Half of millennials would rather live under socialism and communism

[Dill]

(11-06-2017, 01:49 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: Price controls are HORRIBLE (which is basically what you're arguing when you talk about dictating margins), far worse than excessive regulation.  Investors require a return on their capital - you can't just look at the dollars and say a company is making too much money.  People rail about insurance companies.  Those are GIANT companies with tens, hundreds of billions in revenues and tiny margins @3% (half of which comes from investment gains on reserves).

A strong economy is one where the govt is ensuring fair play/competition and NOT putting it's thumb on the scale to pick winners and losers.

If you want to kill innovation and growth at my business, then go ahead and dictate what my margins should be.  You may not be making day-to-day decisions at my business, but excessive regulations and price controls absolutely IS interfering with those decisions.  That IS modern socialism - you're putting your thumb on the scale to effect outcomes just the same as if you were calling those shots yourself.

I wasn't thinking specifically of price controls, but of a range of government actions--taxes, minimum wages, evironmental and safety controls, subsidies, and the like. 

 People certainly do criticize corporations when they keep wages low and send ever higher percentages to CEOs.
But no one in North America or Europe looks at a company and just says "you are making to much money."

Business people constantly say regulations and price controls and taxes kill business, whether they are regulated or not. But which are the "strong economies" in the world today? Which have been for the last two or three decades? I wonder if any of those governments are "picking winners and losers"?

So you are defining socialism as "interfering" with business decisions--not public ownership of the means of production?  I just don't see any analytical advantage to defining socialism that way.  If the government forbids you from dumping chemicals into a local river they are certainly "calling the shots" in this one limited area that concerns public safety and interfering with your profit margins. But they still don't own your business. 

If a policeman tells me to park my car over there rather than over here at a Steelers game then he is interfering with my decision, but it doesn't mean he owns my car now just because he called the shots  in the name of the public in that one instance.