In response to “yellowdogdemocrat”:
>>>”Those of us raised as liberals view large corporate economics differently that conservatives, which is suprising since we both drive toward the same goals.”
You don’t drive towards the same goals as me – that much is clear. And I really wish socialists would stop calling themselves “liberals”. Classical liberals – REAL liberals – believed in economic freedom and the right of the individual to trade with others as and how they please so long as it doesn’t interfere with the rights of others to do the same. Socialists and Marxists hijacked the name “liberal” in the 60′s because “Marxist” is rightly associated with the deaths of over 100 million people and the Gulag and thus a dirty word in the Land of the Free.
>>>”Liberals believe small business is the backbone of the American economy and only through economic independence are we truly free.”
That’s true. But you’re not a liberal, you’re a socialist. Nor do you believe in economic freedom, because of what you’ve said throughout your post.
>>>”We temper our desire for money with a degree of service to others.”
You would best service others by leaving them alone to conduct their business and their lives how they wish. Your “service to others” is fine. I do my share of service to others too. But of my own volition. I do not wish to commandeer the state to act as my “muscle” in forcing others to bow to MY idea of “service to others.”
>>>”This includes paying taxes for the public good.”
Taxes are essential to pay for our national defense, law enforcement and our criminal justice system. All of those things are essential to sustain the conditions of freedom under which the self-reliant individual can get on with his or her agenda, whether that agenda be one of self-interest, that of providing for family, or “serving others” in a wider sense. It is completely just to tax people in order to pay for a government which ensures these conditions. But beyond that, the idea of “public good” or a “common purpose” is purely subjective and hence it is wrong to force everyone to bend to any one interpretation of it.
>>>”We are called socialists because we want to level the playing field for the small business owner.”
One thing you socialists will never understand is difference between the concepts of ensuring equality under the law and forcing equality of result. “Leveling the playing field” in the form of penalizing large businesses in order to give smaller businesses an artificial, state-coerced advantage is unjust and immoral. Large businesses are comprised of individuals who have just as much right to conduct business as anyone else. If a small business can make a profit and survive in the market, that means they are providing a product or service which people want, at a price which they are prepared to pay. This is the “will of the people” – by people, I mean a group of independently thinking individuals acting of their own volition, not a group acting as one.
>>>”Health care is the classic example. Many Americans are afraid of going solo because one major illness and their children go hungry. We have a health care system that protects large corporations against the advancement of smaller competitors.”
That’s not the way to describe it at all. We have a health care system that’s so weighted down with regulation and mandate that it’s impossible for health care providers to compete in the same free market conditions that has made virtually everything else cheap and affordable. This is why even the poorest in capitalist countries have access to TVs and microwaves, and why working class people in America have computers on their desktops which contain chips a thousand times more powerful than the ones which launched the first Space Shuttle. American health care is the best in the world bar none – the only problem is its price. And the free market is the best way to make medical technology as cheap and affordable as other forms of technology. Socialized medicine is not adequate for America. British renal wards have been described as “3rd world quality.” Canadians routinely travel to America to receive life saving treatment that their own government prohibits them from having. Additionally, the vast majority of medical advances come from America – not countries which have socialized medicine. To destroy our means of innovation by socializing health care would be a crime against humanity.
>>>”Liberals believe that energy independence from the Reagan-Bush — Saudi Arabia-Exxon evil empire is in America’s best interest.”
Reagan is dead. Bush’s natural term is about to expire and he’s to be replaced in a democratic election. Please – enough with these tediously childish left wing bromides. If you want energy independence then let’s drill.
>>>”When Obama says he’s going to tax large corporations, I hope one of his plans moves executive salaries below line, meaning they’re not a business expense but a direct payment from net earnings.”
Wage and salary levels have nothing to do with you or the state. They are the business of whomever owns the business. If you don’t like the salaries that a company’s executives receive then don’t buy their products and don’t accept employment from them, it’s as simple as that. The idea that executive salaries are responsible for unemployment, low wages of workers or anything else that leftists claim is a myth, by the way. A typical breakdown of revenues shows that on average, labor (wages) accounts for around 60-75% of those revenues, then of what’s left, most goes towards production costs, reinvestment, research and development and then you have around 3-5% in the form of profits, of which a fraction of this goes toward “executive salaries”. Even if you paid the executives nothing and gave it to the workers instead, it would be a negligible increase.
>>>”Big companies are slow, lumbering giants in search of legal protection against more nimble competitors. They are wasteful with both natural and human capital.”
Like most things leftists say, this is the exact polar opposite of the truth. Since large companies enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, they are able to manufacture and distribute goods and services with a far smaller expenditure of energy per unit. This is why “big companies” on the whole are able to offer such lower prices than small businesses. Those who care about the environment should realize that if mass manufacture was taken out of the hands of big business and “redistributed” among small businesses, the result would be less efficiency, a far greater carbon footprint and higher prices. Does the socialist/leftist/”fake liberal” care about any of this? Of course not. That would mean having to think beyond the immediate range of the moment.
>>>”It is a failure of the American system for the big three automakers to not have a fourth and fifth on-shore competitor for all these years.”
If foreign auto makers can produce cars more efficiently and cheaply than us, then let them! What is this obsession with the manufacture of cars that the left seems to have? If they can make cars more cheaply abroad then this means that the capital which would have been used to manufacture cars here would be best put to some better, more efficient use. What American consumers save in buying cheaper foreign cars can be spent on other things – which means the economy grows in other areas. If American had always taken the left wing view of industry protectionism throughout its history, we’d still be producing cotton as our main product. I thought you people were supposed to be “progressives.” I guess that’s not possible when you’re still peddling the dog-eared, outdated philosophical ideas of the 60′s and 70′s.
>>>”Liberals would like a more fluid economy, not one ground in protectionism for old-school conservatives with Harvard MBA’s who are stealing money in the executive boardroom. When WalMart kills Main Street, we all lose.”
Firstly, you do not want a “more fluid economy.” You want one which is reshaped in the image of your socialist principles regardless of whether or not the result is more fluid or not. For instance, outsourcing makes our economy more fluid and efficient in the long run, yet the left screams blue murder at that idea. Your views above SCREAM of protectionism. You’re not a proponent of the free market at all – despite the fact that the free market has done more for the living conditions of man than any force in human history. That’s not conjecture, it’s empirical fact.
How can executives be “stealing money”? Who does that money belong to? You? If not…who are they stealing it from? The owners of the company? They are the ones who decided to pay those salaries. You would be better off forgetting how much executives are getting and instead campaign towards the kind of greater economic freedom which allows competition and progress.
So OK, shut down WalMart. This means millions of US families will pay higher prices for the goods they used to buy there. This means less dollars chasing the other things they usually buy. It also means the value of the wages of all of those families diminishes, since they can purchase less with them.
Tell me – are there any socialist principles which DON’T lead the death of economic growth and worse conditions for everyone in the long run?
