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United States43591 Posts
On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead...
I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it.
Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable.
The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines.
The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically.
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On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically.
If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes.
... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez...
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United States43591 Posts
I'm using automation as an example of how wealth creation for the rich is often the opposite of job creation for those who need them. We live in an increasingly prosperous society with decreasing amounts of labour needed to keep a person in relative security. The question then facing us is how to deal with the unique challenges that faces for the old capitalist model which at present is allowing the monopolisation of what labour remains for the profit of a few while simultaneously creating and damning an underclass.
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On January 05 2014 04:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes. ... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez...
Automation means that more work != more jobs. Its relevant in the context.
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On January 05 2014 04:50 KwarK wrote:
I'm using automation as an example of how wealth creation for the rich is often the opposite of job creation for those who need them. We live in an increasingly prosperous society with decreasing amounts of labour needed to keep a person in relative security. The question then facing us is how to deal with the unique challenges that faces for the old capitalist model which at present is allowing the monopolisation of what labour remains for the profit of a few while simultaneously creating and damning an underclass.
We've been automating for a long while now, what's so unique this time?
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On January 05 2014 04:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes. ... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez...
He is basically taking Marx's ideas with the opposition between "dead" work (or constant capital) and labor (variable capital). Automation have negative (short term) indirect impact on labor incomes - mainly pushing people in unemployment, which afterwards helps employers to push wages down. It also split the worker force in two group : educated and non educated, with a society that leave no or almost no place for the uneducated work force.
If you can't understand the logic, it is better not to question it.
By the way, Kwark you make me happy when you talk about Marx. Your logic is really important in todays world. Since the end of marxism, we've all more or less accepted the economic language that mixt up capital and labor, and that consider - with the idea of "factor of production" - that the two "factors" participate equally in the production and thus that both need remuneration.
The idea that labor - or more exactly the "people" who work - is more important than the capital, and more than that the idea that we need to defend ourselves from "the capital" - what you call finance - is, from my point of view, a necessity.
On January 05 2014 04:57 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:50 KwarK wrote:
I'm using automation as an example of how wealth creation for the rich is often the opposite of job creation for those who need them. We live in an increasingly prosperous society with decreasing amounts of labour needed to keep a person in relative security. The question then facing us is how to deal with the unique challenges that faces for the old capitalist model which at present is allowing the monopolisation of what labour remains for the profit of a few while simultaneously creating and damning an underclass. We've been automating for a long while now, what's so unique this time?
Just read Marx if you want to know about all that.
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On January 05 2014 04:57 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes. ... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez... He is basically taking Marx's ideas with the opposition between "dead" work (or constant capital) and labor (variable capital). Automation have negative (short term) indirect impact on labor incomes - mainly pushing people in unemployment, which afterwards helps employers to push wages down. It also split the worker force in two group : educated and non educated, with a society that leave no or almost no place for the uneducated work force. If you can't understand the logic, it is better not to question it.
Did I say I couldn't understand something? What? How the hell does your brain work?
Nevermind, I don't want to know... maybe you're contagious...
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On January 05 2014 05:01 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:57 WhiteDog wrote:On January 05 2014 04:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes. ... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez... He is basically taking Marx's ideas with the opposition between "dead" work (or constant capital) and labor (variable capital). Automation have negative (short term) indirect impact on labor incomes - mainly pushing people in unemployment, which afterwards helps employers to push wages down. It also split the worker force in two group : educated and non educated, with a society that leave no or almost no place for the uneducated work force. If you can't understand the logic, it is better not to question it. Did I say I couldn't understand something? What? How the hell does your brain work? Nevermind, I don't want to know... maybe you're contagious...
Don't be so mad, it's okay to be wrong from time to time, it happens to everyone.
For Marx automation is a central exemple : it is the result of the desire of the capital to increase the rate of profit, but by replacing workers by machine - or dead work - it decrease the long term rate of profit. It's one of the key exemple of his "law of the tendency of the profit to fall". By trying to increase their profit and capital accumulation, bourgeois destroy long term profit.
