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Originally Posted by JustRalph
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A few thoughts... I am not convinced I have all of this correct, but it is something that occured to me after reading the link above and the one below...
Full socialism is not the answer to the economic problems in the U.S.
As a society, we do have a responsibility to look our for the well-being of everyone. That's why there are things like social security, medicaid, taxes to pay for highways, etc. We work together to serve the greater good.
But too much socialism is probably a bad thing -- like in Venezuela.
Capitalism is a better system, but it has to be reigned in. The nature of capitalism is to grow stronger and gain more control until finally one person owns it all and uses their wealth to control politics in order to maintain their position of power and control.
So we have laws to prevent monopolies. Companies that get too big and dominate the market are broken up into smaller companies.
This colum by Nassim Taleb (author of "The Black Swan") can be used to show why socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor can partly be blamed for the rise of liberal movements like BLM and antifa and conservative movements like white nationalism and boogaloo.
https://medium.com/incerto/corporate...u-3b31a67bff4a
It all comes down to economics. Wars usually start because of economics. The Civil War was fought to end slavery, but slaves (cheap labor) were the economic backbone of the South.
U.S. companies eventually moved manufacturing to countries where there was cheap labor -- Mexico and Asia. That may have lowered the cost of manufacturing, but U.S. citizens actually suffered because there were less good paying jobs. So U.S. citizens had less buying power.
Then we had the housing and banking crisis and massive quantitative easing. The people who benefited the most were banks and bankers who got bailouts. The stock market rose to new heights and asset prices like luxury real estate also rose to new heights. But the rich were the ones who benefited the most from the rise in the markets. Poor people don't buy stocks or luxury real estate.
The mom and pop motels, restaurants, corner stores, landscapers, etc., are not politically powerful. They don't have lobbyists in D.C. fighting for them. Who bails them out when the country comes to a halt due to a depression or pandemic? There are calls to open up the economy and get back to work. This is like telling people you have to go into Chernobyl to clean up the nuclear spill. It isn't safe, but someone has to do it. It's the poorest and least powerful in our country that face the most danger of going back to work in restaurants, bars, retail stores, grocery stores, etc.
The poor and middle class people suffer the most. This economic suffering causes stress in their daily lives because they constantly have to worry about how they are going to manage to make ends meet. And now they have to worry about dying. The stress causes people to lash out more easily. Take a police officer who is under constant stress in his job and at home trying to pay bills and support a family. He encounters someone breaking a window or simply being beligerent and overreacts. He could die from the virus just by coming into contact with a person he is trying to arrest. In normal times the cop might reason with the person, but when the cop is angry and stressed it is not surprising that he would lash out quicker than he might otherwise in normal times.
And vice-versa. An unemployed or underemployed or underpaid person under constant economic stress finally reaches a breaking point. This is why riots and demonstrations happen. Mix these two volatile groups of people and guess what happens -- conflict and violence.
Meanwhile, the wealthiest and the political elite in the country are immune from all this until one day the subjugated figure out fighting each other is not solving the problem. So they go after the 1% -- think about what happened to Marie Antoinette or what Fidel Castro did in Cuba.
Think it can't happen here?
