Its not a reduction of freedom; its a reduction in spending power. Money does not equal freedom.
Taking away peoples money does mean you are reducing their freedom. Money does not equal freedom, because freedom is not limited to issues involving money, but it does include such issues. Also in an important sense almost every issue involves money.
If the government takes the money and decides how to spend it, then the government is making more of the decisions, leaving less of them up to the individual.
As for "France is nearly as capitalistic as the US", that depends on what scale your measuring it on. On a spectrum from the freest possible market to the least free that is possible, France and the US would be close. On a scale of considering the major economies of the world, the gap between the two countries would be relatively larger. On the scale of considering the large highly developed democratic countries (thus not considering such large economies as India and China), the distance looms even larger.
You want a pure capitalistic economic model for the US.
Not really.
unfortunately that doesn't work.
In your opinion.
Also the statement really isn't relevant because that isn't what I'm calling for. So its a straw man, and in this case you fail even to demolish the straw man, let along my real positions.
France covered the center of the chart because its in the middle of the political spectrum.
The center can be measured on countless axises, with countless different endpoints, and countless different ways of measuring the distances, most of which are highly subjective, and all of which are somewhat subjective.
The idea that France is such an obvious perfect center that nothing else can be at the center, or even close without being very like France is a bit silly even as a subjective opinion, and total nonsense if its presented as some objective fact.
"The Center" in this type of context, is a very vague and subjective term. And importantly even if something is truly at the center that doesn't imply that its better in any way.
Tim, they are not wrong.
You saying they are not wrong seems to be a self contradiction, as you just talked about how France and the US are close, but your charts so the US president to be closer to Mugabe and Saddam.
However you reconcile your conflicting statements, if you actually believe that Bush is close to Mugabe and Saddam then he is to the leaders of France or most other "Western" democracies, and you believe that Greenpeace is more of a supporter of laissez-faire capitalism then Ronald Reagan was, and that Hitler was more a supporter of it than George Bush is, then your going off the deep end.
And if you don't believe those things then your should argue against the charts you posted. |
