Why do so many people distrust socialism?

[malificent7]

Is it due to the legacy of Marx, the notion that it's a race to the bottom, the feeling that those who work harder should get paid more or a mistrust of human nature?
I do understand these concerns but what is more worrying if the vast inequality that seems to prevail nowadays. Thoughts please.

Oops we have an unelectable racist Marxist as our leader.

While I think Labour would be better served under different leadership, this comment is ridiculous. Corbyn has fought his whole life against racism. As for being unelectable, the Tories believed this was true in 2017 and lost their majority because of it. His main problem now is that people who would have been inclined to vote Labour are fed up with his (lack of) Brexit stance.

Because they’re not morons. It’s pretty fucking obvious what happens when the government takes so much money from the population that the majority are dependant on the government to meet their basic needs.

@Sakura7 he’s an antisemite

Pink Buffalo and Easy...that is the problem. I think of the Chinese on bikes except for the govt families in cars. I admire Tony Benn but find it hard to swallow that he made arrangements to avoid inheritance tax so that he could pass on his wealth to his children. Do as I say, not as I do!

an unelectable racist Marxist as our leader

We currently have an unelected racist Islamophobe as our PM.

BogglesGoggles No, he isn't, and the hyperbole coming from the right wing press doesn't make him so. It's a horrible accusation.

Also have you missed the fact that the majority of people on benefits are in work? That employers are getting away with paying meagre wages that the government has to top up? I suppose that's a roaring success of capitalism, is it?

We currently have an unelected racist Islamophobe as our PM.

Indeed. There are many examples of actual racist comments by Johnson which are barely reported on, yet Corbyn is the big bad monster. He has them fucking terrified.

Because it doesn't work.

Socialism does not work.

I had it explained to me very well regarding Venezuala: "Poor people will always vote for free stuff for themselves"

The trouble is, that free stuff has to be paid for. By other people's work. And if free stuff is being promised, why pay when you can get the stuff for free? In other words INCENTIVE.

Socialism fails to understand incentive and tries to impose the collective. It will ALWAYS fail. No human will ever work for anyone other than their own genes.

Capitalism on the other hand accepts and embraces incentive. If you provide a service for me that makes you a profit, that makes you get up in the morning and behave altruistically towards me (providing the service). But what gets you up is working for your family. Win win all round.

Margaret Thatcher was not wrong when she said: 'the trouble with socialism is that inevitably, they run out of other people's money'

Zimbabwe is simply the latest socialist experiment to collapse.

That's massively simplistic Screaming. How do you account for people volunteering if people only work for their own genes?

Capitalism on the other hand accepts and embraces incentive. If you provide a service for me that makes you a profit, that makes you get up in the morning and behave altruistically towards me (providing the service). But what gets you up is working for your family. Win win all round.

Pps still going black and white, but calling all shades of grey black.

How does pure capitalism account for this who can't get up in the morning. What if your employer wants you to get up even if you're ill? Or doesn't want to pay you enough to eat? Or doesn't give you enough hours work, but wants you available (zero hours contracts)?
Is that a win-win?
What if those with money don't think your children are worth giving an education because all they need is to be able to work in their factories?
How will the good people rise through the ranks? How does it enable meritocracy?

I'm amazed that some people seem so simple minded not to recognise the contribution of social concerns and socialist ideas to our current society and think that it's capitalism working well. It's laughable.

I have to laugh at the idea of 100% inheritance tax. People who propose 100% taxes need to google "Laffer curve". Taken to extremes, higher tax rates means the state gets less income.

As things stand, DD parental assets are about £4 million, but due to various exemptions, only about 300K IHT will be owed. I've decided to do bugger-all to avoid it, a 7.5% hit on overall assets isn't worth doing anything complicated to avoid. Raise IHT from 40% to 100%, that is a hit I don't want to take. I will make arrangments, the state will get nothing.

Similarly, I will pay at most 20% tax on pension income up to 50K, and DW will do the same. We could move to the countries we grew up in, both pleasant sunny holiday destinations, and pay 0% on our UK pensions under double-taxation treaties. But, overall, paying 8K each in tax on pension income is a reasonable price to pay to live in the UK, considering various positive attributes, not least access to NHS. Try and get your mitts on a much bigger chunk of our pensions, and we would move to aforementioned countries. If necessary we could liquidate our pensions there, before you got any pension-grabbing legislation through parliament. (No-one has suggested such a raid, I'm just making a general point about the limits of government power to tax.)

