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The Only Thing, Historically, That's Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe (theatlantic.com)
ColdWetDog writes: The Atlantic has an interesting article on how societies have decreased economic equality. From the report: "Calls to make America great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in the cataclysm of the world wars. The pressures of total war became a uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most part between 1914 and 1945, this 'Great Compression' (as economists call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it stalled and began to go into reverse. This equalizing was a rare outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk."
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Slashdot reader ColdWetDog notes: "Yep, the intro is a bit of a swipe at Trump. But this should get the preppers and paranoids in the group all wound up. Grab your foil! Run for the hills!"
Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands. Not Cuba or Venezuela. Dunno why you'd think that.
The Declaration may not be "Law", but it is _the_ single most important document in American History. The Declaration of Independence is what founded the country. The document provides both the reason for discarding rule from England
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
And the principles that the Country should, and would, have.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
I'd recommend reading the whole Document. The Constitution is the Law used to protect the rights declared.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Wages in Europe were extremely low before the Black Death due to massive overpopulation versus amount of available jobs. After the Black Death there were more jobs than people to work them. Not only that there were less competition for limited resources like land. It could be argued Renaissance would not have happened without the Black Death. Families like the Medici would not have succeeded without some upending of the old world order.
Although USSR identified itself as communist,
They didn't, though. It's even in the name, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They had a communist party, whose goal was to achieve communism, but they were fully aware they hadn't gotten there yet.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Let me politically educate you!
In USSR, up until the 1922, reds were collecting all taxes. Then they explicitly permitted private companies in between 22-25 and gave quite good tax perks.
In 1925 all companies except luxury goods producers were nationalised. Luxury goods firms were in private hands up until the death of Stalin.
During the middle of Khrushev's term, they first tried to unscrew the economy by autonomising companies, following the idea "shit floats". Only the biggest companies remained institutionally part of the government. Every other company was no longer GosPlan managed.
The first Khrushev's reform had moderate effect, the most terrible loss makers did close, but people found ways around. Funds kept flowing into Swiss and US bank accounts of corrupt officials.
Second and third reform were mostly targeted at technological improvements and furthering autonomisation, but had 0 effect as they were never carried out. They existed on official papers only.
Private gold mining was permitted periodically throughout the Soviet reign, whenever the state was short on gold.
Cooperative farms were de-facto private, up until 72-76 when they were all finally nationalised
Few foreign enterprises had formal right of ownership of production plants through entire post-Stalin period - better known were Cocacola, and factories of Armand Hammer, and Fiat
Better info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Have you ever wondered why? It's because they were trying to reduce the influence of slaveholders. A default position of counting slaves as a full person for representation purposes would have led to the slaveholders (who actually voted for representation, not the slaves) controlling the federal government based on the number of slaves they held.
So the 3/5ths compromise as well as granting the power to restrict or prohibit the importation of slaves (also in the Constitution) were the Nation's first two anti-slavery measures, passed over opposition from the slave-holding States. They'd have done more, but then the slave-holding States wouldn't have ratified the Constitution in the first place, making any restrictions in it pointless.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
"There was never a catastrophe in Switzerland, but their living standard is one of the highest in the world."
:) What happens when 20-40% of a growing population has no skills to work for generations?
Switzerland looks after its own internally and does not let many random people just wonder in and become Swiss.
People can find a job or are supported if a person cant get work or will never work at the very local, canton level. No fraud, no cheating i.e. no illegals can hide in a vast federal system. Any gov support payments are kept at a normal rate per normal population size. Work is encouraged and rewarded. Nice car, nice house, holidays, or own business. Education gets people ready for work. Some military service then ensures every generation knows how to work together and what their nation has to offer. A few days in the mud, cold, in the back of a truck, up a mountain, been in a bunker gets different people talking and helps build a nation.
The ranks of the unemployable are not allowed to rise every generation by inviting lots of unemployable people in.
The medical profession globally is protected to ensure only the best in any nation can work on a citizen in need of help.
Any medical expert on duty should be the best a nation can educate or have passed the same exams.
No wealthy citizen wants to wake up in their own nation and be told some "medical specialist from anywhere in the world" on duty did not have the skills needed to ensure a normal recovery. So most nations are very aware of who they allow to practice medicine. Only the best get to pass tests and practice.
If a nation wants to save its citizens after a crash or in some emergency it can be very simple.
Have great ambulance crews with real skills and the national support they need. Allow helicopters, aircraft to fly in all weather, at night and bring back patients to only the very best hospitals. Most normal nations can fly helicopters at night in 2017 to get people to a fully equipped hospital.
