Socialism is thrown around like 'maverick' and 'washington outsider'. A cute buzz word to imply a meaning w/out having to give details. But when you dig deeper there's not much relevance there. If you think Obama's plans will bring about socialism, you might as well consider our country socialist right now. It's just another lame attempt to scare people. Obama's plans are nowhere near drastic enough to do what some here are implying.
Every industrialized nation on earth, including ours, is socialist to an extent. Saying one candidate is "socialist" and the other isn't is just more of trying to paint the world in black and white. Frankly, I'm ready for an administration that will recognize and understand the world in all its colors. McCain doesn't measure up in that respect.
In the abstract, yes. A progressive income tax system is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. In general, though, I think you'd do a lot more good and increase equitability by simplifying the tax structure and getting rid of a lot of exemptions, and maybe even lowering some of the marginal tax rates.
OK - but it's also one mentioned positively in the Wealth of Nations as the quote shows. Does that make it a capitalist concept?
Who here makes over 200k a year and wants to give more of it away? maybe not socialism, but that still sucks.
Accusing folks of being socialist is mainly a way to bash liberals. The US is the least socialist of the advanced western democracies.
I heard an interview just in the last couple of days on this very subject. It was with a prof. named Jeremy Sherman, who teaches at a place called the Ex'pression College for Digital Arts (?) in Berkeley. He calls this Nounism, or Radical Nounism. It’s about a 10 minute interview starting at about the 17:45 mark of Part 2 of this show, which is an afternoon national radio show on CBC Radio 1 here in Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/thepoint/MT/2008/10/on_the_show_wednesday_october.html
No. I pulled out my dusty copy and reread the article where the quote occurs, as well as the articles about taxes on profits and taxes on wages. The house-rent tax was specifically a central-planning idea, and Smith's idea was that it would encourage more conservation of space and resources. Smith believes that all forms of income tax are negative to the economy, and taxes levied against wages (especially against wages of country wage-earners) are most destructive. In fact, Smith is more anti-wage tax than anything except tariffs. The taxes that he seems to be most okay with are: fees for government services (stamps, etc.), taxes against rent of land for production (doesn't discourage increasing productivity from that land, equivalent to a business owner property tax today), sales taxes on luxury items. Here is the introductory section to the Part on Taxes, which I think has a lot of wisdom that we can still use:
Jeremy...maybe friends call him Jay for short? And he's a professor...like professorjay!?!? Coincidence? Actually, yes, yes it is.
