There are few statements that irritate me more than this seven link coil of bullcrap masquerading as wisdom:
“The best social program is a job”.
No, it’s not.
A “job” is something that creates wealth for someone else in excess of whatever paltry or princely sum they pay you.
A “social program” is something that redistrubutes wealth created by those who have a “job” into the pockets of those who don’t.
Nobody goes into business to create jobs, no matter what they might say when angling for tax incentives. They go into business to create wealth for themselves, which sometimes necessitates paying others to help them create it.
But wait, Kate! What about all those jobs building infrastructure?
So ET what activities are left to be considered as private then. The communal has the right to take private wealth? Good Grief. No, I don’t think you are a socialist, I think you are a communist.
That’s not socialism; that’s an acknowledgment that some parts of our life are private and some parts are communal
And who (since I gather you mean it’s not me) gets to decide which parts of *my* life are private, ET?
If there’s a requirement for *any* involuntary servitude or duty to this “CAS” you define, then you are advocating State supremacy over the individual, and that *is* socialism’s core defining attribute, and all the rest is quibbling about degree.
Ron Good,
Are we then to understand that your antipathy for “socialism” is such that you would, if you could, eschew roads, bridges, canals, sewers, municipal water supplies and the host of other benefits of ET’s “CAS” ? If that’s really your belief, you were born more than a century too late. Our forebears, the rugged frontiersmen who toughed it out in little cabins or soddies and, to the maximum extent possible, lived off of the land, were genuine individualists but, guess what -when more families moved into their neighbourhoods, they pooled their efforts and resources, first to build wagon roads and later, to string community telephone lines and build little community hospitals. Damned socialists !
No, Zog, you would be wrong to understand that–and who is this “we” you refer to?
I’m generally happy to cooperate with folks who respect me enough to ask, and then respect my answer. It’s the “involuntary” part I reject.