Theories on how to efficiently run an economy

[phoenyx]

No, it doesn't. Capitalism needs to be managed, just like any other economic system.

It does, and I explained how. If a business does something inherently bad, or destructive, people will go to their competition. Sell people poisoned food? They won't be buying from you anymore, you'll likely never get business again.

Ah, the innocence of youth. The fact of the matter is, companies and corporations violate health and safety laws all the time. Sure, you can go to the competition, but odds are they're doing it too, especially if your aim is to get cheap food, something which is a high priority for the bottom 40% of Americans which, as I previously mentioned, have a combined wealth of a measly .2% of U.S.' citizens' wealth. Here's an example of all the violations achieved during a single week in April of this year:
26 food-selling businesses have multiple violations in this week's inspections

Same with defective medicine.

Such innocence. As to the reality, in the case of vaccines, the vaccine companies have worked out a sweet deal wherein taxpayers pay for their mistakes. It's essentially akin to the government bailing banks out when their ponzi schemes are revealed...
American Taxpayers Have Paid Out $2 Billion To Settle Vaccine Lawsuits

They also can't pay employees too little, because they'll either work for someone else, or won't be able to afford that business's goods and services, which will damage the business.

Let's take a look at the 2 assumptions you are making above:
1- If an employee is paid too little, they will be able to find a place that pays them more.
2- The employee is also by default a significant customer of the business.

You haven't shown evidence for either of these assumptions.

If a business's employee gets hurt, they can be sued.

Perhaps that can work if you have a lot of money. Here's the reality for most people who don't:
**AN INVESTIGATION by ProPublica and NPR earlier this month detailed how states across the nation have been dismantling their workers’ compensation systems, with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year.

In some states, the cuts have been so drastic that injured workers have plummeted into poverty, losing their cars and even their homes. In others, workers spend years battling insurance companies for the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend...**

Source: The Fallout of Workers’ Comp ‘Reforms’: 5 Tales of Harm

 

[phoenyx]

I'll include an excerpt from an article that gets my point across:

Klein's indictment revolves around Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning guru of the University of Chicago School of Economics and the brains behind the movement for unregulated corporate trade, the elimination of public services and the eradication of organized labor.

Klein begins in the 1950s, the depths of the Cold War, when Friedman refined his theory of pure capitalism as a counter to the threat of communism and a radical alternative to the mixed checks-and-balances system that was installed under the influence of economist John Maynard Keynes to combat the Great Depression. Under Friedman's precise mathematical theorem, the only functions permitted for government are police and armies. Everything else should be privatized.

With eager financial support from corporate interests, Friedman's theories made the Chicago school the powerhouse of academic economics in the U.S. The search for a live test laboratory -- a nation to erase and re-create from scratch -- did not take long.

When Augusto Pinochet's military junta prepared for the takeover of Chile in 1973, Friedman's students handed him a complete plan of economic reform in advance. Friedman himself visited the new dictator, urging him to press even harder -- by dint of troops, tanks and death squads -- at selling state-owned property, utilities and services to American corporations. The plan also included eliminating public medical care, education and transportation; arresting, torturing and executing labor leaders, social workers, academics and other troublemakers; and throwing hundreds of thousands out of work. The aim was to shock the entire population into stunned acquiescence to the new corporate economic policies. The term in use was "shock therapy."

The effect was to impoverish the majority of the population while enriching those in power. International corporations, being on the plush end of the equation, were delighted. The Chicago Boys, as Friedman's students were known, were ready for similar actions in Argentina, southern Brazil, Bolivia and beyond. By the 1980s large segments of Africa and Asia also had submitted to Friedman's shock treatment...**

Source: Caution, 'Disaster Capitalism' at Work | Naomi Klein

First, a dictatorship is exactly what I'm arguing AGAINST, I don't care how 'capitalist' a country is, if the government is too powerful, well, it's too powerful. If anything, this is a perfect argument against your suggestion of government expansion, and only shows that regardless of what system you have, expanding the government too much will cause a disaster. I also didn't say that other government functions should be given to corporate executives, in fact, I'm advocating a method to STOP them from deciding what the government should do. In the end, your article does not help you.

