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^^ Without the welfare schemes that India has for the past many decades, the country could not achieved what it has so far. A country that takes care of the underprivileged, thrives in the long run.

Somebody who has doubts about welfare schemes should take out time and see what goes in with a family which has nothing to survive on. How they guve back to the society when taken care of.

Studies and data can be obtained frim sources supporting it, but seeing it first hand really clears the doubt.

Any welfare program should have two things:
1. Objective/Outcome it wants to achieve with milestones.
2. How long should it take to achieve that objective.

Once it has the above two: Regular monitoring and progress report will be required.

Scrap/Modify the program if:
1. It does not fulfill the above criteria.
2. It does not yield positive results on a yearly basis.

Sir, 4 of those you mentioned rules without an electorate. Two others are now acknowledged as the start of decline in their economies in terms of income equality, industrialization, productivity, and competitiveness. I would not recommend their names as a shining example of politico-economic achievement. Roosevelt stands alone as a true visionary who won his people's trust four times, built one of the greatest social contracts of all time, and beat fascists back, building his country into a superpower. He is one of the greatest heroes of the 20th century, alongside a slightly older bald Indian gentleman who died a few years after him. :)

Communism, capitalism, and socialism are all philosophical and economic concepts. Democracy is a form of government, the opposite of which is autocracy, or tyranny, or dictatorship. You can have any of the three economic situations and democracy. Most current elected governments globally are a mix of socialism and capitalism, while being democratic. Similarly, democratically elected governments in Kerala and West Bengal are or were communist while veering towards socialist.

I can empathise with this. While we didn't have 'nothing to survive on', I can assure you that, hand on heart, without some targeted welfare schemes that helped previous generations, I would not have the ability to type this out here. Over the last few decades, those in my family who benefited have provided employment for hundreds, if not thousands, and generated commensurate taxes in return.

Communism is a political concept, which was created to destroy the social class system. So, it adopted socialism as the economic system to achieve that goal. There is no communism without socialism. In fact, communism tried to redefine socialism as rule of the working class, a political theory. They called their version scientific socialism.

Meanwhile, capitalism and socialism are economic systems.

Kerala or West Bengal never had communist governments. They always had democratically elected governments where the ruling party believed in communism and named their party as such. But they heavily implemented socialism, since implementing communist government within in a democratic country is impossible.

But communist parties couldn't really succeed in India since every major Indian party is economically left-leaning to attract the votes of poor.

The last 3 US presidential elections have been a choice between sanity and insanity, and Trump is usually believed to be the insane choice.

However, some of the economic policies suggested by Kamala Harris this time does make one wonder why democrats are trying to lose this advantage.

1) 25% capital gains tax on unrealized gains for people having more than $100M assets. That will force all the rich folks to sell their shares for no other reason than paying taxes. How will this help the economy? Government will get more taxes, but stock market will be toast.

2) Price cap on groceries, which is always a very low margin product. It has always led to food shortages.

3) Free healthcare to all the illegal immigrants. This in a country where even legal immigrants and citizens don't get free healthcare. How is this supposed to make voters happy and vote for Kamala?

https://youtu.be/vTKVv5Mm9_M

You know, as a populist political appeal, point no 1 & 2 are perfectly acceptable. The first one appeals to poor people who feel the rich must pay "their share of tax".

Second point is also understandable politically since price caps are the first thing any govt declares in order to appease the poor (especially if reeling under inflation).

However, the third point is a lesson on absurdity. How does giving health care to illegal immigrants going to help the political ambitions? What other kind of benevolent agenda the Democrats have in mind?

As far as I understand, allowing illegal immigrants across the southern borders, bussing them to various locations across the country, pamper them with benefits which even the citizens cannot get and thereby change the demographics which suits the democrats as vote bank.

Virtue signalling, may be to attract any one still neutral but may slide towards Democrats with good 'intended' policies (without thinking on outcome).

Wait.. mods, are we allowed to discuss politics?

It is US politics, where we don't have much skin in the game. It is the local politics we totally avoid.

Besides, it is hard to detach economics entirely from the politics. Stay to economics part of the subject as much as possible. We moderators will intervene if it deviates too much.

Could be to garner votes of those who support this type of immigration. More so in the southern states. Supporters could be businesses who need/use these kind of immigrants. Or those who have now become legal (with whatever means) and want more of their kind to continue to come. Kind of what the Mirpuri Pakistanis want in UK.

1) Very unlikely to be implemented. The biggest losers will be the sponsors of the Democratic party which includes very big organizations.
2) This will give the American economy on a platter to the Chinese. They're the only ones who can build things at a cost and still make a profit.
3) Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Our own members hate freebies from being given out to our very own needy citizens. I can't imagine anyone being ok with providing relief to illegals in any country.

If they truly care about their country, they should probably vote Trump which will give every other country, including ours, a tough time.

Looking at the US, I'm always reminded of the proverb/ saying: Hard times create great men. Great men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

This woman is a CPA, not an economist. And it shows in her understanding, which throws words like communism into the mix for more clicks and views. No wonder this video has 5x more views than all her other videos combined. Her policy understanding should actually qualify her for the Harris ticket, they show a similar lack of competence.

1. This policy is a bit wonky. A lot of US financial institutions offer loans against equity, both listed and unlisted. Most wealthy people use this to fund a lavish lifestyle while reporting near zero income. You can easiliy get a $ 50 m loan against $ 75 m in equity (1.5x). As the stock market climbs 2x, you only need to sell $ 25 m of your equity (previous value) to cover your loan, plus a small interest component. Your cost of capital is zero, your income is zero, your tax liabilities are zero. Elon Musk is a great example, so is Adam Neumann, the scamster formerly of WeWork. The only way to make this proposal work is to tax the liquidity received in loans against equity, thus reclassifying it as income instead of debt. Otherwise this proposal won't work.

2. Price caps in theory are a good idea and will be popular. I can't say about the reality.

3. This has become a massive controversy. I quite dislike Kamala Harris (and love Trump's entertaining theatrics) but she didn't say this. What she said was that everyone deserves to have access to healthcare, period. If you have a family of four, where the children are born in the US and thus legal, and the undocumented father falls ill, those US citizen kids are going to starve unless there is a healthcare net to take care of the family. This also removes people from the workforce, which is a net economic burden. Any economist will tell you that universal healthcare and social security increase economic activity and per capita productivity.

It would take 18+ years for this to have any effect - the illegals would need to make US babies who then grow up to vote, no guarantee on whom for. I cannot think of any politicians this intelligent and farsighted, outside of Robert Ludlum novels.

The curious thing is that many of owners of such enterprises are Republican supporters, they are make use of the free marker labor available at low cost (no minimum wage socialistic bureaucratic hurdles here)

Missing the illegal part?
How can an illegal immigrant have voting rights?

Yes, I guess that why I did mention showing a benevolent face - but it is my experience (perhaps I've had mostly harsh and bitter experiences): people in general are not benevolent unless they are following a set societal norm (like most people follow principles of charity because they follow a prevailing religion, not because they are charitable by nature).

Helping and empowering illegal immigrants occurs in no-one's textbook.


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Economically, how will the Point #1 will be factored and evaluated?
Mark to Market? That means it will be subject to the vagaries of market prices at the time of tax assesment! :Shockked: