My only concern is high employment rate and taxes, that's all.[/COLOR]
When you have a government system that pays for people to live even if they don't work, it is doing a few things:
1. It's taxing the money from those who produce and giving the product of their work to someone who didn't earn it. (This is why taxes are high.)
2. It's sending the message to those who don't want more than the government gives that they need not actually work for themselves, which means they don't produce, which means they're not taxed much, which means taxes on others will have to be raised to cover what these people on the government teat use up.
3. It's essentially forcing one person to pay someone else's bills before they pay their own. Because money is taken from one's paycheck before they even see it, and used for other people, you're essentially forcing people to work for the benefit of others before they work for themselves. That's not right. (It's almost a form of covert slavery, if you think about it. What else is forcing someone--at the threat of government penalty--to work for someone else's ends and not your own?)
So, not only does socialism not work in the long run--because while it claims to make everyone equal it makes them a very LOW quality of equal as more people choose not to produce--since they need not--but socialism also isn't moral. It's not moral to do through the government what one person can't do morally.
Let me put it this way. The government is supposed to get its authority from the consent of the people. The government, therefore, should have no more rights than any one person. If you're hungry, and you have no food and no money for food, it would be fine to ASK others to help you, to feed you. But it would NOT be right--it would be immoral--for you to take a gun, walk up to your neighbor's house, knock on the door, and when he answers say "give me food, or I will hurt you." Right? I mean, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't say "give me money for my rent, or I will shoot you." Right?
But what you want is someone else to do that FOR a person who needs rent or food. You want the government to go to your neighbor and use the threat of GOVERNMENT force to get money from him to give to someone else. How is that more moral? Because people vote for it? What if everyone in your neighborhood decided that you don't need your computer, and they come in, take it, sell it, and use the money for someone who they think needs it more than you? Is that right? Is it immoral when a neighborhood does it, but not when a government does the same thing?
And if you say government doesn't threaten people with a gun--really they do. Almost any act of government is ultimately an act of force.
Say you don't pay your taxes. What happens? They fine you. What happens if you don't pay the fines? They arrest you. What happens if you don't want to be arrested? They force you to go to jail. What happens if you try to escape? Ultimately, this is what the gov't does--it forces people to follow laws. So, we have to be careful what should and shouldn't be a law, don't we?
Socialism advocates we redistribute wealth. It claims that the state owns the product of people's labor--not the individual. That, to me, is immoral.
Your work--whatever work you do that someone pays for--is the result of you spending TIME from your life. Time you don't get back. If you spend your time to make money, and then buy a car, and I STEAL your car, I've stolen TIME from you, because now you have to work again, make more money, and replace your car. I took a portion of your life you can't get back--the time you invested to earn the money to buy your car. Even if you have insurance that replaces it--someone's time is going to replace that car, and I've stolen it. I've stolen a part of your life. That's what theft is. That's why I'm against ANYONE stealing--be it a person, or the government.
We should help people. We should donate time and money to food and clothe those who can't. But that should be of our free choice, not at the point of a gun--whether its the gun of a thug or a government.
Whether your system works or not (and it doesn't work well) doesn't really matter. The system that would threaten people to work for someone else and not themselves is not a moral system. It's the same thing that slavesmasters do to slaves.
