Q&A session with a cold hearted capitalist

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Cause your plan sounds like cuba to me so far.

If you think these things sound like Cuba I don't believe our debate is going to go very far. For example:

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Simply taxing 100% of everything above X income? Seizing property? Nationalizing major corporations?


None of these things are realistic goals, at least in the short term. Nationalizing major corporations wouldn't work in most cases view; instead, we could strive for worker ownership of firms, or follow Roemer's plan of coupon capitalism where each person owns a certain ammount of stock, which she can trade but cannot sell, and hence ownership of them is technically very widely dispersed. The property is not seized, the government slowly buys the stocks from private companies and distributes them to individuals. His plan can be called 'coupon capitalism' or considered a variety of market socialism, of which there are many. It is detailed in his book "A Future For Socialism".

A 100% tax rate is not a reasonable plan right now, it won't be 20 years from now, and it might never be. For right now, I would argue, we should work on turning regressive taxes (sales tax and social security tax) into non regressive taxes. making the income tax more progressive is a possibility. Keeping the inheritance tax would be good. I think it may be time to strongly consider something like a wealth tax, to fund redistribution of assets, instead of money.

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Because public schools currently have approximate equality by and large.

I can't believe we live in the same country. Based on what I've read and seen first hand about schools we have basically two school systems: one, in wealthy areas, which works rather well, and another, in poor areas, which works, well, poorly.

The first thing we should do in this area is eliminate the property/locality based way of funding schools and replace it with a national one which funds schools at an equal level.

I have few problems with private schools as long as all people can afford to go to all of the ones that are in existensce.

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How will you do this in ways that don't require iron-fisted coercion and imprisonment of "violators", and in ways that don't utterly destroy our economy?

Using the first few policies I mentioned helps, having a proportional represtation system helps, doing what countries in western europe have done, particularly Sweden, helps, allowing sympathy strikes helps, encouraging worker owned firms as well as Employee shared ownership firms helps, campaign finance reform on a massive level helps, seriously there are all sorts of indirect ways to go about this.

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high-sounding axioms but what is *your* plan?

I am arguing for general principles of justice that should be guiding social and economic policy. What exactly the best way is to live up to those principles depends a lot on circumstances. I've given details on two plans I agree with on this forum in the past.

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Maybe I'm just stupid, can you explain how you will "redistribute income and wealth" and "increas the power of labor relative to capital" in a way that doesn't trample on freedoms and brutally suppress individual initiative and send our nation into penury? Please explain.


There is little evidence that either redistribution or increasing the power of labor 'depress individual initiative or send nations into penury'; the experience in several other democracies tells you this.

As for freedom, we must be using different definitions of freedom; you must seem to think the U.S. is a 'more free' country than Norway or Sweden or Japan.

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UBI


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How is this different from welfare I don't really know but ok.

Everybody gets it always, indefinitely, whether they are working or not. Not like welfare, where only certain people get it and a person loses the benefits if they get a job.

The ultimate justification of the UBI, as argued for by Van Parijis in his book "Real Freedom For All", is freedom, as the title suggests, the thing you seem to be concerned most about: the freedom to have time to engage in training and education, as well as the freedom to 'say no' to state agencies and employers, without being punished via matieral deprivation. It also reflects the commitment of 'real libertarianism' (Van Parijis is a 'left-libertarian', and has been one of many scholars to argue against the 'right wing' libertarian view of freedom which is prevalent on this board) to promoting freedom, conceived as a generic good; the real libertarian urges that we provide people with the resources they need to achieve their aims, whatever those aims are.

Here is a link to a description of the idea the idea[/url], and how it is supposed to help with some other concerns as well.

Edited by moorobot (05/31/06 09:00 AM)

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