neu said:
So poor people don't deserve access to good health care?
No one "deserves" food, healthcare, housing, etc...those things aren't rights, although the Left like to claim they are. Anything that requires the skills of someone else to provide it, cannot be a right. To make "good healthcare" available for all means you would have to take all of the good doctors who busted their butts to get their education and force them to provide services to everyone.
That would mean infringing on their rights.
Good healthcare has a price. There is a misconception that we have a free-market healthcare system right now, but that isn't the case, most amply illustrated recently by that doctor who wanted to provide services for a lower price to his customers, only to have the government come in and tell him he can't do that, he has to keep the price higher.
While I agree with most of your post, the examples you give here all had/have underground economies and so are not under complete government control.
Those countries had government controlled economies in the same way that the U.S. was alcohol-free during prohibition. That was the goal, but not the reality.
Yes I get what you're saying, that's because if the government owns all of the industries and tries to control the price system, the economy literally won't function, unless a black market pops up. In the case of the Soviet Union, the entire economy converts into one giant black market.
You have a very simplistic view of the world; you seem to think you live in a perfect meritocracy.
i.e there is a linear relationship between "hard work" and salary, and that poor people just don't work hard enough.
This is quite clearly not the case is it.
In a free-market economy, you aren't paid according to how hard you work, you are paid according to what you produce and how much of it you produce. How you produce it doesn't matter. If you build a robot that can do a job that used to take 50 men, and thus up your productivity to 50X as you are one person, well you will make lots more $$$, even if you are sitting on your butt from then on.
If you work very hard at a job that doesn't command a very high pay because it is easily replaceable, say a janitor, well then no you won't be paid much.
Another example, if you sit on your butt and code a great software program and start a company and make millions, well you probably haven't worked harder per se (at least not physically) than the janitor, but you have PRODUCED something far more valuable.
Wealth is created by creating better and more productive ways of doing things.
"The poor" is a misnomer. The only real reason "the poor" exist as they do is because of lazy people who won't work. Yes, there will always be a people who earn the lowest amount in society, but with all of the consumer products and services and the standard of living, even an idiot can make a semi-decent living these days.
You can work as a janitor and live in a one-room apartment, yet you still enjoy a standard of living beyond what billions in the world enjoy. You still have access to Starbucks coffee, high-speed Internet, computer, refrigerator, air conditioning, heat, shower, etc...yes there will always be some truly poor who weren't welfare folks, they just happened to get knocked on their rearend, and people can debate whether or not social safety nets should exist to help such people when they're down and out, but most of the "poor" exist only because society pays them to (welfare programs).