Opinions Editor Jack Jursnich discusses why socialism doesn’t work and the naivety behind “Tax the Rich.”
BY: JACK JURSNICH
Opinions Editor
Although it sounds nice to have a country where everyone pays their fair share in taxes, and that the money be spent on the benefit of the people, this just isn’t the reality of socialism and ‘taxing the rich’ that people mistake it for being. Before I explain my issues with these concepts, I want to preface by saying that I choose not to use statistics to make my arguments. Too much have I seen people argue with credible stats just for there to alternative credible stats to counter argue that person. Obviously, I think there are exceptions where we have to weigh information, but as a rule, I believe we should be having discussions in layman’s terms instead of complicating things with a wide array of statistics to cherry pick from.
To get started, I want to talk about this slogan “Tax the Rich”, a phrase I have seen myself and many others spout rampantly like it’s the solution to all our economic problems, but now I see it as nothing more than an excuse to spend more taxpayer money. Whenever the government needs more money, “Tax the Rich” is said first. But let’s say we do raise taxes to the top 1% – like how we have been increasingly for a very long time – do you really think a new tax code is gonna stop these guys from not paying taxes? What if we just “Eat the Rich” and take the money for ourselves, will that work? Before we answer that, we have to understand who ‘the rich’ are. ‘The rich’ are not only people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, they’re the owners of nearly all businesses in America, who create and hold jobs for so many people that if the federal government were to take more control via taxes over such businesses, every aspect of the economy would be in decline. Yes, taxing the rich would create a pit in the 1%’s pockets but that in turn means higher taxes on businesses and employees, as well as the loss of so many jobs.
Plus, businesses will move to foreign countries due to the high tax rates at home, which then creates high demand in imported goods and a high tariff rate alongside that – basically, doubling the tax rate. Also, ‘the rich’ don’t just have a big room full of money that the federal government can take from, a lot of that wealth is put into assets, and the time and money it would take in court to determine the value of such assets would probably take more than it’s worth. Taxing the rich affects more than just the 1%, and even if we still kept taxing them more and more, some of them can just bribe their way around the tax code, or create and use whatever loopholes they can to get out of it. Again, the government has been raising the taxes on top wealth earners for decades, and nothing has come of it, so the one thing I ask of people who say to “Tax the Rich” is please start thinking in terms of cutting spending instead of assuming there’s some infinite pit of money hiding behind the 1% that can afford anything we choose to spend it on.
Now let’s talk about socialism. Just like with “Tax the Rich” I used to believe in this, too. I was a Bernie bro and I thought collecting more taxes from people to fund free healthcare and free tuition was a solid idea. But I found it really odd that the people who initially pushed socialism – like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker – were those who had already made their wealth off the capitalist system. What I wish I could ask these people is “why talk about income inequality and the need for socialism when you have managed to do so well in the capitalist system already?”
Why do Bernie supporters complain so much about capitalism, when they could be asking Bernie for his secrets to success under capitalism? I understand people want things like free tuition and free healthcare, and I think the concept of everyone pitching in for such things sounds good, but when you think about it practically, can it really be trusted? First off, if we can’t trust the Department of Transportation to fill the potholes in St. Louis, or fix the boarded and broken buildings in the downtown area, then how can we trust the federal government to allocate our tax dollars to free education or free healthcare? Secondly, let me use an analogy for this one: if you were offered a free car, would you trust that it runs? No, it’d be smart to ask what’s wrong with it first. So if you wouldn’t trust a free car, then why would you trust a free education or free healthcare?
Now I want to talk about the general feud between socialism and capitalism. My understanding is that the most popular benefit of a socialist society is the idea that workers will own the means of production, which sounds nice on the surface but when put into practice, this really means that the workers will have to pay for every asset of production that they didn’t have to before.
We could get into the weeds and the rabbit holes of how socialism just simply doesn’t work wherever it’s tried – i.e. China, Russia, Sweden, Norway, etc. – but I’d rather talk about how capitalism is better. Capitalism favors efficiency and innovation through its market system, allowing good quality products to be sold for cheap as new products of better quality are introduced to the market. Since capitalist systems were implemented, the standard of living has improved exponentially. Decades ago, barely anyone could afford things like a television or a refrigerator, but now you can find one or more of these things in the average home. Poverty still exists, true, but only under capitalism can the state of poverty improve.
With socialism, the redistribution of wealth would be on an equitable basis, meaning taxpayer money would go to the poor and there would be no standard of poverty anymore, not because the poor got richer, but because the wealthy became poor. Socialism would end poverty, yes, but by means of removing the ability to rise up individually. The ability for the individual to climb the economic ladder is possible under capitalism, and it is because of this ability that there are people who are able to give a substantial amount of wealth to the poor rather than it be the government’s responsibility to give a measly handout. We can cry about corporate greed and whatever whatever, but these factors are not fundamental to capitalism, nor are they the beliefs of the average capitalist.
Capitalists don’t like the idea of insider trading and state-corporate cooperation because it limits the ability of individuals and small businesses to compete in the market, and the people that claim to be capitalists but practice these things are not true capitalists. Some will call them corporatists or crony capitalists, but all I see is people who want more control on where money comes and goes, and that screams socialism to me. These activists and politicians who tout socialism as some utopia are nothing but scam artists who frame it as the people controlling the means of production, when really it just makes people responsible for the means of production. They’ll yap about income inequality statistics, how the 1% doesn’t pay “their fair share”, but they never seem to have a plan put together. As much as these people pretend to be working class, they’ll never be the ones affected by what socialism could actually do.
Image courtesy of Reddit.