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On January 05 2014 03:24 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:06 darthfoley wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 04 2014 06:47 Nyxisto wrote:On January 04 2014 06:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Side note - I'm not sure why you're figuring that low income / low education voters are opposed to single payer healthcare. I haven't seen that statistic. I was mainly referring to the surprisingly large group of "working class whites" that seem to root with the Tea Party or other Libertarian groups, or the Anti - Government agenda of the Republican party(which from a foreign perspective seems what they have been shifting towards). I am aware that lower income voters generally tend to favor the Democrats, but given the fact that the country is nearly split in half while the agenda of the GOP is basically putting 90% of the people at disadvantage is astonishing to me. Perhaps because the perspectives of comfortable middle-class people on the benefits of a heavy government blanket for all do not quite match up to the reality of the working poor trying to deal with the behemoth. I actually am one of those working poor, and dealing with the government on anything is about eight bitches and a half. What is promised by government and what is delivered by government "where the rubber hits the road" are two vastly different things. And it only gets worse when you're an employer or some kind of wealth creator trying to deal with the government. You guys can go on and on about how competently you do it in Europe but if that were actually true to the degree claimed, Hollande wouldn't be going all Reagan in a desperate attempt to save his bacon right now, your rich countries wouldn't be bullying the poor ones around to get their houses in order, the NHS wouldn't be treating patients like grandma and grandpa in the cheapest, most loathsome "retirement homes" in the US South, and immigration wouldn't be such a controversial issue. Sorry but it actually is true that you do eventually run out of other people's money, it actually is true that economic innovation and vitality are sapped by too much taxation and regulation, and it actually is true that the US economy is more resilient because we put less weights on it "for the common good" than Europe does. You've chosen the trade-off at a different point than the US has, and it hasn't leapfrogged you past us. Of course it is astonishing to you, when you think of economic advancement you don't look toward yourself, you look toward the government. Americans look more to themselves. And it's a laugh and a half that the "agenda of the GOP is basically putting 90% of the people at disadvantage." That is stupid. The GOP is the nationalist party, remember? What kind of nationalism is it to intend to "disadvantage" 90% of the people? "Shoot your country in the foot" nationalism? The GOP wants everybody to be as rich as they can possibly be, just like all political parties have their idealistic nonsense. Arguing that the people vote against their interest because they're ignorant or mystified or stupid never has been a winner and never will be. We live in democracies, the people decide what their interest is and if you don't like it, that's really just too bad. The GOP wants everyone to be as rich as they can be? Well, it definitely wants the rich people + businesses to be as rich as possible. Although i'm sure you'll construct some argument to say that deregulation + cutting taxes on the rich will have a great trickle down effect, especially when coupled with cuts to all the programs that support the poorer Americans. Because i'm sure that single mother who works 9-5 and is on food stamps isn't really working hard enough. I have a solution! Cut her welfare so that she has to feed her kids shittier food; THAT will motivate her to "work harder!" For anyone interested in the issues of cutting welfare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgxxT4xpVNI It's an informative and well presented documentary that challenges the stereotype of minorities feeding off the government as the principal welfare recipients. You say people decide what their interests are? I agree. Perhaps that's why the GOP has been beaten soundly in the last two general elections. The most confusing thing about that, is that the GOP seems to have gone farther right after getting small %'s of everyone that isn't white. Hell, Al Gore even won the popular vote in 2000. What about when the GOP expands government programs like Medicare and cuts taxes for lower income people? Is that just for rich folks too?
Yes. Obamacare makes insurance industry richer and lower taxes on lower brackets are just a political concession to get lower taxes on the rich.
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On January 05 2014 05:06 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 05:01 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2014 04:57 WhiteDog wrote:On January 05 2014 04:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. If I'm not mistaken, rising inequality is being driven by differences in labor incomes. ... and you're really complaining about automation? Geez... He is basically taking Marx's ideas with the opposition between "dead" work (or constant capital) and labor (variable capital). Automation have negative (short term) indirect impact on labor incomes - mainly pushing people in unemployment, which afterwards helps employers to push wages down. It also split the worker force in two group : educated and non educated, with a society that leave no or almost no place for the uneducated work force. If you can't understand the logic, it is better not to question it. Did I say I couldn't understand something? What? How the hell does your brain work? Nevermind, I don't want to know... maybe you're contagious... Don't be so mad, it's okay to be wrong from time to time, it happens to everyone. For Marx automation is a central exemple : it is the result of the desire of the capital to increase the rate of profit, but by replacing workers by machine - or dead work - it decrease the long term rate of profit. It's one of the key exemple of his "law of the tendency of the profit to fall". By trying to increase their profit and capital accumulation, bourgeois destroy long term profit.
But why are you telling me a story I've already heard?
