4 ms·

I make enough money that any swing to the left generally costs me more than I gain from it. I don't vote that way because of narrow self-interest, I do it becau

by badsock 11y ago

I make enough money that any swing to the left generally costs me more than I gain from it. I don't vote that way because of narrow self-interest, I do it because I want a better society to live in, and the majority of the hard data I've seen says that a redistributive system results in a better society.

oldmanjay 11y ago
The USSR notwithstanding. Or whatever it is China does.
- briandear 11y ago
  Redistribution results in one thing: equal levels of misery. Re: Cuba, Venenzuela, pre-Deng Xiaoping China, the Warsaw Pact countries, Vietnam. Standards of living are higher in capitalist countries, that's a fact. Aside from the insane, nobody in 1987 said, "Citizenship in the USSR would be so much I nicer than here in the U.S." Also interesting: the lines around US consulates to get immigrant visas-- they often extend around the block. Every single day. The line outside the Cuban embassy? None. If a redistributive economy is best, why aren't Latin Americans sneaking into Cuba instead of into the United States? Why aren't the Hondurans making the trip to Venenzuela instead of risking the danger of crossing through Mexico to get to the United States? I would offer that the poorest people in the world all want to go to the U.S. Not because of redistributive policies, but because of opportunity. You can't become rich in Cuba. You can't even start a business of any consequence there. You can't get capital loans. what's the incentive to innovate and work hard if the government is just going to steal your efforts. The government should have a regressive tax;bathe current tax system actually penalizes success and rewards failure.
  - badsock 11y ago
    I don't get how some people seem to think that there's only two possible political systems in the world. When I say redistributive, I mean things like progressive taxation, estate taxes, and basic income. In terms of median household income, the US places 6th in the world (and dropping), behind 5 countries whose taxation systems are significantly more progressive, so I dispute your claim of "equal levels of misery": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income I really do understand that incentives matter, and that progressive taxation is also progressively disincentivizing. However, the countries in the world that have a better quality of life for the majority of their people are to the left of America, not to the right. And I'm more swayed by data than abstract economic theories.
    - lotharbot 11y ago
      since your argument is about the effect of taxes, "median household income ... before deduction of taxes" (which is what the wikipedia page shows) isn't really a useful metric.
      - badsock 11y ago
        You are 100% correct, thanks! Here's a more appropriate link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-home_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-... The US is 7th, behind a very similar group of steep-progressive-tax countries. I would say an even better metric is median quality of life indicators (which tell a similar story of the US trailing left-wing countries) but that's an understandably more controversial index.
        lotharbot 11y ago
        A further nitpick: pretty much any index of this sort (particularly QoL) also has to be corrected for demographic trends -- the US absorbs around 20% of the world's total immigrant population [0], and the majority come from much poorer countries (#33 Mexico, not-even-ranked China, India, Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, etc. [1]) Those are countries with much worse economies, health care outcomes, education systems, etc. -- all of which have significant effects on both "median" and "average" numbers for measures of the US as a whole. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
        badsock 11y ago
        13% of the population of the US is immigrants; for Sweden it's 14%, and Norway it's 13% (source: Wikipedia).
        lotharbot 11y ago
  - notahacker 11y ago
    And redistributive Northern Europe is more miserable than non-redistributive sub-Saharan Africa? (Actually, on the subject of redistribution in notionally communist countries, it's pretty funny when you're sat round a beer stall in Saigon and its the citizens of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that are loudly condemning the amount of money that gets redistributed to the indolent poor in the US because the biggest handout most of their own unemployed ever get is a 10% cut on any state lottery tickets they can sell...)
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    The USA is very redistributive, but is less efficient in doing so in many ways than other countries. For example the health care system in america is significantly less economically efficient then the health care system of Canada, which causes a lot of human misery in the USA. To 'redistribute' wealth, you don't have to directly take money in the form of taxes and directly give it to others. You can also redistribute wealth with 2nd order effects such as rent control, or limiting the supply of doctors through unrelated expensive requirements and so on. Much of the economic inefficiency in the US's health care system comes from these 2nd order policies. So am I leftist if I want the US to adopt single payer health care and to cut a lot of it's negative 2nd order policies? Or am I conservative/libertarian for wanting it?
- badsock 11y ago
  This is basically the mirror argument of the "if you like libertarianism so much, why don't you move to Somalia?" argument that didgeoridoo rightly calls out in this thread. You don't have to be a Marxist to point out that often where there's well-funded, universally accessible mental health and addiction treatment programs crime has dropped significantly, for instance.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    I'm not arguing against social programs. I'm noting the fact that the grandest experiment in redistribution to date resulted in massive amounts of human misery.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      And being clever science-minded individuals, we can learn from that particular experiment and avoid some of its more egregious mistakes.