PettyContractor I find attitudes like yours absolutely abhorrent tbh. Greed is so ugly. What actually is your problem with the state, who you admit provides some services you like, benefiting from your assets to ensure a fairer and easier life for everyone when you die? Why do you want people to remain in poverty and unable to access basic needs? 100% inheritance tax would only work if more regulations were brought in to stop people doing what you describe. A cap on how many properties any one person can own would be a wonderful start.

PettyContractor

Nice one - these dreamers need to know that people won’t sit still while the government confiscates their assets. They’ll be out of here in a rush, and the greedy socialists won’t see a penny.

While I think Labour would be better served under different leadership, this comment is ridiculous. Corbyn has fought his whole life against racism

Say hi to the others at Momentum HQ. Your comment is from the old leaflets. He, and significant numbers of his party, are racists. They have now admitted a lot of it. He has barely lifted a finger so far in his life about Antisemittism other than to try and nobble various disciplinary processes. He has supported openly anti Semitic terror geoups.

Didn’t you get the memo 2 weeks ago about not denying it any more?

At least you told the truth, PettyContractor. I'm not judging you for it - at least, no more than I'd judge someone playing the benefits system - but there's no denying you're right about what would happen

Clever accountants are just one more thing money can buy, and if a loophole exists it's hardly surprising if folk faced with an assets grab were to use it

Shortstuff99

What the fuck are you on about? I'm not a member of any party, or any 'movement' within a party. I'm just commenting on what I see.

Interesting that you have nothing to say about Boris Johnson's racism. Letterboxes, piccaninnies, little AIDS ridden choristers, etc, etc.

@PettyContractor

Try and get your mitts on a much bigger chunk of our pensions, and we would move to aforementioned countries.

The United States provides an excellent living laboratory to test this hypothesis. Everyone pays the same federal income tax, but most states impose their own income tax on top of it. The rates for the state taxes varies from nothing for some states to 6-8% in others, depending on income bracket. What the data shows is that large numbers of people move from high tax to low tax states, which is quite an easy thing to do:

Americans Are Migrating to Low-Tax States

My own state of New York has been losing population for years because of this. Politicians know that raising taxes is unpopular, so they often try limiting the increase to the evil rich, who often have second homes in other states, then are shocked when tax receipts fall the following year because there are fewer evil rich people to tax.

What the fuck are you on about? I'm not a member of any party, or any 'movement' within a party. I'm just commenting on what I see.

Defensive much!? Jeremy has accepted there is a problem. Move on. Why are you trying to change the subject? Does Boris’s racism make Jeremy’s OK? Grow up.

Corbyn has fought his whole life against racism

But only, sadly, for selected races

When Labour are only the second party - apart from the BNP - to meet the threashold for investigation, you know the party's problems are bad

PettyContractor

My parents in the UK think the same, and won’t want to protect what they have worked for.

MissConductUS

My state is in a similar position we are next to New Hampshire, where there is 0% sales and income tax.

As often as possible we shop in NH, and DH works in NH.

Nobody (not even the Labour party) wants private schools closed

Really?
Using the hashtag, ‘@AbolishEton’, the Labour Against Private Schools group is circulating a motion for the party’s conference in September, that would commit a Labour government to stripping fee-paying schools of their privileges and integrating them into the state system.

So some member of the Labour Party want them abolished.

Lweji no one is defending those regimes
Really?
A pp posted this

In communist Russia, people got housing as standard, and those that lived in the city got a house in the country as well (for free given to them by the state!). Secondly in Russia you got 30 days (or more) holiday as standard and families regularly went on holiday for an entire month!
What they didn’t add was that if you didn’t tow the line (and sometimes if you did) you were murdered or sent to a Labour camp.

I don't think private schools should be absorbed into the state system but I do believe they should lose their VAT free status and be subject to all the costs that state schools have (private schools can claim relief on some bills that state schools cannot). Either that or state schools should get the same relief.