I would probably do a little of both amongst other things. I have no problem with restricting things that impact the community negatively, whether that’s an unhealthy fast food chain that doesn’t give back to the community or a strip club next door to a school. Agree with you 100% on promoting healthy alternatives.
I wouldn’t say that ghettos exist because of an elaborate “conspiracy” either, but I would say they exist because of deliberate and institutional polices that benefited the wealthy or privileged in some way. Impoverished neighborhoods were/are preventable, and they’re existence is not the fault of their residents.
Can you believe it? Hitler gave them the choice: Truly progressive taxation, a more egalitarian, progressive society, and a transparent democracy, or death in a concentration camp.
Quoting from “Tea Party Nation” are we? Of course, in their view, “Truly progressive taxation, a more egalitarian, progressive society, and a transparent democracy” are evils beyond measure. Really.
Goodthings? I honestly cannot fathom how you can possibly imagine that increasing human lifespan would ever result in anything but more horror and suffering. The only good thing you can say about the majority of world leaders is that at least they will eventually die. The only solace of our most downtrodden is that at least they will eventually rest in peace.
I mean, I admire and marvel at your optimism, but death really is the gift of man.
In NYC right now, De Blasio is trying to move through truly universal publicly-funded pre-k. In order to accomplish this, he’s proposing a 3% tax increase on the wealthy (my details/numbers may be off EDIT: and indeed they were, see reply below from @helenaglory)
My boss sits on the board of the work-group making this happen. We’re a private/public non-profit, and her full time job is more or less looking for grants and funding for our projects, and as such, occasionally shows signs of a little bit of wealth-proximity sunstroke. In a meeting a few weeks ago, she told a story about how she was surprised to learn that people who have"dedicated their lives to children" (read: chose “children” as their charity/tax shelter/self-congratulatory exercise…) are offended by the idea of this tax increase, and feel that their contributions aren’t recognized or appreciated. I kept waiting for her (She’s a remarkably intelligent and dedicated leader) to shake her head at the silliness, but she just closed with “I never thought about it from their point of view.” I almost bit through my lip. The arrogance of people involved in charitable giving through large foundations, hand-selecting the experimental projects they like, and having non-profits who rely on them to constantly bend and twist to fit the really important work into the values of the givers is incredibly frustrating and disheartening. That not being able to be congratulated and have their names slapped on things, but rather be required to contribute to a stable and sustainable system of support is the height of toddler-dom. The idea that charity of this kind is the same as taking responsibility for the way the world is just grinds my gears.
The solution there is generally defaults and convenience rather than ‘You can’t do this’ while leaving yummy tempting things as the default and most convenient option.
Some would argue that marketing is part of the problem there, and I would wholeheartedly agree as well.
Ah, so people should give to charities that YOU think are worthwhile. Their charities are just stupid and you could spend their money better than they?
You’re missing the point. The same amount of money spread throughout the middle class makes a huge difference, because all those people are going to spend some of it on a new washing machine, or a good meal in a restaurant. A billionaire doesn’t need that many washing machines, and can’t eat that many meals. They just can’t spend enough money to make a difference. A large and healthy middle class is the best indicator of economic stability and long-term growth. The middle class are the REAL job creators, because they create the demand- not the 1%.
Yeah, and “too big to fail” corporations can do a risk assessment on their actions- $450 million in profits against a $20 million fine? No one goes to jail? A no brainer, really.
Given that human capital (education and experience) wouldn’t be wasted so quickly, your incredulous response isn’t warranted. Raising and educating a human is expensive, which is why immigration is never bad, economically, when analyzed in hindsight.
Actually, on a per-dollar-spent basis it’s the recently unemployed that tops the benefit ratio list there, the working poor and single parents also tend to cycle resources through the system fairly quickly too. There are a couple of other groups that I can’t recall offhand that fall into the same general category.
The middle class (collectively, given how diverse a group that is) is still a net positive there and pretty close though. I don’t mean to nit-pick but I do think we need to give those for who middle class looks like a dream their credit.
Point taken. The middle class should be a much broader category and a lot more people should be in it. That is, it shouldn’t be a “dream” to anyone except a very few, very unfortunately situated people. And those people should have a well-funded safety net to count on until they can move up. And they will be able to move up when a very healthy middle class exists. When all the money is pooled at the top, and very little is coming back to the middle, it makes the chances to move up from the very bottom very slim.
The middle class will always have more discretionary spending income, and should have the numbers (and confidence in the future) to make that discretionary income actually be felt in the market place. The extremely poor can only spend the very little that they have on subsistence.
I’m tired of these comparisons to the Nazis. Forget Godwin’s law for a moment: This kind of behavior is contemptible in its own right. I think it diminishes that fact when you turn ethics into a matching game.
Does capitalism have to be continually growing? Maybe. This might be a case of “hindsight is 20/20” and we just haven’t reached the end of the line yet. In other words, capitalism looks like the best system for enhancing productivity, but only because we haven’t seen where it will ultimately lead, and if it turns out to leave us with a planet that’s been chewed up and spit out, where every water source is contaminated and the soil is too barren to support plants, well . . . is that really a good system?
Not “maybe”. Yes, capital has to be continually growing, or it collapses. Capitalism is a political-economic system that focuses on accumulating capital. If you’ve got a political-economic system that isn’t focused on accumulating capital, it’s not capitalism. This isn’t a matter of quibbling over dictionary definitions. This is a problem of elementary conceptual confusion – and one that’s astonishingly common.
You can’t appreciate the complexity of the problem without first attaining clarity about elementary concepts.
Frankly, one of the really pathetic things about contemporary politics is that the supremacy of capitalism is rarely questioned in mainstream circles. This is relatively new; while capitalism has been a major force for about four centuries, as recently as 1861, Abraham Lincoln condemned capitalism and capitalists in a State of the Union address, (even as he was prosecuting the war that established the supremacy of capitalism in the US).
