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Comment by korrachs | Hacker News Reader

I was wondering how long it would take for the attack on the solidarity of the precariat:

>The rhetoric of “We are the 99 percent” has in fact been dangerously self-serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality.

7 months after the election is actually quite long.

Here is what makes me in a $300k a year household and the $30k household on the other end of town the same:

>Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.

The rich cannot be ruined. I can. If I was to be fired from my job it would be a minor disaster, if I was to get an incurable disease I would slide down the income scale without a break.

I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't. The rentiers have shown time and time again they would rather destroy the economy than allow everyone to have the luxury of stability.

That is why I am a socialist and I know I'm not the only one.

View on HN

On $300k a year, either you're not really precarious or you're making utterly reckless financial decisions.

You can comfortably afford the best available health insurance. You can comfortably afford very good life insurance and income protection insurance. You can comfortably afford to save a substantial amount for emergencies and retirement.

You're in a completely different situation from someone on $30k a year, who is undoubtedly living paycheck-to-paycheck. For you, a broken boiler or a major engine repair is a near-trivial expense. For someone on $30k, that same expense might put them into debt for months or years. If the mailman brings you an unexpected utility bill or parking ticket, you're not faced with the choice of skipping meals or going into debt.

> You can comfortably afford the best available health insurance.

Even on not-so-good insurance, isn't this why out-of-pocket maximums exists? I'm not a fan of the current system of healthcare insurance, and I'm not an apologist for how these companies push costs back onto people. However out-of-pocket maximum exists so that you don't go bankrupt for a catastrophic event that requires substantial care over the course of a year. It will vary from carrier to carrier, but I doubt a you'll ever pay more than $20k on a year of treatment for lowered tiered plans. With $300k, this person's cap is more likely to be between $5k and $10k. That's going to sting a bit, but $10k is still only 3% of the total income.

I don't deny that a disabling event can really screw things up for a family, but even insurance has its limit on how much they can screw you.

But also:

> On $300k a year, either you're not really precarious or you're making utterly reckless financial decisions.

And that's how solidarity dies. Are we going to start playing the game of "you're not oppressed enough"?

Why not start with the $30k a year household:

Hot water? What a luxury! Half the world can't afford drinking water.

Car engine? They can use a bicycle like they do in India.

Utility bills? Just bring in some chickens into your home to warm it up.

With enough will and prudent planning you can make a dollar a day stretch much further than you could imagine. Just like you are suggesting I spend my life figuring out ways to live better in a system broken by design.

In a sane country I wouldn't have to worry about insurance and the people making a tenth less than me wouldn't worry about cars, boilers or bills, because there would be public options for all of those things.

Where's the evidence that this solidarity ever existed? On the coasts at least, the people in this $300K range may talk a good talk about marginalized groups, etc, but the solidarity clearly ends at their pocketbooks.

Wealthier people skew Republican, and that's not just the 1%. OP's example of the school districts is another example. Still another is the fact that, if you look in any city in America, the wealthy (but not 1%er) areas have better roads, better parks, and better everything in terms of public infrastructure. I have a friend who works at the local power company who outright says that whenever there is a storm that takes out power, the wealthy areas come first for repairs, right after hospitals and police stations. Not, you know, the most populated areas or anything.

And it gets worse still, when the 20% try to redirect blame at the 1%. Because who are these 20%ers anyway? They're lawyers, managers, mid-level executives, financiers, maybe developers for banks, big ad firms, or VC-owned boondoggles. In short, they are the white-collar "hands" providing the services that allow the 1% to exert the level of control they do over the whole system.

To hear the 20% disclaim all responsibility for the state of inequality in the country is very similar to how the head of HR or IT tells you "well, I really can't do anything about anything, it's just Policy, set by our betters". But they are enabling all of it.

> Wealthier people skew Republican

This depends on your state's economy. "In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference" [1].

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1010426

Very interesting paper. Two problems that jumped out at me are: 1) income is not COL-adjusted, and 2) more importantly, there is not a term in the regression for urbanization/population density.

It is well-known that urban areas lean Democratic, and richer states are more urban. Thus the phenomenon may be reflecting urbanization rather than state wealth.

http://www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/users/u308...

Have a look at the period 1950-1970. If we were to tax corporations at the same rate as they were in that golden period we would not have a national deficit.

>Where's the evidence that this solidarity ever existed?

https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Feder...

1950, 1960 again.

Sure, fair enough. I was implicitly talking about 1980s to present (the period when the inequality began to spike), but obviously was not clear about that.

However, in the present day, I don't think it is just the 1% who are against a corporate tax increase. That would hit IRAs, pensions, and investments for those who can afford such things.

>However, in the present day, I don't think it is just the 1% who are against a corporate tax increase.

As I said: I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't. The rentiers have shown time and time again they would rather destroy the economy than allow everyone to have the luxury of stability.

The top 19% do not trust government because for the last 40 years government has been hijacked and made to work against the people.

A perfect example: would you support a 30% hike to pay for Trumps border wall? If not, why are you against tax increases?

The trouble is that it is not hard to point out flaws in any system, government programs included.

Many Republicans have taken this to the logical extreme: they say government programs CANNOT work. In solidly red areas, they justify this by pointing at how their local school districts or whatever are failing badly. Why are they failing? In large part due to lack of funding.

So, low funding creates failure which is used to justify lower funding. It's circular. In cases where there is clear evidence that a socialized alternative can work, like healthcare, the evidence is simply ignored.

This is not to say that the government cannot waste money. Of course it can: walls, military spending, and so on. But your argument is dangerously close to the hypothetical Republican one. The only solution I can see is for taxpayers to BOTH be willing to pay taxes AND demand value for their money.

But your argument is just the extreme. Everybody always wants more spending, but they always want it so more stuff is done for them.

Problem with money is that it represents economic activity. If the government spends more you need to work more (with borrowing becomes slightly more complex, working more now, or working even more in the future).

And when it comes to that, your logic would change as well. Would you work (under a bad boss, etc ... ie. work, as in actual work, whatever it takes) to improve those schools ?

For a very large majority the answer is no.

I understand your comment and your original post, and while I somewhat agree, I think you're missing the point.

You say that the super rich have something most of us don't, stability. I agree with that. The super rich often want the rest of us to lack stability, it's good for employers to have desperate workers. However, at 300k, while you do not have absolute stability like the super rich, you have something that comes very close... the ability to plan ahead.

At 300k, you can save, buy top notch insurance and whether the storms that MANY people in the US cannot. Sure, there could be financial blows that are just too large to shrug off... but those blow that you can withstand, and those of a 30k'er, are two different beasts.

The poor cannot see beyond their own noses.

The rich can see the horizon and plan ahead.

The super powerful float in space looking down on earth and place things beyond the horizon.

Planning is good, but who's game are we playing?

You want a public option for boiler repairs and parking tickets? That doesn't even make sense, and creates an obvious moral hazard because people have no incentive to make prudent decisions if there are no consequences to imprudent ones. Why do you think healthcare and education are already so expensive and inefficient?

The much better solution is to make a universal basic income the sole welfare system. Then let people make their choices.

How rich is "rich" in your mind? At what point can you never be ruined? It's always possible to piss your money away. MC Hammer filed for bankruptcy after being worth 33 million. If you want to slide the scale of "not oppressed" downward, you can just as well slide the scale of "not rich" upward.

We're not playing a game here, we're talking about facts. Whatever structural deficiencies exist in our system, you're not suffering as a result. You don't get to lump yourself in with people who are suffering. You're welcome to express solidarity with us, you're welcome to advocate for us, but you have no right to expect solidarity in return. You're a beneficiary of that broken system, not a victim.

>And that's how solidarity dies.

you've gotta be one of the most of out touch people i've ever seen express their out of touch opinions. what shows of solidarity have you made? have you ever even been to the poor part of town? if you live in nyc message me and i'll gladly take you on a tour where you can stand with your brethren.

>With enough will and prudent planning you can make a dollar a day stretch much further than you could imagine.

go ahead: plan it out for me since my imagination is so poor.

> you've gotta be one of the most of out touch people i've ever seen

Personal attacks like this are a bannable offense on HN. Please never post like this again. Instead, please (re)-read the following and follow them in letter and in spirit from now on:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

Here we have exhibit A on why the social contract in the US is dead. Instead of using politics to better your physical situation you use it as therapy.

I'm not virtuous enough to push for higher taxes and more welfare? By shutting me down you'll have even more poor to celebrate! Isn't virtue signalling great?

Would you please stop arguing like this on HN? It's hard enough for this place to touch on divisive topics without disintegrating. When you post in this nasty, acerbic way, you're weakening the already-fragile bonds that keep HN barely cohesive, and contributing it to it going down in flames. (That's ironic for a post that mentions social contract.) We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so please make sure not to.

A long time ago, pg (who created HN) wrote:

A comment in reply to another comment should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.

That's the standard we ask users here to follow, regardless of how wrong or provocative the other comment has been.

>you've gotta be one of the most of out touch people i've ever seen express their out of touch opinions.

Kettle meet pot.

I scolded that user as well of course, but you need to follow the rules regardless of who doesn't.

how am i virtue signalling on an anonymous forum? who am i signalling to? i don't even have anything identifying me on my profile? and googling this name brings up nothing. so umm maybe i actually mean what i say?

That doesn't mean you're not rich, that just means that you're spending your income on immediate comfort and flashy toys rather than security. If you lived further within your means and invested the difference wisely, within a year or two you would have far more security than the $30k household will ever have.

> within a year or two you would have far more security than the $30k household will ever have.

Within a year or two? I think you mean "after your first paycheck". The ability to have a grand or two 'cushion' money in the bank is an incredible difference between the haves and have-nots. And I don't mean "money in my day-to-day account", I mean emergency money of any kind.

It's bizarre that a 300k/yr household can even contemplate being similar to a 30k/yr one.

I popped in $300k/year into an online calculator and it suggested that would leave you with ~118k/year. Minus the ~26k/year you'd have on $30k (both household married income) is 92190

So, if you lived as a $30k/year household you'd be able to save 3.5 years worth of expenses every year, ignoring any kind of tax efficient ways of doing so. In your first pay packet you'd have a spare seven and a half thousand dollars.

At a 3% withdrawal rate you'd want to have $860k in investments, meaning you could expect to work for ~8-9 years then retire forever. Less if you can invest in a more tax efficient way, are OK with just cutting down to part time or taking on a bit more risk. Oh, and if you're comparing yourself to a $30k household that can afford to save anything, all these numbers just go up and up.

So, comparing a $30k/year household who are able to save literally nothing, you could have the same life but only have to work for less than ten years rather than 40+.

Quick numbers, but I'd be surprised if the various simplifications change the overall result particularly drastically.

Depends on where you live. 30k in the Midwest compared to 300K in San Francisco is actually not too far apart.

2 Beds 1 Bath -- 650 Jackson MO or 7800 a year or 25% of the income gross

$4940 - $5160 /mo 2 beds / 2 bath 979 sqft say 5000 a month or 60000 a year or 20% of the income

add the huge differences in effective tax rate of CA to MO combined with the jump in federal tax rates and it is arguable that 30k in MO would actually be better off

...even if we take this not-quite-equivalence at face value (note: 650 < 979 and 20% < 25%), most life expenses don't scale linearly with housing values - not even close.

Groceries may be more expensive in the big city, but not 10x more expensive. You're not paying 10x more for a car, or a plane flight. And insurance premiums / deductibles sure aren't 10x cheaper in a less expensive part of the country.

Plus, the "$300K in expensive place" household has the option of moving to the less expensive place. The reverse is hardly true.

> it is arguable that 30k in MO would actually be better off

1. No. 2. Even if we were to accept that $30K in one place went just as far as $300K in another, "better off" ignores that higher property costs are likely to indicate a more desirable place to live. (For whatever reason: access to jobs, lower crime rates, pleasant to live in, what-have-you.)

Yeah but look at the different in what you're left with after rent and taxes. It's not even close.

I just can't believe how wilfully ignorant people are about this. You're talking percentages, but ignore the absolutes. 75% of 30k buys you a lot less than 80% of 300k, even after taxes.

Medical issues (maybe legal too) seem to be the game changer. Millions can go just like that, assuming you want the best available (and who doesn't for loved ones?)

"The best available" goes far beyond the point of diminishing returns. If you're willing to settle for merely 'top tier', you'd spend a small fraction of the amount for essentially the same level of care. And that's even in a place with medical costs as insane as the U.S.

Anyway, there's no such thing as perfectly impervious to risk - even ultra-wealthy families sometimes topple. That doesn't change the fact that with careful management, a $300k/year income can rapidly feather a rather nice, rather secure nest. $30k/year cannot.

I'd like to think that there are diminishing returns, but in my experience, the biggest complaint about doctors (and from doctors) is the lack of time they get to spend on a patient. It would stand to reason that a doctor that can spend an hour talking to you, researching your condition and history, collaborate with colleagues across disciplines is going to have a much greater impact than one who sees you for 5 minutes.

And it costs quite a lot to get that level of care.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/economy/high-end...

> in my experience, the biggest complaint about doctors (and from doctors) is the lack of time they get to spend on a patient.

If you talk to someone with significant health issues, it rapidly becomes, "The doctors don't have the answer".

Nobody wants to spend longer with the doctor - they want healthy, productive life outside the doctor's office.

As I understand it, medical expenses are the fastest route from "stable" as OP defines to the street. If you blew your millions on a yacht only to crumble under the load of the debt that would be one thing, but for the majority of people who lose everything they have, it was due to one disease or another, traffic accident, some other kind of ailment that they played little to no role in getting.

That's not right.

> due to one disease or another, traffic accident, some other kind of ailment that they played little to no role in getting.

How do you feel about kids born in Africa?

I'm not certain if you're trying to imply that people in the US shouldn't complain because they have it better than "kids born in Africa" or if you're implying that healthcare shouldn't be a basic human right for everyone, in the US or not.

If it's the former: Suffering isn't a contest, just because you aren't the MOST impoverished person on the face of the planet does not make your problems less real, nor does it make you less deserving of help when you do need it.

If it's the latter, I'm all for getting those kids healthcare (and food) and whatever else they might need. That's a damn sight better use of my tax dollars than numerous Government programs currently sucking up actual trillions of dollars here in the States.

You concluded your comment with "That's not right", implying that no one should ever be in that situation.

Considering that a lot of people are in that situation, I was wondering if you were advocating taking money from the rich to give it to the poor.

Personally, I don't believe in free healthcare. I accept that people who are unlucky or demonstrate poor judgement will suffer and die. However, I also believe that the market should be deregulated so that more affordable options become available.

I accept that people who are unlucky or demonstrate poor judgement will suffer and die.

Oof. That’s quite an admission.

I thank you for stating it though. I think our politics would be in a better place if people would admit things like this more.

I suspect that a lot of Republicans have the opinion that the poor don’t _deserve_ to be taken care of by society, because they believe that they are poor because of their own inaction. But it’s impossible to debate this - and change minds either way - because we don’t admit that point of view in discussion.

