Socialism is legalized theft.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. You don't understand why the people who perform services for your benefit deserve your money? That seems obvious to me. This is just erroneous. The worker has invested his time and effort in the company - often more than the owner (the worker wroks 60 hour weeks while the owner's weekend starts on thursday). By your measure he deserves more of the rewards than the owner.That's not at all what I'm advocating, of course. Just enough for the worker to afford basic needs, like housing, food, and health care.Anyway, you wanted to talk about socialism and the ethics of "robbing the rich to pay the poor"? My point has been that the rich wouldn't be rich without the efforts of the working poor, so it's highly ethical for the rich to foot the bill of keeping the working poor housed, fed, and healthy. Yeah, it's great if you're a business owner. No one's disputing that. But it's hard to become a business owner, simply because other business owners are trying to muscle you out of the game. Not everyone can be a business owner. In a just society, you shouldn't have to be one to secure a livable wage for yourself and family.

And what should we do if we are under an unjust law? Attempt to correct that injustice, of course. For the reasons we've stated, the free market is unjust to the working poor. Therefore, we institute progressive taxation to correct that injustice. I think you're confusing communist government with socialism. No socialist state has ever existed - they've all been communist. And their specific ideosyncracities aren't inherent in the theory of socialism. Socialism doesn't make it illegal to quit your job, and it doesn't make it illegal to have private dealings, etc. Socialism just means that the infrastructure of production is held as common property, in the public trust - and therefore the profits can be divided fairly to ensure that all are provided for.So far you haven't explained to me why the contributions of certain workers should be held in such low esteem as to deny them a livable wage, despite the fact that the entire business, and by extention, society as a whole, depends on their effort.

Hey, whatever. A) you made the first post, and B) I can't help it if you say such obviously wrong stuff.But if this little experience helped you realize that there may be more to questions of economic morality than Rush Limbaugh would have you believe, consider it the first step to enlightenment. You don't have to be sorry or anything; just look a little further into economics next time. Nobody's mad at you.