ilikeaces86 Endorses McCain!

[2_Thumbs_Up]

you are gonna have to provide some more insight into that.

Well, france before the revolution wasn't exactly a prime example of free market capitalism. They were a feudal society where the poor had to pay taxes and the king and his buddies had a lot of privileges. I'd like to change my original statement a bit though. The only way to get such a big distortion in the distribution of wealth is through coercion. Obviously, if a country is in total anarchy small groups of people would be able to use force in order to get what they wanted.

Uneven distrubution of wealth exists because one of two reasons:
1. A few people have through coercion or through government control accumulated a large proportion of wealth, and the protection of it. They will find ways to render themselves immune to taxation, whilst blocking new entries into that immunity. This is what might lead to french revolutions, but it sure as hell isn't capitalism.
2. Some people have striven for more wealth and happened to come out on top. They started their business, and they ran it intelligently. They reaped the benefits of their labor, and so did all people they hired. As a secondary result the society as a whole have profited as well. They have new goods to purchase and more options to select from. There is more competition, driving down prices, making more wealth available to the entire population.

In many cases the rich have taken more from society than they can ever give back. What's the value of jobs created if they don't pay a living wage? Or if work conditions result in death or disease?
Or if the wealth created is at the expense of the environment? Vast fortunes were built in the US in mining, logging and oil industries which paid workers poorly while putting them at great risk and wreaked environmental havoc. All over the world, vast fortunes were built through colonization and exploitation of those region's people and natural resources.

On bad working environments: The reason people work in those conditions is because it's the best alternative they have. Take a factory in asia for example. People may work there for 10 hrs/day under bad conditions and for a pay that may look horrible from our perspective. But they are doing this because it's the best alternative they currently have. The other alternative might be to bust their asses off on a farm for 12 hrs/day. So the workers lives at the factories might still be quite an important improvement from how it was before it. And also, any regulation of the labour market will only make companies more cautious before hiring, meaning less people will get this improvement of their life.

On the environmental issues: I do think it's the government's role to make sure no one pollutes the air etc. A lot of the environmental problems during the industrialization was because governemts failed to do this. Many times they cared more about their nation's production than about the environment.

I agree that the economy isn't a zero-sum game, but it's obvious that unrestrained greed does not make winners out of everyone. Which is one of the reasons we need government regulation of markets.

Unrestrained greed is bad. Fraud, theft and any other unvoluntary transaction of wealth should definitely be forbidden. However, I don't believe any transaction that's voluntary from both parts need to be regulated at all. Both parts believe they are better of after the exchange or it would not have taken place at all. So in every voluntary exchange, both parts are winners. Why should a third part have any saying in this at all?

Highest taxes: Scandinavia. Highest quality of life: Scandinavia.

I would like to hear you liberals thoughts on your taxes going way up to pay for all the social programs the democratic canidates propose.

Why, that sounds entirely right and fair! Surely my fellow Americans (NB I am not American, bear with me) wouldn't have a problem with some of their beer money going to help those in desperate poverty? Go Democrats!

100% taxes ftw! Obviously the correlation between standard of living and amount of taxes can't be linear like that.
Here are some other reasons that may have helped maintain the high standard of living we have here (I can only talk on the behalf of sweden):

1. No war for 200 years
2. The high taxes of today are a fairly new concept (taxes were very low until the sixties-seventies when they started to rise)
3. Lots of raw material. We are a relatively small country with an unproportionally high export (especially beneficial when the rest of Europe had to rebuild after WWII)
4. Close connections to economic superpowers and a geographic position that allows for easy trade.