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
        Absolutely! And as clever science-minded individuals, it's important that we DO learn from it before praising the all-powerful curative nature of wealth redistribution just because it feels good.
        badsock 11y ago
        You're both arguing against a straw man (no one in this thread has even hinted that wealth redistribution is an "all-powerful curative"), and belittling people by implying that their reasoning is based on what "feels good" rather than logic and empiricism. It would make HN better if you tried to make more substantive arguments for your position.
        oldmanjay 11y ago
        What you responded to isn't even an argument, it's an agreement. If you feel belittled then that is on you. I have no particular obligation to ensure that you feel good about your position.
rebootthesystem 11y ago
I think the mistake you are making is to equate the left or left-leaning policies with with a better society. Comparing to other countries and looking at a ranking system in Wikipedia is also a mistake. We are not the same. You are not comparing the same things. There are societal, cultural and historical differences that have a huge impact on the results of any given policy. Also, our economy is much, much larger and diverse, in absolute terms, than that of most countries. The Nordic countries tend to be used as a model to support distributive socialist positions. The problem is that you just can't draw parallels between these nations and the US. Our system, our people, our politicians, our industry, our geography our social construct is very different from theirs. Here's an interesting paper from MIT discussing some of their challenges: http://economics.mit.edu/files/5726 http://economics.mit.edu/files/5726 Here's an excerpt: "The two phenomena taken together imply a tendency for total spending on welfare services to rise faster than GDP over time. As long as the production of these services remains in the public domain, or as long as they are tax-financed, the tax burden must also exhibit a tendency to rise continuously with GDP. This is a problem of the welfare state that we have been living with for decades now. However, starting from an already high tax burden, the efficiency cost of further increases in tax wedges will at some stage rise steeply, and high taxes will eventually cause serious harm to employment and growth. It seems to us that we may be close to a critical point where the deadweight losses due to high tax wedges and, particularly, their effect on labour force participation rates start to bite seriously. This is particularly so in view of some of the consequences of globalization and demographic change." And that's the problem. You can make it work for a while in some societies, but it is not a sustainable long-term model. Greece being a bad example of this. An almost trivial exercise using Excel can easily demonstrate how flawed these ideas tend to be. The Nordic countries can, to a large extent, live the way they live thanks to a lot of what has come out of "the west". Look around your home or office. All of what you see is the result of capitalism at work. From your clothes to your furniture, watch, phone, computer, car, etc. The life saving devices the Nordic countries use to treat their population would not have existed had the entire world operated as they do. They are all the result of capitalism. In other words, socialist societies, could be argued, have been able to keep the status quo thanks to capitalism. That's one view. The other is purely mathematical (the Excel spreadsheet model). I find that anyone who's run a non-trivial business for many years eventually gains an understanding that seems impossible to get as an employee or as a government worker. When you run a business you very quickly understand that income distribution is a formula for disaster. It is not sustainable and it does not, despite how it is being sold by the left, result in a better society. If you want a better society to live in you owe it to yourself to truly and objectively look at what the welfare state has done to our country. The war on poverty is decades old and our poor as more miserable than ever. The war on education, same thing. All of these government programs create more misery than wealth. Look at the contrast between a SpaceX and traditional aerospace contractors. Amazing! And, frankly, you don't get the full sense of the difference until you actually walk through SpaceX --as I have-- and see how different things are when compared to traditional government contractors. It's almost the difference between being motivated and being brain-dead. If you want a better society then you should want more freedom, more entrepreneurship, more SpaceX's and less of anything that has to do with the government controlling your life and your business. We want them to manage our country, maintain roads, enforce reasonable laws and regulations and create solid and productive relationships with other countries. If you truly want a better society you ought to demand results, efficiency, compassion, fairness, frugality, stability and a whole host of things out of our government that we have not had for over 50 years, regardless of which party has been in power. To be sure, the topic is complex, perhaps well beyond our comprehension. All I can ask is that you don't form your opinion based on what they tell you and a single world view. Look at what they have actually accomplished. I am not a Reagan fan-boy but the question he asked in a debate way-back-when is powerful and should be applied to any ideology from any party: Are you better off today than you were <insert date>. Look at Democrat and Republican promises and ideology and see what they've accomplished after decades and decades of being in power. Are poor people really better off today than fifty years ago due to government programs or due to progress created by a mostly free capitalist society. I think the answer is obvious, just remove everything they have and can do today that is a result of capitalism and you have the USSR. Just think. Don't follow. Lead.

