6 ms·

It means that if I'm doing very well for myself, I'll give up a bit more than I would've in a strictly capitalist country. Instead of paying 25-30% tax, I'

It means that if I'm doing very well for myself, I'll give up a bit more than I would've in a strictly capitalist country. Instead of paying 25-30% tax, I'll pay 50%. And that doesn't matter. If I'm earning 300k+ in a year, I can miss it. In return I know that my life is safe from being destroyed, regardless of social class I'm born in or will move to. My parents don't have any money? It doesn't matter, education is free. If I have or get some disability, I will be taken care of. If I get injured, I will be taken care of. If I get sick, I will be taken care of. By the community. Here, I'm only referring to the sensible, politically astute contingent of Americans who yet don't warm up to socialism or even high taxation for that matter. I'm not talking about the impulsively right-leaning lot here. I think such Americans genuinely question if such a smooth trade off - between paying a good chunk more in taxes and a proportionate increase in the standard of living of those on whom that increase in taxation is supposed to benefit - is ever possible in a government that is rife with dysfunction, graft and bewildering inefficiencies at every level. The examples of this present themselves at regular frequencies - say the botched roll out of the healthcare website [1] a few years ago - in the glare of the American media, which don't exactly help either. Further exacerbating this problem is that bright young Americans [2] don't want to serve in the public sector in similar rates as in Northern Europe. [1] Obamacare Website Costs Exceed $2 Billion, Study Finds http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-website-costs-exceed-2-billion-study-finds http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare-... [2] 'Pro-Government' Millennials Take Government Jobs, Discover They Suck, Move to the Private Sector http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/17/millennials-take-government-jobs-discove http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/17/millennials-take-governmen...

x5n1 11y ago
As far as I recall the Obama Healthcare Website was not developed by the government. It was developed by a private company. The front end was developed by Development Seed and the backend was developed by a multi-national. That's what I mean about propaganda. To say this is the doing of socialism is pure propaganda.
- afsina 11y ago
  As long as it is state funded I see no difference. I bet if it would have been developed by the `state engineers` it would even fail worse.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    If it was State run then you could say hey the State failed to deliver. This was a private company which failed to deliver. And the private company, if you actually look it up subcontracted it, so you can't say hey there was no private Capitalist oversight over the project, you know greed to make things run efficiently.
    - TheBeardKing 11y ago
      But even subcontractors on government projects are subject to the same limitations as the prime contractor. So many limitations and increased overhead are imposed on government contractors, it's not surprising government projects fail in ways a similar private project would not with similar funding.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    State engineers we do have (Army Corps of Engineers, NASA) often do a fantastic job.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Government IT has a huge impedance mismatch in the interface from the government agency to the contractors. Specific to "Obamacare"/the ACA, America missed the move to "socialized medicine" immediately post-WWII. Europe had significant disruption because of seven years of tanks and bombers. There was during the Truman Administration a "wage and price freeze" in place to avoid a phantom anticipated inflation. Employer-based insurance and other "perks" were given tax protected status instead. And for a long time, this turned out to be a more effective system. But accumulated rent-seeking and other problems rendered it less cost effective over time.
  - 11y ago
jpt4 11y ago
> If I get sick, I will be taken care of. By the community. Socialism (miniscule s) in the small is charity, forms of which even the most rigid egoist (e.g. Rand) can find ideologically palatable: intentional, contractual communities are communities nonetheless, and generally contain mutual aid clauses. Scale matters, however, and somewhere between 150 and 100 million other persons, the charity co-ordinating entity (i.e. the governing power) becomes a beast unto itself, the contract becomes blurred, and Socialism in the large imposes itself on ideological dissenters with the force of the local violence monopolist. If nation-states were actually communities caring for their own, the philosophical concerns of consent and compulsion, and the pragmatic concerns of checks and balances, would be much reduced. I await the Maneki Neko experiment that could imbue a society of great magnitude with equally great cohesion.
- dTal 11y ago
  >I await the Maneki Neko experiment that could imbue a society of great magnitude with equally great cohesion. That'd be the internet. We just need to figure out the right software to run on it.
intopieces 11y ago
> is ever possible in a government that is rife with dysfunction, graft and bewildering inefficiencies at every level. This is a fair point, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the presence of a significant group of politicians in congress who have made their entire careers out of sabotaging government programs. Remember, Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare at every turn, even taking it to the Supreme Court - twice. So to say the system can never work because it hasn't worked is confusing the cause for the effect, it seems.

x5n1 11y ago

As far as I recall the Obama Healthcare Website was not developed by the government. It was developed by a private company. The front end was developed by Development Seed and the backend was developed by a multi-national. That's what I mean about propaganda. To say this is the doing of socialism is pure propaganda.

afsina 11y ago
As long as it is state funded I see no difference. I bet if it would have been developed by the `state engineers` it would even fail worse.
- x5n1 11y ago
  If it was State run then you could say hey the State failed to deliver. This was a private company which failed to deliver. And the private company, if you actually look it up subcontracted it, so you can't say hey there was no private Capitalist oversight over the project, you know greed to make things run efficiently.
  - TheBeardKing 11y ago
    But even subcontractors on government projects are subject to the same limitations as the prime contractor. So many limitations and increased overhead are imposed on government contractors, it's not surprising government projects fail in ways a similar private project would not with similar funding.
- rayiner 11y ago
  State engineers we do have (Army Corps of Engineers, NASA) often do a fantastic job.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Government IT has a huge impedance mismatch in the interface from the government agency to the contractors. Specific to "Obamacare"/the ACA, America missed the move to "socialized medicine" immediately post-WWII. Europe had significant disruption because of seven years of tanks and bombers. There was during the Truman Administration a "wage and price freeze" in place to avoid a phantom anticipated inflation. Employer-based insurance and other "perks" were given tax protected status instead. And for a long time, this turned out to be a more effective system. But accumulated rent-seeking and other problems rendered it less cost effective over time.
- 11y ago

jpt4 11y ago

> If I get sick, I will be taken care of. By the community. Socialism (miniscule s) in the small is charity, forms of which even the most rigid egoist (e.g. Rand) can find ideologically palatable: intentional, contractual communities are communities nonetheless, and generally contain mutual aid clauses. Scale matters, however, and somewhere between 150 and 100 million other persons, the charity co-ordinating entity (i.e. the governing power) becomes a beast unto itself, the contract becomes blurred, and Socialism in the large imposes itself on ideological dissenters with the force of the local violence monopolist. If nation-states were actually communities caring for their own, the philosophical concerns of consent and compulsion, and the pragmatic concerns of checks and balances, would be much reduced. I await the Maneki Neko experiment that could imbue a society of great magnitude with equally great cohesion.

dTal 11y ago
>I await the Maneki Neko experiment that could imbue a society of great magnitude with equally great cohesion. That'd be the internet. We just need to figure out the right software to run on it.

intopieces 11y ago

> is ever possible in a government that is rife with dysfunction, graft and bewildering inefficiencies at every level. This is a fair point, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the presence of a significant group of politicians in congress who have made their entire careers out of sabotaging government programs. Remember, Republicans have tried to repeal Obamacare at every turn, even taking it to the Supreme Court - twice. So to say the system can never work because it hasn't worked is confusing the cause for the effect, it seems.