My thoughts on this interesting debate.
The real socialists now are those involved in anti globalisation.
The only way that you can achieve Dandy's view is to lock the door on capable people and make them work for you with no reward. Yes, Slavery to your dogma. I suppose that I could put up with living in Cuba, but North Korea, no thank you. Totalitarianism isn't very pretty.
Where I meet with Dandy, though rprobably not for the same reasons, is social justice. But how do you achieve this? Dandy likes the Big State and tax the rich, tax the rich. The problem with this, is simply who are the rich? Ironically, people who work for the State have been better paid than the Private sector since 2005 in the UK. But then they are not subject to the same risk of poor performance and have benefits and pensions that the pPrivate Sector can not pay for.
State politicians have let the multi nationals go, they can operate off shore and are too big for a government to tackle, the government needs the scraps of jobs that they throw their way to pay them off. So you are left with the visible wealthy, who aren't in reality that wealthy. I know self made people who ear $300,000 a year and have nothing left. They pay 45%+ tax and then the choices they make, nice house, nice cars, private education, ;eave them with nothing. Well I suppose they could live in small houses, have small cars and take free stuff from the State, but this takes a lot of money out of the system.
You can't have it both ways. Either people who add value are rewarded or they go elsewhere. This was the very argument that the State has made to overpay the Fat Cats in the Public Sector and there are tens of thousands of them. Is this social justice? The irony runs even deeper because the tax the rich mob don't even have these people on their radar.
As a commercial business owner, the UK NHS gets at best a C from me, whilst every doctor and manager feeds at the trough of underperformance. The German, French and Canadian public health models are much better, but the English are too stupid, arrogant and steeped in self interest to admit it. The NHS stopped being a National Insurance, though of course we still pay it.
I think that the role of the State is to regulate, not to operate. You achieve Social Justice through allowing enterprise to create wealth, wealth that stays in the country and pays for competitively delivered public services.
I am a wealth creator. Rather than being appreciated for the benefits that I have given, I am some sort of rich cunt who has exploited a series of people to create wealth. Ignorant fuckers. What I am not prepared to do is to carry the risks I take just so that a bloated overpaid underperforming state sector can piss my hard work up against the wall, and then come back at me with hatred and demands for more money. Fuck you, I can take my abilities with me and help to create wealth and prosperity for someone else's country and get a fair deal for doing so.
