Samael wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: EvMick@aol.com <EvMick@aol.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> Date: 11 December 1998 01:35
> Subject: Re: The Education Function
>
> >In a message dated 12/10/98 12:25:18 PM Central Standard Time,
> >Samael@dial.pipex.com writes:
> >
> >> Under
> >> capitalism, the rich tend to get richer.
> >
> >And the poor get richer too. Todays "poor" are the equivalent of the
> "rich"
> >of not so long ago. (how long ago was it that only royalty had more than
> one
> >change of clothes?...and could even royalty buy ....at any cost....things
> >which are common today?)
>
> Nope. It's also marvellous that I can walk into my local supermarket and
> get lettucs and cucmbers in the midle of winter. There are all sorts of
> modern things that I am insanely grateful for. Which is why I don't, did,ny
> and never have supported communism.
>
> But there are still people who fall off the bottom of the system.
THe funny thing is that the more socialist a country is, the more people who fall off the bottom and stay in the poverty class. Since taxation adds an incredible amount to an individual's cost of living, it follows that in a high tax socialist environment, more people will fall below the poverty level because the measured 'market basket' of goods and services is inflated by those high taxes at all levels of production and distribution.
Its been calculated that if taxation were eliminated here in the US that the cost of living for the current standard of living would drop by some 60%. I imagine that this percentage is even higher in more socialist countries. This would automatically raise 90%+ of the people who supposedly live below the poverty line up to middle class status, because they can now afford a decent standard of living.
Yes there will still be people who fall off the bottom of the system, people become drunks, drug addicts, or suffer accidents without sufficient insurance, or are dependents of people who do so. That, sir, is life. Now, if we could cure everyone who has predispositions toward drug and alcohol abuse I think that would go a long way toward ending this problem, since most poverty and crime is drug and alcohol related. But that is a medical problem, not an economics problem. The economics are merely symptoms of the medical.
Mike Lorrey