Forum Post: Spread the Wealth Around!
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 1, 2012, 5:24 p.m. EST by struggleforfreedom80
(6584)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Obama was right when he said it’s good to spread the wealth around.
The fact that there’s been very little wealth-spreading after he got into office is unfortunate, but not very surprising. He's bought and paid for like the rest of them. But that’s another topic.
He was however right when he said “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”. Spreading the wealth around does create a better society.
By spreading the wealth we create a more equal society in which more people will have more freedoms and possibilities in their lives. An increasing number of people will be able to enjoy the benefits that exist in a modern technological society. By improving the social safety nets and worker’s rights, people would also feel less insecure and stressed; the fear of losing your home and income f.ex. would be highly reduced. Poverty would decrease substantially causing less crime, conflict and violence. This combined with creating a real participatory democracy would be the best way to organize society.
In a wealthy, modern society we should organize it so that everyone can have a decent life.
Spread the wealth around!
Thanks for all your good posts, struggleforfreedom. Yes. We should demand an economic system that works for all people.
Thanks for those kind words :)
You can hear 50% of America screaming COMMUNIST
Why not pursue a path that 80% of America already says they want?
Achieveing just one goal facilitates virtually all of our goals:
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
With true independent progressives in government, what can we not do ???
"You can hear 50% of America screaming COMMUNIST"
Sure. And they're more or less right. I do want a classless stateless society :)
"Why not pursue a path that 80% of America already says they want?"
Well, I'm not going to let current attitudes among the majority affect my personal opinions. I'm going to advocate the type of society that I want. I don't care what kind of names we should use to discribe this society as long as we work towards that goal.
"With true independent progressives in government, what can we not do"
I'm all for a more progressive government as a short term goal. The problem is that the system, especially in the US is so rotten to the core it's going to be tough. Corporations more or less run the elections. Watch this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVPWNo4rcM&feature=plcp
I think it's also very important to organize and build democracy and solidaric and engaged communities outside the current party system.
we have 60+ videos for you to see
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
Thanks for the link. I have actually some videos too. Check'em out at my yt-channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Andy80o/videos
To put some numbers on spreading the wealth around, if income was spread around equally among all workers, workers would get paid $65 per hour since worker productivity in the US is $65 per hour.
That would obviously make everyone wealthy and eliminate nearly every problem in society. However, if everyone got paid exactly the same regardless of what job they did and regardless of how they performed in that job, that would cause incentive problems.
So I agree that the wealth should be spread around differently. But I think the only fair and workable way the wealth should be spread around is according to socialism, which the libertarian socialist Benjamin Tucker defines as a system that pays workers the full product of what they produce without any deductions for investors or exploitation.
In other words, income should be spread around according to the original socialist slogan, "To each according to their contribution."
And you do that by paying workers 100% of the income (no money is paid to investors) and you limit differences in income by law to only what is necessary to get workers to work hard (you eliminate the ability for anyone to exploit another) which means differences in income are limited to only what is necessary to get people to work undesirable jobs and give their maximum performance in performance based jobs.
Allocating income that way would enable us to pay every worker from $115k to $460k as explained here.
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Unfortunately, we will never get everyone to agree to that kind of society.
But in keeping with libertarian and anarchist principles, which Tucker wrote extensively on, all coercion in society comes from the power of monopoly. Freedom comes from competition and choice.
So in order to have a free society, people should be able to freely choose among competing economic systems. We shouldn't have one, monolithic economic system that has a monopoly over society and forces everyone to live within.
We should have a federation of Republican companies (which is total privatization and the market allocates everything with little or no regulations, taxes or welfare), a federation of Democrat companies (which is a mixture of private and public companies with lots of regulations, taxes and welfare) and a federation of Public companies (where all companies are publicly owned, democratically controlled and income is allocated in an egalitarian way so that you don't need any welfare).
Those systems should compete with each other so citizens can see which works the best and then they should be free to participate in any one they want.
And in order to enact this system we will simply tell the Republicans (or Democrats) we will give you 100% of what you want, so long as you let the Democrats (or Republicans) and Socialists get what they want.
Since everyone wins, since everyone gets what they want, we should be able to enact this. There are enough dissatisfied voters out there who are currently not getting anything they want, like progressives, socialists, libertarians, greens and tea partiers, that we could build a large enough coalition among them to get this idea enacted.
What we would enact is a law that says if there are enough people who want a particular economic system to make that system viable (which would probably be 10-20% of the population), the government will officially charter that federation which means it will authorize the central bank to provide that federation with the investment funds it needs and will enforce that federation's constitution.
Owners of existing companies will then simply decide which system they want to join. And the central bank will provide whatever investment money is needed to fully fund the economic systems that don't have enough businesses.
For example, if 60 million people (20% of the population) decide to join the socialist federation, that is 60 million customers and workers. If no companies join the socialist federation, the central bank will provide those 60 million with the investment money they need to create enough new companies to produce enough goods and services to meet the demand of these 60 million new customers.
