A funny post about redistribution/socialism

• Yoorah wrote on 2014-02-03 04:04
  A random thing I came across:
  

  An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
  The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
  
  After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
  
  The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
  When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
  
  As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
  
  To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
  
  1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
  
  2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
  
  3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
  
  4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
  
  5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

  
  
  A bit oversimplified (and point #4 sounds pretty dumb), but the simplification makes it easier for some to understand the core concept.
  
  But more importantly, I think it's pretty damn hilarious if a professor actually did this for real.
• Juno wrote on 2014-02-03 05:11
  Amusing, but a far cry from anything anyone is trying to do nowadays. Socialism Lite is a far cry from the pure thing.
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-02-03 06:16
  I am confused, do we live in a socialist environment that my money gets shafted to the poor?
  
  Cause i know that's a damn lie.
• Kyishi wrote on 2014-02-03 08:27
  I remember seeing this a while back (except the story was slightly different so I think it's not real, unfortunately). Still an interesting read, lol.
• 800mans wrote on 2014-02-03 18:14
  Post is funny but just that. It doesn't really represent what realistic socialism is.
  
  I'd favor capitalism over socialist ideas if the wealthy actually re-invested their capital into developing America rather than hoarding it for their personal fortunes. But then its hard to be selfless nowadays.
  
  Because the wealthy don't seem to do that significantly (at least from a personal pov), id actually prefer wealth redistribution facilitated by the government. (not complete equalness).
• Campylobacter jejuni wrote on 2014-02-03 18:33

  Quote from Juno;1194134:

  Amusing, but a far cry from anything anyone is trying to do nowadays. Socialism Lite is a far cry from the pure thing.

  
  It's indeed a very far cry from it, there's not even a common ownership of the goods of production to begin with. I don't see how some amount of overlap with y makes x equal to y. Are humans chimpanzees? But then aren't also gorillas chimpanzees? Capitalism* = socialism? I mean both are making presumptions about the nature of economic activity...
  
  I don't see why people see a need to put something as multifaceted as the economy on a black and white scale. It implies to me that they never truly bothered to ponder the economy.
  
  Also that story is quite certainly completely made up and doesn't even hold water as a thought experiment because it ignores everything we know about human motivation. Welfare doesn't turn everybody into lazy no-good bums. Not even everyone is dissatisfied when he has to share some of his success with others. Whoever thinks that clearly has no respect for and understanding of his own species.
  
  And no, simplifications don't help understand anything. They skew the picture, no matter the topic, because the core concept is never enough. In particular crass ones such as these. Could be taken out of hypothetical elementary school rhetorics lessons quite frankly - or maybe sunday school, nudge nudge wink wink.
  
  *[SIZE="1"]Let's conveniently ignore that even capitalism as an umbrella-term is in itself a far cry from a single unified theory.[/SIZE]
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-02-04 03:59
  We can tell whoever originally thought this up is certainly pessimistic about humanity.
  Excuse me, not all of us are selfish assholes who leech off the working man, i think that number is highly in the minority.
  
  
  And confusing socialism with the mentality of college students...
• Kyishi wrote on 2014-02-04 04:04

  Quote from Aubog007;1194419:

  
  Excuse me, not all of us are selfish assholes who leech off the working man, i think that number is highly in the minority.
  

  
  you'd be surprised.
• Aubog007 wrote on 2014-02-04 04:44

  Quote from Kyishi;1194423:

  you'd be surprised.

  
  
  I work with many old and bitter people, and it's for the government, meaning they can't get fired barring excessive stupidity.
  I was expecting lazy people, but everyone here does their job fairly well. Because the better and faster they work, the more time they have "unofficially" to do things.
  
  The working environment doesn't promote greatness, but it surely doesnt promote failure.
  
  College students are dumb, im sure if the "experiment" lasted longer they would have came to an agreement. Also it pisses me off when college students think they are "enlightened", shut the fuck up.
  This is not in reference to any one person, this is in reference to all of the philosophical bullshit they are fed during school and then feed to everyone else thinking they are special. Newsflash, everyone's been fed the same bullshit, but society twists and turns them to their bidding. And judging by everyone older that i have met, their philosophical nonsense died off.
• TheKartheus wrote on 2014-02-04 08:35
  This is a story taken right out of the depths of /r/thathappened, lol. I really hope no one believes this is actually true.
• Hanna wrote on 2014-02-04 16:05
  This was probably made up but is hilarious in a ridiculously dumb way
  "Obummer iz a socialist!!!!!!!"
  

  [Image: http://hateandanger.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/your-greed-is-hurting-the-economy-raise-the-minimum-wage.jpg]
• Campylobacter jejuni wrote on 2014-02-04 18:47
  I sometimes wonder how lthe world would be if stockholders behaved differently but in the same system. Would it be more inefficient because big corporations don't have the pressure to be as cost-effective and progress be slower? Would people use more of their money on things with low financial returns but high social returns and everything be better? Would they do that but everything be worse because it would actually be still better spent on things with little immediate social returns but high financial ones?
  
  I wish we could perfectly simulate the world and see how things would change if we played around with various parameters.
• Juno wrote on 2014-02-04 23:06

  Quote from Campylobacter jejuni;1194584:

  I sometimes wonder how lthe world would be if stockholders behaved differently but in the same system. Would it be more inefficient because big corporations don't have the pressure to be as cost-effective and progress be slower? Would people use more of their money on things with low financial returns but high social returns and everything be better? Would they do that but everything be worse because it would actually be still better spent on things with little immediate social returns but high financial ones?
  
