Free Stuff?? No, no it's "public goods"!!

Posted by Russpilot 4 years, 5 months ago to Politics
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I saw this clip of Occasionally Conscious yesterday and it blows my mind how the little liberal skulls full of mush in the classroom were eating it up. Apparently, she isn't wanting to give away free stuff. Oh no, Comrade, everything is actually public goods! To each according... oops, I mean it is public and as such should be given to all... like, equally or something.
SOURCE URL: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/free_stuff_vs_public_goods.html


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  • Posted by exceller 4 years, 5 months ago
    Cortex witnessed the tanking of Pocahontas' ratings after her steadfast pushing of "Medicare for All" and the subsequent estimate that it would cost $20 trillion at least.

    Cortex and Bernie are both in the same bandwagon so the little darling with no brains made a 360 degree turn, in her rhetoric.

    In reality she is still for it, only changing the narrative.

    Nobody should be fooled by what this means.

    It started with Hussein declaring "you did not build that", introducing (or rather repackaging) the communist idea that everything is public property and no individual should claim ownership of the results of his/her talent/efforts.

    That is the law and order of a communist society and that is the reason it fails, invariably. They have been experimenting with it for hundreds of years, totally disregarding human nature.

    What is the definition of insanity? "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

    Short of cloning the "new human" that will flourish under this upside down order, the communists can implement it only by dictatorial terror.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 4 months ago
    I do not agree with her, but I can explain what she's saying. "Public goods" are things that are non-excludable. If the government provides policing, the benefit goes to everyone. There's no way to turn it off for those who don't want to pay, the way we can turn off electricity. The quote, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez says libraries, education, and infrastructure are also non-excludable. This is incorrect. It is practical to charge for use for those things, e.g. toll roads. Ocasio-Cortez is saying the benefits that come from having an educated population with access to libraries and infrastructure cannot be excluded to those who don't pay. She probably thinks this about all basic needs, like housing, healthcare, food, clothing. Trying to provide them all can easily devolve into a contest of hundreds of millions of panhandlers.
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    • Posted by 4 years, 4 months ago
      I appreciate the well thought out response, but I personally believe that she is merely trying to rebrand her "free stuff for everyone" message to sound more progressive. Everyone knows you can't give away everything for free but "public goods" sounds like something that... well the public should have an expectation of getting a piece of the pie. Be it free stuff or public goods, she still has provided exactly zip, zero, nada insight on how it will be paid for.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 4 months ago
        "trying to rebrand her "free stuff for everyone""
        Your explanation sounds more plausible than mine, since she's a politician. The language hides the facts. "When customers give you something in exchange for serving them, I'm asking you to give a little more of it to the gov't. We will use it to buy things for your neighbors, which will make life better for everyone."

        I have never met people who spent time working on an endeavor where they handed a supplier cash, did work, and then collected cash from satisfied customers, who was also a firm believer in socialism. In the modern world it's easy to work a job, never see customers' cash, never see vendors and employees paid, get a direct deposit to checking, never examine the withholdings, swipe a credit card for most purchases, and then have the card paid monthly on auto-pay from the checking account. Never seeing the money move makes the economy looks like a system they don't understand, i.e. like a motor that's not running well. If they have financial problems, it feels like a motor not running right that ought to be fixed by an expert.

        In this scenario, it's electronic payment that's responsible for socialism... and for allowing people to be tricked by "public goods" language.
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        • Posted by 4 years, 4 months ago
          Exactly! It's like income tax. Since you never see it in your check, you don't think about how much our overseers are taking from us to give to other people to "make life better for everyone".
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