What is the incentative to create/build a business, product - or invent something in a society/government that wants to "spread the wealth"?

one can actually be creative in a socialist context contrary to popular belief.

I am confused. Are you, in fact, asking about a socialist society or are you asking about America, which is a capitalist society?

Socialism isn’t the spreading of wealth.

Socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Socialism

For the benefit of others.

In which you are included.

You still make more of that wealth, this is far from a socialist nation.

Pride and enjoyment in your work, personal accomplishment, recognition and gratitude by your community, the knowledge that what you do helps your peers.
You know, things that really matter. Not mere greed and the quest for possession.
And besides, socialism, an economic system with publicly owned and managed economy, does not necessarily preclude competition among the segments of that economy, so you still can have the satisfaction of “my product is more popular than yours” as another motivation.

Define ‘socialist country” Do you mean one that all assets are held by the government or do you mean a progressive country that levels the playing field for all?

Frankly that sounds like a baiting question from a tea party member.

Free enterprise does quite well in Progressive countries like Sweden and Denmark. Free enterprise made us a rich and admired country before the Reagen ‘trickle down” fantasy. We have been in a steady decline since tax breaks had gone to the rich and jobs have moved out of the countries because of ill-advised trade policies. We have become less free, poorer, and more repressive since Reagen, the father of all decline.

I am not baiting anyone. I was just trying to help my son with a question that was posed in his class today.

No modern country that advocates itself on socialism/spread the wealth principles disallow entrepreneurs from making millions, any government that did may see huge migration from wealth creators. Normally wealth creators use this threat to lower taxes for the higher earners.

I remember this stance taken in a debate on healthcare in relations to people wanting to become doctors. “Who is gonna wanna work for peanuts? ”

Who would join the army getting paid a pittance?
Who would become a teacher getting paid a pittance?
Who would become a doctors or nurses getting paid a pittance?

I think higher taxes can affect how effective a business is and more business will go down hill due to taxes. Personally I think taxes of 55% like in the UK are too high, we need basic care but people have to look after themselves.

These are my own opinions!

Societal norms and beliefs should not dictate your actions. If your beliefs overlap, then follow the norm, but if not, do what you think is right in meeting your beliefs. People start businesses typically not to give to others, but to achieve, to profit, and to benefit themselves in a proactive, independent way.

Why not just sit back and reap the rewards of others hard work?

You inherited money? You’re a trust funder?

Those are the only people I know who don’t have to work.

When that unicorn finally appears, let me know.

The Greater Greed.

Socialism can gain you more money, such as with your old health care system. Very little amount of people could afford covering a huge operation and many would have to go without, with your old socialist healthcare system more people could pay monthly towards this pot to cover a small minority that needed health care.

@MoneyMakingMommy You said, “I was just trying to help my son with a question that was posed in his class today.” and it really gave me a check. Was it posed by another student, or by a teacher?

Because if you make a lot of money you get to keep the vast majority of it. A socialist society would cause you to spread it around evenly between yourself and every one else. For example, in America, you make $100, you keep $90 of it and “give away” $10, and lets say that goes to benefit 7 people. In a Socialist society you’d be required to give $12.50 to those 7 people, and to keep $12.50 for yourself. (Please correct me if I’m wrong guys…)

@MoneyMakingMommy: When you ask “what is the incentative” I think it is plain the incentive is the same in a society that doesn’t want to spread the wealth as one that does—you hope to keep some wealth for yourself. There are many areas of the world where crime and theft are rampant but people still operate there because even after employees embezzle money and trucks are robbed of their cargo and bribes are paid and the government takes from you everything you earned in the first seven months of the year these people still are so productive that they still have something to show for themselves despite these vile leaches.

@MoneyMakingMommy Please, I really want to know..did the teacher pose this question? Also, this prompted another question relevant to this….it has much better info in it.

Well, if you sit on yer ass and do nothing but work for someone else, chances are excellent that you will never achieve wealth. Even if you had to share, doesn’t this way offer you more freedom to structure your life, and more wealth than you’d get working for someone who wants to keep all thier money and not pay you what you’re worth? That’s greed. Once you buy into greed, you screw yourself, too. You might as well be in politics, making laws on this crap. Society never fares well when a minority of the population is favored to the exclusion of all others.

There is no incentive. We will become New Zeland, or worse.

A warm fuzzy feeling for living for the “Greater Good”.

