Do you find yourself angry at rich people? Making justifications for socialism? Saying things that make economic professors cringe? You may be feeling the Bern. Now there’s a cure!
Feel the Bern? There’s a Cure.
December 18, 2015
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I agree with most of this. A couple points of clarification though.
Yes, the top 1% pays 35% of taxes, that may be true, but so what? You need to speak in terms of percentage of income. Currently, the richest 1% hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States (Hurst, Charles E. (2007), Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences, Pearson Education, Inc., p. 31, ISBN 0-205-69829-8). If they only pay 35% of the tax, this is not equitable. Moreover, for people in lower socioeconomic brackets, tax is more of a burden on quality of life than for the rich. For instance, while the rich may have to make do with 1 less luxury vacation, the poor may have do make do without proper healthcare or nutritious food.
Also, check your understanding of the difference between a right and a freedom. “Freedom of speech” is a “freedom,” not a “right.” By definition, a “right” is something you demand from others. Freedoms are inalienable, they are not granted by governments or anyone else, and you do not ask anything of anyone else in order to exercise them (you only demand to be left free to exercise them). When people speak of a “right” to health care, they mean that basic healthcare is something they feel all citizens should be provided with (by society as a whole) regardless of whether the citizen can afford it or not. They do not mean it is a freedom in the same sense of “freedom of speech.” That is an absurd equivocation based on your misunderstanding of the distinction.
You are way mixed up on rights and freedom. Hobbes, long ago, explained that in a “state of nature” we all have natural liberty, including the freedom to murder, rape, etc. His argument was that by giving up our natural liberty (is murder an inalienable right?), in a social contract, we exchange it for the right to be protected from murder and other expressions of natural liberty. Tho he was defending an absolute monarchy, he sowed the seeds of democratic rights by basing the social contract on the people’s consent.
Natural liberty is clearly not inalienable. Rights are codified freedoms: the freedom of speech is a right to exercise a freedom. There is no right to murder, which is also a freedom.
I define freedom as the ability to do something without attaching any moral aspect to it. You have the ability to help old ladies or to murder them. I define liberty as freedoms protected by rights, which are protected or should be for giving up our natural liberty to do whatever we want.
When Jefferson said we have the right to live and liberty, he was saying we SHOULD have these. People have the “right” to revolt when they are not provided. The right of revolution goes back to Hobbe’s ambiguous defense of absolute authority, when he argues it is based on consent. When consent is withdrawn, the right of revolt is invoked. Consent implies the social contract by which we give up our natural liberty for protected rights or liberties. If the state cannot protect us from the evils of natural liberty (murder, rape, etc) and protect our civil rights, we have the fundamental right to throw the bums out and create a new government.
Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc are all rights…ie, liberties we demand be protected by the state or community in exchange for surrendering our natural liberty. This is the liberal concept of rights and liberty as first articulated by a man defending absolute authority but which he was unable to do (since its justification was protection) without the subversive democratic concept of consent. The right of the People as a society to accept or reject a government is the foundation of our democratic rights which are the guarantee of our civil liberty. This was the justification of the American Revolution, which we have yet to complete.
That’s how I see it after a long life of studying political philosophy.
Do not concede a single point to this stupid girl that portrays the 99% as schisophrenics while the only schisophrenic is her. Not even the 1%. She is delusional and cannot understand the world in which we live, so she offers no alternative to collage education debt, to health care, to anything, not even explaining corporativism when it is as simple as welfare for the corporations, less taxes for them and its owners, and the lack of social responsibility across the board, for the utopic state where every one has to be fending for him/herself. She probably went to a college where she leaned to parrot Freeman from one of his followers and never heard of Karl Marx and Galbraith.