Teams of the best doctors on duty selected only on merit then get to care for citizens. Not a citizen? Have that travel insurance ready.
No student, work or tourist visa without full cover medial insurance.
The same goes for education. Test the students and only support the very best. Ensure the best get to university.
The Soviet and Chinese experiments soon run of free cash and have to export their way back into hard currency.
China today is investing globally but its own people know of all the corruption, lack of free speech and pollution.
The confiscatory rate is going to get very interesting with EU/NATO nations. How to support vast numbers of people moving in illegally and expecting generations of free gov support. Housing, schools, medical, dental for millions of new people with no new tax rates?
Governments could take on more debt to cover welfare costs
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I have internet in the stix. It's the only utility that goes as far as my house (not a trailer).
No electricity (solar works well for me), water (well) or sewer (septic tank). I live in a custom semi luxury house with every amenity of someone living in San Francisco would have. I have AC (thee of them actually, two window and a heat pump), a double refigerator and a Bosch dishwasher (hot water provided by popane). I have 30A/120v AC full sinewave power. If I didn't tell you that I was not connected to the grid, you would not know it. And it was done for less than $30,000 and 7 years of work. I have no debt and if need be, I could survive very well on minimum wage, as could many around me (I live near a hippie commune).
Maybe, I grew up in a different USSR. What "luxury goods"? Name one private label, that existed in USSR in 1952...
They were called "collective farms" and weren't "private" at all. Though ostensibly the farm's chairman was elected, in reality the sole candidate was introduced by the Communist Party's representative for the members of the collective to rubber-stamp. Whatever they collectively farmed could only be sold to the government as well.
Neither Coca-Cola nor Pepsi owned anything — USSR-owned factories were producing the drinks under license.
Nope. Some Soviet models tried to emulate foreign cars, but Fiat didn't own any stake in the factories.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes, technology levels the playing field.
That is because, like major wars and catastrophes, it can devalue established wealth and power and empowers others to succeed based on their ability. The great thing about technology though is that it usually does this with far fewer people dying and it does not require wars to spur it on even though they often do.
These countries (nor the ones GP listed) aren't socialist. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production.
Like in the military, schools, medicine, roads, rail, fire brigade, garbage collection, national parks etc you mean?
Pretty much all western nations (incl the US) are socialist to some extent. This may not gel with your ideology, but all of these things are socialist.
Why worship a document so clearly penned by hypocrisy - several owned slaves.
Let me educate you on a little US history.
1. Slavery was instituted in the US many decades before any of the 'Founding Fathers' were born.
2. The first slave owner, and the person who argued it through the courts to make it legal, was a black man named Anthony Johnson.
3. Anthony Johnson's first slave, John Casor, and most of the others he ended up owning, were white.
4. Thomas Jefferson, the most-oft cited slave-owning Founder, never bought nor sold a single slave. He inherited them from his in-laws and kept them together so as not to break up their families and treated them as well as he could under the existing laws passed long before he was born.
5. Jefferson could not free his slaves as under the laws of the time, he would have been hanged.
6. Nearly all the Founders despised slavery. The only reason it was allowed to continue was the southern Democrat States would not join the US revolution on the American side if it was outlawed. They enacted the 3/5ths Compromise so as to lessen Southern slaveholders' voting power, so that slavery *could* be banned down the road while still achieving the immediate goal of forming all 13 colonies into a single unified nation to defeat the British and achieve independence.
Sorry about your broken worldview. Fortunately, an education in history can get you a new and better worldview if one is willing and able to change their thinking based on facts.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
3. Anthony Johnson's first slave, John Casor, and most of the others he ended up owning, were white.
That's just not true
That fantasy land is Europe.
I'd invite you, but we already have far more than enough people who followed the invitation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is another factor from which America gained huge benefit: German and Japanese industry had been decimated. Without funding from the US they likely could not have recovered at all - but for many decades US manufacturing had effectively no competition. Toyota and BMW were slowly rebuilding from nothing - a process that took decades. It's easy for your factories to get rich, and pay people well, when the only competition is from other companies in your own country with the exact same legal and economic situation as you have.
No. WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments, and it didn't take decades.
Japan took that second spot in 1968. That's 23 years to rebuild everything they lost, and become the second largest economy in the world. Between 1955 and 1973, they averaged 9% growth per year. That would be phenomenal for any country, much less one recovering from the impact of the war.
This notion that US industries simply had no competition for decades is simply very wrong.
Coming out of WW2, we gave veterans the GI Bill. Hundreds of thousands of people could now go to college who would never have been able to without that assistance. In 1956 the US would start the interstate highway system, which would be critical to moving goods around. And in 1961, Kennedy would give the country a direction with a decree to go to the moon.