We have one of the least progressive tax systems and the lowest individual tax rates of any industrialized nation in the world today, and the leaders of the right are still trying to con middle class people into voting to cut taxes even further for the wealthy. How did Bill Gates and Warren Buffet manage to do so well in a society that took every cent they earned and gave it to the fat dark-skinned welfare queens the right imagines rule the nation? Check it out…

@ETpro: One of the reasons America is great is our (comparatively) low tax burden but we have been giving this advantage up. One of the things holding us back from further greatness is welfare queens et all. How did Bill Gates and Warren Buffet manage to do so well? It was money retained after taxes and hard working people NOT welfare mothers, high taxes, and social wealth redistribution programs.

@malevolentbutticklish This country didn’t have a middle class of any note till WWII and beyond. We enjoyed the postwar boom and made America truly great with very high top tax rates. We were able to pay down the debt of WWII and the Depression slowly while achieving a roaring growth in GDP. And we made plenty of new millionaires and opened some hugely successful businesses in that time.

Ronald Reagan cut the top rate from 70% to 28%, and we began to add debt at a phenomenal rate. Reagan tripled the national debt in his 8 years—something no other US president has ever come close to. Bush 41 would have doubled it again, but couldn’t win a second term. Clinton raised the top rate back to 39.6% and began to bring the debt down again. He left office with the largest budget surplus in US history. Bush 43 went back to “Don’t tax, just spend” and blew through that surplus, doubling the national debt yet again.

See who did what to the debt here. The numbers don’t lie, but a lot of politicians do.

My son said there was some arguing at the school today about the whole healthcare reform bill and someone said – (remember, I’m quoting a teenager) – “why shouldn’t everyone have healthcare and spreading the wealth is the only way to do this….”
So the teacher asked, “Is spreading the wealth the only way to do this? Will spreading the wealth hinder incentive to invent, be doctors, start a business…etc…” So I was trying to base my question on that. I am not “involved” in politics….I don’t profess to have the answers – I’m not looking for a debate personally – I’m just not a confrontational person. Sorry for ever posing the question. I thought it was a good one at the time – I’m new here….so I’ll steer clear of political questions in the future. Mom always said, “Never talk money, politics or religion.”

@MoneyMakingMommy Debating political questions needn’t become a war zone. And the moderators on FLuther are quick to stop anyone who gets too heated and starts shifting from a fact-based discussion to personal insults.

As to your kid’s question, I think the “spread the wealth” phrasing was unfortunate, and it sounds like his teacher is a new conservative bringing political indoctrination into the classroom. Here are some facts it is too bad your kid didn’t have at hand to answer the teacher.

The whole rest of the developed world provides healthcare to their entire citizenry and does so at about half of what it costs the USA to leave over 15% of our citizens with no healthcare. We are fast approaching devoting 1/5th of our entire GDP to providing healthcare. We are pouring a great deal of our nation’s wealth into it right now. France has the best system in the world, uses single-payer, and does it for about half of what we pay per person. Healthcare reform isn’t about spreading the wealth, it is about using it sensibly.

We rank #37 in the world in healthcare outcomes, behind Costa Rica and just ahead of Slovenia! Why would you insist of bankrupting the country to do what is not working? I thought conservative meant preferring tried-and-true solutions. Apparently not.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have given billions of dollars to help those less fortunate than themselves yet they didn’t go to the poorhouse as a result. They still rake in quite a bit of dough on top of their already substantial net worth yet they still manage to spread the wealth.

Many people forget that there is a middle-ground between spreading the wealth and hoarding all the gold. Unfortunately, we Americans are now so either/or extremist that we can’t even see shades of grey. I am surprised that they still sell color TVs since we can’t see anything except for dark black and blinding white.

@ETpro: “We rank #37 in the world in healthcare outcomes” <== Do you believe that our health care is therefore worse than the countries with better health care outcomes? Consider that a major factor in health care outcomes is weight. Of the 36 countries with better health care outcomes how many have a population fatter than ours?

@jerv: Notice they GAVE instead of having their money taken from them! These are totally different events.

@malevolentbutticklish Non sequitor. Wealth was spread without making them poor. How it was spread is irrelevant.

If you wish to dispute that further, first give every penny you have to the richest person you know and rest secure in the knowledge that you brought the economy one step closer to perfection. Your logic implies that the economy works best with all of the money in one place. Since only most of it is there right now, the fact that you have any money at all means that you are hurting the economy.

