people back into work when they become unemployed.
If the majority of your income is directly deducted at source and what you have left you need to pay for food and rent, how exactly can you claim to be a free person and not a serf in a neofeudal society? But this is the reality for many if not most people in Europe.
The reality in the whole developed world is that of having a strong social welfare service while having a military spending that’s just the bare minimum needed. Priorities I guess.
How can Americans claim that their capital slavery is freedom is beyond me; but I find amusing that they look at Europe claiming they are living in a feudal society while not seeing how dependant they are on the capital.
I’m happy to live without the risk of going bankruptcy for going to the hospital. Can you say the same?
I happen to be European, so not sure why you assume this is a viewpoint only US Americans would have?
Regarding health insurance… I agree the American system is insane, but the same time I would rather pay less for basic health insurance that covers emergency needs than being automatically enrolled in a mandatory comprehensive insurance scheme that eats up a significant portion of my total income (and the service still kinda sucks).
Thanks to that significant amount, if you happen to be diabetic, you don’t have to pay hundreds for a single insulin dose. Just to talk about a single thing. But there are many others. What do you consider “emergency needs”? A car accident? Good, but what about a long term illness? Like cancer. Or what about paid sick leave?
The problem is that you are assuming that you will never need the system. And that is a very risky stance.
Besides, considering US Americans pay hundreds in insurance anyway (and then they still have all the misery of their system), are you sure you’re paying too much for your public healthcare system?
I think those things should be covered by a non-mandatory supplementary insurance.
Yes it is a certain risk, but I would still prefer if people had a choice. Not having any financial resources for other things is also a big risk and might even cause health issues that you would not have if you could afford a more healthy lifestyle instead of being forced to pay into a mandatory insurance scheme.
US Americans pay hundreds per month on their health insurance. And it doesn’t mean they have “free” healthcare after they pay those hundreds. In fact, they usually have to pay thousands in case of need (the difference is that with insurance they pay few thousands instead of hundreds of thousands). The reason our system is cheaper is because it doesn’t operate for profit.
If we had a system in which people doesn’t have a mandatory, they would need to pick too: between health insurance (that would be more expensive than the mandatory) or healthier lifestyle. And many would still pick the insurance because the alternative is what we see in the US. People would simply end up paying more than they pay now for the mandatory plan.
The US system is uniquely bad, not sure why you keep going back to that as the supposed alternative.
There are many countries that have basic government run insurance (Canada for example) that don’t cost an arm and a leg in monthly payments and still cover the most important stuff.
I pay 130€ a year for my health insurance in Belgium it’s not significant at all.
There are a lot of variation across countries it’s a gross reduction to talk about the Us vs. Europe.
Yeah I wish there was an offer like that in my home country. 130€ does not even cover half of the monthly payment for mandatory health insurance there (but it depends a bit on your income).
When i was a kid i’d always hear that communism was when: what everyone had was the same, and was nothing. I’d always been confused by this because it seemed to me like that would give people a common incentive.
To the naive question of cost, i have told people that i’d gladly give the government my entire paycheck if they genuinely took care of all of my needs. I’m not much of a consumer and i never have been, and i’d likely have a much higher quality of living if that were the case.
Fortunately if you look at the real world nothing like that is necessary, any sort of actual socialist economy takes care of its own needs practically automatically. But I’d still do it, if it worked like that.