40 thoughts on “Great Moments In Socialism”

  1. When a 3 km asteroid collides with Earth, you’ll thank the socialists for the colonization of the ocean floor.

    1. When a 3-km. asteroid strikes Earth, the odds are about three out of four that it will do so on the ocean floor. Try again.

      1. Go on, Dick Eagleson, game it out. After it hits, say, the South East Pacific ocean, off the coast of Chile, and perhaps triggers an ice age, what happens to the sea floor colonies in the other oceans? You can google “Eltanin impact” to learn about the evidence of just such an impact. Click here: https://www.google.com/search?q=Eltanin+impact

        1. Go on, Dick Eagleson, game it out.

          Well, the hellacious big overpressure and displacement wave front spreading out from point of impact should put paid to any sea floor habs in the Pacific at the same time they’re pushing those Ragnarok-class tsunamis up, over and through pretty much everything on the Pacific Rim coastlines and those of riverine banks as well. Damage to Indian Ocean habs and coasts might be survivable in places, but probably not many. The coastal scouring will extend at least tens of miles inland essentially everywhere on that side of the planet and well exceed a hundred miles in many places. The good news? The Cordillera and the fact that the Amazon empties into the Atlantic will save a lot of South America. Ditto the Mississippi, the Gulf and North America. But anything west of America’s Spinal Column will be toast. The waterborne shock and displacement waves will likely do at least a modest – by comparison – amount of damage in the Atlantic as well, but they will be much attentuated by having to wrap around Cap Horn on their way. Still, I don’t think anyone will be hearing again from most of the Antarctic research stations.

          I could go on like this for quite a while. Humanity as a species would probably survive, but the world would be a seriously diminished place. Modern technological civilization might just suffer the same sort of brittle fracture that brought down the Minoans. I don’t think remaining sea floor habs would be likely to figure prominently in the recovery. Their supply chains would be largely gone.

          How’m I doing so far?

  2. I thank them now, Bob–for providing stupid commentary those of us who value reason and freedom can ridicule.

  5. The actual name for the magic boats is Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC isn’t as well-known or politically popular as the minimum wage, but it does a good job of improving the lives of low-wage workers and their families.

    2. And it makes another dependent class that I have to support with my paltry wages. Everyone in this country should have to pay something, even if it’s only ten dollars a year.

        1. LOL Trent. If you’re even paying a little, you’ll have more civic responsibilities and get involved. You might even, you know, watch CSPAN instead of the Kardashians.

          But yes, equality of robbery is correct.

          1. That’s why they don’t want them to have any skin in the game just like they want to hide the true costs of the healthcare industry.

    3. Jim,

      If you really wanted to help poor people, you’d eliminate state lotteries. That’s an incredible poor tax.

      You’d also eliminate cigarette taxes.

      But since those are revenue sources for bloated government, your side will never touch them.

      1. IN fact in some places – like New York City – the Federal and State taxes on cigarettes are so steep that the poor cannot afford them.

        The Socialist elites all wanted to impose a sin tax to try and force people not to smoke. More social engineering by people who haven’t a clue.

        In fact what happened was that only the poor are hurt, few stopped smoking, a black market in cigarettes was created (i.e. “loosies”) and one man died while being arrested for it.

        I haven’t the data but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the extreme taxation on cigarettes didn’t create a crime opportunity and theft of cartons of ciggies rose.

        All due to graft, mistaken social engineering ideas, and cotton candy thinking by Democrats.

    4. The EITC is includes a significant of “improper payment error rate”:

      The earned income tax credit program had an “improper payment error rate” of 24% in fiscal 2013, according to the latest GAO report. The error rate includes fraud but also represents mistakes made by taxpayers when filing tax forms and the IRS when processing payments. The GAO blamed the mistakes on the “complexity of the tax law.” The errors cost taxpayers $14.5 billion — which is less than half of the high-end estimate provided by Paul.

      2. Complexity in the tax law, from the perspective of the politicians, is a feature not a bug; as it provides ample opportunities for graft.

    6. It is and it does. It’s main drawback is that it doesn’t apply to people who aren’t working at all. The Earned Income Tax Credit is basically a subset of an idea long known in policy circles as the Negative Income Tax. Instead of farking around with stupid and ham-fisted indirect measures featuring large unintended (even if easily predictable) negative consequences (e.g., Minimum Wage), the NIT establishes what might reasonably be called a Minimum Income instead.

      The late socialist sci-fi author Mack Reynolds wrote a lot of stories based on a future in which most of humanity was on an NIT with only a small elite population of actual Taxpayers (the capitalization was Mack’s). Most of these stories featured a partially NIT-supported private detective who, pursuant to various cases, oftentimes had to move in the world of the Taxpayer elite. As I say, Mack was a socialist, but he was emphatically not a utopian.

    7. Now, I am totally confused. Does this mean Jim opposes these boosts in the minimum wage because of the EITC?

      Because without the minimum-wage boosts, a parent can work a low-wage job and have their income supplemented by EITC so they can care for their child. With the minimum-wage boosts, that parent is out of a job, hence ineligible for the EITC, and the parent and their child are back in dire poverty?

      1. To borrow the phraseology of a famous socialist, Jim is living in a bizarro world where the solution caused by government interference is more government interference.

      2. I thought the same at first, but I think Jim is going for what Dick Eagleson refers to as the NIT and Minimum Income angle.

      3. EITC makes more sense to me than big minimum wage hikes, but minimum wage hikes seem to have more punch as a political issue.

        A universal basic income or negative income tax might make more sense than either.

        1. It might make sense if ALL other social programs were cut to zero. You get your basic minimum and NOTHING ELSE. Give it to everyone equally regardless of their income, which is really none of the federal government’s business anyhow. And then on the other side of the ledger, eliminate all federal taxes (under any name, including a repeal of the 16th amendment) and replace with a federal sales tax. Then fire all of the unneeded federal employees (every department but Defense, Justice, and a pared-down Treasury) and watch the economy soar.

          1. Oh and the State Department, keep that too. Everything else – from the Department of Energy to the Department of Education, poof gone, find a productive job.

        2. Ontario is apparently thinking of trialing a universal basic income and will start sending everyone a check in the mail. So, we’ll see how hardcore wealth redistribution works out here possibly soon.

    8. So…

      The state giving the poor money is how we help business afford to pay above market rates for labor.

      That sounds like a typical thought chain these days. Gold star.

    9. The actual name for the magic boats is Earned Income Tax Credit.

      Jobs are lost. Businesses fail. Tax credit does nothing. Try again, Jim.

  6. +Earned Income Credit – Obamacare penalty – property tax to county hospital = life before the Johnson administration.

  8. If you really wanted to help poor people, you’d eliminate state lotteries. That’s an incredible poor tax.

    You’d also eliminate cigarette taxes.

    But since those are revenue sources for bloated government, your side will never touch them.

    So true, Jon. Just wait until electric cars catch on, gasoline tax revenue falls, and they will start taxing electricity. Yet another tax that will slam the lower income folks

      1. Ya, that is coming soon to Washington state. There might be a OBDII work around but there isn’t a good system for reporting milage.

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