Well, firstly, no-one outside of a few pseudo-communist nut-jobs are suggesting that all the wealth be spread….. just that a little more of it be spread to help out those worst off. & frankly, yes, the motivation should be that you know you are acting in a more moral way, that you are becoming better people for it. Besides, it’s not as if you’re no longer making lots of money, just not quite sooo much as you were when you were acting purely out of selfishness.

@jerv: “How it was spread is irrelevant” <== not true, BG and WB had an incentive to acquire wealth so that they can donate it as they see fit. Others have disincentive to create wealth so that it can simply be taken from them and distributed in ways they do not see fit and never receive credit for. The users on fluther never tell me what a great guy I am for all the money I mailed in that eventually was awarded to welfare mothers.

You are free to believe that you are being sucked dry from lazy asses if you want, but the welfare system changed from being an all you can eat buffet about 10 years ago. There was a complete overhaul of the system that created new provisions for all recipients.

Without a board certified doctor’s report detailing what is wrong with an applicant, and to what extent that person is able (or not) to work, no applicant can attach themselves to the goverment teat. There were also time limits set. You can’t live off the governemnt for life anymore. 5 years is the longest a recipient can have food stamps. Additionally, they added EBT cards. Those cards, when scanned at the checkout stand, automatically kick out those items not approved for consumption (lollipops, wine, cake, tobacco).

THe recipients are then required to go on job interviews set by the welfare office. In Georgia, the welfare office acts as communication liason between recipients and private industry. If the recipient does NOT go on interviews, their benefits are immediately terminated. If it was determined a recipient was fraudulent on the application, or during the time they received thier benefits, Georgia sues them. There are ex-welfare recipients sitting in prisons right now for that very reason.

The overhaul is not perfect. There are still a few sticking points that are pissers. But to say that welfare recipents are helping themselves to your trouser pockets is not only an error, it is now akin to saying that a person in a wheelchair deserves to be hated for the decisions your government made.

@phillis: Welfare recipients ARE helping themselves to my trouser pockets. FIVE YEARS? Please excuse me if I don’t want to get ripped off for “just” FIVE YEARS! Don’t forget you can always switch scams and maybe get another year of unemployment before finding a doctor who won’t bother challenging your back-hurts story. Also, the money on EBT cards isn’t just used to buy booze but crack and other drugs as well. The process is simple. All the money on EBT cards is money freed up for crack you would otherwise annoyingly have to spend on food. Some people take it a step further and get free food from the church. Then they sell the groceries from their EBT cards or even give someone else the pin and let them use the card directly. Alternately Patel at the mini-mart might right them up for a bunch of groceries and then hand them the cash instead.

Maybe another way to look at it is to ask why poverty exists in the first place? Maybe he could look at whether or not ‘creating wealth’ is in any way related to those with whom the wealth is shared or spread.

@MrsAshleyO: “poverty exists in the first place” <== A lot of it is deemed into being when people say things like “impoverished people make less than half the average of those around them”. Under these types of definitions a person with two cars and a three bedroom house could suddenly find themselves “impoverished” if their neighbor worked extra hard and created more wealth. They could also go from impoverished to middle class if only a tornado destroyed their neighbor’s house. If the destructive “tornado” was actually damaging policies created by Obama he could then pat himself on the back for how much “poverty” he eliminated.

Poverty exists because at any given time, there are more people than there are jobs available on the market. And many of those jobs are so badly paid that the salary received are not enough to pay for a reasonable standard of living because the prices for products as determined by the market are too high.
It has been that way since the dawn of civilisation and will remain that way until true socialism or communism can be established.

@malevolentbutticklish As I said, you are free to think whatever you wish. Unless I am mistaken, we agree with each other that “The overhaul is not perfect. There are still a few sticking points that are pissers.”

Your stated-as-fact claim that doctors challenge applicant’s of injury is hyperbole smoke screening intended to bolster a malaligned viewoint. Let’s see if I can set the record straight. For those who do not know, but would like to, doctors do not challenge the claims of applicants. They only provide proof, if there is any, of significant injury or permanent disability for a person who says they are unable to work.