We had the newly educated masses, the means for transportation, and a path forward. The innovation to come from that in electronics, material science, and miniaturization is what propelled the advances that most people today take for granted, everything from telecommunications to food preservation.
Now, unfortunately, we have people who revel in their stupidity, and no longer understand that we are better as a nation, instead of a mass of stupid idiots with no rhyme or reason.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The main difference is that there is a group of health insurers called Gesetzliche Krankenkassen (health insurers according to law), which are heavily regulated and whose service offerings are governmentally controlled. If you earn less than a specified amount of money as an employee, you are required to get coverage from such an institution. Which institution is up to you, it just has to offer you the contract according to law. There are about 100 different health insurers in Germany, which offer coverage according to law, and most of them operate through the whole of Germany. You are free to buy additional insurance if you want more or better services. If you are on social security, you are automatically insured by a Gesetzliche Krankenkasse. If you are self employed, operate your own business or earn more than the limit, you are completely free in your choice of health insurance.
Here you go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And calling me a liar? You can go fuck yourself.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Being described as "Negro servant, John Casor," doesn't make him sound overly white.
My very first post was specifically discussing quality of life, especially arguing that making everybody equally poor doesn't make for a better society. And that is in fact what GP was arguing against, though admittedly my second post did go on a tangent, but that was because of the few points the article makes about civil equality (i.e. mention of voting rights.)
I understand what your point was, but it was refuting a strawman argument no one made. The article does not state the world is better off because wars reduced income inequality. It merely states the wars reduced income inequality. It then goes on to say it will be much harder to reduce inequality in peaceful times than it was in the middle of the last century. It does not make any claims that we are worst off because of this, only that we will need to work harder to reduce inequality without outside factors which made it easier in the past.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The numbers come from a 2006 article about the 1970's protests against Friedman at his own University - which I had used as a reference to prove the no-platforming is decidedly NOT an millennial invention - the boomers started it (and while I defend no-platforming as BEING rather than attacking free speech, the boomers probably didn't qualify in the same way because they crossed a line millennials have generally refused to go near in protesting to demand the firing of a tenured professor - there's a huge difference between being selective of what outside speakers you want to welcome on campus outside of class, and protesting which TEACHERS are allowed to teach there).
Either way, the numbers on Chile were largely mentioned in passing, as the article was mostly focussed on the role of Friedman and Hayek - and their subsequent influence on the Reagan and Thatcher administrations (it was so funny to see a libertarian declare Reagan an evil that libertarians fought against... when the REASON they fought him was not being libertarian enough after missing my original point: it's impossible for any non-dictator to actually DO all the libertarians want, it cannot be done because in a democracy you can never convince THAT MANY people to sacrifice themselves on the altars of the moneyed gods). Reagan got protested by libertarians because of what checks and balances PREVENTED him from doing.
Anyway, it's quite possible I misread a number, or just remembered one wrong, or the article could have had a typo. As I said my reading of it was for a different purpose and the focus of the article itself was on a different aspect of that history. So I'm happy to concede I may have had that number wrong.
That the Chilean economic 'miracle' never happened however is beyond dispute. It looked great on paper but it never represented any actual growth.
You can contrast that with the Argentinian miracle - arguably the greatest vindication of anarcho-socialist philosophy since the Andalusia. The economy collapsed and the capitalists fled with their cash. Then the workers just showed up and kept running the abandoned businesses as democratic coops... and in the same economic conditions where the capitalists had given up and fled while they still had money... these coops thrived, their profit-sharing meant everybody was also earning more - so they could buy things, which meant the success of every coop guaranteed the success of the others by providing a steady supply of customers who could afford to buy the goods they made. Today these coops provide over 80% of Argentinian employment with the remainder being mostly civil servants and a small number working for overseas companies that have since returned. On paper, Argentina's economy is in dire straits - in PRACTICE it's one of the most successful in the world. The elites aren't making money, the usual measurements are showing terrible declines as a result - but the PEOPLE are living the highest quality of life in their history and funding it with genuine productivity. The exact opposite of how Chile ended up. And thus, very unlikely to experience a similar crash (it's been going on ten years now and no dangerous crash-like signs are showing).
What's interesting is that this form of workers-own-the-means-of-production socialism happened with no statism, no state involvement in fact, and no violence or revolution either. Which probably explains why the outcome has been so positive -since the things that destroyed Soviet-style communism (the authoritarian all-powerful state) was absent from the equation and it retained the best aspects of the free market. These independent businesses still compete with each other in an open market, it's just that in the successful ones the profit actually goes to the people who created it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *