Cool post. Sounds like you really know what your talking about

What is a "living wage" to you? and why do you think that would be a feasible thing to hand out to everyone for "free" at the expense of those who do work?

The safety net often is a living wage. It keeps people fed and off the streets. It opens up the opportunity for them to find work without the pressures of worrying about food and housing.

Making people comfortable in their poverty would simply discourage their ambition for upward mobility.

Except it's the complete opposite. And it's not about making people comfortable in poverty, it's about making people comfortable with a normal lifestyle. Not living from day to day. Making poor people richer could make them acquainted with concepts like saving money for a bigger purchase, paying off debts, etc. When you are living day to day, all those concepts fly out the window. Especially when there's little to no perspective as far as careers go.

And it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome is a good example.

Also a good idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

That's true. The point I was trying to make is that having enough income not to worry, creates so much oppurtunity and frees your mind of the shackles society puts on you when you're poor.

Seriously though, legal corruption benefiting the powerful existed long before capitalism and will after capitalism eventually implodes.

Socialist and communist governments, as well as more primitive governments like aristocracies, monarchies, juntas, also have this happen. I won't call this a problem, because privilege is only a problem to some and that would be injecting value into the statement.



That was Marx's reason for communism

People can go about actually living their lives like the creatures we are instead of spending all of our time working to create value for somebody else that is in much more excess then they can ever need. I think this thought goes back to John Locke and his thoughts about private property, that everybody should be able to take as much as they can use, and no more, because that is unnatural and wasteful. He warned that the phenomenon of money will corrupt this notion and people who were able to would take far more money than they need would do so and take more of the world's resources than they could ever possibly use themselves, which by definition is stealing from others who aren't getting as much as they need.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 6 2014 10:37am

I rather be subject to an economy where I am forced to find employment, rather than one where the government determines where I work, how much I work, and how much food my family needs. There is far more freedom of choice in the capitalistic economy.

If that's not how communism works, how would it?

Freedom is an illusion for those with less. It doesn't exist for the poor with the current wealth divide.

Sure it does, they just don't have all the toys that wealthier people have. The vast majority of poor people are not starving, nor homeless. They live much better lives than middle class people in several countries. The real illusion is the story they tell themselves, that not having as much wealth as their neighbors makes them less worthy. It doesn't.