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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (10505)	2/1/2006 2:03:44 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543863

From each...to each is Marx 101. It certainly is in the popular imagination but it's hardly unique with Marx. That idea has been around a rather long time and, even in the 19th century, was hardly simply a "Marxist" idea. The term "redistributionist" is another interesting term here. I consider the Bush tax cuts "redistributionist" by providing more income and benefits for wealthy upper class tax payers and taking it from the benefits structure for middle class (dropping support for assistance to higher education, as the clearest instance) and the poor. In my view, the best arguments for single payer health insurance is not a redistributional one but a public health policy one and, increasingly, an economic advantage one. It establishes a floor for coverage not a cap on coverage. It's very hard to say just how moving from the present system to a single payer system would "redistribute" income and wealth. It might just be a wash. But that's way too complex. I've not seen anyone tackle that one.

To: Lane3 who wrote (10505)	2/1/2006 7:28:02 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543863

any government act that redistributes income from the haves to the have nots has a distinctly socialistic character even if you wouldn't call the macro scenario socialism To be sure, the reductio ad absurdam is that any and every penny spent by any government is 'socialism': because you are removing an asset (tax money) from an individual and deciding centrally, i.e. by the government, how to spend it. So tax is socialism - state ownership of assets. Having a nationalised army, for example, is pure socialism. What could be more socialist than putting the means of power enforcement into the hands of the state (the people), and then giving - giving- them the money to pay those armies?? I'm not sure offhand what the capitalist answer would be, but presumably those with the most money would be able to hire mercenaries as they wished. I don't know if they could then declare their own wars, but this probably wouldn't take long. (e.g, Pohl/Kornbluth novel, "The Space Merchants"). Of course, anyone arguing that everything should be capitalist except the military is by definition and inclination a pure fascist, wishing only the state to control the military, so we can disregard them ;-)