Ideally what percentage of the economy do you think should be government filtered? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.

What percentage of the economy should be government filtered?

1. 0-5%
5
33%
2. 5-40%
3
20%
3. 40-60%
1
7%
4. 60-95%
No votes
0%
5. 95-100%
2
13%
6. Other
4
27%
#14937106
Simple enough question: how much of the economy do you think should be under direct ownership or management by an institution called government? Also for bonus points please state in a post where you self-identify as sitting on the left-right spectrum and who are your guiding economic propagandists eg, Marx, Keynes, Hayek or whoever.

If you are a pragmatist enough to say that it depends on the particular circumstances, war-time more, peace-time less for example, then please try to avoid dumping your vote into other and place your vote where you think your own country at this particular time should be according to its specific circumstances.
#14937153
Other

Who the hell knows? Market failures like healthcare should obviously be government run to some extent though whether or not that means direct ownership is best I have no idea.

Whatever works basically, and I have no idea what that would look like.

Ideology....somewhere between center left and social democrat.
#14937155
SolarCross wrote:Simple enough question: how much of the economy do you think should be under direct ownership or management by an institution called government? Also for bonus points please state in a post where you self-identify as sitting on the left-right spectrum and who are your guiding economic propagandists eg, Marx, Keynes, Hayek or whoever.

If you are a pragmatist enough to say that it depends on the particular circumstances, war-time more, peace-time less for example, then please try to avoid dumping your vote into other and place your vote where you think your own country at this particular time should be according to its specific circumstances.


There is no good reply. Around 10-20%. If you have less than 10% then you don't have a government. If you are above 20% then taxes have to be too extreme. There are good ways to go above 20% and it can produce resoults but it requires a very efficient government apparatus and rule of law. So its not easy with the exception of very few countries.

There is no answer here that fits. Anything above 40% is socialism?
#14937162
Although most economies have a 'private', along with a 'public' sector, they are grouped together in terms of the national accounts under the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) or Gross Domestic Product Per Person(GDPPP)or Capita, which equates to the GDP divided by the total population that is about 64.7 Million.
Our current per capita value is about £34.1K($44K), little changed from 2015.

It's pretty much a pointless excercise to delineate public vs private.

Certain people would say that 'public' spending is wrong(Tories), well, they would say that, wouldn't they, whereas 'Labour' argue to the contrary.
There's hypocrisy aplenty on this issue, because, with 'public' spending, the biggest beneficiaries are the 'private' sector, both corporately & on the personal levels.
In contrast, the Treasury receive disproportionately less income through taxes on business than on personal taxation, direct\indirect, combined.
On the personal side, the government(in spite of protest to the contrary)show distinctly more favour to the rich & better-off than to the less well-off.
Again, business gets special treatment by the government, private businesses are manipulating the tax system to their benefit, with the connivance of the Tory government, from inneficiencies & bad decision making on inestments.

Those businesses are 'writing down' notional 'losses' & consequently they are avoiding tax liabilities as a result.

That is wrong, the taxpayer should not finance business 'losses', those businesses that lose money, should take those losses head on & HMRC should NOT allow 'write-downs'.

Too much 'private' business in the U.K is in existance due to corrupt governance of public funds & too many rich,better-off people are receiving unjustified amounts of taxpayers money from tax 'breaks' when they should not be receiving any financial benefits at all, especially when the numbers in poverty are rising exponentially creating deeper divisions in society.

I believe in efficient private enterprise, the people working in that sector are the ones creating the 'real' wealth, 'Labour' is the 'real' wealth in the economy, NOT 'capital', people employed are the real assets of business, not the monetary assets of the rich to whom business owes a debt by way of dividend or share price increase.

We should reduce Corporation taxes inversely proportionate to increases in people employed each year & investments into productive assets that create more wealth as a result.

I would nationalise all the utility companies, but have them managed by the best people who would be rewarded accordingly,all other business would be left alone.

I would increase taxes on unearned or incomes that are 'deferred'.

Public services are probably more efficient that private sector equivalents, indeed, 'outsourcing' or 'privatising' of our NHS should be reversed without compensation, brought back under government control.

We know they are more efficient, because they do not require 'profits' to operate, 'profits' that would be spent where money is meant to be spent, on the services provided.
#14937214
JohnRawls wrote:There is no good reply. Around 10-20%. If you have less than 10% then you don't have a government. If you are above 20% then taxes have to be too extreme. There are good ways to go above 20% and it can produce resoults but it requires a very efficient government apparatus and rule of law. So its not easy with the exception of very few countries.

There is no answer here that fits. Anything above 40% is socialism?

Well that seems like a good reply to me.

As to whether being over 40% constitutes socialism.. It's an interesting question. Keynes is the capitalist proponent of big government but as I understand it even he didn't think it was safe for government to be bigger than 45% or it would cause stagnation and demoralisation. Sweden these days is operating at something like 55% far far into the Keynesian danger zone but yet I don't think even Sweden really constitutes a socialist state and the reason is they don't hate the private sector, if anything they kind of love the fact that the private sector placidly shovels gargantuan sums of money into bureaucratic hands for them to play with. A real socialist wants to kill the private sector not get fat and lazy off it. Sweden's operating philosophy is that the private sector is the golden child that must be looked after by a wise and caring nanny state, spiritually this is still keynesian even if they are taking it too excess.

For a real socialist there is no maximum of state ownership, whatever the % is it is not enough and the private sector is just a hateful enemy to be destroyed as ruthlessly as possible. This is quite different.

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Just for fun
Last edited by SolarCross on 05 Aug 2018 15:35, edited 1 time in total.
#14937223
SolarCross wrote:Well that seems like a good reply to me.

As to whether being over 40% constitutes socialism.. It's an interesting question. Keynes is the capitalist proponent of big government but as I understand it even he didn't think it was safe for government to be bigger than 45% or it would cause stagnation and demoralisation. Sweden these days is operating at something like 55% far far into the Keynesian danger zone but yet I don't think even Sweden really constitutes a socialist state and the reason is they don't hate the private sector, if anything they kind of love the fact that the private sector placidly shovels gargantuan sums of money into bureaucratic hands for them to play with. A real socialist wants to kill the private sector not get fat and lazy off it. Sweden's operating philosophy is that the private sector is the golden child that must be looked after by a wise and caring nanny state, spiritually this is still keynesian even if they are taking it too excess.

For a real socialist there is no maximum of state ownership, whatever the % is, it is not enough and the private sector is just a hateful enemy to be destroyed as ruthlessly as possible. This is quite different.

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Just for fun


It is hard to say. There are several methedologies to measure this. Honestly there is employment of public sector and also product value per whole gdp etc.

World bank: https://ourworldindata.org/public-spending
Wiki with employment studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... note-ILO-4

Sweden is nowhere near the number that you quote. The numbers that you quote are inflated for some reason.
#14937230
JohnRawls wrote:Sweden is nowhere near the number that you quote. The numbers that you quote are inflated for some reason.

I don't recall where I found that factoid but wiki has the total tax take of Sweden at 51% of GDP for 2007.

The slowly declining overall taxation, 51.1% of GDP in 2007, is still nearly double of that in the United States or Ireland. Civil servants amount to a third of Swedish workforce, multiple times the proportion in many other countries.


I think the difference may come down to different methods of evaluating the % the government controls. I guess the methods you linked to wouldn't count welfare payments for example, although functionally this is exactly equivalent to paying someone a salary. If one assumes tax incomes are proportional to government spending then the ratio of tax take vs GDP is a fairly direct way of assessing how much of the economy is government directed, if one assumes that he who pays the piper calls the tune. But that works best for so called mixed economies I guess that wouldn't work so well for a full blown socialist country like the DPRK. The DPRK has millions in slave labour camps who aren't being paid a dime, they are really owned by the government but wouldn't show up as a % of GDP. Also if the government owns everything then they aren't taxing anything either.

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Who do you like Hayek or Keynes?
#14937278
Every single damn thing down the the last barbers, butchers or bakers. ;)

Image

In reality though it makes no difference. A state owned industry is of no use if the government is right wing, they will just give it away to themselves and their rich mates at a fraction of it's actual value (see Yeltsin's or Thatcher's privatisations).

The importance is class ownership not if it is state of private, a non state collectively owned bar (for example the 1 in 12 in Bradford) is owned and controlled by the workers just as much as a nationalised industry in a one party socialist state is owned and controlled by the workers.

A state bank in a centre right bourgeois "democracy" is owned and controlled by the capitalists just as much as a private company in a social democrat mixed economy state is owned and controlled by the capitalists. It does not magically become left wing just because it is owned by the state.

The gas chambers used for murdering communists, socialists and trade unionists in 3rd Reich were state owned yet only a lunatic or an american would call the Nazi's left wing.
#14937295
It's kind of idiotic that as crony monopoly capitalism runs rampant the crank wingnuts are concerned about government owned industry but to answer the question I'd say ideally it would be 0%. We can have publicly owned and controlled industries without government being involved. An easy way to achieve that is charter public corporations that are run for the public benefit rather than profit and give all stakeholders(workers, customers, any groups that would be economically, environmentally, etc impacted by the activities of the enterprise) a vote on everything from how the corporation is structured and how it operates to its board of directors. Economic democracy doesn't necessarily entail statism, socialism is perfectly compatible with a minarchist nightwatchmen state or no state at all.
#14937412
Sivad wrote:It's kind of idiotic that as crony monopoly capitalism runs rampant the crank wingnuts are concerned about government owned industry but to answer the question I'd say ideally it would be 0%. We can have publicly owned and controlled industries without government being involved. An easy way to achieve that is charter public corporations that are run for the public benefit rather than profit and give all stakeholders(workers, customers, any groups that would be economically, environmentally, etc impacted by the activities of the enterprise) a vote on everything from how the corporation is structured and how it operates to its board of directors. Economic democracy doesn't necessarily entail statism, socialism is perfectly compatible with a minarchist nightwatchmen state or no state at all.


What if your stakeholders voted for having a profit?
#14937523
I put 4-40 % . As I feel that aside from key industries in the commanding heights of the economy , which are already publicly owned and operated in certain states in the U.S. , I feel that industries should be private sector , and more preferably co-operative enterprises . My underlying political views are to be completely honest rather syncretic . On the furthest left , I am both a liberal socialist , and a left-wing populist , but in regards to the radical center , I am a fusion of communitarian , and left-libertarian . My main economic influences are Richard Wolff , and Gar Alperovitz .
#14937631
Sivad wrote:Maybe the wingnuts can tell us what percentage of government they think should be corporate oligarch filtered? Gotta love these wingnuts, their government is almost entirely controlled by corporations and billionaires and these geniuses are fretting about public ownership. :knife:

Are you saying "corporate oligarchs" are not members of the public? Are you anti-democratic?

Who exactly do you mean by "corporate oligarchs"? People like Mark Zuckerberg? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? George Soros?

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Shawshank Redemption - bribe scene



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