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coplinger
06-15-2007, 08:38 AM
America is at a point today where a very small percentage of the population has a very large percentage of the wealth. This may be more or less so than in previous years, but it is true nonetheless.

I agree that a free market economy is the best & most equitable system, but I also believe that a more even distribution of wealth would help alleviate many social problems & lessen the need for State welfare programs.

If we were to switch to a free market economic system now, are there any mechanisms within that system that would redistribute that wealth more evenly? I'm not just talking about getting to keep more of your paycheck either, but about things that would make it easier for many more people to own property or start & maintain a small business without constantly being in debt to the banks?

And speaking of which, is there a plan to end fractional reserve banking so that citizen A cannot legally create money out of thin air & loan it to citizen B with interest?

Does part of this solution have to do with switching to a sound monetary policy instead of fiat money?

It would seem like that to do a free market equitably, you'd almost have to first switch to communism for a week, redistribute the land & wealth, then go free market. : )

ChooseLiberty
06-15-2007, 09:25 AM
Good question. The devil is in the free market details.

A pure free market system seems almost impossible to achieve - like a curve approaching a line but never meeting it.

For instance - there's a big problem with emergency room care now due to the illegal aliens. Under a free market emergency room treatment may reach a lower cost, but is anyone prepared to see critically injured or sick people turned away from emergency rooms if they cannot pay even that price?

Another one - if you cut out all the government supports like social security and threw it open to the free market are you prepared to watch old folks dying in the streets for lack of shelter or food?

Some people say the private donations would pick up the slack on these, but would they really? Does Friedman or the free market economists have a solution?

Revolution9
06-15-2007, 01:37 PM
I think the wealth..whiuch s not money gets redistributed according to ngenuity and sweat equity. If regulations for starting a small business and licensing were out of the way then one could easily start a small business or make ends meet.

For example. You take the family car down to the airport and slap a magnetic "TAXI" sign on it and pick up a rider. Drop him off and go make a few more bucks and get another. No hassle from the cops or city commisioners.

You make a great enchilada or the best hamburger in town. Fine..buy a bag of charcoal and a Hibachi, some ground beef aand season it and get some rolls. Go down to the local park and sell burgers..No additives, a slice of real cheddar and made with Uncle Charlie's secret recipe.

You may not be able to open a small hardware store right away under your own steam but diligence can get you there. You may end up as a burger mogul instead of a hardware store proprietor.

If you have a big idea and a working model, theoretical or physical, you can become partners with a venture capitalist tyoe if it requires a factory facility or more research.

If one actually is able to have ownership of the alloodial title to their land they can build and keep what they put their sweat equity into and not lose it to taxes.

With middle and lower class families keeping 100% of their earnings they would be able to put an addition on their house for ma and/or pa to live with them as in the good ole days here and as it is in most other countries in the world. Chariities would benefit from extra donations. Americans are not shy to donate when there is a real need and they see people hurting. The American public of all stripes has repeatedly proven this over and over and over. It is often the government that actually skews or prohibits good intentions such as charity donations to Palestinian aid organistaions being tagged as terrorist funding..

Just a few simple thoughts.

Best Regards
randy

coplinger
06-15-2007, 02:33 PM
So how would this new 'sound money' be spent into the economy since it is not debt-based? Will there be low or no interest government loans to compete with the fractional reserve banks? Will we trade our dollars in for the new currency? If we go to sound money, how does that cause the wealth to even itself out?

Chibioz
06-15-2007, 03:52 PM
I have a few questions about this. Does the United States have enough gold to back a gold backed dollar? Also, a lot of gold is held by people outside the U.S. and other foreign powers. If we were to switch to a gold based currency, the countries that have built up huge gold supplies would be rich in our currency from the start, would they gain undue influence? And finally, what if there was a massive call in for gold like happened earlier in our history when tons of gold was called in by foreign powers and we moved off the gold standard?

I apologize if these questions have already been asked. Thanks!

coplinger
06-15-2007, 04:06 PM
I thought I heard Ron Paul say that his method would be to allow a sound currency to compete with the dollar, not to fix the price of the dollar to a commodity. Am I wrong in this?

hroos
06-28-2007, 03:41 PM
Good question. The devil is in the free market details.

