Why I'm a leftist

My cousin asked me if I was a socialist, and I couldn't really answer the question. What I could say though was that I strongly advocate for left-wing economics, and I can explain why and I'm about to do that.

But before that, I googled left wing and opened up the Wikipedia article on "Left-wing". Apparently the terms left and right wing originate from the seating arrangements of the French estates general during the French Revolution. The people on the left wing were the people who opposed the monarchy. This is actually a little surprising to me because i always figured that left and right were terms used to distinguish different economic philosophies but I guess the term can, and has been used more broadly.

Back to my point, why do I support left-wing economics? To put it simply, I want to eliminate inequality. But I know that eliminating inequality is impossible. No matter how hard we try as a society some people will inevitably be more capable than other people, and they will rightfully earn more than other people. In other words, what I want is a meritocracy. The problem is free market economics is not actually meritocratic, and I say this as someone who sees a lot of benefits in having a free market, which is why I wouldn't advocate for a full on communist system.

The main reason why I think current economic systems aren't meritocratic is inheritance. If you are born into a rich family, you have many more opportunities than people born into poorer families. Which means if you are rich it's easier to stay rich, if you are poor it's hard to not continue being poor. For an economic system to be perfectly meritocratic, you would need to eliminate inheritance completely, I think it should go without saying that this is unfair, not to mention practically impossible, short of separating children from their parents to be raised together in an environment where no one child gets more privileges than another.

What you can do is provide people the means to have social mobility. The main way to do this would be education. Which is why I think ideally, all education should be publicly funded, or at the very least made affordable for everyone in society. I was watching a Bernie Sanders interview the other day and he made what I felt was a great point. If you go back many years ago(70-80 years maybe) you could get a job and live a middle class life with just a high school education.

Primary and secondary school education is pretty affordable in most places in the world, and this may be one of the reasons why, because a long time ago that level of education was enough to reach a certain amount of social mobility. Nowadays you need a tertiary education to get good jobs that allow you to live a middle class life. The people who can't afford tertiary education have to go straight to work in a job that won't get them out of the cycle of poverty. Now imagine the people in the cycle of poverty are members of a marginalised racial group, that's one of the reasons why racism and even segregation continue to exist in the modern era.

On a side note, these people who go straight to work often work minimum wage service jobs(waiters, counter clerks) may in the next few years see themselves be gradually replaced by automation. The people who would work these jobs will be unemployed in the future. If you think they're struggling to make a living now, they may not even be able to make a living in 15-20 years.

Going back to the cycle of poverty, illness and the cost of healthcare can also bring people into the cycle of poverty. That's why I think healthcare should be publicly funded as well.

You may say; well if these services are going to be publicly funded that means that taxpayers are going to pay for it, and in most if not all countries that means rich people are going to pay a higher tax burden to pay for these services. Why should they? My answer is this: as I've already said, it is easier to be rich when you are born rich. The riches one amasses are to some extent(to what extent it can't be known) because of inheritance. If we really want a meritocratic system we are going to have to reduce the default inequality that inheritance creates, and higher tax burdens on the rich are a necessary evil. But I have another argument for this that doesn't involve the concept of "necessary evil".

By living in society, we all benefit from society in ways that we may not even imagine. The phone you are using to read this, is the product of centuries of scientific progress that would not be possible without a somewhat organised society. Hence, I would say we all have a "moral debt" not to individual people, but to society at large(which of course is made up of individual people), for allowing us to live the lives that we do. And I think the natural conclusion to that premise is that rich people, who in particular have benefited more from society, should be "paying back" their moral debt at a higher rate than everyone else. The mechanism by which society as a whole is represented, Government, is thereby entitled to impose higher taxes on richer citizens.

The final point I'm gonna make is this: Democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider all the others. I strongly believe in democracy because I think it's the best way we have to maximise the public utility. Democracy works because when everyone votes in favour of their own interests, you have at least a little over half of society with their interests represented. Although ideally, everyone in a country should be thinking not only about themselves, but society as a whole. Otherwise you'd end up with tyranny of the majority(but this and other failures of democracy I'll save for another day). The word "idiot" is from Ancient Greece, and they used it to mean a person who did not participate in "public life".

In other words, the ancient Greeks thought that a person who did not take part in politics was an idiot. I myself like to be politically informed, I think it's very important, but I get that it's not for everyone. Life in the 21st century is infinitely more complicated than life was for the ancient Greeks, it's simply unfair to call someone an idiot just because they don't like politics. But there are people out there who just might participate in politics, who would be more politically aware, if it wasn't for their economic class.

There are so many people who just watch the news on TV or they have a certain news outlet they like and that's where they get all their information, because they simply don't have time to look at other sources. If you get back from your 9-5 job that you find stressful and tiring, are you really gonna spend an hour or two trying to catch up on all the news when you find politics stressful? Probably not, and add on top of that the fact that some people have to take home their work to do before they go to bed. Some people have to work a second job to support themselves giving them even less time. So the only news they have the time to consume might be heavily biased and bought out by the elites, and then when they vote based on the news they consumed, what they're really voting for is for the interests of the elites.

If we can give everyone the ability to not have to break their backs working to support themselves, we can have a more informed society which ultimately is necessary for Democracy to thrive. On the other hand, when people aren't properly informed they get convinced that the reason they're struggling economically is because of immigrants and minorities and other far right nonsense, and the people who are convincing them of this are the same people who are putting them in dire economic straits in the first place. The rise of far right and facist movements in history(1930s) and the present coincide with recessions.

What are you still doing here? The show's over. Go home.