You said that already. You were supposed to explain how one implies the other.
Are you really that use to people just going along with your nonsense?
The Government Does Not Create Wealth?
- Thread starter SPECTRE1
- Start date
Are you really that use to people just going along with your nonsense?
If I already said that, than why should I explain your interpretation.
You should think about wealth as the value of those things above their cost. If someone pays $200 for a barrel of oil that is only going for $100, then they have a negative wealth amount until the price gets above the $200 they paid for it.
I think it is an important distinction because the capital isn't a value in itself, but instead it should only be worth the productive activity you can squeeze out of it.
The government is a political arrangement, backed by force.
I edited it a bit, but I think this is a purer definition. What the government does with that force is a reflection of the people governed.
The current values of the country supports immoral coercive force, but that isn't the natural state of government. The natural state of government is to be the primary user of force by the consent of the governed.
We as a nation could choose to support an exclusively moral application of force, and if we did, that government wouldn't be more unnatural or natural than the present government.
By your definition, if we got a moral government tomorrow, then it would be the corrupt version because it doesn't follow the defined path of death and destruction.
Evil doesn't have to be the default of government. It has been that way for all of written history, by choice.
I agree with all of what you said, but I will include the effect of that list. It also allows a person to break the norms of history and not be a savage leech on others around him. For the first time in human history people could choose to be around others based on their mutual economic self-interest, and the use of force is unnecessary and contradictory to the purest idea of wealth.
I mention earlier how my beliefs leans towards the consent of the government.
Our current electorate endorses the theft currently in progress, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I loosely agree with this enough to not add anything.
Let me change my definition of wealth to stored energy or that which saves energy.
Oil, coal, wood, and food are examples of stored energy and therefore wealth.
A tool, that reduces the time to perform a required task that provides energy, is wealth. So, an axe, that is used to cut down a tree for firewood, is wealth. And, the firewood is wealth, also.
By that definition, anything created by law, decreed, or political, is not wealth.... because it neither saves nor stores energy.
All forms of political violence, the police, the military, the militias, destroy wealth because they waste energy and prevent/retard either the production of stored energy or the saving of energy.
Government not only does not create wealth... government is the greatest destroyer/waster of wealth.
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Why the U.S. government should send you $3,000 for doing nothing
Why the U.S. government should send you $3,000 for doing nothing
Support builds for a new kind of "welfare state" By Keith Wagstaff |
November 14, 2013
In Switzerland, voters will head to the polls on Nov. 24 to decide whether every citizen should start receiving unconditional checks for 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,800) every single month.
It's called a universal basic income or basic income guarantee, and it's been championed by everyone from socialists to free market champion Milton Friedman. Thomas Paine advocated for a version of it in Agrarian Justice, published in 1795. Mostly, it has been a kind of utopian pipe-dream, implemented here and there only by local governments.
The idea is simple: Every month, every citizen gets a certain amount of money from the government, regardless of income or any other factors. Someone making $100,000 a year would get the same check as someone making $15,000 a year.
That monthly check, the thinking goes, would guarantee a basic living standard and drive up wages as private companies are forced to compete with the government. On a small scale, this already happens in places like Alaska, where, every year, residents receive a share of the state's oil profits ($900 in 2013).
It has never, however, been implemented across a large, developed country like Switzerland. If it works there, could it work in the United States?
Most of the proposals for a similar program in the United States have thrown around sums much lower than $2,800 a month. Switzerland, with a population about the same as New York City, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita — making it hard to relate to when drawing up policy.
In the United States, some have suggested setting the basic income guarantee at the poverty level, which is currently $11,490 for one person. That means everyone would get a check for about $957 every month. Less ambitious, but perhaps more practical, is leftist economics writer Matt Breunig's suggestion that Uncle Sam cut every American a check for $2,920 every year. That includes children, so a family of four would get $11,680 a year, no matter what.
His reasoning was that nearly $3,000 in basic income, added to someone's regular income, would lift about half of the country's poor out of poverty.
"Maybe that will convince a few Americans work isn't worth it anymore," he wrote in The Atlantic, "but the vast majority who will probably continue to work won't have to worry about losing their check as they move up the income ladder."
Of course, that "probably" is what scares conservatives already weary of the "welfare state."
However, it's conservatives that have made some of the strongest cases for the basic income guarantee, mostly because, theoretically, it would replace regimented government spending on programs like food stamps, Social Security, and Medicare with a lump sum that Americans can spend as they please. Other government programs could be slashed and eliminated as Americans got used to receiving a single check from a single department.
"Leave the wealth where it originates, and watch how its many uses, individual and collaborative, enable civil society to meet the needs that government cannot," wrote libertarian columnist Charles Murray in the introduction to his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.
