Quote:
|
Originally Posted by caspofungin
that's socialism? ok, how's this for capitalism...
Last Thursday while walking to lunch on the corner of Market and East Bay, I passed what appeared to be a homeless man holding a hand-made sign that read,“Vote Obama, I need the money.” Disgusted the temerity of the man, begging on a sidewalk that my hard-earned taxes had paid for, I kicked him aside. "Get a job, you slob."
...When the check finally came I decided not to tip my waiter and explained to him that I was going to implement a practical application of capitalism.
He stood there in stoic disbelief as I explained to him that I was going keep his rightfully earned $10 tip to myself. After all, the service wasn't that great, and he was already getting a slary from the restaurant owner. The waiter stammered a few "Why practice on me? I’m just a local college student!" retorts and then angrily stormed away from the table in a steaming huff of progressive self-righteous indignation. "Oh well," I thought, "one day he may be a systems analyst or have some other good job, but today he's learned that just because you've worked hard and done your best, you don't necessarily get a tip. Or even a wage. Actually, he's lucky that I eat here regularly, otherwise he'd be out of a job. He should be tipping me."
As I walked back to my office, I began thinking about the heavy burden of corporate ownership and the endless frustration from beating my head against the wall of increasing bureaucracy year-after-year. I also thought of the majority of this year’s hard-earned profits that I had planned to reinvest in a few new cars, annual raises to the CFO and COO to reward loyalty, Christmas bonuses for my own extraordinary effort, and year-end corporate donations to the Republican Party, my Ivy League alma mater, and the Historic Charleston Foundation.
Yes indeed, in a society of have's and have not's, it's harder than you think to be a have.
|
I was going to write something like that too
The real thing that's wrong with this story is the assumption that wealth is something that is obtained with total ethics and is completely deserved, while poverty necessarily comes from laziness and is associated with social ills. The recourse of wealthy people is that, well, they played the system by the system's rules. But who is to say those rules don't exploit the misfortune of others? I for one can't you if the author's having an extra $10 and going to restaurants is the result of working diligently his whole life, or whether in fact it comes from the profits he makes while employing a staff of migrant workers on minimum wage.
I can't speak for rich people, I've only known a few in my life. I can tell you, however, that most poor people aren't naive, stupid, lazy drunks. So this particular ideology irks me like you wouldn't believe. The fact is that for every fear that socialist approaches will screw over people and their hard-earned income, there are already a dozen poor people screwed over by the capitalist system by virtue of never having access to this type of income in the first place. The "American dream" ideas here help, but they're rapidly breaking down even in the States.
I will continue warning of this: the day America will be really screwed is the day they wake up and realize there is no real middle class anymore. When that happens, all that was good about the system can very much be considered to have gone down the drain. In the case, using a limited amount of socialist thinking is a good and acceptable idea. It helps you keep a middle class, which will allow a reasonable liberal democracy to continue functioning. This is the same type of "outrageous socialist agenda" that probably saved the West from a communist revolution akin to that of Russia in the early 20th century - things like unions, wage and working conditions and regulations, and social benefits are directly the products of the socialist agenda. They weren't easy to agree to. They brought the same type of resistance as this. But in the end they saved the system from the brink of collapse. The system is again approaching it. Either a tough, painful fix is brought in to help balance it again, or you can say goodbye to democracy as such.