Rand Paul "The Case Against Socialism"

[Cypress]

Or go found one. I cannot stand Rand Paul.

I myself invest zero time thinking about Rand Paul.

I do periodically think about rightwing libertarianism, which I compare to communism. Because they are both systems that ardent geeks invented in theory and which supposedly sound good on paper --- but they never work and have never been proven to work in real life.

What has been proven to work, and is the most successful socio-economic system in all of human history, are the liberal democracies/social welfare states of the western tradition in the 20th and 21st centuries.

[LV426]

Rand Paul went to the socialist hellscape that is Canada for the surgery he needed after his neighbor kicked his ass.

[TOP]

The View.....
Wonkette
NY

[cawacko]

You know what brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in places like China and India? Capitalism and free markets. Now I'm not suggesting we need to go the communist backed state capitalism style of China but the results of opening up their markets speak for themselves.

There's a certain segment of the U.S. population fascinated with several small largely all white European countries. What gets left out is those countries had their largest economic gains with their markets were the freest. Over time some became more about redistribution and it was during those times that their growth slowed or reversed.

So you don't go from a poor country to a redistributive one because the latter does not create the necessary growth.

[Micawber]

I don't take lectures from unqualified self appointed pedantic poseurs.

[PoliTalker]

Hello dukkha,

Senator Rand Paul and his wife Kelley promoted their new book, “The Case Against Socialism,” at an event hosted by Columbia University Libertarians and Colloquia Wednesday evening. Almost 300 students attended the event, where the Pauls argued that socialism is fundamentally harmful to society, claiming that its recent popularization by progressive political figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would fade.

Former Fox News anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle introduced the Pauls at the event sponsored by Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization that seeks to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”

During his talk, Paul emphasized that the current prominence of socialism in political discussions, especially among younger populations within the U.S., does not equate with moral righteousness. He cited historical leaders, such as Adolf Hilter, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, as examples of corrupt socialist leaders responsible for the death of millions. Paul claimed that his underlying disdain for socialism is due to its disparate policies, which he viewed as treating people unequally.

Yeah. It's just so unfair to the most advantaged in society to be forced to help the disadvantaged.

“We have this belief in our country … that is equal protection under the law. That the law should treat everybody the same, no matter who you are,” Paul said. “And yet realize that if you have complete socialism and you have equal outcome for everyone, meaning you have the government equalize everyone, the problem is that we’re not equal.”

Ah, but the people you are arguing against are not advocating for complete socialism. By taking this bend, you are putting words in their mouths, arguing against something which is not real, An exaggeration.

Rand and Kelley looked to Scandinavian countries to demonstrate what they consider to be downfalls of so-called “socialist” nations.

“They do have a huge welfare safety net, and for them it’s not really welfare because everyone uses it,” Kelley said. “They have free college and free healthcare, but nothing is really free. There is an enormous burden on the middle class.”

But if you ask them, they are happy with their system and would not want to switch to an American-style extreme wealth inequality system.

Kelley continued, noting that the middle class faces a 60 percent tax on income and a 25 percent value-added tax on all sales transactions to allow for the Scandinavian social safety net, which she claims results in low-income Scandinavians paying a higher tax rate than the rich.
[/B]
In reality, Scandinavian countries have a progressive income tax system, though the various rates at which incomes are taxed are all relatively similar and all very high compared to the U.S.’s rates.

Further, Paul added that he disagreed with the self-identification of politicians such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez as democratic socialists, instead claiming they’re more akin to ‘democratic welfarists.’ Paul distinguished that ‘democratic welfarist states,’ such as Scandinavian countries, want to provide a large social safety net while democratic socialists advocate for a more authoritarian government.

Hey, if you have no good argument against what they stand for it always helps to repaint them, demonize them, as something more scary.

Ultimately, according to Paul, the democratic socialists’ focus on income inequality through the lens of wealth distribution overshadows the emphasis on viable standards of living, which he argued could be achieved in every economic context.

If Paul got his way, wealth inequality would become more extreme and lower standards of living would become lower still.

When Paul polled the audience at the beginning of the event to determine who in the audience viewed socialism favorably and who viewed socialism negatively, both stood about equal. Some liberal students attended to hear the perspective of the other side and better their own understanding of issues

In his speech, Paul ended by criticizing both establishment political parties as too institutional to create the limited government that he wants.

“When you go to the voting booth, vote for none of the above. Really, it’s both parties’ fault—Republican and Democrats are equally guilty on the debt. The Republicans want unlimited military spending. The Democrats want unlimited welfare spending, and they have to get together if they want more spending they get together with the other side and vote for more spending for everything.”
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/ne...-libertarians/

The problem with Paul's dream is that limited government allows more scoundrels to get away with more oppression.

[reagansghost]

John Galt was a metrosexual

[archives]

The debate is socialism vs. capitalism. Libertarianism isn't a school of economics - it's employs capitalism.

I am a big time libertarian. Government inevitably breeds corrupt officials,and the more power they have the more it becomes corrupt. The apparatchiks are the best example, but mid level official in any corrupted state get the way from power over money and resources.