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On January 05 2014 05:26 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:24 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2014 03:06 darthfoley wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 04 2014 06:47 Nyxisto wrote:On January 04 2014 06:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Side note - I'm not sure why you're figuring that low income / low education voters are opposed to single payer healthcare. I haven't seen that statistic. I was mainly referring to the surprisingly large group of "working class whites" that seem to root with the Tea Party or other Libertarian groups, or the Anti - Government agenda of the Republican party(which from a foreign perspective seems what they have been shifting towards). I am aware that lower income voters generally tend to favor the Democrats, but given the fact that the country is nearly split in half while the agenda of the GOP is basically putting 90% of the people at disadvantage is astonishing to me. Perhaps because the perspectives of comfortable middle-class people on the benefits of a heavy government blanket for all do not quite match up to the reality of the working poor trying to deal with the behemoth. I actually am one of those working poor, and dealing with the government on anything is about eight bitches and a half. What is promised by government and what is delivered by government "where the rubber hits the road" are two vastly different things. And it only gets worse when you're an employer or some kind of wealth creator trying to deal with the government. You guys can go on and on about how competently you do it in Europe but if that were actually true to the degree claimed, Hollande wouldn't be going all Reagan in a desperate attempt to save his bacon right now, your rich countries wouldn't be bullying the poor ones around to get their houses in order, the NHS wouldn't be treating patients like grandma and grandpa in the cheapest, most loathsome "retirement homes" in the US South, and immigration wouldn't be such a controversial issue. Sorry but it actually is true that you do eventually run out of other people's money, it actually is true that economic innovation and vitality are sapped by too much taxation and regulation, and it actually is true that the US economy is more resilient because we put less weights on it "for the common good" than Europe does. You've chosen the trade-off at a different point than the US has, and it hasn't leapfrogged you past us. Of course it is astonishing to you, when you think of economic advancement you don't look toward yourself, you look toward the government. Americans look more to themselves. And it's a laugh and a half that the "agenda of the GOP is basically putting 90% of the people at disadvantage." That is stupid. The GOP is the nationalist party, remember? What kind of nationalism is it to intend to "disadvantage" 90% of the people? "Shoot your country in the foot" nationalism? The GOP wants everybody to be as rich as they can possibly be, just like all political parties have their idealistic nonsense. Arguing that the people vote against their interest because they're ignorant or mystified or stupid never has been a winner and never will be. We live in democracies, the people decide what their interest is and if you don't like it, that's really just too bad. The GOP wants everyone to be as rich as they can be? Well, it definitely wants the rich people + businesses to be as rich as possible. Although i'm sure you'll construct some argument to say that deregulation + cutting taxes on the rich will have a great trickle down effect, especially when coupled with cuts to all the programs that support the poorer Americans. Because i'm sure that single mother who works 9-5 and is on food stamps isn't really working hard enough. I have a solution! Cut her welfare so that she has to feed her kids shittier food; THAT will motivate her to "work harder!" For anyone interested in the issues of cutting welfare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgxxT4xpVNI It's an informative and well presented documentary that challenges the stereotype of minorities feeding off the government as the principal welfare recipients. You say people decide what their interests are? I agree. Perhaps that's why the GOP has been beaten soundly in the last two general elections. The most confusing thing about that, is that the GOP seems to have gone farther right after getting small %'s of everyone that isn't white. Hell, Al Gore even won the popular vote in 2000. What about when the GOP expands government programs like Medicare and cuts taxes for lower income people? Is that just for rich folks too? Yes. Obamacare makes insurance industry richer and lower taxes on lower brackets are just a political concession to get lower taxes on the rich.
I don't think expanding Medicare makes the insurance industry richer. Nor do I remember only tax cuts for the rich being proposed.
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On January 05 2014 04:06 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... Does Trump pay out of his pocket for new hotels or does his hotel chain pay for it? Does Gates pay for a new windows out of his own pocket or does Microsoft pay for it? Additionally even the companies who spend the money will almost always spend that money regardless of tax-rates. Microsoft doesnt stop producing software because taxes went up 5%.
What difference does it make whether trump pays "out of his own pocket" or a company that he controls and owns pays for it? What matters it that an entity (be it Trump or his corporation) embarks on a project to make money, and that project gives people work. This is really inarguable so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Obviously Microsoft won't stop making windows if corporate taxes go up 5%. But it makes a difference at the margin. (If you don't understand what I mean by "at the margin" please google it -- it's very important) If you raise corporate taxes, corporations will factor that in when they decide whether to embark on a new project or not. When the regulatory climate is unpredictable and unstable, companies will hesitate to spend money because even if the laws are favourable now they may change next week.
If companies decide not to spend money, they either sit on their cash or they pay it out as dividends.
The point of all this is that "the super rich spending their money" does create jobs -- at least if they spend it with a view to making more money for themselves.
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On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically.
