Greg Bell: Socialism vs. the safety net
Socialism superficially seems so simple to create economic equality. But rather than engineer economic equality, human decency and compassion demand we provide basic, life-sustaining opportunities for quality education to the indigent.
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Everybody agrees that capitalism has been a success. Everybody agrees that socialism has been a failure. The conclusion therefore? We need more socialism. Milton Friedman.
As modern democracies have matured, most of them have embraced socialism and given their citizens elaborate government-provided benefits. The fall of the USSR proved the bankruptcy of the socialist/communist ideal and its pillars of central planning, government control of production, quotas, price controls, forced labor, common ownership of land and other assets. Ultimately, pure socialism impoverishes everyone. The contrast between East and West Germany when the wall came down in 1989 provided stark and undeniable proof that free enterprise works and socialism doesnt.
Nonetheless, die-hard socialists believe that if done right, that is with enough government force, these methods will finally achieve economic equality. But they cannot because the tenets of socialism are at odds with immutable human nature. We act in our self-interest. No edict can change that.
In "Of Plymouth Plantation," William Bradford tells of that 17th century colonys experiment with a crude form of socialism. Plymouths citizens worked the ground in common for the first two years. The arrangement proved unsatisfactory as food scarcity prevailed. By necessity they changed the system, and Bradford assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression. He concluded that from Plato to modern times, people have erred in thinking, that the taking away of property, and bringing [it] into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing .
Why then does socialism perpetually rear its ugly head? It is because superficially it seems so simple to create economic equality. If Paul has $100 and John has no money, the government can take $50 away from Paul for John so both have $50. Whats wrong with that? First, the salary and expenses of the bureaucrat who seizes, re-distributes and enforces the system must be paid from the $100, leaving significantly less than $100 to share. Paul gets to keep less than half of what he produces, so his incentive to produce and invest has been significantly reduced.
Conversely, if John knows the government will give him half of what Paul produces, irrespective of whether he tries to support himself, his incentive to work will naturally be diminished. As the fruits of hard work, investment, saving, and education are reduced, aggregate production of income and wealth will diminish, resulting in less for both Paul and John. If you start socialism with a rich enough society and great enforcement power, you can forestall the inevitable consequences for a time before you run out of other peoples money, as Lady Margaret Thatcher once observed. But that time always comes because socialist systems subtract; they dont add.
Many liberals argue that a free-enterprise system is based on greed and unfairly leaves people behind. People will always have different economic outcomes because people are so different. Some have greater business acumen, work harder or invest better and many less fortunate are denied a decent education and are barred from entering the economic mainstream. Our social compact has rightly created a safety net for those who cant support themselves.
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Greg Bell: Socialism vs. the safety net