Ted Rall for January 07, 2013
Transcript:
Coming Soon: The chained consumer price index, which saves the govt. money on social security by changing the way inflation is calculated. Can't afford steak due to higher prices? The chained CPI assumes you'll switch to ground beef. Presto: 0% inflation! If ground beef gets too expensive, they'll assume you'll eat liver or spam. Inflation: still zero. What if you get priced out of meat entirely? Technocrats say you'll be just fine with pasta. Sorry, old follks- no C.O.L.A. If you can't come up with enough money to keep up with empty carb prices, your govt. thinks you should consider water. Still no inflation. Of course, they charge for H2O now. So if that's beyond your budget, there's always... A.K.A. "proletariat steak"
Well, many Communists would say that the socialism that they had in Russia was never true socialism, and I think that they would have a very strong point. That said, there was a lot about that system that worked very well for a lot of people. Many people who live in Russia today miss the Soviet Union and wish they could get it back even with all of its problems. One thing that I think is kind of funny is that you think you have freedom. How can you possibly have freedom when there are so many people who are starving to death? What kind of freedom do they have? The freedom to starve? The freedom to die because they can’t possibly afford medical care? Also, I think it’s interesting that you think that the only motivation that makes people show up for work is money. I don’t know about you, but I would draw cartoons and comment on politics even without money. In fact, both of us are posting these comments completely for free. We both care about our opinions and we care about our names enough to be careful about what we write and how we write it. We have an incentive even though we don’t have a profit incentive. There are a lot of things that people do without needing to be paid for it. Do you have a family? You take care of children? You probably don’t get paid for that either yet you still try to do a good job. Capitalism is only one way to motivate people and it really appeals to people’s worst possible instincts.