A pure free market system seems almost impossible to achieve - like a curve approaching a line but never meeting it.

For instance - there's a big problem with emergency room care now due to the illegal aliens. Under a free market emergency room treatment may reach a lower cost, but is anyone prepared to see critically injured or sick people turned away from emergency rooms if they cannot pay even that price?

Another one - if you cut out all the government supports like social security and threw it open to the free market are you prepared to watch old folks dying in the streets for lack of shelter or food?

Some people say the private donations would pick up the slack on these, but would they really? Does Friedman or the free market economists have a solution?

I understand this argument however the conditions are virtually the same as from the turn of the last century (late 1800s and early 1900s). What was the difference, well social programs were run exclusively by churches. Most hospitals were University hospitals and Religious Hospitals which the later was the vast majority. Even today, Religious Hospitals are among the best in the country in terms of care and treatment. On the other hand, government run hospitals are ... (thinks of Walter Reed...) nuf said!

joenaab
06-28-2007, 05:03 PM
There's more than a few complex questions in the OP. I'll take a quick pass at them.

1. No question a return to sound money, be it gold/silver backed or simply a non-debt financed fiat currency well-managed by the Treasure Dept in the best interest of the people will go a long way to stem the transfer of wealth from the 98% to the 2%. Competing currencies would likely be best. So much value gets siphoned out of the economy in the form of unecessarily high interest and inflation. All of this will stay in the hands of the consumer.

2. Cut all corporate subsidies that go to the same small group of elite who own everything. This would include much of the trillion dollars a year spent on defense, too. This would be the money taken from consumers in the form of taxation.

3. As for the "one week of communism", this depends on a lot of things. However, as an idea that many don't think about...We, as taxpayers, have subsidized technology R&D for decades in the form of massive defense spending. These private corporations own all the patents from technology invented with our tax dollars. A legal argument could be made that these patents belong to us. They could simply be declared "open source" or we could share in the profits generated by their commercial applications.

4. End protectionist regulation that gives their businesses/monoplies competitive advantage over smaller businesses. Though I don't know the details, I've read that the anti-trust laws passed in the early part of the 20th Century were a great deception against the public and served to strengthen monopolies rather than to discourage them.

5. This is the most important. From the above four, we now have put as much money back into our pockets as possible and eliminated advantages to the corporations owned by the 2% elite. However, no re-distribution of income/wealth can happen without a change in how we consume. If we are given back the two-thirds of our income that is taken from us in the forms of interest, taxes, inflation and such, and we continue to shop at the Walmarts of the world, we deserve to be poor! If we, instead, purchase and transact with neighbors, with companies that employ Americans and pay fair wages, purchase our food from regional farms that don't use agrotoxins and pestides made from oil and sold by huge corporations owned by the elite, we can put them all out of business. More simply put, we can employ widespread consumption boycotts of all goods and services from corporations known to be owned by the 2% elite. We can stop banking at their banks, buying their hydrocarbon energy, buying food from their animal factories and giant farms that use petrochemicals for fertilizer, stop using their pharmaceutical drugs and radiation therapies that cause more harm than good, etc., etc. This will cause them to lose nearly all their wealth overnight. Remember, their wealth is concentrated in the ownership of corporations and the value of a corporation is a multiple of it's net income. If it ceases to have net income it becomes instantly worthless. This "value" is then transferred to the businesses owned by the rest of us, the new benefactors of our consciencious consumption habits. I already do this to the best of my ability and there's no reason anyone has to wait to do this, either.

These are just a few ideas. I can go on at length on these subjects. #5 is huge.

angrydragon
06-28-2007, 05:16 PM
Ron would never be in favor of number 3 or 4. He is strongly opposed to this redistribution of wealth. He'd make gradual changes, as letting young people opt-out of the ponzi scheme that is social security. With the money saved from the American militarism around the world and bringing the troops home, he'll use it to support those still dependent on the welfare system, while phasing it out.