This investment, of course, will come as an expense to the other 2 federations, but it should. They just lost 60 million customers. This idea is explained here.
Like I've explained many times before, I disagree with you in regards to incentives. We should work for a society much less obsessed with money, and instead focus on human creativity and need. Pay according to effort is not a humane society.
Competing economic systems? That doesn't make any sense. The economy is all-encompassing.
"I disagree with you in regards to incentives"
It doesn't concern you that your assumption that we really don't need to pay people to work is not supported by any evidence?
Or that it goes against the experience of the vast majority of workers who show up to their job every day not because they have nothing better to do but because they need the paycheck?
Or that nobody will even think it is fair to significantly reduce the income workers are getting paid so that you can pay that money to all the people who are not working?
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"We should work for a society much less obsessed with money"
What benefit does society get for becoming less obsessed with tracking the costs of our production and its consumption?
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"Pay according to effort is not a humane society."
Since all our production comes from effort, it is only fair to give all that production to the ones putting in all the effort (outside of the retired and disabled).
It is not fair for someone to have to work hard producing things for people who contribute nothing to society and just take, take, take.
It is not humane for an entire society to struggle financially because not enough people are working to meet the demands of that society because you stopped paying people to work.
The only humane and fair society is to guarantee everyone a job and guarantee everyone full pay for the work they do.
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"Competing economic systems? That doesn't make any sense. The economy is all-encompassing."
An economy is just a group of companies organized under a common set of protocols and benefits.
If half the population thinks the best way to organize companies is by the Republican Party method where taxes and regulations are minimal and everything is allocated via the market including school, medicine and retirement, then all those people should organize that way.
Half the companies can join the Republican plan and everyone who is a Republican can join the Republican system which means they will work and buy from companies that are included in their Republican plan.
It is like when you buy medical insurance, you can only visit doctors and facilities that are participating in that plan.
If you join the Republican plan, you will work and buy from companies that are participating in the Republican plan.
What benefit is there in forcing Republicans to live according to the Democrat plan? Or the socialist plan? Or the libertarian socialist plan where everyone is paid equally?
If you asked democrats and republicans, WHO ARE NOT CURRENTLY LIVING IN THE SYSTEM THEY WANT, would they be willing to agree to let the socialists live according to their economic plan and in exchange, you get to live EXACTLY according to the plan they want, they would agree to that.
We can have a Republican plan, a Democrat plan and a Socialist plan (and a whatever plan so long as there is a minimum amount of people willing to support that whatever plan). And people should have the FREEDOM to choose to participate in any plan they want. All 3 systems can exist side-by-side in the same geographic location just like 3 different insurance plans can exist side-by-side in the same geographic location.
I don't have any more proof than you have proof of people not wanting to participate if they don't get a paycheck.
People do things all the time that are not motivated by money. In all different cultures around the world, many of which have much less money and remuneration systems, you see this all the time; in the neighborhood you see this; among friends, families and other social relations you see this all the time. Just take a look at what you're doing here. Promoting a system you've spent a lot of energy creating and promoting. Are you getting paied? Are you doing this for money?
People want to work, create and contribute; it's a part of who we are. I think NC explained it very well here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXevpVXzePc
"nobody will even think it is fair to significantly reduce the income workers are getting paid so that you can pay that money to all the people who are not working?"
In a classless society everyone would have a decent life. Services and goods that workers wanted and needed would be avilable to them as well.
"Since all our production comes from effort, it is only fair to give all that production to the ones putting in all the effort (outside of the retired and disabled"
Our personal contributions, no matter what we do, are microscopic compared to what we recieve from society. In a wealthy highly technological society that way of thinking is meaningless.
When it comes to the economy we’re not, as individuals or small groups, living in an isolated bubble of some kind.. On the contrary; when it comes to the economy we’re all in the same boat. The economy is all-encompassing and affects us all, therefore the whole system must be adressed and dealt with.
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And who will determine how this wealth will be "spread"? How much is enough? How will you determine when an individual has too much money and is being "unfair"?
But do you agree that a more equal society is better?
Well, I want a classless society where we make services and goods, at least those involving necessities, free of charge. The ones who should determine things in society must be the ones living there (pretty logical right?), so democratic process in other words. That would also include remuneration etc.
Sigh.... Keep dreaming. Continue to waste your time.
You would be surprised what can be accomplished if those who can see the curtain, are brave enough to open it for all to see.
If support for real freedom and democracy seems low, then that doesn't mean we should set those values aside, it means that fighting for them is extremely important.
It's going to take some time to get it established on a large scale, but we must never stop fighting for freedom and justice - and that's not a waste of time, that is extremely important.
What's timewasting is continuing to support this unsustainable existing state-capitalist system which is exploiting the planet and its inhabitants more and more. It must be replaced at some point, and the only reasonable system to replace it in long term perspective is Libertarian Socialism