Equality and Freedom

I have lived in eastern North Carolina my whole life and work in the nonprofit sector. I grew up lower middle class (lower middle class in eastern NC is what many of you folks from the Piedmont would call poor) and joined the Air Force so that I can now be in college.

I blame social safety nets for the decrease in social mobility. We are subsidizing poverty and making the lifestyle of the uneducated, unskilled and disinterested a comfortable existance for people who are not interested in contributing to society. Working toward equality of outcomes will not motivate people to contribute more.

Sorry, I couldn’t help but add an additional point: The writer that Mr. Turner is clearly enamored of puts the phrase “Winner Take All” in the title. And yet, in the quoted passage, he uses the term “zero-sum” as if he knows what it means. If you understand the notion that there are positive sum arrangments facilitated by trade, then how can America be “winner take all”? I’m not sure this author is doing anything but throwing out vacuous bromides for leftish types to lap up. Forced economic equality and economic liberty are, unfortunately, not commensurable. But increased prosperity is the result of the latter, for sure. (Thanks for the two comment allowance, Steve, and btw I still appreciate the teaser, despite not agreeing with your punchline post above.)

What planet are you living on?! You honestly think people want to stay in $7 an hour jobs. To afford a 2 bedroom apartment in Raleigh– and still eat–requires someone to earn $12 an hour.

Nevermind that I stipulated a wage for a high school student who one can safely presume lives at home. The whole point behind upward mobility is that you have to start somewhere to have a place to go.

“Living wage” fetishists fail to realize that higher wages destroys the creation of other lower wage job opportunities. (For example: As a small business owner, I wanted three employees at $6.00 per hour but I can only hire two due to the minwage. The lot of the two employees has improved. But that third person I would have hired still has no income versus the prospect of some income, despite how low the wage is. But ask an immigrant worker from El Salvador which situation she prefers–$6 per hr or $0 per hour. For her and her family, that is a ‘living wage.’)

You are advocating central economic planning, Mr. Turner. My last post shows why this never has and never will work. There are far too many vagaries and variables in life to assume that centalized decisionmaking is possible. It is quixotic to believe that what is good for the folks in Wake will be good for the folks in Robeson, not to mention that a central planner has the ability to know everything necessary to make decisions about everything involved in human interaction. This is all explained in much greater detail in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

“How about universal healthcare, unions, affordable housing, affordable higher education, child care…this has nothing to do with “being on the dole,”

Who pays for it all? I am curious as to your definintion of “being on the dole.”

“Reagan obviously wanted to “redistribute” to the most wealthy.”

“Redistribute” from whom? Allowing people to keep more of the money they earned is not the same as taking money from some people (via the gov’t) and giving it to others.

*Sigh*

Sometimes mere emoting is all I can conjure up in the face of the same-old same-old bullshit arguments.

Yes, this is James of “Anglico” fame. And if this is Max of “Max” fame, I’m not surprised that you had this to say:

That said, I’m not troubled by wealth disparities as much as I would be about purchasing power or the inability to gain access to job opportunities, food, and shelter.

I haven’t noticed that you’re troubled at all about people’s inability to gain access to job opportunities, food, and shelter (and, presumably, health care). How many people must live on the street or suffer from chronic malnutrition or go without basic medical care to have the problem be large enough for you to be “troubled?”

I too would like to see the top 5% of wage-earners “keep more of what the earn,” and I don’t see how it makes any difference whether they have done well or not over the last five years. As long as they’ve earned it, it’s not anyone else’s concern how well they’ve done. As one of those other 95% guys, I certainly don’t feel entitled to more services or a higher standard of living based on the fact that someone else made out well.

The fact is the top 5% already pay a share of taxes that is vastly out of porportion to their numbers, while the bottom half pay very little. Many pay only social security and medicare, and a piddling amount of state and local taxes. To my way of thinking the fairest tax is one that taxes everyone the same rate, with some relief at the lowest end for those who work hard but still barely get by.

