December 26, 2004
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Topic: Which is better, benevolant individuals or a benevolant state?
so…i was watching some football pre-game, and there was a special on Warrick Dunn, who plays for the Atl. falcons. Like all pro-athletes, he has more money than he knows what to do, but he’s started a foundation that helps poor people put down-payments on their houses, and fills the houses with food, furniture, and a computer. We can clearly see there, how extreme wealth leads to clear benefits for the less fortunate. I want to question now Huey Long, a politician who took money from the rich, from people like Dunn, so the gov’t can try to help the poor. The question is, who is more capable of helping the poor, rich individuals, or a rich gov’t? Think about schools, as much as I support the idea of public schooling, the reality is as we know, that public schooling often does more harm than good to students’ learning and love of learning. Even if we taxed more and put more money into schools, we’d still find the same problems, test scores might go up, but real learning would down. What are the best schools that use the best educational practices? Typically privately funded schools, schools funded through the wealth of people like Bill Gates. So, despite the outrage of the middle-class and below about the superwealth of a few, we cannot deny the many contributions in the forms of foundations and other programs established out of the benevolance of the rich, and while it is true that there exists enough wealth from the rich that could help the poor, how does private expenditure of wealth compare to gov’t expenditure of wealth (welfare, public schools).
Let’s assume for a minute, that everyone, capitalists, socialists, Democrats, Republicans, Green Party, etc., all want the same thing. They want a society where everyone has enough to live comfortably. If we could all start from that premise, we might be able to better understand the other side. It might seem that certain parties care more about the poor than others, but, for the minute, let’s assume that all parties want the same thing, we just differ in how to get there.
I haven’t yet decided which system is best equipped to provide for the poor, I think most of our judgements come out of present day realities. Therefor, we see one system not working, and so we attack the system, but economic and political systems are created by man, and therefore subject to subjective interpretations.
I’m curious to learn about those societies that live in harmony, without any prescribed system of economics and politics. Take the Native Americans. It is their culture that ensures that all are taken care of. The problem with America is the culture that has developed. And, while most posts on my site and others point out the ills of our culture, we must also consider that America has done some incredibly humanitarian things. We have people doing the Peace Corps, we’ve established all sorts of organizations to look out for human rights violations around the world.
New question, we’ve discussed pleanty of the ills of our capitalistic society, what are some of the benefits? How can we use the unique strengths of the capitalistic system of cure its ills?
Comments (4)
Here’s the problem with this: Warrick Dunn does something good for a few people with a tiny percentage of his money. Bill Gates does a few good things for a few people with a tiny percentage of his money. So do a lot of rich people. But it always comes with strings or other requirements. My sister who lives in Austin, Texas thinks Michael Dell is great, but Michael dell doesn’t give a dime to anyone outside of Austin, Texas, so all the profits he makes around the US are worthless to 99.9% of the population.
No, public schools aren’t perfect, but neither are 99% of private schools, and here’s a clear difference: Public schools take everyone. The white kids and the black kids. The smart kids and the not-so-smart-kids. The special ed kids and the extremely high needs kids no private school will consider. The violent kids, the mentally ill kids, the severely mentally impaired kids. I hate to say this, but I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of schools and I have never seen a private school with anywhere near the diversity common to urban public schools. Of course public schools also educate 100% of the kids with parents who don’t care: That is, private schools are a “self-selected group” with parents caring enough and educated enough to make choices about their child’s education. Public schools educate 100% of migrant children and other children who move continuously. Public schools educate over 90% of children whose parents fall below the poverty line.
So when you say to Bill Gates: give your money to this school instead of paying taxes, you are taking money right out the hands of the educators who have the hardest jobs. Now Gates does support public education, which is great, but most rich people do not.
And would it be better for the mass of underhoused Americans for Warrick Dunn and all his teammates to pay FICA taxes on his entire income so everyone making minimum wage could have a 15% salary increase? Of course it would be. (The Falcons quarterback alone, if his whole annual income were subject to FICA, would cover the FICA taxes for 1,400 people making minimum wage each year.)