It's heartening that you are arguing against dictatorships, but it seems you are unaware who Milton Friedman was. The Library of Economics and Liberty has this to say about him:
*Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets... In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for “his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” Before that time he had served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon and was president of the American Economic Association in 1967. After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, Friedman became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.**

Source: Milton Friedman: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

This man's students -encouraged- Pinochet to commit atrocities. As I imagine you know, most corporations are not democracies. Only worker owned companies would fit that bill. The rest are somewhere along the line of an oligarchy and a dictatorship, which helps explain Milton's students' zeal for a horrific dictator like Pinochet.

I'm glad that you atleast realize that corporate executives can do brutal things and shouldn't be allowed to commit atrocities with government support. Here are 14 examples of some of the worst corporate evildoers, including Coca Cola, Ford Motor Company and Nestle:
The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers | International Labor Rights Forum

Here's an introduction to the corporation Monsanto:
**Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination...**

Source: Monsanto’s Cruel, and Dangerous, Monopolization on American Farming

 

[phoenyx]

"In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6]"

Note the words: "whose ultimate goal". Which means that, prior to that, there could indeed be social classes, a state, and money. The USSR clearly never got past that stage.

Also note that those are core components, which Soviet Russia never implemented,

We can agree Russia never implemented the ultimate goals of communism. But the U.S.S.R. definitely considered -itself- to be a communist country, as denoted by the fact that the only allowed party was the communist party. Communism as practiced by the U.S.S.R. is recognized by many as a failure, even by Russia itself now.

The problem is that the rich hold too much of the money and the lower classes hold too little. What use is a high minimum wage if those with money aren't hiring? The problem is in who has most of the money, and why they have so much of it.

...nobody should care how much money someone has. Every level of business is hiring and expanding, and as long as they do that, how much money they have isn't a problem. They ARE hiring, it's just that regressive policies are preventing them from hiring as much.

If everyone had enough money to make ends meet and the environment was being properly taken care of, the issue would be of far less importance. Neither is the case. The reality that some people have yachts while others are starve to death and/or are poisoned by their environment. This is gross negligence.

 

[phoenyx]

one shouldn't use "bernies policies" and "efficiently run an economy" in the same OP..

Why not?

 

[phoenyx]

We have 160 worthless government agencies,

Where'd you get that number?

I was actually trying to ballpark the number, but it turns out there are roughly 400 Federal Government agencies.
A | A-Z Index of U.S. Government Departments and Agencies | USAGov
Federal Register | Agency List
List of federal agencies in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So the real number was larger then your 'ballparked' number by around 280%, which makes me wonder how you "ballpark" numbers to begin with -.- Anyway, we now have a number that looks to be legit, thanks.

It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Imagine if we reduced spending on the Military(Which is basically using mostly outdated equipment), and we actually got attacked. Having a weak military is EXTREMELY dangerous.

People who are dying of malnourishment or hunger need to eat to live. Meanwhile, you seem to keep on believing that the military budget is primarily for "defense". I think former U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler explained war's primary purpose fairly well in a key summary of it:
**War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.**

Source: War Is a Racket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The U.S. spent more 400% more on its military in 2015 then its closest competitor, China. it also spent over 700% more then the next highest spender, Saudi Arabia, and over 900% more then its former cold war opponent, Russia (Source: List of countries by military expenditures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). So unless the U.S. is wasting an incredible amount of money on its military (which, frankly, I wouldn't discount as a possibility), it is way ahead of its competitors when it comes to "defense" as well as what it generally does, which is aggressive -offensive- wars against other countries. I think the biggest waste to taxpayers are all the wars it gets into that were completely unnecessary and detrimental to all but a few, those described in Butler's summary.

 

[phoenyx]

So you think that a large federal government creates corrupt politicians? Personally, I think how those politicians are funded strongly influences said politicians. Most of the time, said funders would be the rich.

If the Federal government didn't have the power to influence the competitors of the large businesses, do you think that we'd get said big businesses funding politicians getting into office to stifle their competition?

Well, -that's- certainly a mouthful of a question . I think we should first start with the basics, namely, the definition of government. Wikipedia's introduction to the term starts with this:
"A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled.[1]"

Source: Government - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first question that anyone should ask is, does a state or community -need- to be controlled? Based on what you yourself have said, even you would agree that yes, it does. However, it seems that you seem to think that the only things the government should be controlling is the use of force. Am I correct?

