gislebertus

It's called "paying back your investors."

If I get rich, it won't be because I'm some superman. It'll be because I had good teachers, good public health, a stable banking system, adequate military and police protection, etc.

If I'm making $10 million a year, I'll gladly pay half of that to support the institutions and people who helped me get rich.

During the United States' golden age, 1945-1975, rich people were taxed heavily. Nowadays, when the country is in decline, they're relatively lightly taxed. No coincidence.

Greed is bad. Selfishness is bad. Community is good. Public investment is good.

As for, "Don't let the bureaucrats take your money!", our government can work well. It has worked very well in the past. It just hasn't lately because it's been run according to conservative ideas such as "Don't let the bureaucrats take YOUR money!"

Your money is not all your money, it's partly our money, because we all helped you make it. Pay back your investors.

Who cares.

Wish GOP sock-puppets would stop posting this stuff on HN.

As a long-time entrepreneur, I'm concerned most about a market: are there people able and willing to buy what I'm selling?

Social Security helps with the "able" part, by making sure that no American lives in abject poverty if they're old or crippled.

Before Social Security, this was a big problem. About a quarter of Americans lived in poverty, and about half of old people.

More people with more money to spend means a bigger market for whatever I'm selling. That's why Social Security is good. That's why markets are bigger in places with lots of Social Security-type programs (Europe, the U.S.) than in places without them (South America, Africa).

Social Security also helps make it possible for me to be an entrepreneur. I know that I can take risks and not plunge my family into abject poverty if I'm crippled and can't work.

Why did I write about Conservatism in relation to this article? Because when someone is attacking Social Security, it's almost always as part of a larger political agenda they're promoting: Conservatism.

This article was from the Hoover Institution, a politically Conservative organization that pushes to eliminate New Deal programs like Social Security (not just SS). They also push for unregulated markets, and flat or regressive taxes. So does the American Enterprise Institute. So does the Heritage Foundation.

These groups call themselves "think tanks," which implies objective research. Unfortunately, they aren't averse to pushing false information or abandoning their principles to promote their interests.

For example, For example, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized Malaysia's government for years. After a consulting firm owned by Heritage's president began representing Malaysian business interests, Heritage assessments of Malaysia turned positive. (http://thinkprogress.org/2005/04/17/money-talks-at-heritage/)

Seems like there's an awful lot of polemical posts on Hacker News lately from Conservative political organizations. Guess they figured out that here they could promote their agenda for free.

Is that really what Hacker News wants to be? A political forum? If so, I'll encourage the folks at Media Matters, Center for American Progress, and Campaign for America's Future to start posting here.

It's bad enough that Conservative political groups are hijacking a startup news aggregator. It's worse that the ideas they're pushing don't work.

Conservatism--the political philosophy promoted by AEI, Hoover, Heritage et al--is the flip side of Communism. With Communism, the purpose of people is to serve The State. In Conservatism, the purpose of people is to serve The Market. Thus, popular New Deal programs such as Social Security are anathema to them.

Both Communism and Conservatism work badly, producing similar effects. Our unregulated Conservative markets have crashed and burned just as badly as the Russians' hyper-regulated Communist markets did. States and countries run on Conservative principles are typically backward and stagnant:

--Mississippi and Alabama have Conservative state governments, and have practically no startup activity. Massachusetts and New York are not Conservative, which makes them capable of spawning MIT and Silicon Alley.

--Conservatives say that the keys to a strong economy is low taxes on rich people and unregulated markets. We've had them for the past decade, just as we did in the 1920s, and just as it did in the 1920s, our economy has melted down. What happened when we had sky-high taxes on rich people, and highly regulated markets? We got the U.S. economic boom of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and built the world's biggest middle class.

The fact that their political philosophy has produced poor results doesn't give the folks at AEI/Hoover/Heritage pause, however. Just like the old Communists, these Conservatives are now complaining that "Conservatism DOES work! It's just never been tried!" Just as with Communism, Conservatism never fails, it is only failed.

As for the ideas of Milton Friedman that these Hacker News Hijackers are pushing, we may want to read what a Nobel Prize-winning economist has to say about them:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19857