4 ms·

The whole 'government doing anything is a slippery slope to socialism' is such a worn cliche. It's much more likely that having a large, disadvantaged populatio

The whole 'government doing anything is a slippery slope to socialism' is such a worn cliche. It's much more likely that having a large, disadvantaged population thats cut off from class mobility or basic life necessities is what encourages people to start dragging landowners into the streets. There's a reason why the Great Depression led to a number of relief programs - the threat of a soviet-style communist uprising was pretty high.

m0zg 7y ago
There also were some pretty great "relief programs" in the USSR at the time, where millions of people were relieved of their food and left to die of starvation. A government powerful enough to give you everything is also necessarily powerful enough to take everything. And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to. As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-poverty-rate-fell-lowest-since-while-uninsured-rate-rose-census-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-povert...
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Repeating things doesn’t make them true. People aren’t asking for the government to do everything, they’re asking for affordable healthcare and education
  - m0zg 7y ago
    But that's not what the government can actually deliver. All the government can really do is take money from one set of people under threat of violence, and give it to another set of people. That's it. It's a parasite. It doesn't produce anything. If you believe in the law of conservation of energy, adding government to any process will only make it less efficient. See e.g. US student loans and what that did to college tuition.
    - andrepd 7y ago
      Governments obviously do more than what your absurd statement implies. They are democratically controlled veichles of power. One of the things they do is some measure of redistribution of wealth, attempting to counter the capitalist tendency for wealth concentration. Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.
      - m0zg 7y ago
        The US is factually a better place to live than most other countries, in spite of the high "inequality".
        JetSpiegel 7y ago
        For subset of Americans, sure.

m0zg 7y ago

There also were some pretty great "relief programs" in the USSR at the time, where millions of people were relieved of their food and left to die of starvation. A government powerful enough to give you everything is also necessarily powerful enough to take everything. And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to. As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-poverty-rate-fell-lowest-since-while-uninsured-rate-rose-census-says/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-povert...

notfromhere 7y ago
Repeating things doesn’t make them true. People aren’t asking for the government to do everything, they’re asking for affordable healthcare and education
- m0zg 7y ago
  But that's not what the government can actually deliver. All the government can really do is take money from one set of people under threat of violence, and give it to another set of people. That's it. It's a parasite. It doesn't produce anything. If you believe in the law of conservation of energy, adding government to any process will only make it less efficient. See e.g. US student loans and what that did to college tuition.
  - andrepd 7y ago
    Governments obviously do more than what your absurd statement implies. They are democratically controlled veichles of power. One of the things they do is some measure of redistribution of wealth, attempting to counter the capitalist tendency for wealth concentration. Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      The US is factually a better place to live than most other countries, in spite of the high "inequality".
      - JetSpiegel 7y ago
        For subset of Americans, sure.