oops! I guess I really don't like Leica Ms.

[wind.dk]

<CITE>"The capitalist system doesn't "distribute" wealth. Only socialist governments do that."</CITE> - immediately followed by a long description of some (but far from all) of the mechanisms by which capitalist systems indeed <STRONG>do</STRONG> distribute wealth. LOL!

[robert_byrd1]

Harvey, I don't agree that capitalism is poor at providing health care and economic security. The economic incentives for the drug companies to do research and for talented people to go into medicine have given us, in the U.S., a health-care system that people flock to from all over the world. It is especially a magnet for people who cannot endure the mediocrity, delays, rationing, age discrimination, and arbritrariness of socialized medicine. Security? That is up to the individual. If you are improvident, if you don't defer your gratifications, and if you make reckless decisions in your life, you will end up without economic security. Seems fair enough to me. I would rather my security be up to me than up to the whims of a corrupt government bureaucracy. And if I want to be quite comfortable in my old age, I don't want the government to seize the fruits of my labors and give them to people who have lived thoughtlessly. Education? We don't have a capitalist system of education in the States. Our system is government-run, and it is politicized, wasteful, and third-rate. Doug, I defer to your experience in economics, but the Federal Reserve's powers to increase the money supply must be attuned to something, else there will be inflation or recession. I believe that wealth generation, i.e., production of goods and services, is what allows the Fed to expand the money supply in a helpful way. Am I wrong on this? Ivar, I don't think I am communicating a crucial difference between distribution of wealth and the movement of wealth in a free market. All-powerful governments seize all the wealth and distribute it according to political influence and bureaucratic decisions. When most of the wealth is left in the hands of the people who create it, those people express their needs and interests in the marketplace. That spreads the money around, to be sure, but calling it "distribution" confuses this process with the centralized distribution I mention above. The distinction is important. It is the difference between serfdom and freedom, as Hayek put it. Oh, Doug, you are right that some people create wealth in harmful ways. The policing and prevention of such abuse is a legitimate function of government. Deciding who is to have how much money or who is allowed to get medical services are not.

[h._p.]

"If you are improvident, if you don't defer your gratifications, and if you make reckless decisions in your life, you will end up without economic security. Seems fair enough to me"

 

There speaks someone who has no empathy and little understanding of the real world. People have financial problems for a lot of reasons, few of which are to do with being "improvident". I really doubt that you know what poor is or you'd understand just how easy it is for someone whose income barely covers their necessary expenses to be wiped out by a couple of months out of work or a week's sickness without a safety net to help them.

 

I've got to assume you're pretty young to be quite that unpleasantly stupid. If you've reached thirty five and still hold those views then there seems very little chance you'll ever become an acceptable human being.

[robert_byrd1]

Harvey, re-read my post. You will see that I was talking about people who live viciously and deserve their lack of security. You berate me for callousness toward cases that I wasn't even talking about. Extreme cases such as those you mention can mostly be covered by the resources of extended family and private charity, but some government help is justified. Oh, as for me: I am sixtyish, not young, and I have lived most of my life close to and below the poverty line. And I have had a lot of acquaintances in the same condition. Don't sentimentalize us. We deserved every penny we did not have. And BTW, if you can't disagree about politics without becoming abusive, you must have been in a lot of pub fights!

[h._p.]

Never been in one. If you really are as poor as you claim to be then you should know better than anyone that poverty is often not the fault of its victims. And you should have a lot more sympathy for the vast majority of poor people who are honest and industrious. A lot of people are poor because we have an economic system that thinks a prat in red braces shifting money around the world is more important than a man who clears away the dustbins or a woman who nurses the sick.

[h._p.]

And you're right, that really was rude of me and I apologise.

[robert_byrd1]

Harvey, I'm sure there are cases such as you mention. I can only speak for myself and the people I've known. We were poor because we threw away our chances and lived irresponsibly. When I realized how self-destructive I was being, I pulled in the reins and started living like a mensch; then my income improved. But there were many, many wasted years, and I will have to live with that. I still have nightmares about the doors I slammed in my own face. Anyway, because of my experience, I find it difficult to be sentimental about poor people in the abstract. So much crime comes from the poor, and it is just as likely that their criminality causes the poverty as vice versa. I rather think income in the States is based upon how many people you can serve, and how hard it is to acquire the skills for your profession. Schoolteachers will never be paid much because they only serve a few people at a time, and because it isn't that difficult to get a teaching certificate. Really good baseball players were always hard to find, but they couldn't make the big money until television allowed them to entertain mass audiences. Cleaning floors doesn't take much skill, and a floor-cleaner just can't serve that many people. If he owns a cleaning company with machinery and employees, then he can do better--he is serving more people. But, because his skills are not difficult to acquire, there's a limit. The system seems tough sometimes, but I'd rather have this kind of market force determining my income than some bureaucrat. I mean, you can adapt to market forces, but bureaucrats are unbudgeable. Anyway, thanks for the apology. I respect people who can apologize, and I've known so many people who cannot do it.

[douglas k.]

"...the Federal Reserve's powers to increase the money supply must be attuned to something, else there will be inflation or recession. I believe that wealth generation, i.e., production of goods and services, is what allows the Fed to expand the money supply in a

helpful way. Am I wrong on this?"

 

You are largely incorrect. While increased production of real output (through productivity gains, better technology, etc.) does allow monetary expansion with less risk of inflation, in reality Fed monetary policy is driven, much more so, by contemporaneous macro conditions; for example, our current recession has induced the Fed to cut interest rates to extremely low levels, which is actually accomplished by expanding the money supply -- and this is occuring precisely when real output is stagnant, not rising. [Caveat: I'm not a macroeconomist.]

<p>Personally, I think Robert's thesis -- that the profit motive has led to great growth in national output, wealth, technology, etc. -- is sound. On those measures, capitalism works better than anything else we've tried. However, it also generates many large problems which can only be ameliorated through government intervention. Contrary to popular belief, there are reasonably objective measures of efficiency, optimality, whatever we wish to call it, in market operation, and gov't intervention of market systems -- sometimes gov't operation of an entire sector -- gets us closer to those best outcomes. For example, we'd have nothing close to an optimally-sized military sector without gov't operating it.

[Allen Herbert]

woman who nurses the sick. Silly women, should be a show girl , bigger audience......yes! more money. That's what it's about fools.

 

Obviously, have little understanding of economics.

 

Third world countries (so called)...well, small audience for them. You just have to except than some of their population need to die of hunger. Hey, it's for the greater good.

 

Could not resist, i'm not even a political person.

[Allen Herbert]

Remember my friends, where your forefathers came from, the 'down and outs of Europe'. Luckily, you found a new Country rich in resources Being impoverished folk you made the most of your opportunities. Now you are a rich and successful nation. Indeed, the most powerful nation on earth.

 

But remember my friends who you were. Have a thought for those brethren who were left behind.

 

Mmm, I�m waxing lyrical tonight

[kilgore_trout1]

"...the capitalist system's ability to distribute wealth ..."

The less important someone's activities are to the general public's health and survival the more they get paid. There's nothing new about it, tho', it's been that way since some inept hunter or gatherer came up with the "I can talk to the Gods" scam.

 

 

Well, that would explain us web developers... I've made tons more with computers and meaningles trip than I ever have with photgraphy...

[chris_henry1]

Have a thought for the brethern left behind? Do you mean the landed gentry?