EBT cards cannot be used to withdraw cash or trade in for goods and services. Yes – pin numbers can be given out. I’ve done that myself before, when I paid a neighbor’s electric bill because she did not have the cash to pay it. She gave me her card so that I could get groceries equal to the amount I paid on her electric bill. However, these cards do not work like an ATM card. Perhaps you are getting them confused with child support cards. In my state, the two look an awful lot alike (incidently, getting Patel to part with ANY of his money tells me that you have precious little experience dealing with Indian culture. Its laughable, considering their culture trumps the Jew stereotype by a mile).

Your incessant whining regarding why you are against any health care for those who cannot afford it by stating this gem “I wish they let the people without money or health coverage die but unfortunately it hasn’t worked that way here in my lifetime” that can be found here:

http://www.fluther.com/disc/79309/if-you-all-of-the-sudden-had-to-become-the-president/#quip1260287

tends to sour any humanitarian instincts within me toward rallying behind your rants. The price you pay when you do not care about others is that they tend not to care about your needs, either. Since you seem nowhere near making the decision to live like a hermit, perhaps the practicality behind supplying everyone with healthcare would be the most reasonable affect you could project. I won’t be holding my breath in anticipation of that, so I take comfort in the fact that my life is not dependent upon your calling 911 on my behalf.

@jerv How it is spread is absolutely everything. It’s the damned attitude that makes it all wrong, unethical even.

@JeffVader What is selfish about wanting what you have worked for? And if your money is taken by force, what does morality have to do with anything? Nothing, because there is no choice.

@phillis: First you state “EBT cards cannot be used to withdraw cash or trade in for goods and services.” but then you say “She gave me her card so that I could get groceries equal to the amount I paid” so it is clear that EBT cards can be used to purchase booze, or crack, or pretty much anything through a thinly veiled transaction. Your neighbor turned her food stamps into $$$ and you participated! My tax dollars aren’t even going to feed your neighbor as advertised but instead to run her TELEVISION. Why should I have to work extra late to run her television paid for by “food stamps” using your help? ... and since you accepted my tax dollars to pay to run her television now she can take her cash and buy smokes, drugs, booze, etc. Then she will lie about how much of “her money” went towards the electrical bill on whatever forms she fills out.

As far as Patel this really shows how little you understand about this. People with food stamps BUY FOOD from Patel. Then Patel buys the food right back at a discount in cash. The food goes back on Patel’s shelves, he keeps the difference in what he charged EBT and the cash the food stamp holder received instead of the food itself. He might also ring up a gallon of milk and then hand them a 40.

As far as health-care if there is a free house, free school, free health-care, free electricity, etc why work? A house, electricity, food, health-care, etc… these are suppose to be your reward for working. If you take away the reward plenty of people will choose not to work and make do with more than most of the rest of the world enjoys for free off the backs of the taxpayers. Then they’ll sell their EBT credits for the rest.

I think the present system by which the richest of us get the most breaks and the middle class pay is less an incentive to work. If the state had rules that would churn the money rather than making it easier to accumulate vast fortunes without actually contributing to society or the progress of the country we would all have incentive to work.

After you reach a certain level of wealth, another million or ten will not substantially affect your lifestyle. The extra money is just a point system for bragging rights and actually hurts the poor and middle classes because it locks up finite resources. The middle class, productivity, and the general wealth of the country improved and was stable when the highest tax rates were in the 70 to 90 percent range.

After Reagen, the incentive was removed from manufacturing and productive activities to non-productive activities like moving operations overseas, stock trading as a career, and flipping real estate. The only activities that create wealth are manufacturing, mining, and farming. All the rest is just moving money around without producing anything.

What we really need are realistic tax rates for the most fortunate of us, reclaim the right to protect domestic production with tariffs and trade agreements with individual counties, and much higher short term capital gains tax rates.

Real investment and production should be rewarded, resource draining activities should be heavily taxed and discouraged.

Let’s return to real capitalism instead of corporate monopoly protection.

My neighbor didn’t have a television. She barely had a pot to piss in. Because a storm came through 3 years ago and knocked the glass out of her windows, she had duct tape where the glass used to be. I’m not about to add to her misery by crucifying her for trying to find a way to pay me back that meets with your approval.

She was a decent woman who did not deserve the troubles she had, yet she was capable of feeling for someone else. Better that kind of neighbor, than a dick who can afford thier own insurance. I’ll take her any day of the week.