Here's the thing- the use of force against others should only be used as a -last- resort. The consequences of force are ugly, and frequently fatal. This is why the government has so many -other- agencies, other then military and law enforcement ones; to try to resolve things before they get to that level. Yes, the government is certainly powerful, but that's a -good- thing, because the government, atleast, is atleast accountable to voters every 4 years. Corporations aren't. The scary thing is that corporations and the lobbyists they fund are becoming more and more powerful, to the point that most politicians are essentially doing whatever they want in order to receive campaign contributions. Let me put this another way- if the government didn't have the power to regulate corporations, a power which they are using less and less all the time, the corporations would rush to fill in the vacuum. Already, many large corporations have more assets then small countries. And unlike the U.S. government, no one is under the illusion that corporations are accountable to those they affect; only those who have shares of the company can vote, and even then, it's only the voting shares.

It was a rhetorical question, I already knew the answer. If I wanted an answer I could take seriously, I wouldn't have asked a Socialist.

Some have argued that Bernie is actually a social democrat, not a socialist:
Bernie Sanders Is No Socialist - The Globalist

Since I pretty much support Bernie's ideology all the way, that'd make me the same. It all depends on how one defines the term.

 

[anotherlife]

Theories on how to efficiently run an economy? To my understanding, most economy models are balance based, which proves to be false. The newest economy theories under development are network based. I think that has a better potential. Or at least that's what my math teacher says.

 

[phoenyx]

Without regulations, there would be so many jobs, businesses would never have enough employees. If anything, removing Federal Aid would cause businesses to pay their employees more, and cause them to hire more employees and expand faster.

What draws you to these conclusions?

The fact that most regulations cause businesses to lose money, and limit their market potential.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion? Don't get me wrong, I certainly know that -some- regulations do indeed cause certain businesses to lose money. Here's the thing, though- few people seem to consider what many toxic businesses are costing the world. 6 years ago, the Guardian wrote some articles concerning a UN Report. Here's the main one:
World's top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates

Another article in the series wrote this particularly poignant passage:
**Yet in exercises like this, we quickly hit the paradox of environmental economics. By putting a price on nature, hopefully it makes it less likely that we will treat the world, and its natural resources, as if it were a business in liquidation. Yet there is a point when it becomes meaningless to treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading. For example, what price would you put on the additional tonne of carbon which, when burned, triggers irreversible, catastrophic climate change? Who would have the right to even consider selling off the climate upon which civilisation depends? The avoidance of such damage is literally priceless.

If that sounds dramatic, consider that last September a large, international group of scientists published a paper in the journal Nature which identified nine key planetary boundaries for key biological systems upon which we depend. They found that we had already transgressed three of those, and were on the cusp of several others. All are potential points of no return as such complex systems begin interacting.

The huge advantage of the UN work is that it attempts to improve the feedback system between the economy and its ultimate parent company, the biosphere. Better risk assessment and value measurement is essential to help prevent what happened to banks happening to the planet.

The concept of a balanced budget, so loved by conservatives in relation to finance and spending, seems to be an alien concept when the consumption of natural resources and the production of waste is concerned. Yet it is far more important to achieve a balanced environmental budget than an economic one. You can always print more money, but you can't print more planet. As John Ruskin put it, "There is no wealth but life."**

Source: The price of environmental destruction? There is none | Andrew Simms

 

[phoenyx]

All people who acquire money are connected to someone who is viewed favourably to some extent by the banks or the government. Failing this, they would be unable to acquire money, unless through robbery. Ethics frequently has little if anything to do with it. I strongly recommend you take a look at the following documentary detailing the morally reprehensible things that many corporations have done and continue to do:

You likely view anyone with any decent amount of money morally reprehensible.

Again, stepping out of the usual chronological order in which I respond to messages, I have a feeling that this point you're making may be particularly important to you and thought I should address it. First of all, I'd be curious as to what you consider a "decent amount of money". Regardless of what type of dollar figure that might be, however, I think it's morally reprehensible that some people have much more then they need while other people are starving. That's not the same thing as saying that an -individual- who has much more then they need is necessarily morally reprehensible. Issues such as how a person's wealth was acquired are certainly important in determining the quality of a person's morals. Regardless of how one acquired an unnecessary amount of wealth, however, no adult with too much money can escape the fact that their failing to share their overabundance means that they are failing to do their part to end homelessness and hunger in the world. To quote a line often mentioned in spiderman, "with great power comes great responsibility". Money is certainly a form of power.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Except... I don't care about any income disparity, that's just how the world works. If you work hard, you succeed. If you don't, you don't. is that, as someone else said, you can lead someone to water, but you don't make them drink.

Nor Louis XVI , nor Nicolas II had any regard for income disparity... and the outcome... indeed ... pretty much how the world works.

As long as we have businesses, we have jobs. as long as we have jobs, people have money, except lazy people, who don't want jobs, nor work. Going out of our way to help said lazy people only damages the economy, not that we should help them out, anyway.

That's false. During depresions people are laid off regardless of whether they want to work or not.
Some are not able to work simply because they lack access to credit.
Muhammad Yunnus, founder of the Gremeen Bank, actually thinks credit should be a universal right.

 

[phoenyx]

Except... I don't care about any income disparity, that's just how the world works. If you work hard, you succeed. If you don't, you don't. is that, as someone else said, you can lead someone to water, but you don't make them drink.

Nor Louis XVI , nor Nicolas II had any regard for income disparity... and the outcome... indeed ... pretty much how the world works.

As long as we have businesses, we have jobs. as long as we have jobs, people have money, except lazy people, who don't want jobs, nor work. Going out of our way to help said lazy people only damages the economy, not that we should help them out, anyway.

That's false. During depresions people are laid off regardless of whether they want to work or not.
Some are not able to work simply because they lack access to credit.
Muhammad Yunnus, founder of the Gremeen Bank, actually thinks credit should be a universal right.

I wouldn't go that far. I am a fairly big fan of the idea first put forth by Louis Blanc in 1851, ""From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", but there are some caveats. The largest has to do with capacity. Put simply, if not everyone can be properly fed, one has to make difficult decisions. For instance, in the film "In the Heart of the Sea", a crew of sailors find themselves in a boat at sea with a dwindling food supply. One member decides to kill himself in order to increase the food supply for those remaining. A difficult decision, but arguably the logical one. This isn't the situation in today's world, but there is still another issue, one that I think communist governments such as the U.S.S.R. have faced, namely that a lack of reward for excellent performance demotivates people to perform well. There is a reason that capitalism has worked better then communism, and I think that this is at the heart of it. Nevertheless, crony capitalism, while perhaps not quite as bad as no reward communism, is a close second. Ironically, the reason is pretty much the same- when people at the bottom realize that there is little opportunity for upward mobility regardless of how hard they toil, the difference between communism and crony capitalism becomes less and less noticeable for those at the ever increasing bottom of the social spectrum.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Do you have evidence to support that assertion?

Trade Unions / Sweden / Countries / National Industrial Relations / Home - WORKER PARTICIPATION.eu
Details percentage of Union involvement.

About what you'd expect from Regressivism.

We were talking about Germany- none of your charts include Germany...
Why Germany Has It So Much Better Than the U.S.

We were talking about unions in the Nordic area.

 

[phoenyx]

Do you have evidence to support that assertion?

Trade Unions / Sweden / Countries / National Industrial Relations / Home - WORKER PARTICIPATION.eu
Details percentage of Union involvement.

About what you'd expect from Regressivism.

We were talking about Germany- none of your charts include Germany...
Why Germany Has It So Much Better Than the U.S.

We were talking about unions in the Nordic area.

No, we were talking about Germany. Go back in the thread, and this is what you'll find:

Don’t blame globalization. Other advanced nations facing the same global competition have managed to preserve middle class wages. Germany’s median wage is now higher than America’s.

Through unionism, and their production and overall economy are garbage compared to ours.

Do you have evidence to support that assertion?

Source: Theories on how to efficiently run an economy

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Ah, the innocence of youth. The fact of the matter is, companies and corporations violate health and safety laws all the time. Sure, you can go to the competition, but odds are they're doing it too, especially if your aim is to get cheap food, something which is a high priority for the bottom 40% of Americans which, as I previously mentioned, have a combined wealth of a measly .2% of U.S.' citizens' wealth. Here's an example of all the violations achieved during a single week in April of this year:
26 food-selling businesses have multiple violations in this week's inspections

http://lubbockonline.com/crime-and-...lling-business-have-multiple-violations-weeks
Ah, the ignorance of Regressives. It's up to the consumers whether or not they give these people business. There's no fast food without a demand for it. Considering that making your own food is cheaper than buying fast food, this only means people CHOOSE to eat unhealthy food from places that violate inspections.

