Capitalism or Socialism

I want to start off by saying that your definition of socialism is questionable. The more proper definition would be common ownership of the means of production. The definitions are however similar and this can be worked with for the debate. You start off by saying that people are allowed to own and run their own business, and hire who they want. This is true for those who own capital (I may refer to private business as private property or capital in a lot of my arguments, keep in mind that Marxists make the distinction between private and personal property). This is obviously not true for those who do not. It is impossible for everyone to own private property in a capitalist society. So not everyone has the opportunity to experience the freedom that proponents of capitalism advocate so much. There will always be a class system: Those who own private property and those who don't (bourgeoisie and proletariat). Their class interests will always disagree and create what Marxists call class struggle. An example of this is workers wanting to make as much as possible and the bourgeoisie wanting to make as much profit as possible. It is not always the fault of the owner when a business fails. A large business may try and form a monopoly and this could put others out of business, completely out of their hands. One example is Best Buy. Netflix and Hulu took video streaming by storm, and video stores like Best Buy had eventually had to close, they couldn't out-compete. Socialism has nothing to do with taxes, however, I do want to touch on what you said. Lowering taxes and giving economic advantages to the rich sounds ideal in theory, but it doesn't work that well in practice. Let's start with the jobs aspect. According to the theory, more money will go back into the business and more jobs will be created for working class citizens. This ignores the fact that demand actually creates more jobs. If the demand for a product or service increases greatly, more jobs will be created to take advantage of this demand. This happens regardless of high or low taxes. This theory has also, historically, led to greater wealth inequality between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. This inequality has been increasing even with higher taxes and regulations. Socialism isn't about redistribution of wealth to make everyone make the same amount of money. It's about the working class owning the means of production and abolishing class society. Making more money does not always mean you were more productive. Rich ceo's can make thousands an hour and they don't have to do much work at all; they get rich just because they own their business. Many working class folk work much harder and would take much, much longer to make what a rich ceo does in a week (Construction workers for example). Your incentive to work would be the same it would be now; to make money. Whether or not you would have to work for basic needs would depend on the country itself and what direction they decide to go in regarding that path. You talk about how if people were receiving money as the result of other's hard working labour, then this would discourage them to work. The thing is, this is exactly what happens in capitalism. It is often said that the rich got rich through hard work. My follow-up question would be this: Who's hard work? Ceo's make their enormous wealth off the backs of the labour of the working class. They didn't work to receive all this money; all the employees did. Socialism doesn't mean everyone gets paid the same. This is bogus propaganda. People would most certainly get paid more or less depending on a variety of factors, the country would have to decide how that operates. In socialism, there would be no private business to destroy as socialism wouldn't have private business in that sense.