by badsock 11y ago

oldmanjay 11y ago

The USSR notwithstanding. Or whatever it is China does.

briandear 11y ago
Redistribution results in one thing: equal levels of misery. Re: Cuba, Venenzuela, pre-Deng Xiaoping China, the Warsaw Pact countries, Vietnam. Standards of living are higher in capitalist countries, that's a fact. Aside from the insane, nobody in 1987 said, "Citizenship in the USSR would be so much I nicer than here in the U.S." Also interesting: the lines around US consulates to get immigrant visas-- they often extend around the block. Every single day. The line outside the Cuban embassy? None. If a redistributive economy is best, why aren't Latin Americans sneaking into Cuba instead of into the United States? Why aren't the Hondurans making the trip to Venenzuela instead of risking the danger of crossing through Mexico to get to the United States? I would offer that the poorest people in the world all want to go to the U.S. Not because of redistributive policies, but because of opportunity. You can't become rich in Cuba. You can't even start a business of any consequence there. You can't get capital loans. what's the incentive to innovate and work hard if the government is just going to steal your efforts. The government should have a regressive tax;bathe current tax system actually penalizes success and rewards failure.
- badsock 11y ago
  I don't get how some people seem to think that there's only two possible political systems in the world. When I say redistributive, I mean things like progressive taxation, estate taxes, and basic income. In terms of median household income, the US places 6th in the world (and dropping), behind 5 countries whose taxation systems are significantly more progressive, so I dispute your claim of "equal levels of misery": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income I really do understand that incentives matter, and that progressive taxation is also progressively disincentivizing. However, the countries in the world that have a better quality of life for the majority of their people are to the left of America, not to the right. And I'm more swayed by data than abstract economic theories.
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    since your argument is about the effect of taxes, "median household income ... before deduction of taxes" (which is what the wikipedia page shows) isn't really a useful metric.
    - badsock 11y ago
      You are 100% correct, thanks! Here's a more appropriate link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-home_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-... The US is 7th, behind a very similar group of steep-progressive-tax countries. I would say an even better metric is median quality of life indicators (which tell a similar story of the US trailing left-wing countries) but that's an understandably more controversial index.
      - lotharbot 11y ago
        A further nitpick: pretty much any index of this sort (particularly QoL) also has to be corrected for demographic trends -- the US absorbs around 20% of the world's total immigrant population [0], and the majority come from much poorer countries (#33 Mexico, not-even-ranked China, India, Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, etc. [1]) Those are countries with much worse economies, health care outcomes, education systems, etc. -- all of which have significant effects on both "median" and "average" numbers for measures of the US as a whole. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
        badsock 11y ago
        13% of the population of the US is immigrants; for Sweden it's 14%, and Norway it's 13% (source: Wikipedia).
        lotharbot 11y ago
- notahacker 11y ago
  And redistributive Northern Europe is more miserable than non-redistributive sub-Saharan Africa? (Actually, on the subject of redistribution in notionally communist countries, it's pretty funny when you're sat round a beer stall in Saigon and its the citizens of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that are loudly condemning the amount of money that gets redistributed to the indolent poor in the US because the biggest handout most of their own unemployed ever get is a 10% cut on any state lottery tickets they can sell...)
- mahyarm 11y ago
  The USA is very redistributive, but is less efficient in doing so in many ways than other countries. For example the health care system in america is significantly less economically efficient then the health care system of Canada, which causes a lot of human misery in the USA. To 'redistribute' wealth, you don't have to directly take money in the form of taxes and directly give it to others. You can also redistribute wealth with 2nd order effects such as rent control, or limiting the supply of doctors through unrelated expensive requirements and so on. Much of the economic inefficiency in the US's health care system comes from these 2nd order policies. So am I leftist if I want the US to adopt single payer health care and to cut a lot of it's negative 2nd order policies? Or am I conservative/libertarian for wanting it?
badsock 11y ago
This is basically the mirror argument of the "if you like libertarianism so much, why don't you move to Somalia?" argument that didgeoridoo rightly calls out in this thread. You don't have to be a Marxist to point out that often where there's well-funded, universally accessible mental health and addiction treatment programs crime has dropped significantly, for instance.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  I'm not arguing against social programs. I'm noting the fact that the grandest experiment in redistribution to date resulted in massive amounts of human misery.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    And being clever science-minded individuals, we can learn from that particular experiment and avoid some of its more egregious mistakes.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Absolutely! And as clever science-minded individuals, it's important that we DO learn from it before praising the all-powerful curative nature of wealth redistribution just because it feels good.
      - badsock 11y ago
        You're both arguing against a straw man (no one in this thread has even hinted that wealth redistribution is an "all-powerful curative"), and belittling people by implying that their reasoning is based on what "feels good" rather than logic and empiricism. It would make HN better if you tried to make more substantive arguments for your position.
        oldmanjay 11y ago
        What you responded to isn't even an argument, it's an agreement. If you feel belittled then that is on you. I have no particular obligation to ensure that you feel good about your position.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

