{Socialists} How about voluntary gov't social programs ?

If you can opt out of a tax it's not a tax it's a donation to charity, and it's not right that people - particularly billionaires - be able to draw massive financial benefits from being participants in a society but opt out of paying the share that society requests for them to pay back.

Charity does not solve structural problems. Europe ran on charity before the welfare state came into being. Charity never came close to providing half of the population with healthcare, education, or security. It is a failed system.

Structural problems require systemic solutions. Sprinkling some pennies around does nothing but stroke your own ego. It does not help people overcome dependency and poverty. It makes them more dependent on you and your criteria for who receives charity. It's nothing more than a means to control the poor.

There cannot be individual freedom for all without solidarity.

It's also simply cheaper to provide these things systemically without a profit incentive.

Whenever people ask this question, I seriously need to ask if they ever read up on the 18th and 19th century Europe, because that was the system that existed at the time. And if they did, do they want to be a random European at the time? Try out how well that worked for the average Joe? Work 14 hours a day from age 3 and up.

There was a reason why Europeans emigrated in droves.

The people who need assistance are, by definition of being in need, those who don't have resources to spare.

Why must EVERYONE have universal healthcare?

What the hell does this mean dude. It's not universal if it doesn't cover everyone - thats what universal means.

Yes you can go get private medical insurance or to a private practitioner in a UH system.

Couldnt we let ppl opt in and out of most taxes

That would make it not a tax but a subscription.

and the programs that make far too few in revenue need to be changed

You get a negative feedback loop. You have too little revenue to make lets say public education viable, so you gut it and make it more inefficient. This draws more people out of it, gutting public education further so it's even more inefficient, more people unsubscribe and so on until you privatise everything.

Just skip this fake diplomacy and say it straight: How about we privatise everything? Now you sound like a radical which you tried to disguise by pretending to be diplomatic.

Because if being given support was optional, then those who receive it would be discriminated against, pressured to deny it.

I would like to opt out of military funding please.

How come conservatives always want healthcare to be optional but military spending to be mandatory? Both are attempts at saving lives, right? If anything, healthcare is a more effective way to save lives.

No, we couldn't.

Since we have a semi-working system of trade and taxation, the onus isn't on us to tell you why it must be like this to semi-work, but on you to tell us how your idea will improve the lives of people.

Bonus points if you can determine how realistic your proposition is to be implemented by contemporary politicians.

If it's up to me we "could just have communism where everyone gets what they want", but I don't go around suggesting that we can "just do that" and ask anyone opposed to my idea to tell me "why can't we just do that".

This is silly.

ideas promoted by "the left" always assume that everyone must participate.

Yes as opposed to the extremely optional conditions of working for a capitalist company for meager wages and barely eking out an existence until the day you die.

I had a sort of similar idea. Have a “socialism” program in the US where anyone can join at 18.

If you join you get access to whichever socialist programs that you and the other socialists vote on. Funding is voted on as well. Pretty much everything is voted on.

The only catch is that you can’t opt out of the program later and nothing passed by the “socialism” program directly affects people not in the program.

It wouldn’t work in practice but the response I got was interesting, none of the socialists wanted to do it. Socialism apparently only works if you can force everyone to do it.

1. First show that your Capitalist society wouldn't immediately fucking collapse.

2. Show that this would actually be a benefit to the greatest amount of people, while minimizing harm to the fewest amount of people.

I’d be in favour of rich people being able to opt out of taxes, if working people could opt out of capitalist property arrangements.

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What do you think this is? Your opinion doesn't matter to socialists. You will fall in line or be shot. That's how it has worked historically, works and will always work. You obey and follow orders under threat of death because that's more efficient and realistic than waiting for you to voluntarily assist them.

Taxes are liberal speech. Everyone from the labour aristocrat low middle classes up to the biggest bourgeois will meet the exact same fate. They will be silenced and their cultural and social interests and productions erased. Any rights and property they had taken away as punishment; and be thrown into camps where they will work their sins away assuming they don't get outright shot.

Pick up a damn history book and stop listening to that college liberal humanist shit anarchists and the bernie sanders crowd uphold for "socialism". You will face the wall along with the rest of us people in this website.

Why must EVERYONE have universal healthcare?

Because it's a basic human right.

Why must ALL BILLIONAIRES be taxed suchnsuch amount?

Because they're the ones exploiting workers for money, obviously. To let the guys hoarding the wealth be the ones to say "Nah, we're good, we're not going to contribute" seems a pretty obviously bad idea, especially when they gain their tremendous wealth through participation in society.

To allow them to choose to not fulfil their duties but to still get the benefits of participating in society would be nonsensical. You don't get to use everything our society has built but owe nothing back.

What taxes? Even Marx was anti-tax and virtually all other Socialists before and after him. Taxation is usury.

Without full participation, it’s just charity and not going to solve the problems of the the entirety of the country.

Also, I have to say I don’t like how people in this sub use the term “participation” in these contexts.

Why must everyone have universal healthcare?

Theoretically, you could have a system where you could opt out of receiving universal healthcare, but I don’t know why anyone would voluntarily pay for their own healthcare in the U.S. when they don’t have to.

Depending on who you ask, many people favor a single-payer healthcare system with the option to pay more for better healthcare coverage (e.g., so rich folks can still see their fancy Beverly Hills doctors), but that inherently creates a divide in healthcare quality between everyday citizens and the rich, meaning rich folks will have access to healthcare services that others won’t simply because the rich can afford it. That defeats much of the purpose of universal healthcare which is allowing the whole public to receive the medical coverage they need.

Why must all billionaires be taxed suchnsuch amount?

1. Because no one should be allowed to hoard that much wealth when millions of people are homeless and starving.

2. Because they find ways to get out of paying their taxes. It genuinely amazes me that so many American conservatives obsess over raising taxes on the masses, but don’t bat an eye when the richest among us pay nothing when their taxes are impossibly more valuable to society (much larger percentage of a much higher income).

3. Because they can afford it while no one else can. This might be unpopular, but boohoo if someone thinkings billionaires are too highly taxed. No one else can afford it and billionaires sit on my more wealth than anyone could spend in a lifetime. If it comes down to it, high taxes from the wealthiest people in history are wholly justified if they’re being used to support the rest of the country as it languishes in need.

We get it. Capitalists are so stupid they don't understand the benefits of welfare. Die of a flu or something, idiot.

Rights and duties are co-extensive. For every right you have, someone else has a duty. No same person would forgo something like healthcare, so it is a right. That means that you have a duty to pay your share for the universal satisfaction of that right. There is absolutely no reason why participation in or support for such a social program should be "voluntary."

What libertarians/ancaps/conservatives really want is to have rights for themselves without duties to others. They simply don't want to call them "rights" because they have already have them satisfied for themselves and don't want to admit that others are as deserving as they are.

That's Libertarianism. Taxes in the US originally was more like Tithing to the church.

The US tried that but it didn't work.

The British invaded Washington DC and burned down the White House in the War of 1812.

But I do think that George Washington had the right idea when he focused on raising revenue through Vice Taxes.

None billionaires would be taxed at all. They'd spend millions and billions fighting against us, so they'd get the aliven't treatment.

But honestly, it feels like you live in a fairytale.