Freedom of speech is in the Bill of Rights – that’s why freedom of speech is called a “right”. The Bill of Rights outlines what our rights are and is why it’s called the Bill of RIGHTS, because they are rights, not freedoms.
what’s the dif between corporatism and capitalism? not that i’m feeling the bern, but raw capitalism sucks. It leads to GovCorp. Socialism is the natural state of affairs in tribal societies. Don’t be afraid of it…it’s the only way to battle elitism. As long as personal liberties are maintained. Hard to say how that is accomplished without trial and error? It is of course very telling that the Bern has not proposed a tax on wall st. like Webster Tarpley or Ralph Nader. If he did they wouldn’t lt him in the debates.
The bern is unavoidable – the gold collar criminals have usurped nearly all governments throughout the world.
think of them as pinky and the brain.
Pinky “what’ll we do tonight brain?”
Brain “the same thing we do every night, Pinky, try and take over the world.”
they want fewer bipeds and those left will not inherit the earth but will be enslaved and forced to work and hope the great pharisees show some mercy (rofl)
taxes and usury are tools of choice which keeps the masses from having anything – agenda 2030 is progressing.
This is the most stupid right wing propaganda I ever have seen, full of inaccuracies. This is capitalism, not Adam Smith capitalism but capitalism of the Centyry XXI, the capitalism of the financing, which probably you have not heard yet (see Monthly Review, which 10 years ago advance the concept of economy stagnation). It is stupid to say that corporations lobby for regulations. When regulations are imminent, corporations lobby to make them ineffective but their philosophy is auto regulation or no regulation at all. This girl does not feel the Bern because the poor thinker thinks that she is a physician and is bringing the cure to the Burn when what is needed is the cure to the malaides of our society, what we who feel the Bern try to achieve. According to her, there are no societal evils and thing should be business as usual. Hers is a great post fro New Max or any other extreme right win outlet.
I don’t consider the Democrats or Republicans as true political parties. They are gangs who use political power for what benefits them and their friends. Their only strategy is to win elections and keep the power.
They are no parties. They are the one party of the superrich.
Why do so many people associate Free Market Capitalism with a Corporatocracy?
We didn’t witness Capitalism failing in the Fall of ’08.
We witnessed a deliberate, orchestrated theft (like the ‘Depression’).
Government is to prevent monopolies, not BE the monopoly.
When government and private interests are not separated…
THIS is what we get.
A full blown Corporatocracy, which is what we have now.
And we ‘ain’t shareholders or ‘Stakeholders’.
I thought this piece was great.
Forward it to your favorite Libtard.
What she said about education is all wrong. Education is not consumed like food or fuel. It is intellectual property that exists indefinitely. Free education just means transferring costs from what’s already being spent to the new system. Why should a “professor” be paid to tell me to go home and read 3 chapters of a textbook that cost $200, and repeat the process every semester?
Also, the $200 textbook isn’t any better than the one from 10 years ago that isn’t allowed to be used anymore, so they can sell the $200 textbook. I even had a class where the required lab book was authored by the instructor. US education is a ripoff. The money needed for free or near-free education is already being spent, we just aren’t getting our money’s worth.
Your best resource is people, What’s wrong with keeping people healthy out of taxes ?
Another ” Either/Or”, “Black or White”, “Capitalism or Socialism” melange of nonsense, scewed towards an ever changing “Right Wing or Left Wing”, “Patriotic or Terrorist” groupthink found only in the USA. Because the American has been “Dumbed Down” by a corrupted schooling system, fed Diploma Mill “Facts” to spew out for the rest of their lives, and stand ready and well prepared for a mid 20th Century oil based lifestyle even in this 21st century, articles like this, video vignettes of total propagandized, twisted logic, even nonsense premise, base axioms set in utter folly go unchallenged while blood pressure predictably rises over pre formulated triggers? This is in fact how ISIS can cause committing of horrendous crimes even through internet videos that are seemingly harmless in content? This article carefully skirts around the style of democracy and capitalism practised in Russia, ignores by omission the Communist Chinese successes with Capitalism/Communism and never dares to mention the Islamic (Huge part of the world population) solutions to these concerns? Such a blinkered, narrow-minded, Americana version of reality!