Religious organizations, charities, families and indivduals would need (I'm sure almost everyone would) step up and provide these social service after the income tax is gone. Eventually getting the welfare-state abolished, while still providing for those in need through charities from the general good-will of people.

joenaab
06-28-2007, 05:35 PM
Ron would never be in favor of number 3 or 4. He is strongly opposed to this redistribution of wealth. He'd make gradual changes, as letting young people opt-out of the ponzi scheme that is social security. With the money saved from the American militarism around the world and bringing the troops home, he'll use it to support those still dependent on the welfare system, while phasing it out.

Religious organizations, charities, families and indivduals would need (I'm sure almost everyone would) step up and provide these social service after the income tax is gone. Eventually getting the welfare-state abolished, while still providing for those in need through charities from the general good-will of people.

Ron Paul is definately in favor of #4, which is bringing an end to federal regulation of the free market. I'm not sure what you are talking about here. How is this redistribution of wealth?

#3 is not a re-distribution of wealth, per se, but a legal process to take ownership of what we've paid for which is rightfully ours. For example, the CIA contibuted some of the venture capital used to create Google. That was our money, those are our shares in the company. The CIA owns shares in a lot of companies. We own the CIA. If we paid Boeing to create a certain technology for a rocket and that technology has a commercial application, it belongs to us. Why aren't the people who paid for it receiving royalties? This is how business is conducted. We are the investors and are entitled to the return on our investment!

So I not saying that we "steal" anything. There are arguments to be made that we are the rightful owners. It's very complex and as far as #3 goes, I'm being very "hypothetical" here.

angrydragon
06-28-2007, 05:40 PM
Well, you added a number 5. Haha.. =)

Mesogen
06-28-2007, 06:32 PM
I understand this argument however the conditions are virtually the same as from the turn of the last century (late 1800s and early 1900s). What was the difference, well social programs were run exclusively by churches. Most hospitals were University hospitals and Religious Hospitals which the later was the vast majority. Even today, Religious Hospitals are among the best in the country in terms of care and treatment. On the other hand, government run hospitals are ... (thinks of Walter Reed...) nuf said!

Walter Reed is a top notch hospital. It was only the part that got contracted out that was in the gutter.


And fractional reserve banking and debt-based money creation is wealth re-distribution (from the bottom to the top). From main street to wall street.

joenaab
06-29-2007, 09:25 AM
Well, you added a number 5. Haha.. =)

Actually, I did quickly insert a #4, bumping the original #4 to #5. Thought I did it quick enough. ;)

However, then to defend #5, which was the #4 that I think you were referring to when you said that Ron Paul wouldn't support it... First off, I'm not trying to appease Ron Paul here! Second, it's not a forced re-distribution of wealth. Its a re-distribution brought about by free choices made in the free market by consumers who choose not to enrich the already rich, who have seized control of the country/world. I was trying to address the OP and stand by my post in that it is a free market solution to his question.

hroos
06-30-2007, 08:45 AM
These are awesome questions. Can someone compile them and send them to Youtube so that CNN can ask some of these questions at the debates?

Gee
06-30-2007, 09:23 AM
If we were to switch to a free market economic system now, are there any mechanisms within that system that would redistribute that wealth more evenly? I'm not just talking about getting to keep more of your paycheck either, but about things that would make it easier for many more people to own property or start & maintain a small business without constantly being in debt to the banks?
With higher interest rates and less inflation, the need to take out loans would be reduced. Remember that inflation is a monetary phenomenon, and the easier it is to get loans to buy X, the more money pours into the X market, and the more X costs. Since the loans create the money, X is inflated to heights it would not otherwise be with a more equal distribution of newly-created money.


And speaking of which, is there a plan to end fractional reserve banking so that citizen A cannot legally create money out of thin air & loan it to citizen B with interest?
In a truly free market, fully-reserved banks might come into existence, and currency would be free as well. Its like Ron always says, the best way to transition something to a free market is to allow competition with that thing.


Does part of this solution have to do with switching to a sound monetary policy instead of fiat money?
If currency were free, I think any privately-created currencies would be commodity-backed. Fiat money really only got started because it was backed by the force of law, which is not something that could come to be in a free market.