That's right, and if elected , the democratic nominee will get right to work on that.

Socialism doesn't work.

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Well, that depends on what you want it to do...

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

I think we are dicussing poverty and wealth, so lets say it should eliminate poverty.

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Well, I suspect no system will do that, so by that standard capitalism doesn't work either.

I suspect a socialist system has the potential to substantially narrow the gap between the very rich and the very poor, and that it would be more effective in doing so than capitalism would be.
Of course I also suspect it would decrease the total amount of wealth available to society.

But very few Americans advocate pure socialism or pure capitalism; and indeed we currently have a hybrid of the two. The legitimate the debate is over whether the balance should be nudged one way or the other.

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To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

As long as the nudging is done with incentives and not with multi-generational handouts, I'm all for it.

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There is nothign wrong with multi-generational handouts. My father worked hard to produce a business he could turn over to his children. It has provided well for me and would have for my sister as well if she didn't choose to disgrace the family by marrying a papist.

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Nate Peele
www.Thatsrightnate.com
"Finally a journalist is not scared to question the truth"--TJ Baker Holm

Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the "general Welfare" clause:

"To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies, and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, may it never be seen here that ... government shall itself consume the residue of what it was instituted to guard. To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the guaranty to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it."
—Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816).

"[i]f experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth."
—H.L. Mencken, "The Politician" Prejudices: A Selection (4th Series, 1924).

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and thus clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
— H.L. Mencken

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."
— James Madison (father of the US Constitution)

"It is not the right of property which is protected but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights but the individual has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to life, the right to his liberty and the right to his property. These three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is still to leave him a slave."
Justice George Sutherland

"The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline."
Milton Friedman

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Ronald Reagan

"If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retributions."
Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead et al. v. United States, 277 U.S. 485 (1928)

"The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise."
Milton Friedman

"The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force."
Milton Friedman

"Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds."
Milton Friedman

TSGracchus - I think you missed my questions to you, so I'll use the below as what I believe your answer would've been. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Why should government be on anyone's side? What makes the citizens, the people, who make up the labor side more deserving of government favors than the citizens, the people, who make up the capital side?
Okay, so we stop allowing producers in low wage countries from selling their products here, the cost of those products go up, and consumers here need to spend more money on the things they buy. This will make them less poor?

I suppose you would argue wages would go up since more people would have to be employed in the US in order to produce these things. Though that wouldn't necessarily be so, it is possible. Do you have any evidence that wages would go up by a greater percentage than the increase in prices? Because, unless they do, no one is relatively richer. The wealth gap doesn't decrease, it just gets skewed upward.

Furthermore, what happens when we can't sell our products to these low wage countries, either because of the lack of any trade agreements, or simply because you've just put them all out of work and now they can't afford our products? With rapidly growing middle classes in these low-wage countries, who look upon our way of life and want all the things we have, aren't you proposing we simply cut ourselves out of those markets? And with those markets gone, should we just depend upon the shrinking markets in "labor-friendly" countries to fuel our growth?
How harshly do you think we should punish achievement?

Exactly that is the problem and why the wealth gap needs to be narrowed.

The wealthy, therefore the powerful have been taking from hard working people for a long time. Most wealthy people don't deserve the money they have they certainly did not earn it either. They sucked it out of the work ethic of those people they could leverage themselves over and control.

In an efficient market long term profits are driven to zero. In the market, long term profits only become more excessive. How is that maintained ? by taking from society.

They took it through use of a type of force from the poor, working, and now middle class.

WHat force is that? They paid someone to do work for them, and then sold the product of that work for profit. How is that wrong? And what exactly does society own that can be taken? If I come up with some new invention and make profit off it, am I taking from society? Your long term profits driven to zero assumes there is a finite amount of product, but that is far from the case. Every day someone comes up with a new idea that someone will pay for.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Typical liberal bullshit-laden diatribe.