> implying all African kids live in shit conditions

Can we please not generalize Africa? It's the biggest continent of the world, not a giant 3rd world country plagued by famine and poverty. Some countries are, but if you mean those, please name them specifically.

(I dislike phrases like "asians" and "europeans" too, much as Americans should dislike the moniker "American")

I always liked the ring of "United Statesian".

I work in a wholesale brokerage. I try and manage the risk exposure so we won't go bankrupt tomorrow because someone couldn't tell the difference between 0 and O on their screen. I have seen trades worth hundreds of millions fail and bankrupt the people making them.

The problem isn't people not saving or investing the problem is an insane system kept afloat by greed, ignorance and fear. "Security"? what good is having paper when no one wants to buy it? October 29, 1929 is a day my grandmother remembers well and one I dread we will see again.

Government is the only insurance scheme large enough to protect us from ourselves.

No one says you need to invest it in the stock market though. There are plenty of assets one can acquire, that are not directly connected to the stock market. Use some debt to acquire them, and good returns can be made, even in small(er) deals.

>Use some debt to acquire them, and good returns can be made, even in small(er) deals.

Gambling on debt sounds like a sure-fire way to end up with even more debt. And that's what most investment boils down to: A gamble

Profit isn't generated out of thin air, somebody has to be the sucker and pay for it, those are usually the losers of aforementioned gambles.

So what? Everything in life is a gamble and involves risk. You need to learn how to live with it.

Dating? Hell, you can't even get to know someone properly in 6+ months. Taking a job? It's all rainbows and unicorns unless you work there for a 6-12 months, etc.

You act as if investing is bad. You're never going to make any meaningful amount of money if you don't invest (in the broadest sense, this could be in yourself, in your business, in the stock market, in alternative assets, etc).

Debt magnifies the result of your investment. Whether you make a good or bad investment is ultimately up to you. Moderate debt isn't a real issue. The interest is often also tax deductible. It sure as hell makes more sense taking on debt for investing than it does taking on debt to (excessively) spend (as most Americans do).

>So what? Everything in life is a gamble and involves risk. You need to learn how to live with it.

Indeed, it's all about risk-management and in that regard gambling on debt represents a way higher risk, one I would not take, than gambling on savings you actually own.

With the latter, you at least have some control over the worst case scenario, while gambling on debt throws any control like that straight out of the window as debt can spiral out of control very quickly that way.

> The interest is often also tax deductible. It sure as hell makes more sense taking on debt for investing than it does taking on debt to (excessively) spend (as most Americans do).

Sure, it does make more sense but consumer credits are mostly short-term and as such somewhat more manageable for debtors with no real income security. Long-term investment credits, which usually have way better interest rates, are simply out of reach for many of these people because they lack the secure long-term income and/or can't make the required deposit.

Sure. It also depends on the point in time and the asset. If the market has just crashed down 30%, I would probably be comfortable making an investment using significant debt in certain individual shares if the interest rate is low. At the moment? not so much.

Also, say you can acquire a plot of land you want to hold for a long time, and you can acquire it with 10% cash down + pay < 1% annual interest on a secured loan, you'd be an idiot not to take on the debt. Take the remaining cash and invest it somewhere with a higher yield.

It depends, is probably the correct answer here. :)

The one option is real estate (which isn't feasible for some who aren't staying in a place for long to manage). What else do you have in mind?

Real estate and land, patents, royalty rights, investing in small businesses, interest bearing securities (bonds, CDs, CoCos, etc), etc.

What investments are you suggesting?

Treasuries, CDs, et cetera. You should be able to build, over a few years, a decent rainy-day fund on $300,000 a year.

Disclaimer: this is not investment advice. Do not take investment advice from Internet comments.

The return on treasuries and CDs is ridiculously low, less than 3%. Bond funds are not much better.

Unless you're talking short term, put it in a total stock market index fund and forget about it.

>Government is the only insurance scheme large enough to protect us from ourselves.

Maybe the culture you come from is very new.

Security is defined by some assumptions. The stability of society and the ability of the government to enforce that through the military and police. Very fragile the things we take for granted.

When there systems fall, only those with either high enough walls around them with ability to sustain independently within those walls, or at least the ability to escape to another currently stable situation will be secure.

When a Gotham'esque hell breaks loose, where is your security then?

Well yeah, if society collapses you'd better be a prepper. Most reasonable people however think that you're very secure financially once you have saved enough for ~30 years of average spending. Barring major market disaster you could then continue living from your capital gains indefinitely.

Sure, but this is the precariat. Most excellently pointed out be korrachs.

This autonomy is the line.

It doesn't have to be total anarchy or civil war either. Imagine food shortages or media propaganda or government policy changes.

Again, all very fragile. The distinction is what controls you, and what autonomy you retain.

Categories: every day is a living fuck all, I depends on the systems around me, I have autonomy myself, I have autonomy over others as well.

How does that have anything to do with the current discussion?

Because this is one way of seeing security. If I have a private jet and runway, I can fly away when war breaks loose.

