NJ tax hike on rich and wealth redistribution?

[Benton]

(09-17-2020, 02:49 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: So can you guys help me understand the problems Socialism would cause in a country and how Socialism can destroy a country?  Is Venezuela a Socialist country?  That gets thrown out there a lot.

Venezuela's biggest problem was an economy reliant on oil high prices, corruption and bad money management. 

As Bels said, socialism is the government owning businesses and industry. If the government is well ran and people do what's best for the community, socialist societies can work. And generally they don't because people do what's best for themselves and few large entities are ran well (no corruption, nepotism, etc). 

Socialism gets thrown out a lot here incorrectly. Having pricing controls isn't socialism. Having industry regulation isn't socialism.

Take healthcare. A lot of time, reforms are met with "THAT"S SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!!" 

And it's not.

We already have subsidized medicine (the government paying critical access hospitals to stay open, eating tuition costs for healthcare workers, paying for healthcare for the poor or elderly, writing off unpaid bills to hospitals, etc); we just don't get much out of it. Why? There are lots of reasons, but part of it is the lack of price controls and standardization. A procedure in one state may be double the cost in an adjacent state, or even from hospital to hospital. That's true with drug costs, too, where there's not a lot controlling what manufacturers can charge. If a company wants to increase the cost of insulin 500%, there's not a lot the consumer can do to stop them. And government doesn't intervene much because stepping on free market toes is considered socialism.