Conservative (Pro) vs. Liberal (Con)

"The fact that you don't acknowledge the failure of the Soviet Union as due to Communism shows a gross misunderstanding of history. The Soviet Union was incredibly corrupt, that goes without saying. But this massive corruption and suppression of its people was actually the only thing keeping the nation afloat."Is that so? [1] As the link I cited below overviews, and yes, that website cites other sources, the Soviet Union was not a bad place to live. It was only in a recession during the war, but just about all of the nations involved in that who were in Europe came out in a worse fiscal position. It was not as corrupt as you think it was, and the people did not hate the government. After experiencing Capitalism, the Russian people were polled and said they preferred the USSR's Socialism. The Russian people will tell you that they were better off in the Soviet Union and the fact that they don't have a USSR today is because of today's corruption. The Soviet Union's Socialism did work, as the peolpe who lived there will tell you, and there was support for it. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the reason you think it didn't work was because of lasting effects from the Red Scare and MacCarthyism from the mid-twentieth century."How you can advocate for a system in which people live their lives in leisure without working at all puzzles me"Let me repeat myself, then. If we are able to utilize the pure efficiency of a Capitalist economy, we could make a system where not everyone has to work. It's not unemployment, it's leisure. Imagine a system where not everyone has to work to have a good living, and they have more time to do what they want. Now, in a system like this, I don't think it would be fair to pay the few who do work the same. I think people who work should make a bit more than those who don't, but essentially, the majority of the population shouldn't need to work. It's not a bad thing. Imagine having more time to do the things you want because you have no job but still make a good amount of money anyway."let's substitute money for grades, as it is more immediate to our lives at this point."Let's not. This analogy does not work because grades are designed to reflect how well you are learning in school, whereas money is simply used to aquire various goods. The purpose of school is not to get good grades, the point of school is to learn and through learning, better grades will come. Grades are a side effect of how well you utilize your school experience. Money, in a Capitalist society, is the direct effect of working at a job."it punishes success and rewards failure. As a result, any sort of incentive to work hard for anything is negated ... I know that you have said that you are not in favor of complete redistribution, but the result is still the same, only on a smaller scale."It doesn't negate all incentive to work, as you clearly stated a couple sentences later. In a Socialist system, there is still a decently sized wage gap, enough that it will still encourage people to try hard to get better pay, it just won't be on the scale where 1% of the population can hold almost half of the whole nation's wealth, that is insanity. People who make billions of dollars are never going to spend all of it, and I doubt anyone who has a civil-moral compass would really object to taking a decent chunk of that and giving it to those who aren't able to, under normal circumstances, make as much as they deserve. There's a man we learned about in U.S. History by the name of Huey Long. He advocated for a wealth cap of about 50 million, which is worth about 600 million today. [2] Now, even 600 million is quite a lot of money for one person to earn, but when compared to those making tens of billions of dollars, it's a reasonable wealth cap. People will still be motivated to thrive in business because 600 million is, again, still quite the sum, but any excess wealtht they make will just be taxed and put into the working class' wages. Does this not seem fair? Does this number seem like an income that would scare people off? I certainly think not."My point is, a higher minimum wage is good for people who manage to keep their jobs. But what will inevitably happen is that jobs will be lost."I'm going to point back to my list of good Socialist nations. [3] The economy could be modeled after Denmark's, whose small business thrive despite using the system I am advocating for. The government could make bills that are pro-small business, such as your friend's pull supply store. That way, wages could be high and small business would still go well, or we could use the system I had described in my previous rebuttle. Take the excess money from the super rich and give them to small businesses to put into the wages. This way, the small business owners don't have to sacrafice their pay to keep employees, employees end up with higher wages, and the rich still get to keep 600 million dollars. These all tie in together quite well when put into practice."Capitalism is not perfect, but it is the only system compatible with a truly free society."You must have a different definition of "truly free." See, in a Socialist society, there can still easily be numerous political freedoms, in fact, Socialism does not work well unless there is true democracy. Also, is taxatio of the rich really infringing on anyone's Constitutional rights? The only one I can think of is No Taxation Without Representation, but I can't think of a singll, moral reason for someone who earns more than 600 million dollars a year to object to getting the excess money cut from their income and put into the wages of those who can't make enough. Can you?"Socialism, by contrast is the philosophy of failure."Socialism is the economic philosophy of common decency, and if you think it means failure, I will, once again, point to my list below. [3]"A country like the United States does not have people at their border desperately trying to become Americans in spite of capitalism, but because of it."I don't hear many reports of Canadians moving to America because of Capitalism. Mexico, while being a Socialist Democracy, follows a very Capitalist practice in the northern areas of it, where the immigrants would be coming from. So no, people are not immigrating to America because of Capitalism, the only ones who are coming to America are coming from a nation the practices Capitalism, but not in an effective way. They're immigrating because our Capitalism is the lesser of two evils."Even before there were any social programs in the United States, people knew that the free market would provide the opportunity to better themselves, and most importantly, their children."Oh, you mean like the 30's? If I remember correctly, the 30's were a depression, and then FDR introduced social programs in the late 30's and early 40's which helped get us out of depression, along with the war. There was also the early 60's where unemployment was up, but after LBJ introduced a slew of social programs, unemployment dropped faster than ever before in American history, and it hasn't dropped as fast since."'If ye love security better than liberty ...' - Samuel Adams"I looked up this quote and was surprised to find that he did not actually say "If ye love security better than liberty." Samuel Adams actually said "If ye love wealth better than liberty," indicating that he was against what you've been arguing for. [4]I thank you, too, for being such a well mannered opponent. You definitely had many points that were hard to refute, and I enjoyed this debate. Keep up the good work, and don't quit your day job. ;)1. https://gowans.wordpress.com...2. http://www.hueylong.com...3. http://blog.peerform.com...4. http://www.goodreads.com...