Your post is interesting -
"David J. Allen" <dallen03NO_SPAM@sanNO_SPAM.rr.com> wrote in message news:
> Fascism and Socialism have one thing in common... they view government as
> able to give and take away rights according to their respective value
> systems.
OK, but would you then agree that a government that tries to take away
women's right to choose is being fascist? After all, it does take away
a right according to its value system. Please let us not start a
discussion here about such a emotionally charged question as abortion;
I am only trying to point out that in the real world governments do
try and do succeed in imposing laws according to the prevalent value
system and not only according to the welfare of the people, as they
probably should.
> Democrats are in a constant dance on the edge of socialism. Their values
> include rejecting the unfairness of their being a large disparity between
> rich and poor, which isn't a bad value....
I agree. Income disparity is one of the worse signs about the health
of a society. A perfectly fair society is an utopia, but the current
situation is clearly unfair and getting worse. Over the last decades
the real income of the poorest Americans has gotten worse, middle
class is stuck (actually it is earning a little less - in 1973,
private-sector workers in the US were paid on average $9.08 an hour,
today, in real terms, they are paid $8.33). The rich are only slightly
better off, and only the very rich are doing significantly better.
Inequality in America is mind-boggling. It is fair to say that 95% of
the American public is not getting a fair deal; after all the richest
1% owns more than the poorest 95%! The top 400 families made in 2002
on average 174 million each, way up from "only" 47 million each in
1992 - even so their tax burden has gone down from 26.4% to 22.3%, and
this before Bush's huge tax cuts skewed towards the very rich; if Bush
tax cut were in effect their tax burden in 2002 would be only 17.5%.
(See:
http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2003-June/022679.html)
> but their answer is to use government to compel "charity" or the "transfer of wealth" through taxes.
You may be right, but then again what would you suggest government
should do in order to "reject the unfairness of there being a large
disparity between rich and poor"? What would you do if you were
President?
> The effort includes finding "rights" to justify this, like rights to
> employment,
I think this is a very good right: we all lose if people just sit
around doing nothing. After all unproductive people will not really
wither away, they will turn to crime or will survive by consuming
social services your tax dollar will pay. A good government should
make it possible for almost everybody to be employed. Surely this is a
no-brainer.
> rights to minimum wages
I do think it is right that people should get a fair minimum wage for
their honest day's work. Surely you wouldn't like employers to be able
to exploit desperate people by paying them, say, 50 cents an hour. So
the only question is how high the minimum wage should be. If too high,
then it would end up hurting the very people it meant to help.
> rights of healthcare,
Health is the single greatest good. People in almost all civilized
countries, including Canada, Europe, Australia, etc., enjoy universal
health care. Sure Americans living in the richest country of all can
afford it too.
> rights to shelter,
Well, I too get mad sometimes when people who are not really trying
get subsidized housing. On the other hand I would not like to be in a
country with poor people living in the streets. So here too, the
question is how to strike the right balance. Maybe the weakest members
of society, the ones who really cannot look after themselves, should
get shelter for free.
right to education,
Here I disagree completely. There is nothing as important for the
future of society as a good education. Everybody wins when people are
better educated. Even candidate Bush proclaimed he was going to be the
"Education President".
> ad infinitum, which rights have to be "found" in the constitution via "activist", "progressive" judges.
In a way I do agree with your sentiment. I hate it when people just
exclaim "this is my right". People should earn whatever they get -
unless they suffer of some infirmity. But in order to earn it they do
require education and employment and health, they require a fair
chance. Unfortunately the current administration prefers to blow
hundreds of billions of tax dollars on Iraq, and also to make sure
that the super-rich pay hundreds of billions less taxes in the future.
I don't see how these policies help the average American.
BTW the mega-billions spent on Iraq do not really go to Iraq or to the
American soldiers who risk their lives there, but mostly go to the
military industrial complex. Let us not forget that before 9/11 what
Rumsfield was trying to do was to spend mega-billions on the "missile
shield" in order to counter that other supposedly major security risk
to America. I can't help but think that what the current
administration is about is to shift more wealth to the already
wealthiest Americans using bogus threats to deceive the population at
large. This may sound simplistic, it may sound extremist, President
Bush might honestly be unaware of it, still I think this is basically
what is happening: a huge social engineering in inverse distribution
of wealth.
One last point - and I promise I am about to finish this post.
Precisely because I believe that "people should earn whatever they
get" I am in favor of estate taxes (what conservatives rather stupidly
have recently called "death taxes": it is not the dead who pay these
taxes but rather their offspring who get the dough). Why should the
ones who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, who grew up in
comfort, got the best possible education and the best connections, why
should they not have to pay taxes for daddy's (or mommy's) fortune
they are about to get? Small estates have always been tax free, but,
as far as I am concerned rich offspring should pay 80% on estates
larger than 10 million dollars and 90% on estates larger than 50
million; this would still give them several million dollars of
unearned money. Also nobody should get more than 10 million dollars
out of the fruits of his or her parents work - even Bill Gates claims
he will give his children no more than that.