There are obvious benefits to open markets, no one challenges that. Europe has them, Japan has them. But both those places combine open markets with real rules and inherent democratic rights (health care, housing, education) that keep society in balance. Taxes on super-wealth fund public services without ever once decreasing the creativity of Sony, Philips, Volkswagen, LG, Panasonic, or Daimler. Limits on the ratio of executive pay to “lowest-earning-worker” pay keep these nations healthy. Rationing health care by need and illness instead of by bank account protects humanity.
I’m not denying that capitalist incentives don’t work, but propaganda artists like thatliberalmedia and the American corporate media system seem to forget a few things: (a) most human progress occurred before capitalism arrived in that late 18th Century. (b) huge inventions in the past 100 years have occurred in essentially socialized nations. (c) many of our most dramatic inventions (from nuclear power on down) are the creations of government spending, as are almost all improvements in those inventions, be it planes, trains, or automobiles, are the result of government efforts. (d) the whole creation of America is the story of government spending: from the Louisiana Purchase to the Erie Canal to the massive grants to Railroads to the construction of highways to the military’s spending on aircraft research and government built airfields to Ontario Hydro, the TVA and other power projects, to the public university systems (and tax support for private universities) that drive almost all research in the US (there would have been no “revolution in Agriculture” without Michigan State, Iowa State, and UC Davis), to the Federal Banking System that protects private investments, to the public schools that continue to train well over 80% of the population. The “capitalists do it” claim is simply a lie. It isn’t true now. It wasn’t true in 1900. It wasn’t true in 1820. It wasn’t true in 1620.
I agree with thenarrator, but I’d add that you’re asking the wrong question. The question shouldn’t be tied to a false government/free enterprise dichotomy. That dichotomy is the one that’s causing us so much trouble. We ask it that way because we have public schools and private schools, so it seems like those are the natural ends of the spectrum.
What needs to happen is that we reprioritize education as a whole, and not in that bullshit ‘Education President’ way, either. This argument of public versus private is not so much about education itself, as an ideological power grab over dwindling resources. It doesn’t help that the free-market side is the one making the resources dwindle (at the moment). They’re using this argument about public versus private to give some kind of ideological justification to budget cuts in education.
Private education can be good, and public education can be good. There’s plenty of room for both, even without vouchers and charter schools. The problem is a lack of political will to stand up for the public schools when it comes time to make the budgets. Schools should not have to sell advertising on their busses or have a Coke machine in the hallway.
“They want a society where everyone has enough to live comfortably”
Assuming the rather vague phrase “enough to live comfortably” does not change over time, then yes, I’d say libertarians would agree with that.
As for Native Americans, in case you didn’t notice, their culture has practically died out. It was clearly not sustainable.
I don’t understand how anyone can claim most human progress occurred before the late 18th century. It requires almost complete ignorance of history. In 1990 U.S. dollars, the value of everything produced in the world grew from $695 billion in 1820 to almost $28 trillion in 1992 and the amount of that production per person went from $651 to $5,145.
Lifespans have close to doubled since then. Infant mortality is now infinitesimal. Leisure time is much much greater for 95% of people. The greatest human progress occurred during the Industrial Revolution.
No one is claiming that free markets don’t need help in providing for natural monopolies, and public goods. But all this has been done with a millionth of the federal budget we have now. Until about 1900, there was no federal income tax. FDR himself once called for a 7% ceiling on income taxes.
I am well aware what that Europeans/Americans are largely responsible for the killing/destruction of the Native Americans, thank you very much. In your indignation, however, you fail to explain how this makes a difference. I don’t know about you, but to me, a key ingredient to the existance of a successful culture is, you know, continuing to exist. If your culture is resistant to technological progress, well, that’s a pretty fatal flaw, isn’t it? If your people are weak, and easily susceptible to disease, again, you have a serious problem (A lot of Natives died en masse from European diseases, but there was hardly any reverse effect, Europeans dying from Native diseases).