I think the mistake you are making is to equate the left or left-leaning policies with with a better society. Comparing to other countries and looking at a ranking system in Wikipedia is also a mistake. We are not the same. You are not comparing the same things. There are societal, cultural and historical differences that have a huge impact on the results of any given policy. Also, our economy is much, much larger and diverse, in absolute terms, than that of most countries. The Nordic countries tend to be used as a model to support distributive socialist positions. The problem is that you just can't draw parallels between these nations and the US. Our system, our people, our politicians, our industry, our geography our social construct is very different from theirs. Here's an interesting paper from MIT discussing some of their challenges: http://economics.mit.edu/files/5726 http://economics.mit.edu/files/5726 Here's an excerpt: "The two phenomena taken together imply a tendency for total spending on welfare services to rise faster than GDP over time. As long as the production of these services remains in the public domain, or as long as they are tax-financed, the tax burden must also exhibit a tendency to rise continuously with GDP. This is a problem of the welfare state that we have been living with for decades now. However, starting from an already high tax burden, the efficiency cost of further increases in tax wedges will at some stage rise steeply, and high taxes will eventually cause serious harm to employment and growth. It seems to us that we may be close to a critical point where the deadweight losses due to high tax wedges and, particularly, their effect on labour force participation rates start to bite seriously. This is particularly so in view of some of the consequences of globalization and demographic change." And that's the problem. You can make it work for a while in some societies, but it is not a sustainable long-term model. Greece being a bad example of this. An almost trivial exercise using Excel can easily demonstrate how flawed these ideas tend to be. The Nordic countries can, to a large extent, live the way they live thanks to a lot of what has come out of "the west". Look around your home or office. All of what you see is the result of capitalism at work. From your clothes to your furniture, watch, phone, computer, car, etc. The life saving devices the Nordic countries use to treat their population would not have existed had the entire world operated as they do. They are all the result of capitalism. In other words, socialist societies, could be argued, have been able to keep the status quo thanks to capitalism. That's one view. The other is purely mathematical (the Excel spreadsheet model). I find that anyone who's run a non-trivial business for many years eventually gains an understanding that seems impossible to get as an employee or as a government worker. When you run a business you very quickly understand that income distribution is a formula for disaster. It is not sustainable and it does not, despite how it is being sold by the left, result in a better society. If you want a better society to live in you owe it to yourself to truly and objectively look at what the welfare state has done to our country. The war on poverty is decades old and our poor as more miserable than ever. The war on education, same thing. All of these government programs create more misery than wealth. Look at the contrast between a SpaceX and traditional aerospace contractors. Amazing! And, frankly, you don't get the full sense of the difference until you actually walk through SpaceX --as I have-- and see how different things are when compared to traditional government contractors. It's almost the difference between being motivated and being brain-dead. If you want a better society then you should want more freedom, more entrepreneurship, more SpaceX's and less of anything that has to do with the government controlling your life and your business. We want them to manage our country, maintain roads, enforce reasonable laws and regulations and create solid and productive relationships with other countries. If you truly want a better society you ought to demand results, efficiency, compassion, fairness, frugality, stability and a whole host of things out of our government that we have not had for over 50 years, regardless of which party has been in power. To be sure, the topic is complex, perhaps well beyond our comprehension. All I can ask is that you don't form your opinion based on what they tell you and a single world view. Look at what they have actually accomplished. I am not a Reagan fan-boy but the question he asked in a debate way-back-when is powerful and should be applied to any ideology from any party: Are you better off today than you were <insert date>. Look at Democrat and Republican promises and ideology and see what they've accomplished after decades and decades of being in power. Are poor people really better off today than fifty years ago due to government programs or due to progress created by a mostly free capitalist society. I think the answer is obvious, just remove everything they have and can do today that is a result of capitalism and you have the USSR. Just think. Don't follow. Lead.