So th power has to be not in government, with the exceptions of limited needs , but in the people.
If you want to see the best example of capitalism creating wealth - even unequal wealth, but wealthy society look at the USA.
Nobody come near us except China.
And China got that way because of corruption/theft by the west and it's enablers

There is a the problem when people start discussing ideologies and that is there doesn't exist a pure capitalist nor socialist economy in the world. Every nation has a mixed economy, the US has been partially socialistic since the 19th Century.

When Paul presents everything in a capitalist vs. socialist dichotomy, making sure to include the catch words, Stalin, Hitler (who wasn't a socialist), and Mao, plus drop the term socialism as often as possible, he isn't discussing nor describing reality, but selling books. As someone above put it, he wants to come across as the intellectual politician, but in truth, he is just another politician, and isn't the libertarian his father was for decades

[Cypress]

The debate is socialism vs. capitalism. Libertarianism isn't a school of economics - it's employs capitalism.

Rand Paul and his supporters style themselves as self-styled rightwing libertarians in the tradition of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged.

That obligates them to point to actual real world examples of major nation-states that successfully employ their vision of extremist, rightwing libertarianism.

Otherwise, they simply engage in mental masturbation at best.

I am a big time libertarian. Government inevitably breeds corrupt officials,and the more power they have the more it becomes corrupt. The apparatchiks are the best example, but mid level official in any corrupted state get the way from power over money and resources.

So th power has to be not in government, with the exceptions of limited needs , but in the people.
If you want to see the best example of capitalism creating wealth - even unequal wealth, but wealthy society look at the USA.
Nobody come near us except China.
And China got that way because of corruption/theft by the west and it's enablers

Libertarians only provide slogans.

They provide no real world examples of where their ideology works at the scale of a nation state.

The debate between "socialism and capitalism" is pointless, fruitless, and worst of all disingenuous and dishonest.

Every modern nation state in the western liberal tradition employs a hybrid system of regulated and restrained capitalism combined with a generous social welfare state and government intervention in the macro-economy.

You are attempting to set up a false narrative and a phony shadow-boxing match between "socialism" and "capitalism"

[Micawber]

and if you read the fountainhead the protagonist is a raping asshole.

Most people aren't geniuses, we should not design a world to cater solely to maximizing their freedom, even if
it costs us a few architectural treasures along the way..


Trumfucks don't even bother trying to understand what I wrote. It contains assumed knowledge you morons can't possibly fathom.
Not your fault, you want libertarian education, not evidence based.

[reagansghost]

it figures wingnuts would love Ayn Rand, a drunk RUSSIAN nutbag chain smoker ranting utter bullshit

[Cinnabar]

You know what brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in places like China and India? Capitalism and free markets. Now I'm not suggesting we need to go the communist backed state capitalism style of China but the results of opening up their markets speak for themselves.

There's a certain segment of the U.S. population fascinated with several small largely all white European countries. What gets left out is those countries had their largest economic gains with their markets were the freest. Over time some became more about redistribution and it was during those times that their growth slowed or reversed.

So you don't go from a poor country to a redistributive one because the latter does not create the necessary growth.

And exactly where has anyone advocated for the eradication of capitalism? Which candidate? Ever? What I'm hearing is better regulations and a more fair common sense tax structure while maintaining social safely nets.

The way things stand under the current broken and corrupt form of capitalism, the middle class is being decimated. The USA is on the way to officially becoming an oligarchy/kleptocracy...if we are not already there.

The Middle Class is not “Normal”

There’s nothing “normal” about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it’s a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class. Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels.

At the top there is a very small class of superrich. Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs. And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.

So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in “normal” capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.

You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.

This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years. The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich.

History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class. If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you’ll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich - the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations - was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/20...;normal”

The entire article is worth the read.

[LV426]

What gets left out is those countries had their largest economic gains with their markets were the freest.

No, their largest economic gains were when they were colonizers who subjugated entire populations and nations to advance the interests of a wealthy few (see: Dutch East India company).

[PoliTalker]

Hello cawacko,

You know what brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in places like China and India? Capitalism and free markets. Now I'm not suggesting we need to go the communist backed state capitalism style of China but the results of opening up their markets speak for themselves.

There's a certain segment of the U.S. population fascinated with several small largely all white European countries. What gets left out is those countries had their largest economic gains with their markets were the freest. Over time some became more about redistribution and it was during those times that their growth slowed or reversed.

So you don't go from a poor country to a redistributive one because the latter does not create the necessary growth.

-Which is why the best system incorporates elements of socialism mixed with capitalism in the correct balance.

The problem with anti-socialists is that they always mischaracterize socialism as a replacement for capitalism. They can never acknowledge the benefits of mixing the two.

[PoliTalker]

Hello dukkha,

the countries all all different. Norway is a petro-state. Denmark resists the label of Socialism.

The tax rates are so high they destroy risk taking ( entrepreneurs ) 60% income tax and 25% sales tax
on middle class

I know that sounds bad but if everybody is paying the same thing then nobody is disadvantaged by that.

And the perk is that everyone benefits by it.

Free health care, free college, free day care ... all these things allow society to function. They allow people to flourish, work, raise families, contribute to society in their fullest.