C’mon, krm, 80+ hours per week? When do you sleep, man, because I know you spend 40 hours per week objecting to NC Policy Watch. And a Masters in Education? In what? I need to warn my school-age children.

You do seem to be in some type of time warp, krm. Your rant is vintage Ronald Reagan circa 1980. I’m surprised you didn’t mention Cadillac driving welfare queens.

Your point is basically ridiculous. When the top individual tax rate was 70% (before Reagan, when CEO’s only made 20 times the average worker) people in the top 5% worked just as hard as they did when Reagan lowered it to 28%. Now it is at 35% (and CEO’s make 400 times the average worker). Do you think a lot of CEO’s threw in the towel and went on the dole because it was increased to 35%? No. And if it were increased to 42% or capital gains were taxed at 35% rather than 15%, everybody would continue to work as their circumstances or desires dictate. One thing you will see, though, is that people in the lower tiers who have falling or stagnant wages will work more hours or get a second or third job (and their spouses will do the same).

The state’s university system is a microcosm of the ‘haves’ (i.e., the 16 campuses of the UNC system) and ‘have-nots’ (our community colleges). After working a few years for the ‘have-nots’, watching the ‘haves’ take the lions share of funds, I wonder if you’ll begin to see the world a little differently.

The Left isn’t talking about equality of outcomes, we’re just talking about having a fair playing field.

I personally don’t think we live in a capitalist economy anymore; we live in a corporate economy. The last few generations choose to sacrifice liberty for profit. Democracy is just a tool and without protection of the minority it becomes tyranny of the majority. Liberty is the most important aspect; the form of government is just the tool to maintain it based on a social contract from one citizen to all.

In our day though, the social contract is dead. No one respects the social contracts and if you want liberty you must purchase it and can actually destroy the liberty of those who are unable to defend themselves from those who have wealth.

If you want real upward mobility then we need to return to the idea of liberty. There should be no taxation on labor, only the profits of business. Taxation of labor is akin to ownership of people by the government. Remove taxation of property as well. If people choose they can live off their land and never pay a single tax, which is true liberty. If they have a business and make a profit, that is different.

The current system though is actually socialistic protectionism for the wealthy. That wealthy being the people on Wall Street and the banking system administered by the Federal Reserve. The central bankers and their founders are the ones that supported the setup of the IRS and taxation of the masses. They needed the masses to be taxed so that the banks could bailout their failed businesses and redistribute taxation onto the masses instead of them. This is how the wealthy fail forward, at everyone else’s expense.

Let me simplify it a bit. The banks print the money then lend it to their rich friends on Wall Street. Wall Street uses it at the current value of money in circulation, then goes out and buys businesses. When their buddies on Wall Street fail the banks bailout or attempt to use interest rate manipulation to protect them. If these businesses really make a huge mess then the banks bail them out, maybe even with taxpayers holding the tag directly. Either way, all of this debt is paid for in inflation and the loss of purchasing power by all laborers who are paid in dollars. Not only that it is a direct tax by the wealthy upon everyone who has a dollar in his or her pocket. This is a socialist system that is setup for the protection of the most powerful people in our nation, those who control the wealth.

I guess you could say you pay taxes twice. You pay one time to the government and you pay a second to Wall Street and the banks.

In a real capitalist system with a real free market there would be no regulatory banks and supply and demand would set the rates as well as risk aversion. Through the failure of banks, business upward mobility exists by new business replacing them. Also, real free trade that benefits upward mobility is trade that even the least of American citizens would be protected and allowed to buy and sell form a citizen in China or any other nation as they wish. Attempting to block free trade by large corporate entities should be seen as a direct attack upon liberty and the desire of the wealthy to entrench themselves as aristocracy.

A government’s only reason for existence is to protect individual liberty of each of its citizens.

Maybe we need a rule to have a separation of business and state, like that of church and state. In setting up our society I think the founders believed to much in the inherent decency of men of wealth to desire to do the right thing. A few of them hated hereditary rule, yet hereditary rule has often come out of families of great wealth who entrench themselves in society and government. And the last recourse to remove aristocracy has always ended in bloody war through out history.