Office of Senator HappyWarrior

[Marokai Backbeat]

Endorsed!

And good to have you back around, HW!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Thank you for voting against the Progressive Socialist Taxation Act.

What do you think your biggest accomplishment of your term has been?

^

When you think calling "socialist" something you don't like authomatically wins you the argument... this is called ideological bankrupcy.

How is it not socialist? A 99% tax on the rich. That leaves everyone with nothing. It is redistribution of wealth at it's peak. Not to mention the collapse of the economy if it passes, where everyone who could, would leave the country, and every corporation, would do the same. There's a reason we saw a great period of economic and cultural growth when capitalism really started to take off. This tax turns Atlasia into the Soviet Union economically.

Good lord.

Leaving out the fact that I'm, you know, relatively sure there was more to communism than taxes, I'm curious about this mythical period where 'capitalism really started to take off" in which we experienced such amazing economic and cultural growth. Was it during slavery or child labor? When medicines and meat went virtually unregulated and entirely unlabeled? Or when immigrants were basically forced to work by the barrel of a gun? Or when we experienced long and frequent depressions due to horrible currency policies?

The time we actually had vast economic expansion that was fair and affected everyone, with great cultural development, was the post-WWII boom that lasted into the 70s. The so called "Golden Age of Capitalism", a time of much greater regulations, much more unionization, and an era where the top income tax rate was anywhere from 70% to 90%.

[Marokai Backbeat]

First off, I thought you quit? That didn't last long.

Did no one actually read what I said or have any recognition of the OTHER Atlasia retirees that still roam this place? Al posts from time to time and he stopped taking this place seriously years ago. Do I have to go into solitary confinement just because I retired from politics?

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Under right-wing Presidents in the last few decades wages for the lower classes almost always stagnate unless it's a time of unnatural boom. Under Reagan, incomes for the middle and lower class were essentially flat or nearly so. Under Bush, the average wage dropped by a number of roughly several thousand dollars. You can pull out the usual cop-out card of "they weren't REAL capitalists!" but each one of the things you listed were fathered by and prospered under much left-of-center individuals.

Women's rights saw their strongest breakthrough with the Populist movement at the end of the 1800s, people who wanted to institute a progressive income tax and nationalize several industries. The middle class was created by the institutions and regulations put into place by the New Deal. All of the things you listed came to be by movements and ideologies that sought to blend socialist and capitalist, individualistic and collectivist, philosophies, together.

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That's debatable at best. Slavery ended here because of war and direct government intervention. Plenty of other places ended slavery long before we did. You could probably better argue the opposite, that the United States lagged so long in abolishing slavery because of our more "capitalistic" roots.

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This is always a silly demand, but it's worth pointing out that the USSR was more than competitive economically for a very long time.