Such innocence. As to the reality, in the case of vaccines, the vaccine companies have worked out a sweet deal wherein taxpayers pay for their mistakes. It's essentially akin to the government bailing banks out when their ponzi schemes are revealed...
American Taxpayers Have Paid Out $2 Billion To Settle Vaccine Lawsuits

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/science/vaccine-lawsuits-government/
I already said I'm against the government subsidizing anything.

Let's take a look at the 2 assumptions you are making above:
1- If an employee is paid too little, they will be able to find a place that pays them more.
2- The employee is also by default a significant customer of the business.

You haven't shown evidence for either of these assumptions.

Where there's a business paying employees 7.50 to start, there's a business paying $8. I already mentioned that only 3% of people in this Nation make minimum wage, it stands to reason that if you're not making 'enough', you can find someone that pays more than what you're making. A store manager I know explained to me that while someone can replace a position, they cannot replace a skilled employee. If someone actually works hard and proves themselves a money-saving asset, they can request a raise and explain that they'll be seeking other employment opportunities if they don't get the raise they need. If they don't get that raise, they can request higher pay from somewhere else. If their resume is as impressive as they thought it was, they can get that raise somewhere else.

2-If you can show me proof that people with no job or source of income make up any significant part of ANY consumer base, then we can call it an assumption. Otherwise, you're just ignorantly blustering.

If a business's employee gets hurt, they can be sued.

Perhaps that can work if you have a lot of money. Here's the reality for most people who don't:
**AN INVESTIGATION by ProPublica and NPR earlier this month detailed how states across the nation have been dismantling their workers’ compensation systems, with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year.

In some states, the cuts have been so drastic that injured workers have plummeted into poverty, losing their cars and even their homes. In others, workers spend years battling insurance companies for the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend...**

Source: The Fallout of Workers’ Comp ‘Reforms’: 5 Tales of Harm[/QUOTE]
You'd think that sort of thing would be illegal.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

I'll include an excerpt from an article that gets my point across:

Klein's indictment revolves around Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning guru of the University of Chicago School of Economics and the brains behind the movement for unregulated corporate trade, the elimination of public services and the eradication of organized labor.

Klein begins in the 1950s, the depths of the Cold War, when Friedman refined his theory of pure capitalism as a counter to the threat of communism and a radical alternative to the mixed checks-and-balances system that was installed under the influence of economist John Maynard Keynes to combat the Great Depression. Under Friedman's precise mathematical theorem, the only functions permitted for government are police and armies. Everything else should be privatized.

With eager financial support from corporate interests, Friedman's theories made the Chicago school the powerhouse of academic economics in the U.S. The search for a live test laboratory -- a nation to erase and re-create from scratch -- did not take long.

When Augusto Pinochet's military junta prepared for the takeover of Chile in 1973, Friedman's students handed him a complete plan of economic reform in advance. Friedman himself visited the new dictator, urging him to press even harder -- by dint of troops, tanks and death squads -- at selling state-owned property, utilities and services to American corporations. The plan also included eliminating public medical care, education and transportation; arresting, torturing and executing labor leaders, social workers, academics and other troublemakers; and throwing hundreds of thousands out of work. The aim was to shock the entire population into stunned acquiescence to the new corporate economic policies. The term in use was "shock therapy."

The effect was to impoverish the majority of the population while enriching those in power. International corporations, being on the plush end of the equation, were delighted. The Chicago Boys, as Friedman's students were known, were ready for similar actions in Argentina, southern Brazil, Bolivia and beyond. By the 1980s large segments of Africa and Asia also had submitted to Friedman's shock treatment...**

Source: Caution, 'Disaster Capitalism' at Work | Naomi Klein

First, a dictatorship is exactly what I'm arguing AGAINST, I don't care how 'capitalist' a country is, if the government is too powerful, well, it's too powerful. If anything, this is a perfect argument against your suggestion of government expansion, and only shows that regardless of what system you have, expanding the government too much will cause a disaster. I also didn't say that other government functions should be given to corporate executives, in fact, I'm advocating a method to STOP them from deciding what the government should do. In the end, your article does not help you.