In other words: If the government is going to spend money anyway, why not let the people decide how to spend it? This, however, isn't a universal libertarian argument. Economist Tyler Cowen argued that politicians would never end programs like Medicaid or Social Security, which would lead to something that "suddenly starts resembling … the welfare state, albeit the welfare state plus."
The appeal to the left is obvious. New York Times' economics reporter Annie Lowrey made the case for how a basic income guarantee would level the playing field for the 99 percent:
Not that Washington is even remotely capable of passing anything like this. Congress can't even keep the government running with the system the United States has now. But it will be interesting to see how things play out in Switzerland, and if the basic income guarantee is a success, whether other developed nations start toying with the idea themselves.
http://theweek.com/article/index/252828/why-the-us-government-should-send-you-3000-for-doing-nothing
Why the U.S. government should send you $3,000 for doing nothing
Support builds for a new kind of "welfare state" By Keith Wagstaff |
November 14, 2013
In Switzerland, voters will head to the polls on Nov. 24 to decide whether every citizen should start receiving unconditional checks for 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,800) every single month.
It's called a universal basic income or basic income guarantee, and it's been championed by everyone from socialists to free market champion Milton Friedman. Thomas Paine advocated for a version of it in Agrarian Justice, published in 1795. Mostly, it has been a kind of utopian pipe-dream, implemented here and there only by local governments.
The idea is simple: Every month, every citizen gets a certain amount of money from the government, regardless of income or any other factors. Someone making $100,000 a year would get the same check as someone making $15,000 a year.
That monthly check, the thinking goes, would guarantee a basic living standard and drive up wages as private companies are forced to compete with the government. On a small scale, this already happens in places like Alaska, where, every year, residents receive a share of the state's oil profits ($900 in 2013).
It has never, however, been implemented across a large, developed country like Switzerland. If it works there, could it work in the United States?
Most of the proposals for a similar program in the United States have thrown around sums much lower than $2,800 a month. Switzerland, with a population about the same as New York City, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita — making it hard to relate to when drawing up policy.
In the United States, some have suggested setting the basic income guarantee at the poverty level, which is currently $11,490 for one person. That means everyone would get a check for about $957 every month. Less ambitious, but perhaps more practical, is leftist economics writer Matt Breunig's suggestion that Uncle Sam cut every American a check for $2,920 every year. That includes children, so a family of four would get $11,680 a year, no matter what.
His reasoning was that nearly $3,000 in basic income, added to someone's regular income, would lift about half of the country's poor out of poverty.
"Maybe that will convince a few Americans work isn't worth it anymore," he wrote in The Atlantic, "but the vast majority who will probably continue to work won't have to worry about losing their check as they move up the income ladder."
Of course, that "probably" is what scares conservatives already weary of the "welfare state."
However, it's conservatives that have made some of the strongest cases for the basic income guarantee, mostly because, theoretically, it would replace regimented government spending on programs like food stamps, Social Security, and Medicare with a lump sum that Americans can spend as they please. Other government programs could be slashed and eliminated as Americans got used to receiving a single check from a single department.
"Leave the wealth where it originates, and watch how its many uses, individual and collaborative, enable civil society to meet the needs that government cannot," wrote libertarian columnist Charles Murray in the introduction to his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.
In other words: If the government is going to spend money anyway, why not let the people decide how to spend it? This, however, isn't a universal libertarian argument. Economist Tyler Cowen argued that politicians would never end programs like Medicaid or Social Security, which would lead to something that "suddenly starts resembling … the welfare state, albeit the welfare state plus."
The appeal to the left is obvious. New York Times' economics reporter Annie Lowrey made the case for how a basic income guarantee would level the playing field for the 99 percent:
Wages are stagnant, unemployment is high and tens of millions of families are struggling in Europe and here at home. Despite record corporate earnings and skyrocketing fortunes for the college-educated and already well-off, the job market is simply not rewarding many fully employed workers with a decent way of life. Millions of households have had no real increase in earnings since the late 1980s … If our economy is no longer able to improve the lives of the working poor and low-income families, why not tweak our policies to do what we’re already doing, but better — more harmoniously? [New York Times]
Not that Washington is even remotely capable of passing anything like this. Congress can't even keep the government running with the system the United States has now. But it will be interesting to see how things play out in Switzerland, and if the basic income guarantee is a success, whether other developed nations start toying with the idea themselves.
http://theweek.com/article/index/252828/why-the-us-government-should-send-you-3000-for-doing-nothing
source: Democracy Now
With Wins for de Blasio, Minimum Wage and Tea Party Losses, Voters Signal Rejection of Austerity
<IFRAME height=225 src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2013/11/6/with_wins_for_de_blasio_minimum" frameBorder=0 width=400></IFRAME>
With Wins for de Blasio, Minimum Wage and Tea Party Losses, Voters Signal Rejection of Austerity
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source: Truth Dig
How the Rich Became Dependent on Government Welfare
Remember when President Obama was lambasted for saying “you didn’t build that”? Turns out he was right, at least when it comes to lots of stuff built by the world’s wealthiest corporations. That’s the takeaway from this week’s new study of 25,000 major taxpayer subsidy deals over the last two decades.
Entitled “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent,” the report from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First shows that the world’s largest companies aren’t models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they’re propped up by billions of dollars in welfare payments from state and local governments.
Such subsidies might be a bit more defensible if they were being doled out in a way that promoted upstart entrepreneurialism. But as the study also shows, a full “three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations”—not to the small businesses and startups that politicians so often pretend to care about.
In dollar figures, that’s a whopping $110 billion going to big companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion.
These kinds of handouts, of course, are the definition of government intervention in the market. Nonetheless, those who receive the subsidies are still portrayed as free-market paragons.
Consider Charles and David Koch. Their company, Koch Industries, has relied on $88 million worth of government handouts. Yet, as the major financiers of the anti-government right, the Kochs are still billed as libertarian free-market activists.
Similarly, behold the big tech firms. They are often portrayed as self-made success stories. Yet, as Good Jobs First shows, they are among the biggest recipients of the subsidies.
Intel leads the tech pack with 58 subsidies worth $3.8 billion. Next up is IBM, which has received more than $1 billion in subsidies. Most of that is from New York—a state proudly promoting its corporate handouts in a new ad campaign.
Then there’s Google’s $632 million and Yahoo’s $260 million—both sets of subsidies primarily from data center deals. And not to be forgotten is 38 Studios, the now bankrupt software firm that received $75 million in Rhode Island taxpayer cash. The company received the handout at the very moment Rhode Island was pleading “poverty” to justify cuts to public workers’ retirement benefits.
Along with propping up companies that are supposedly free-market icons, the subsidies are also flowing to financial firms that have become synonymous with never-ending bailouts. Indeed, companies like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup—each of which were given massive taxpayer subsidies during the financial crisis—are the recipients of tens of millions of dollars in additional subsidies.
All of these handouts, of course, would be derided if they were going to poor people. But because they are going to extremely wealthy politically connected conglomerates, they are typically promoted with cheery euphemisms like “incentives” or “economic development.” Those euphemisms persist even though many subsidies do not end up actually creating jobs.
In light of that, the Good Jobs First report is a reality check on all the political rhetoric about dependency. Most of that rhetoric is punitively aimed at the poor. That’s because, unlike the huge corporations receiving all those subsidies, the poor don’t have armies of lobbyists and truckloads of campaign contributions that make sure programs like food stamps are shrouded in the anodyne argot of “incentives” and “development.”
But as the report proves, if we are going to have an honest conversation about dependency and free markets, then the billions of dollars flowing to politically connected companies need to be part of the discussion.
How the Rich Became Dependent on Government Welfare
Remember when President Obama was lambasted for saying “you didn’t build that”? Turns out he was right, at least when it comes to lots of stuff built by the world’s wealthiest corporations. That’s the takeaway from this week’s new study of 25,000 major taxpayer subsidy deals over the last two decades.
Entitled “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent,” the report from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First shows that the world’s largest companies aren’t models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they’re propped up by billions of dollars in welfare payments from state and local governments.
Such subsidies might be a bit more defensible if they were being doled out in a way that promoted upstart entrepreneurialism. But as the study also shows, a full “three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations”—not to the small businesses and startups that politicians so often pretend to care about.
In dollar figures, that’s a whopping $110 billion going to big companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion.
These kinds of handouts, of course, are the definition of government intervention in the market. Nonetheless, those who receive the subsidies are still portrayed as free-market paragons.
Consider Charles and David Koch. Their company, Koch Industries, has relied on $88 million worth of government handouts. Yet, as the major financiers of the anti-government right, the Kochs are still billed as libertarian free-market activists.
Similarly, behold the big tech firms. They are often portrayed as self-made success stories. Yet, as Good Jobs First shows, they are among the biggest recipients of the subsidies.
Intel leads the tech pack with 58 subsidies worth $3.8 billion. Next up is IBM, which has received more than $1 billion in subsidies. Most of that is from New York—a state proudly promoting its corporate handouts in a new ad campaign.
Then there’s Google’s $632 million and Yahoo’s $260 million—both sets of subsidies primarily from data center deals. And not to be forgotten is 38 Studios, the now bankrupt software firm that received $75 million in Rhode Island taxpayer cash. The company received the handout at the very moment Rhode Island was pleading “poverty” to justify cuts to public workers’ retirement benefits.
Along with propping up companies that are supposedly free-market icons, the subsidies are also flowing to financial firms that have become synonymous with never-ending bailouts. Indeed, companies like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup—each of which were given massive taxpayer subsidies during the financial crisis—are the recipients of tens of millions of dollars in additional subsidies.
All of these handouts, of course, would be derided if they were going to poor people. But because they are going to extremely wealthy politically connected conglomerates, they are typically promoted with cheery euphemisms like “incentives” or “economic development.” Those euphemisms persist even though many subsidies do not end up actually creating jobs.
In light of that, the Good Jobs First report is a reality check on all the political rhetoric about dependency. Most of that rhetoric is punitively aimed at the poor. That’s because, unlike the huge corporations receiving all those subsidies, the poor don’t have armies of lobbyists and truckloads of campaign contributions that make sure programs like food stamps are shrouded in the anodyne argot of “incentives” and “development.”
But as the report proves, if we are going to have an honest conversation about dependency and free markets, then the billions of dollars flowing to politically connected companies need to be part of the discussion.
Not just "libertarians" but "arch conservatives" who back politicians as they cut food stamps and cut and keep people off Medicaid, all the while making sure their media outlets tell us about people who may have lost their policies under "Obamacare".
Them.
When I lived in Vancouver the power and water companies were owned by a government corporation called BC Hydro. The province had a massive hydro electric dam and a surplus of drinking water. The government made sure that all of the residents had access to power and water at cut market rates before they could sell it to other markets.
To put it in perspective, when I lived in a large studio apartment with electric heat I paid $50 a month for my power and water. In the summer time I paid about $20 a month.
When I moved to California I was shocked on how much PG&E and t EBMUD charged for utilities. In a month I paid more for water alone than I paid for all my other utilities combined back home. Then there was the natural gas explosion in San Bruno that destroyed several homes, the ENRON scandal. All things that NEVER would have happened back home. The system is set up to avoid problems like that.
To put it in perspective, when I lived in a large studio apartment with electric heat I paid $50 a month for my power and water. In the summer time I paid about $20 a month.
When I moved to California I was shocked on how much PG&E and t EBMUD charged for utilities. In a month I paid more for water alone than I paid for all my other utilities combined back home. Then there was the natural gas explosion in San Bruno that destroyed several homes, the ENRON scandal. All things that NEVER would have happened back home. The system is set up to avoid problems like that.
Keep talking openly about how great it is when a governmental entity did this and you will be secretly accused of being a DPRK agent. A van will show up outside your house and a team of people will enter your house and car surreptitiously. They will drop covert surveillance when you leave. There is no room for debate or discussion about anything you are talking about in the U.S.
The U.S. has become a clown show that would never support something like this. I have my own problems which is frustrating when a failed system of surveillance and terror is an impediment to your growth, progress, and innovation. It did not use to be like this; however, all great empires diminish internally such as the USSR until they collapse. The only solution is to leave.
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Why? It's not that different from the U.S. government's rural electrification program. It's also what would essentially happen if the U.S. ever enacted universal health care.
It's also worth mentioning that while this government run monopoly works well for power and water it fails dismally in other areas. For instance in 2005, ICBC, the government owned car insurance company, charged me $150/ month to insure my 1987 Cutlass. That was with 5 years driving experience, no accidents or DUI's and only a couple speeding tickets.
The government controlled liquor distribution pushed the price of a six pack of beer to $12 and a fifth of smirnov to $25. I've gone to Washington State and seen Canadian made beer sell for half of that price.
The government recently gave up its hold on cel phones and even still you can't get a plan for less than $100/month. Even a metro PCS type deal.
There is nothing wrong with a well regulated private sector
This is an age old issue in the USA. Special interests (corporations) have had an undue influence in the government since the mid 1800s. We have gone back a forth over it since then. We even had a political party founded on corporate principles. The republican party.
MYTH BUSTER ???
In her recent book, The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths, Mariana Mazzucato challenges the image of the lethargic, regulating state versus the dynamic business sector—using historical examples to show how some of the most high risk and courageous investments that led to revolutions in IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology, were sparked by public sector institutions. It offers a new way of thinking about political economy in the 21st century.
In her recent book, The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths, Mariana Mazzucato challenges the image of the lethargic, regulating state versus the dynamic business sector—using historical examples to show how some of the most high risk and courageous investments that led to revolutions in IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology, were sparked by public sector institutions. It offers a new way of thinking about political economy in the 21st century.
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