Can you see the line?

We're talking about financial security. Not security when there's an apocalypse.

i_cant_speel> Not security when there's an apocalypse.

One man’s apocalypse is another man’s civil war. I will let the more knowledgable reference history here.

On what we’re speaking about:

korrachs> I was wondering how long it would take for the attack on the solidarity of the precariat:

korrachs> The rich cannot be ruined. I can.

taneq> within a year or two you would have far more security than the $30k household will ever have.

Although you could argue that I’m cherry picking to make my point, I will so bold as to allude that perhaps we are missing the larger argument here.

The solidarity of the precariat under fire is an excellent way to consolidate power amongst the influential. A little something called divide and rule.

Yeah.

There's a strata of poor to somewhat rich, but they're all in the same bucket of the grander wealth scale: workers. They must keep doing work in order to maintain their lifestyle, the only thing their relative income difference dictates is the quality of that lifestyle and how long they can maintain it after losing income.

After that comes 'i don't need to work again' wealthy. Then 'fuck you' wealthy. Then 'I can ignore the law' wealthy. Then 'I can buy the law' wealthy. The 99% sits on the lowest rung on the meaningful wealth scale.

I find interesting your wealthy classification.

What is the difference between the first two? I can't figure it out.

It's the difference between someone who can maintain a comfortable lifestyle for the rest of their life if they don't go overboard, and someone who has enough money to start pursuing other ventures at cost. This comes with a whole lot of changes like losing most of your 'poor people' friend circle and rubbing shoulders with impactful people.

As the creator of Minecraft put it:

>Once I realized I had fuck-you money and didn't care about my public image any more because it didn't affect my day to day life in any way

Everything you said can be applied either to the 1% in America or the Americans in the world. Both are about in the top 1% of richness and both have those privileges among their respective 99%s.

The average American can't change the law in an arbitrary part of the world.

Lloyd Blankfein can.

You're pulling that quote out of context there, the previous paragraph grounds the statement into something entirely different than attacking the precariat:

> Beneath a veneer of classlessness, the American class reproduction machine operates with ruthless efficiency. In particular, the upper middle class is solidifying. This favored fifth at the top of the income distribution, with an average annual household income of $200,000, has been separating from the 80 percent below. Collectively, this top fifth has seen a $4 trillion-plus increase in pretax income since 1979, compared to just over $3 trillion for everyone else. Some of those gains went to the top 1 percent. But most went to the 19 percent just beneath them.

Nothing about what you state goes against the spirit of the article, which between the lines mainly seems to be about wealth redistribution.

Also, while I agree with all of your points, putting yourself in the same boat as the precariat, the most vulnerable underbelly of modern society, is a bit crass.

> I would happily pay 80% taxes

That's ridiculous. No government services costs that much. No insurance for any event costs that much.

If you live in richest country in the world and citizens pay 30% taxes and government can't provide free education and health care then it's something wrong with the government itself and artificially inflated prices on education and healthcare.

Instead of raising taxes, you need pop healthcare and education bubble first.

Denmark and Sweden's top marginal tax rate is around 60%, which doesn't include value added taxes of about 10%.

And that's why I left Sweden to the Netherlands because the Netherlands offers huge tax discount - 30% rulling. In other words, Sweden lost me as a software developer.

And it looks like it's not only me how doesn't like high taxes in Sweden:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-founders-blast-swedens-...

Or you use the taxes to transfer wealth from the richest to the poorest, for example by paying everyone a basic income.

In Hungary you pay 54% of it + 27% VAT.

>Here is what makes me in a $300k a year household and the $30k household on the other end of town the same:

You and the $30k household are both in the global 1%. Over 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. Both of you have social safety nets for food, housing, and healthcare. You live better lives than virtually everyone in the history of the planet has ever lived. That's what makes you the same.

>That is why I am a socialist and I know I'm not the only one.

Capitalism with relatively free trade is the only mechanism in the history of the world to be able to pull massive numbers of people out of grinding poverty. Socialism has tended to result in the opposite outcome. If you need a refresher course, watch Venezuela unfold right now in real time.

>Capitalism with relatively free trade is the only mechanism in the history of the world to be able to pull massive numbers of people out of grinding poverty.

What does this even mean? Rome pulled massive numbers of people out of grinding poverty with the free grain dole, not at all capitalist.

>If you need a refresher course, watch Venezuela unfold right now in real time.

Yep, socialism is the cause of all their problems. In no way is this situation caused by the huge drop in oil prices, something almost entirely outside their control. And Capitalism has never experienced a collapse like theirs...

> >Capitalism with relatively free trade is the only mechanism in the history of the world to be able to pull massive numbers of people out of grinding poverty.

>What does this even mean?

It means that the reason there was grain for Rome to give was because of trade and capitalism (as well as some slavery and conquering which impoverish some populations to enrich others).

Capitalism (private ownership of means of production) means that I benefit if I provide things that other people want.

Trade allows individuals to make exchanges that benefit them.

Free trade ensures that exchanges benefit both parties, resulting in an increase of total well-being.

> Rome pulled massive numbers of people out of grinding poverty with the free grain dole, not at all capitalist.