It's heartening that you are arguing against dictatorships, but it seems you are unaware who Milton Friedman was. The Library of Economics and Liberty has this to say about him:
*Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets... In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for “his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” Before that time he had served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon and was president of the American Economic Association in 1967. After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, Friedman became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.**

Source: Milton Friedman: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

This man's students -encouraged- Pinochet to commit atrocities. As I imagine you know, most corporations are not democracies. Only worker owned companies would fit that bill. The rest are somewhere along the line of an oligarchy and a dictatorship, which helps explain Milton's students' zeal for a horrific dictator like Pinochet.

I'm glad that you atleast realize that corporate executives can do brutal things and shouldn't be allowed to commit atrocities with government support. Here are 14 examples of some of the worst corporate evildoers, including Coca Cola, Ford Motor Company and Nestle:
The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers | International Labor Rights Forum

Here's an introduction to the corporation Monsanto:
**Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination...**

Source: Monsanto’s Cruel, and Dangerous, Monopolization on American Farming

I never said that Corporations should have government powers, nor should they be above the law, but you're also never going to convince me a corporation should be run by employees, that's regressive, and as I explained, it would chase businesses out of the nation to other places that didn't suddenly forget how an economy works. There are certain laws that can be passed without it being business regulations, to prevent people in general from hurting others.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

We can agree Russia never implemented the ultimate goals of communism. But the U.S.S.R. definitely considered -itself- to be a communist country, as denoted by the fact that the only allowed party was the communist party. Communism as practiced by the U.S.S.R. is recognized by many as a failure, even by Russia itself now.

I consider myself a princess, that doesn't make me one. I could also try to be a princess, but until that goal is achieved, I wouldn't be one. Likewise, Russia can try to be Communist and declare itself Communist all it likes, but until they actually fit the definition, they are not. What they practiced was Socialism by definition, and that cannot be changed.

If everyone had enough money to make ends meet and the environment was being properly taken care of, the issue would be of far less importance. Neither is the case. The reality that some people have yachts while others are starve to death and/or are poisoned by their environment. This is gross negligence.

You don't seem to understand that regardless of your intentions, Socialism cannot work in any sense. As long as the money is earned, it's not anyone's business what people do with their money. If money is handed to people simply as a reward for having some, and is stolen from people that are successful, you're punishing success and rewarding failure. People will intentionally fail so they would be paid, and won't have to work. If people die due to laziness, it serves them right, and there's nothing you can do about it. Laziness by choice is not something that can be stopped or solved.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

So the real number was larger then your 'ballparked' number by around 280%, which makes me wonder how you "ballpark" numbers to begin with -.- Anyway, we now have a number that looks to be legit, thanks.

The list I first used was incomplete.

People who are dying of malnourishment or hunger need to eat to live.

At least if they're dead, they aren't a leech on society.

Meanwhile, you seem to keep on believing that the military budget is primarily for "defense". I think former U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler explained war's primary purpose fairly well in a key summary of it:
**War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.**

Source: War Is a Racket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The U.S. spent more 400% more on its military in 2015 then its closest competitor, China. it also spent over 700% more then the next highest spender, Saudi Arabia, and over 900% more then its former cold war opponent, Russia (Source: List of countries by military expenditures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). So unless the U.S. is wasting an incredible amount of money on its military (which, frankly, I wouldn't discount as a possibility), it is way ahead of its competitors when it comes to "defense" as well as what it generally does, which is aggressive -offensive- wars against other countries. I think the biggest waste to taxpayers are all the wars it gets into that were completely unnecessary and detrimental to all but a few, those described in Butler's summary.

It needs to continue being far ahead of its competitors, even if it is misusing the military. Besides, you're the one who's advocating the government have more power, what's wrong with having a military to back up your god-like government?

 

[Pumpkin Row]

So you think that a large federal government creates corrupt politicians? Personally, I think how those politicians are funded strongly influences said politicians. Most of the time, said funders would be the rich.

If the Federal government didn't have the power to influence the competitors of the large businesses, do you think that we'd get said big businesses funding politicians getting into office to stifle their competition?

