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And people wonder why we want a socialist for president

Bernie Sanders is a social democrat, not a socialist. It's insane that social democrats haven't rebranded considering how common the confusion is.

Bernie Sanders has been branding himself as a "democratic socialist" (not social democrat) for decades.

You are 100% correct, and I'm wrong. Thanks for the correction!

Nationalism is the only thing that fixes globalization.

Government at all levels already spends 35% of the GDP. It's hard to see how increasing that will make things better.

That's not an argument. You're just asserting that it's not possible.

The rise in government's share of the economy correlates with the rise in the economic ills. What is the basis for thinking there is an inflection point where the correlation reverses?

Economic ills? Well consider that numerous other developed nations have large amounts of state-owned industry and that if anything their economies are stronger than ours.

Consider a 25 year return on investment in the economy. Adjusted for inflation and including dividends, it's about 9% for the S&P 500:

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm

Are there any developed economies with a higher figure?

To be fair, most other developed nations don't have the American military or a worldwide reserve currency either...so comparisons are kinda moot...

How much of that is due to capital flight from economies which are actively downsizing their public investments?

What's the basis for the assumption that correlation equals causation?

Heck, where's the evidence for your purported correlation in the first place?

The 'rise in the economic ills' also correlates with a rise in life expectancy. To make a modest proposal, does that mean we should start killing off the elderly and the very young?

Well, if the correlation exists because government spending is a lagging/sticky indicator, and what's actually happening is that globalisation is hollowing out the manufacturing/wage earning class,there's no evidence that it will reverse, but the causation of this phenomenon is the opposite direction: government expenditure is increasing as a percentage of the economy because the other private part is collapsing, not because government expenditure is crowding private expenditure. In this instance it is an early indicator of distress, but not necessarily the cause.

Germany seems to be doing better than most of Europe, despite having higher taxes than most of the countries.

> The rise in government's share of the economy correlates with the rise in the economic ills.

That's pure BS that's never been supported by any evidence.

Every developed country with strong property rights has seen an increase in quality of life and prosperity as the share of government's spending as % of GDP increased.

You won't see it on recent graphs though. If you want to see evidence that this is true, you have to look as far back as the 19th century.

There is plenty of information to suggest that %30-%40 is the optimal level of government's share in spending and the fact that most of the developed world has converged on those numbers over time should dissuade all but the most delusional libertarians that the notion of "minuscule government" is nothing more than a wet dream.

But if Millennials are earning less money, who will pay for socialism?

I'm not suggesting that I'm in favor of this, but the idea is that the country has plenty of wealth, it is just concentrated in older generations who were able to build it through decades of economic largesse, so, well, that's who should should be paying for it.

And I'm still not clear on how taxing the shit out of everyday working citizens somehow redistributes the wealth which is already hoarded by the 0.1%.

Well we could start with some common sense tax reform, like not letting anything above $112k not be taxable for social security, a system through which old people are living off the backs of the young and straddling them with debts for services they will never see themselves - a ponzi scheme

Wait are you for increasing the SS cap (which is 118.5k btw) or just eliminating it entirely?

I think having no cap on income for SS would make sense and make the system solvent - so basically, cut a tax only for the wealthy retired folks living off of backs of young folks, who are not exempt and they will never get there by subsidizing old folks in exchange for interest payments on private loans in the 7% range.

But the super wealthy -- the ones the Sanders crowd really dislike -- don't tend to have earned income anyway. They primarily benefit from capital gains which are entirely exempt from SS and Medicare entirely.

There's still a huge gap from $112 to having income in long term capital gains tax. Just because there are more things to do with capital gains tax reform, doesn't mean we can't have common sense reforms like this one.

That would make SS a tax which it isn't supposed to be right now.

SS IS a tax, when you have a dedicated line item in your paycheck. I would like to see some benefit down the line from that tax, wouldn't you?

People who are capable of earning greater than $112k a year are probably capable of changing the way they're compensated in order to avoid the higher SS rate.

I've realized it's pretty much pointless, and here's why. There's a bunch of people who don't really pay taxes and don't understand how wealth and taxes work. But they have to file a 1040 every year, so when you talk about taxes they think "income taxes". If you mention "capital gains", mostly their eyes just rollover because they can't conceptualize even what you are talking about.

They just don't understand they are agitating against hardworking doctors, lawyers, engineers, small business owners, and etc., while giving the people who do nothing but open an envelope every month a pass. They are probably 'useful' in a sense.

Hardly man. I'm a small business owner. I pay a hell of alot in income taxes. I have invested money.

The thing is - we all use our resources in this country. We all use the roads, the land, the water, the minerals, and every other item out there. My company probably uses more than the average person. It should be taxed at least equally - if not more as a result.

I have a bunch of people that drive all over the place. They write on paper. Many miles of roads are used slightly because of them. Paper is produced for them to write on. My grandma has never drove a day in her life - and at 95 still walks everywhere she needs to.

She makes pennies on the thousand dollar compared to me. Taxes provide infrastructure and resources. The poor are overly taxed.

Roads roads roads. It's always roads that people bring up when defending socialism. Look up how much our roads cost to maintain and compare it to our entitlements spending and you'll get a better understanding of what socialism looks like. There's not a capitalist alive who isn't comfortable paying taxes for roads.

Ok then, what about the health of your consumers (not just medically)? Is the community at large not an asset we all tap in to every day? People have noticed that there is a growing portion of that asset that can't contribute as well as they could. Namely because of difficulties acquiring education, healthcare and financial security.

That's where things get very fuzzy. It's easy to link tax dollars to roads because the road is either there, and well maintained, or it is not. In order to make the argument that businesses get more from their dollars by giving it to the government to improve the "health" of the workforce than they would investing it how they see fit, you need to be able to measure it, and that's not an easy thing to do. If it were obvious, like taxes for roads, you'd get little argument from businesses over taxes. The problem is, it's not obvious nor easy to prove.

Absolutely, it's hard to prove. Maybe the answer isn't in government, it just seems like a silly thing to leave to the invisible hand of capitalism, seeing as that exact reasoning appears to have brought us here.

Why not cultivate your crop, you know?

Terms to investigate:

Multiplier Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics)

Velocity of Money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

I'll add...

Sectoral Balance Identity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances

Endogenous Money Creation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_money http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915...

I live in taxachusetts and really enjoy not having to worry about healthcare and having an (albeit poorly) functioning public transit system with real subways. It... actually seems to work out guys.

That's the same as asking who will pay for laissez faire statism, so inconsequential.

"We" do not want a socialist anywhere in government.

Because you are gluttons for punishment?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12115982

Venezuela is nowhere close to what Bernie Sanders believes in.

Now Bernie supporters wouldn't get caught dead with Maduro, but Hugo Chavez was quite popular with the American left back in the day:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hugo+chavez+american+celebri...

It's a somewhat poor comparison because Venezuela is primarily an oil economy.

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