You have so many assumptions woven into reality that you cannot even give me the courtesy of asking me for the specifics that you claim exist, despite the fact that you weren’t there. How can you be an authority on the scenario, when you weren’t even a witness?

Anybody can see by my post that that was a personal transaction, _not a business transaction. Your proposed scenarios, such asthe enlightening Patel creation, is not personal, but business. For the third – and final – time

“The overhaul is not perfect. There are still a few sticking points that are pissers.”

If you can’t hear that by now, then I am wasting my time. I don’t think you’re that stupid, though. I think you simply enjoy being miserable. Pardon me if I do not participate in the enabling.

The purpose of my telling you that story was to try to meet you somewhere in the middle between my points and yours. It was an act of grace…..or mercy, if you will, not a slanderous mission intended to beat you to death with your own fallacious, self-centered assumptions. Wishing everybody dead who can’t afford medical care did a far better job than any slanderous assaults upon your character than anything I could hope to come up with. Have a nice day.

@phillis:
Does this woman have a job? Where is her husband?

Wishing people wealth, prosperity, savings, and self-reliance is mutually exclusive with totally eliminating suffering and death. We have all heard the story of the grasshopper and the ant. People have to choose if they want to be an ant or a grasshopper. So long as the ant has his food redistributed to the grasshopper each winter more and more people will learn you don’t need to be an ant. Something terrible must happen to a few grasshoppers to create a society of ants.

PS: Why do you (incorrectly) think I am miserable?

Did you happen to see the short post I left on the other thread for you guys? I am happy to take it to PMs if you like.

You can not have ‘real capitalism’ without the eventual formation of monopolies, because monopolies are the natural and inevitable outcome of ‘real capitalism’.
It is like a room full of little monsters. Some of these monsters eat more food, become bigger and then begin to eat the smaller monsters. This goes on until no other smaller monsters exist anymore.

@timanon_jihadendrew The selfishness comes from a person saying they’d rather they kept all their money to themselves, in excess of what they need to comfortable live, than help those less fortunate….. it’s a pretty basic principal.
The morality comes from you consenting to the money you’ve earned being taxed…... Very simply, if I wasn’t happy with the money I’ve earned being taxed at the rate it is in the UK then I’d move to another country.

@phillis Have you noticed that screen names and icons on answers have changed? I can’t find any of my answers with my name or icon.

Yeah, I was on when it happened. It’s an April Fool’s joke from the board owners :)

So… it’s morally acceptable for the richest nation on Earth to let people sicken and/or starve because it would be un-American to help the truly downtrodden, especially since most of them are scammers while everybody on Wall Street is squeaky clean and beyond reproach.

Gotcha.

Very funny, Jerv :)

This is not a funny April Fools joke.

When presidents (Kennedy, Reagan, etc.) lowered taxes, prosperity increased. When presidents raised taxes, economic problems increased.

@ItsAHabit Are you familiar with the Laffer curve? By your logic, we would do the best at 0% taxes; a provable falsehood.
While taxation is a balancing act, you can’t measure prosperity based solely on how the top 10% are doing. And while they pay more dollars in taxes than the rest of us, it is disproportionate to their income, net worth, or spending. Basically, by any measure, our system is skewed to create a trickle-up effect akin to that found in corrupt third-world regimes, failed Communist states, and banana republics.

@ItsAHabit When Reagan reduced taxes from 70% to 28% for the wealthiest, highest earning Americans, prosperity did increase. You know what else increased? The national debt. Reagan Tripled the US National Debt, reversing a trend that had started with Harry Truman of paying down the heavy debt left over from the Great Depression and fighting WWII. The debt as a percent of GDP hit 120% by the end of WWII.

Since Reagan turned the National Debt into a skyrocket, all subsequent Republican Administrations have followed don’t tax, just spend policies that double the National Debt again every 8 years. Only Clinton turned the debt curve back around, began paying it down again, and left office with the largest budget surplus in US history. He did it with a modest tax increase on the top brackets only. We are now nearing debt hitting 100% of GDP, and suddenly the Republicans want to fix the debt problem. How, more tax cuts for the rich. It hasn’t worked 5 successive Republican Administrations, but it’s sure to produce a completely different result this time around. Isn’t that eerily close to Einstein’s definition of insanity. “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

@ETpro Why did this spring to mind immediately?

I thought about sharing my opinions, and then I rethought that thought.

I’m too tired to jump into shark infested waters. lol