Well, -that's- certainly a mouthful of a question . I think we should first start with the basics, namely, the definition of government. Wikipedia's introduction to the term starts with this:
"A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled.[1]"

Source: Government - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first question that anyone should ask is, does a state or community -need- to be controlled? Based on what you yourself have said, even you would agree that yes, it does. However, it seems that you seem to think that the only things the government should be controlling is the use of force. Am I correct?

Here's the thing- the use of force against others should only be used as a -last- resort. The consequences of force are ugly, and frequently fatal. This is why the government has so many -other- agencies, other then military and law enforcement ones; to try to resolve things before they get to that level. Yes, the government is certainly powerful, but that's a -good- thing, because the government, atleast, is atleast accountable to voters every 4 years. Corporations aren't. The scary thing is that corporations and the lobbyists they fund are becoming more and more powerful, to the point that most politicians are essentially doing whatever they want in order to receive campaign contributions. Let me put this another way- if the government didn't have the power to regulate corporations, a power which they are using less and less all the time, the corporations would rush to fill in the vacuum. Already, many large corporations have more assets then small countries. And unlike the U.S. government, no one is under the illusion that corporations are accountable to those they affect; only those who have shares of the company can vote, and even then, it's only the voting shares.

It was a rhetorical question, I already knew the answer. If I wanted an answer I could take seriously, I wouldn't have asked a Socialist.

Some have argued that Bernie is actually a social democrat, not a socialist:
Bernie Sanders Is No Socialist - The Globalist

Since I pretty much support Bernie's ideology all the way, that'd make me the same. It all depends on how one defines the term.

You wouldn't happen to be 5-7 years old, would you?

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Except... I don't care about any income disparity, that's just how the world works. If you work hard, you succeed. If you don't, you don't. is that, as someone else said, you can lead someone to water, but you don't make them drink.

Nor Louis XVI , nor Nicolas II had any regard for income disparity... and the outcome... indeed ... pretty much how the world works.

As long as we have businesses, we have jobs. as long as we have jobs, people have money, except lazy people, who don't want jobs, nor work. Going out of our way to help said lazy people only damages the economy, not that we should help them out, anyway.

That's false. During depresions people are laid off regardless of whether they want to work or not.
Some are not able to work simply because they lack access to credit.
Muhammad Yunnus, founder of the Gremeen Bank, actually thinks credit should be a universal right.

Muhammad Yunnus sounds like a nutcase. Depressions caused by the government, anyway. If they'd keep their crusty fingers off of the economy, depressions would never occur.

 

[Pumpkin Row]

Except... I don't care about any income disparity, that's just how the world works. If you work hard, you succeed. If you don't, you don't. is that, as someone else said, you can lead someone to water, but you don't make them drink.

Nor Louis XVI , nor Nicolas II had any regard for income disparity... and the outcome... indeed ... pretty much how the world works.

As long as we have businesses, we have jobs. as long as we have jobs, people have money, except lazy people, who don't want jobs, nor work. Going out of our way to help said lazy people only damages the economy, not that we should help them out, anyway.

That's false. During depresions people are laid off regardless of whether they want to work or not.
Some are not able to work simply because they lack access to credit.
Muhammad Yunnus, founder of the Gremeen Bank, actually thinks credit should be a universal right.

I wouldn't go that far. I am a fairly big fan of the idea first put forth by Louis Blanc in 1851, ""From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", but there are some caveats. The largest has to do with capacity. Put simply, if not everyone can be properly fed, one has to make difficult decisions. For instance, in the film "In the Heart of the Sea", a crew of sailors find themselves in a boat at sea with a dwindling food supply. One member decides to kill himself in order to increase the food supply for those remaining. A difficult decision, but arguably the logical one. This isn't the situation in today's world, but there is still another issue, one that I think communist governments such as the U.S.S.R. have faced, namely that a lack of reward for excellent performance demotivates people to perform well. There is a reason that capitalism has worked better then communism, and I think that this is at the heart of it. Nevertheless, crony capitalism, while perhaps not quite as bad as no reward communism, is a close second. Ironically, the reason is pretty much the same- when people at the bottom realize that there is little opportunity for upward mobility regardless of how hard they toil, the difference between communism and crony capitalism becomes less and less noticeable for those at the ever increasing bottom of the social spectrum.

Just from that quote, I'm already of the belief that you're hopeless.