| We have socialism for the rich, so why not for the poor? Edit: wanted to make this a little less low-effort so here's how I see us having socialism for the rich: Taxpayer-funded research being transferred directly to private companies, often with little to no compensation back to the government or taxpayer, and with all profits from this R&D being privatized. The entire Internet is an example of this. SpaceX getting decades of NASA research almost for free (plus contracts) is an example. Pharma companies privatizing taxpayer-funded university research. Endless examples. This one is a huge transfer of wealth, usually to people who don't need it. The old system (until the 1980s) was that those people pay it back through taxes, but they've successfully removed that part, so now we pay for the R&D and they keep the profits. The whole "too big to fail" phenomenon and bailouts. 2008 really showed this clearly, and it hasn't gone away. Meanwhile ordinary people are not too big to fail and will not be bailed out. Open regulatory capture, now institutionalized through a system that looks very pay to play. Direct government subsidies to companies that absolutely do not need it, such as state and local government offering huge "incentives" to get data centers that don't generate much local employment. These are basically handouts to the already rich. Tax cuts on things like real estate and capital gains and increases in consumption taxes like sales taxes and tariffs. All consumption taxes are regressive, meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their income to them (because a higher percentage is consumption) than the rich. Tax cuts on property taxes and investments benefit the wealthy more than the poor. ... and so on. At this point simply flattening the system and making it neither progressive nor regressive would be a net move in the progressive direction. The current system is regressive. It's socialism for the wealthy paid for by everyone with privatized gains and socialized losses. |