A guy I went to high school with would be what I think we'd all consider "rich". Built his business up from nothing more than one other guy and a pool skimmer. He now owns one of the largest pool supply companies in the world. I know another guy, here in San Diego, who started his business with a lawnmower and an old Ford Ranger. He now owns one of the most successful landscape companies in southern California. Another guy, who started with an asphalt striping machine, now owns his own paving company. In fact, all of the people I know who'd be considered "rich" got "rich" through nothing more than their own hard work and determination.

Are they "taking from society"? Perhaps in the form of payment for work performed, but nothing more...

Because that's complete bullshit, that's why.

I NEVER said I didn't want government to fix it; what I said was that I wasn't advocating taking your money and giving it to someone else who didn't deserve it. Nor did I. Ever. Not once.

What's more, you KNOW that. Cut the bullshit. I can't stand dishonesty and have no respect for it, nor does it deserve any.

No, I'm simply holding the government accountable for doing its job. There is no contradiction between that and expecting people to take responsibility for their own situation. They will always have that responsibility, no matter what the rules of the game are. Nevertheless, what the rules of the game are still matters.

The "American Dream" isn't just about getting rich. It's about creating a just society. It's as utopian a vision as Marx ever had, if hopefully a more realistic one, too. It's not just me. It's us.

"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the guaranty to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it."
—Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval (12 July 1816)."--Thomas Jefferson.

Wanted to post that again, since I know a overdid my quotes. The income tax in the US was sold to the people as a way to "soak the rich." It was presented as a way to get the rich people in this country to pay back into the system that helped them get rich. Of course, what few people realize is that the filthy rich, people like the Rockefellers, all hid their money in trusts and foundations before the income tax took effect. Thus the income tax didn't tax the super-rich, just the succesful people who were not quite rich yet. At first, the highest tax rate was only 7% and only a tiny percentage of Americans made enough money to have to pay any income tax at all. Then, only 4 years later, we entered WWI. In 1917 the top income tax rate was only 15%, but in 1917 it jumped to 67%. Then it went to 73% for 1918-1921. By 1925 it dropped down to 25% for a few years, which is at least reasonable.

In 1941 the top rate was 83%, but you had to have income over 5 million dollars. In 1942 this changed drastically, when the top rate was 88% on income over 200,000. From 5 million to 200 thousand in one year, to be taxed at the top rate. Sickening.

From 1951-1963 the top rate was 91% on income over 400,000.

SICKENING.

This is how well meaning people have been tricked into supporting laws which have been crippling our society. The government lies to us, tells us what we want to hear in order to get legislation passed, then when it is too late to change it, they pull the rug right out from under us.

Yes, the people have been lied to all their lives. You do not have the right to have food given to you, or free housing, or social security. These are all tricks to dupe the sheeple into allowing the government more control over our lives.

When you take from someone who works and give to those who do not work, this goes against every principle this country was founded upon.

Of course, when you don't believe in the principles this country was founded upon, it doesn't matter a whole lot.

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasure; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor . Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

James Madison

Of course what does Madison know, I mean just because he is the father of the constitution doesn't mean he knows anything.

Few people seem to care about the truth, or the principles this country was founded upon. Oh well, freedom was sweet for a while. Too bad the sheeple are allowing it to be subverted.

Well said.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Norrin Radd:

1) The income tax was not sold to the American people as a way to "soak the rich."

2) Those "sickening" tax rates apply only to taxable income above a certain amount. Even the richest taxpayers pay the lowest tax bracket rate on all of their income up to a certain point.

3) The statement that high marginal tax rates were "crippling our society" is counterfactual. On what basis do you claim that American society was "crippled" during the years from the end of World War II until 1980, when in fact the U.S. economy performed better than it ever has at any time before or since?

4) The quote you presented from Madison state not his views, but those of ant-federalists, presented in preparation to argue against them in the Federalist papers. In fact, though, the anti-Feds were right, and that IS the meaning of the clause. The only one of those actions which Congress cannot and does not do is to "take the care of religion into their own hands," and only because that is expressly forbidden by the First Amendment.