And Rome periodically put them back into grinding poverty by reducing the size of the grain dole because it was too expensive? Funding consumption can't reduce long term poverty (give a fish vs teach to fish).

Calling the Roman economy "capitalism" seems like a bit of a stretch, given things like the Emperor's ultimate control over anything. If you roll with it you're doing a massive white wash of history to praise capitalism for eventually improving problems it faced.

>as well as some slavery and conquering which impoverish some populations to enrich others).

Massive understatement, roughly 15% of the population of Rome were slaves and the Pax Romana is often seen as one of the causes of the breakdown of the economy. This is a common theme with capitalism and it's enrichment periods. It's very hard to argue that most of the world benefitted from colonialism.

>And Rome periodically put them back into grinding poverty by reducing the size of the grain dole because it was too expensive? Funding consumption can't reduce long term poverty (give a fish vs teach to fish).

And capitalism periodically put them back into grinding poverty with massive crashes or unchecked greed. Teaching a man to fish isn't that helpful if you then own all of the poles and materials to make the poles and refuse to share.

>Teaching a man to fish isn't that helpful if you then own all of the poles and materials to make the poles and refuse to share.

In a world with free markets and free trade how would this be possible? I'm having a hard time imagining a single person or even a corporation owning, for example, all of the iron across the entire globe.

It was about the grain dole, the rich bought all the land that the soldiers owned while they were off at war and then forced the state to auction the land won to the highest bidder. This led to the free market and free trade of soldiers, where competition is not at all in the public interest.

Sorry, but stealing someone's land and turning them into a slave is not a free market. No one is putting Rome up as an ideal for its economic or political freedom. But why would the wealthy people even bother stealing the land in the first place? Because once they were able to control that capital (the land) they could produce more grain than subsistence levels and turn a profit. This incentive allowed Rome to produce so much grain they could offer a public dole in spite of its other ethical problems.

They didn't steal the land, that came later afterwards the republic fell. They used their wealth in a free market political field to start wars that the citizen army left to fight, then stepped in to buy the land that the owners were too busy at war to maintain.

And no, control of that land isn't what enabled the grain dole. The lands won by the army did.

This isn't that different than capitalist Venezuela. Loan someone in Venezuela a bunch of arms, they fight, then they have to repay you and look at those discovered oil fields they have!

Describing Rome as "capitalist" in the modern sense is a gross misrepresentation of what is known about the ancient economy, ignoring the work of Finley and Polanyi.

(Also, you spotted that Rome was a slave society, but failed to make the obvious conclusion that slavery precludes free exchange of labour!)

>Describing Rome as "capitalist" in the modern sense is a gross misrepresentation of what is known about the ancient economy, ignoring the work of Finley and Polanyi.

Government took only 5%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#GDP_and_income_d... In the Scheidel–Friesen economic model, the total annual income generated by the Empire is placed at nearly 20 billion HS, with about 5 percent extracted by central and local government.

What does the marginal tax rate have to do with it? The economic structure was not similar to modern industrial organisation.

I don't understand how that's relevant. The citizens of Rome were able to keep 95% of the results of their labor. I'm certainly open to any suggestions you have about reducing my marginal tax rate to 5% if you think Rome is a good example of bringing people out of grinding poverty.

"Citizens of Rome" meaning what? As the traditional meaning is literally the residents of Rome until 90 BCE, then reluctantly Italians. Provincials weren't citizens until 212 AD, and that still left out slaves.

Venezuela seems to be more straightforward corruption and incompetence, the sort of thing that can ruin any political system left or right.

This is precisely why socialism is a bad idea. Bad people will always get elected eventually. The solution to this problem is not to hand more control of the nation's capital to a nice pretty centralized target for evil/imcompetent people.

Bad actors are a problem in any system, which is why the system should be pluralist; but it's entirely possible for bad right-wing actors to get elected. Argentina, rather than Venezuela.

How can you be more pluralist than by letting each citizen keep their own power?

That's a nice slogan, but empty without an analysis of power relations. Participants in a market are not automatically equal in power!

Especially important in the sub-discussion about healthcare that's going on here. There's disparity of information (not every citizen has a complete knowledge of all possible medical specialisations), disparity of capability (medical conditions can be literally incapacitating), and disparity of risk (most medical conditions are mostly randomly distributed).

>Participants in a market are not automatically equal in power!

Yes, that's true. The world is not fair and we're not all equal in power. How is the solution to that to take 80% of everyone's income and hand over control of it to a select few in government?

In a free market system at least each participant is free to walk away from any given transaction. Now you want to take away even that.

By taking that statement to it's logical endpoint for a start, rather than the crazy libertarian version where "keeping your own power" includes a government that is ensuring what you call your own power stays your own power. Or, "What is Property?"

Would you let Donald Trump personally manage your 401k? Do you believe, in doing so, that he would have your best interest at heart? If not, then why would you think it'd be a good idea to let him have control over your Social Security?

Who do you think is better capable of making decisions about your own children's best interests when it comes to getting educated: you or Betsy DeVoss?

The more centralized power/money is, the more ripe it will be for corruptive forces. The less powerful the government, the less damage a bad actor can do when they inevitably get elected.

>The more centralized power/money is, the more ripe it will be for corruptive forces.

If this is the basis of your argument, then again there is only one logical endpoint. "What is property?... Property is theft!" Ownernship centralizes power over that thing in the hands of a person or small group.

The US libertarian view is anarchy with property rights stapled on, which does nothing except help the rich get more powerful. They use the same arguments about how freedom is essential and government interference is bad, but ignore how there is no freedom on private property and want government guaranteeing their status.

> I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't. The rentiers have shown time and time again they would rather destroy the economy than allow everyone to have the luxury of stability.

Nothing prevents you from moving in a more socialist country. Why don't you? There's plenty of choice out there.

Actually, quite a lot does prevent Americans from moving -- namely the work permits and job offers that are generally required -- just as America limits immigration, so do other countries. I actually have lived and worked in other countries myself, but my employers had to write justifications as to why they were hiring me rather than one of their countrymen.

>Nothing prevents you from moving in a more socialist country.

Countries can control who moves into them, you know.

Language and nationality would be two significant obstacles.

You would pay 80% to have your healthcare paid for, but we already spend double, as a percentage of GDP, vs. any other country for health care and we have worse outcomes by many measures. More government spending will just make the problem worse. Something, anything, besides spending more money has to be done to solve the health care crisis but political thinking is so calcified that we can't imagine a solution that doesn't involve spending more money.

FWIW there are some studies that try to break apart health outcomes caused by health care vs those cased by lifestyle. Most of these seem to indicate that we are actually getting something for our extra money in the US. Cancer recovery rates, for example, are very good in the US compared to elsewhere.

Many of our poor health outcomes seem to be due to lifestyle issues (obesity, drugs, lack of exercise, etc) not our actual health care system.

Not disagreeing with your comment as I think you are mostly right. Just thought you might find this interesting.

It would also be interesting to see where income lies in those lifestyle issues as well before and during the downturn.

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of your spending vs the 30k household here.

After all, if you always adjust your spending to your income, you will never be rich in any 'cannot be ruined' sense. Consequently, it would be unfair to compare situations to the 30k family and conclude you are in the same boat.

> I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't.

No, you wouldn't.

If you lived on 20% of your income ($60,000 - still double that $30k household that you claim is the same), you could retire in 5.5 working years and have that nest egg sustain you forever - no welfare state needed.

If you drop it down to the $30,000, saving 90% of your income, you could retire in 3 years.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

Your lifestyle is preventing you from doing that, and your lifestyle and the fact that you can choose whether or not to live the $30k lifestyle is how you are not the same as that $30k household on the other end of town.

> That is why I am a socialist and I know I'm not the only one.

You're still only a socialist as long as you're spending other people's money.

Everyone is looking for security. Security from physical violence, security from medical issues bankrupting them, security for their children to be successful (of which living in a high income high expense neighborhood is apparently a huge factor).

Dividing the world into the 1% who "own" and the 99% who must sell their labor is useful on one level, but obscurantist on another.

The question is not one of abstractions, but of political realities. What exactly has this so-called "solidarity of the precariat" wrought? The author's point is precisely that the upper-middle class actively work against the interests of the 80%. Do you disagree that 30k/yr private schools, Ivy League legacies, and these suburban enclaves are also "an attack on the solidarity of the precariat"? Only that the 80% only have their words and their votes, whereas the 20% have real political power?

"I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't. "

It sounds like you should buy insurance.

> I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't.

What's stopping you from saving up same amount of money?

> if I was to get an incurable disease I would slide down the income scale without a break.

...as would your utility to the society. It's understandable, from basic moral instinct, that society would continue to provide you with basic food and shelter, would such a thing happen. But why on Earth would I, for example, be compelled to continue pay you your former salary (since we're on HN, I'd assume you're on senior software engineer level) after you can no longer provide the relevant service?

> What's stopping you from saving up same amount of money?

The fact that it would put him at a significant relative quality of life disadvantage compared to his peers. A widespread 80% tax would not.

Slightly OT: I'm really glad my parents raised me not to judge my "quality of life" based on how much money my peers spend. This way I can save hard, and get off the wage slave treadmill early.

Which drives home the most important point about socialism. While capitalism is keeping up with the joneses, socialism is about making sure the joneses are kept in their place.

All that an 80% tax would do is suck the wealth away to the 1% even faster. No one is minding the store--the money the federal government takes now at 25-33% is mostly wasted on nonsense that benefits the war machine, the healthcare machinery (think: rent seekers) and all manner of pork projects. I can't see forfeiting even more to them, I just wouldn't bother to work at all. Enough is enough when it comes to this socialist utopia dream--it doesn't exist, it has never existed, it will never exist.

Hi, I went to a doctor this morning and recieved a prescription for which I will pay nothing. Apparently I don't exist?

That money came out of someone else's pocket! It is not free. The free lunch is what doesn't exist and has never existed.

> That money came out of someone else's pocket!

This is also true of insurance systems.

Nobody's pretending that socialised systems magic healthcare out of thin air, it's more a question of total resources spent by society and distribution of outcomes - including whether certain people get rationed out of the system because they can't afford it.

Insurance is voluntary--you can opt out. I can't opt out of taxes and put that money to other uses. It is am matter of economic freedom of choice.

WE NEED SOCIALISM for the following.

Transportation

Post

Healthcare

Emergency Services

Basic Welfare

For everything else there's capitalism.

I would add utilities to that list, at least to a certain extent. It's impractical to have multiple electricity/water/sewage grids in the same city.

Competition?

Although I've never had the option to choose these utilities in the cities I've lived in. I haven't lived in a ton of cities, but enough to wonder.

but the consumption of utilities varies great from household to household and it would be abused. but a capped subsidized amount would make sense.

yes, the grids should be the same company, but who bills you varies.

Education

yes that's another one.

Can't you afford health insurance?

> I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't.

This crucial point of yours seems to have been missed by the author of the article. I wonder if that has something to do with them being from the UK, which has nationalized healthcare and some sort of a welfare state.

Oh and by the way, countries like the Soviet Union have never been known for providing good healthcare solutions or even producing remotely interesting new drugs for their population.

Are you sure you really want socialism for health care? Seems like the facts don't really align with your idealized version of socialism.

One of the things that makes me flinch: When people on the internet are shouting each other about a topic without realizing they are talking about completely different things.

When everybody in this thread are advocating for socialism, are using the word in the European sense, socialism as in social-democracy [1], as have many leading European parties in their names [2][3]. Its tenets are as many as there are people using the word, but usually involve a strong safety net with a publicly owned healthcare system, strong redistribution by taxing the rich and companies, and generally having corporations on short leash. For a successful implementation, see the Nordic countries.

In the US, the word socialism is used as a synonym for communism, that is the word that would be used in Europe for the kind of government that ran all those countries you mentioned, is responsible of all those awful things and shares nothing with socialism but a far historical background, lost in the mists of the late XIX century.

In real life (in Europe), it would be hard to find anybody that goes by socialist or votes a socialist party that would advocate for anything remotely similar to a full fledged Communism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Ger... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_(France)

That distinction is lost on me: Either you are voting to strip the wealth of people under the color of law or you aren't.

"All taxation is theft" is a ridiculous position which if implemented leaves you without a functioning society.

I can see that lots of Americans refuse to acknowledge the difference between different kinds of political systems, or look at Europe as it actually is. It's disappointing that even on HN people can't see past their prejudices.

It's not ridiculous as a basis for policy. The idea that the money belongs to the government has to end.

I can't figure out "Europe as it actually is." I have concluded that peasants like to be ruled and cradle to grave socialism is what people clearly prefer despite the negative effects it has on real personal freedom.

Socialism != soviet union.

The world is full of countries with more equally distributed healthcare systems than the US with better public/private balance. The one that gets brought up most often here is the UK NHS, but there are plenty of others.

(Ironically, even if you limit yourself to actual communism, Cuba has quite an effective healthcare system. It just relies on not having freedom of movement so doctors can't move to better paid countries)

Cuba does not have an effective healthcare system. I, for one, would like my hospital to have air conditioning and stable electricity, two things Cuban hospitals don't often have.

I'm going by e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cubas-health-car...

"The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than it is in the United States and is among the lowest in the world"

Not perfect, but far better than you might expect.

Have you been to Cuba? It's more decrepit than one might expect.

Its just about as effective as the USA's according to the World Health Organization.

> The world is full of countries with more equally distributed healthcare systems than the US with better public/private balance. The one that gets brought up most often here is the UK NHS, but there are plenty of others.

How many countries with socialist health care systems then produce new drugs for patients? I can tell you, it's about none. Most of the new drugs worldwide come from the US market. There's no way going around that fact.

Some major medicinal companies here in socialist Denmark are:

Novo -- focusing on diabetes; about 15,000 employees in Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Nordisk

Novozymes -- enzymes; about 6,500 employees in Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novozymes

Coloplast -- colostomy bags etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloplast

Genmab -- cancer etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genmab

These are 4 directly medical companies that also are all 4 part of the OMX 20 stock market index (similar to NASDAQ 100, the most 20 valuable public companies). That index also has 2 hearing aid companies (GN and William Demant)

One source estimates 44.000 employees in biotech/medtech in the Copenhagen/Sweden "Medicon Valley" area.

So what are all these medical researchers in the EU doing? I have a suspicion that much of this stuff is fully international and it's the final steps of trial, patenting and bringing to market that happen in the US, causing research to be over-attributed to the US.

There's also the question of what kind of research is prioritised by the profit motive.

(Human Genome Project is probably the flagship example of such international public research)

Their research is only possible because they know they will be able to recoup costs in the US.

Saying Soviet Union is socialism is like saying China's government really cares about communism.

Hey so where is the real socialism yet? you don't seem to realize that all socialism leads to a construct like Soviet Russia. Everything was nationalized, which is basically what Socialism advocated all along. The effects are well known, let's not pretend there was ever a "no true scotman" effect for socialism in Russia.

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