  I wish we could perfectly simulate the world and see how things would change if we played around with various parameters.

  
  
  If we kidnap enough people and buy a large enough peanut butter jar, we can totally pull this off. For science, of course.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-02-05 02:00

  Quote from Juno;1194134:

  Amusing, but a far cry from anything anyone is trying to do nowadays. Socialism Lite is a far cry from the pure thing.

  
  Agreed, but it's a realistic scenario of what happens in socialism none the less. "Socialism Lite" may not be as bad, but it still is regressive in some ways.
  
  

  Quote from Aubog007;1194150:

  I am confused, do we live in a socialist environment that my money gets shafted to the poor?
  
  Cause i know that's a damn lie.

  
  I assume you mean shifted?
  You should look at statistics and budget numbers. The US spends extremely large sums of money on its poor. And even official statistics aren't painting a completely clear and honest picture due to changes in how they're calculated: In the past, the poverty rate in the US was calculated after receiving government aid such as housing, food, etc. Today, the poverty rate is being calculated before government aid is taken into account, making it look like the poor are getting poorer. This is as bizarre as it is misleading; the poor in the US have a pretty good standard of living when compared to those in other developed nations.
  
  

  Quote from Kyishi;1194179:

  I remember seeing this a while back (except the story was slightly different so I think it's not real, unfortunately). Still an interesting read, lol.

  
  Aw, that's too bad. I can still see this happening for real, though; this already happens in group work at a small scale, leading to some bitter feelings sometimes.
  
  

  Quote from 800mans;1194256:

  Post is funny but just that. It doesn't really represent what realistic socialism is.
  
  I'd favor capitalism over socialist ideas if the wealthy actually re-invested their capital into developing America rather than hoarding it for their personal fortunes. But then its hard to be selfless nowadays.
  
  Because the wealthy don't seem to do that significantly (at least from a personal pov), id actually prefer wealth redistribution facilitated by the government. (not complete equalness).

  
  Does job creation not count as investment in the country? It's silly to overlook this. The main differentiation here is that the money is given to those who are useful and deserving--the money isn't being taken from anyone by force.
  
  Interesting case: A Google Programmer 'Blew Off' A $500,000 Salary At A Startup — Because He's Already Making $3 Million Every Year
  
  

  Quote from Hanna;1194541:

  This was probably made up but is hilarious in a ridiculously dumb way
  "Obummer iz a socialist!!!!!!!"
  

  [Image: http://hateandanger.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/your-greed-is-hurting-the-economy-raise-the-minimum-wage.jpg]

  
  Nobody cared about Obama here. As for raising minimum wage, that's a topic in itself. But the short story is that people who demand a significant increase in the minimum wage are ignorant of how the economy works--it works similarly to a food chain.
  
  I remember when the fast food workers wanted to get $15/hr. What they forgot to take into account is that they do not live in a bubble; there's a wide spectrum of professions with pay ranging from minimum wage to 15/hr, including jobs like teaching assistants and paramedics in between. This presents two initial problems:
  - Does a fast food worker really deserve to be paid more than a paramedic or a teaching assistant? This is obviously a No, so it leads to...
  - If a fast food worker should make 15/hr, how much should the salary of a teaching assistant and a paramedic be increased by, then? 25/hr 30/hr?
  ...oh shit, that's what entry level engineering and computer programmer positions pay. What should we do about those, now? etc.
  
  And of course, if everyone suddenly has more money, the price of living increases by just as much, if not more. This adjustment happens every time minimum wage is increased, and it's rarely even increased by much in the first place.
  
  Lastly, this doesn't include the fairness argument for those who are working hard to climb out of the minimum wage jobs to reach, say, 15/hr. Their progress just gets reset and they're back to the bottom. This has happened to someone I knew back when we I worked low end jobs. He got a $1 raise for being an excellent worker, then the gov raised the minimum wage...
  
  

  Quote from Campylobacter jejuni;1194584:

  I sometimes wonder how lthe world would be if stockholders behaved differently but in the same system. Would it be more inefficient because big corporations don't have the pressure to be as cost-effective and progress be slower? Would people use more of their money on things with low financial returns but high social returns and everything be better? Would they do that but everything be worse because it would actually be still better spent on things with little immediate social returns but high financial ones?
  
  I wish we could perfectly simulate the world and see how things would change if we played around with various parameters.

  
  Stocks are a complicated business. I can certainly see cases where companies are driven to make tough choices (often not beneficial in the long term either), but most of the time, I think it's just a way to put metrics on a company's overall success in the market. They're also vital for raising cash to grow the business, which is beneficial to all. Social vs Financial is not a zero sum game.
  
  I agree that a way to simulate the world economy would be pretty interesting. Unfortunately, due to the complexities of the multiple layers and interconnected domains, it won't be feasible to do in the near future.
  
  I should have expected that a silly post would generate even sillier replies. >.>
• Juno wrote on 2014-02-05 07:59

  Quote from Yoorah:

  Agreed, but it's a realistic scenario of what happens in socialism none the less. "Socialism Lite" may not be as bad, but it still is regressive in some ways.

  
  
  It's a realistic scenario, but by no means does it present any evidence that it's a scenario that's likely more likely to occur than some other realistic scenario.
  
  More to the point, I don't agree that any element of socialism whatsoever is regressive, if that's what you are saying. For example, court appointed lawyers are a necessity, but providing them to anyone free of charge is definitely a socialist idea. The US criminal justice system would collapse otherwise, though.