Interesting post. Just to clarify, I'm not asserting that financiers are benevolent. I'm not asserting that "the rich aren't rich enough". And it seems to me that you're just arguing semantics when you say "Trump is not creating the wealth, the workers are". OK ... if that's how you want to describe it ... so what?
Romney said something in one of the debates that stayed with me. He said, "The rich will be just fine no matter which of us becomes president". Of course -- the rich will always be fine no matter how the laws change. I don't care about whether the rich do well for themselves or not. I care about having a society where normal people have a fair chance to make a good life for themselves.
So the question then is, what can government do to help move us towards that society? When we think about this, we need to realize that high taxes, unpredictable rules, and transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor create a climate in which less wealth is created. You say that we shouldn't just focus on growing the pie. But we should also be careful not to shrink it.
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On January 05 2014 06:15 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:06 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... Does Trump pay out of his pocket for new hotels or does his hotel chain pay for it? Does Gates pay for a new windows out of his own pocket or does Microsoft pay for it? Additionally even the companies who spend the money will almost always spend that money regardless of tax-rates. Microsoft doesnt stop producing software because taxes went up 5%. What difference does it make whether trump pays "out of his own pocket" or a company that he controls and owns pays for it? What matters it that an entity (be it Trump or his corporation) embarks on a project to make money, and that project gives people work. This is really inarguable so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Obviously Microsoft won't stop making windows if corporate taxes go up 5%. But it makes a difference at the margin. (If you don't understand what I mean by "at the margin" please google it -- it's very important) If you raise corporate taxes, corporations will factor that in when they decide whether to embark on a new project or not. When the regulatory climate is unpredictable and unstable, companies will hesitate to spend money because even if the laws are favourable now they may change next week. If companies decide not to spend money, they either sit on their cash or they pay it out as dividends. The point of all this is that "the super rich spending their money" does create jobs -- at least if they spend it with a view to making more money for themselves.
Because were talking about "reducing taxes for the rich job creators so they make more jobs" when its not there money that makes jobs.
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Automation is no new phenomenon. We've had to adapt to technological progress and workers becoming obsolete ever since the invention of the printing press. It is only different now in magnitude, but that isn't an issue. There are millions of ways people can bring value in an economy, not only through manipulation of materials into goods, but through providing services as well. As long as a great majority of people are still performing unpaid, nonspecialized work by making a good or providing a service for themselves, there is a job to be found.
The issue is really who can pay for these jobs.
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The idea that business owners are "job creators" struck me as ridiculous the first time I heard it.
If anything people in the top 20% of income earners (more egregiously the top 1%) are job killers.
We know that for people to work, people have to want to consume something (food, shelter, entertainment, luxuries, etc...)
Well when we look at income we see a ratio of about 1:15, when comparing the avg income of the bottom 20% to the avg income of the top 20%. Meaning the average household on top about 15x as much as a household on the bottom. On it's own, not necessarily a devastating problem for our economy...
But when you breakdown the numbers and look at consumption between those same groups you can see a far more frightening picture. While taking in about 15x more than a household in the bottom 20% a household in the top 20% only consumes about 2x more (per person).
So if more compensatory consumption means more jobs, than the income derived by the "job creators" would actually create far more jobs in the hands of the average Joe than it ever will in someone like Trumps bank account. So by concentrating wealth so much at the top, people are actually killing jobs (or at very best preventing jobs) not creating them
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nrrCvhi.jpg)
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On January 05 2014 06:42 GreenHorizons wrote:The idea that business owners are "job creators" struck me as ridiculous the first time I heard it. If anything people in the top 20% of income earners (more egregiously the top 1%) are job killers. We know that for people to work, people have to want to consume something (food, shelter, entertainment, luxuries, etc...) Well when we look at income we see a ratio of about 1:15, when comparing the avg income of the bottom 20% to the avg income of the top 20%. Meaning the average household on top about 15x as much as a household on the bottom. On it's own, not necessarily a devastating problem for our economy... But when you breakdown the numbers and look at consumption between those same groups you can see a far more frightening picture. While taking in about 15x more than a household in the bottom 20% a household in the top 20% only consumes about 2x more (per person). So if more compensatory consumption means more jobs, than the income derived by the "job creators" would actually create far more jobs in the hands of the average Joe than it ever will in someone like Trumps bank account. So by concentrating wealth so much at the top, people are actually killing jobs (or at very best preventing jobs) not creating them + Show Spoiler +Image SourceSource
Sure, but don't forget about capital goods 
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United States43591 Posts
On January 05 2014 06:23 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:On January 05 2014 03:47 ziggurat wrote:On January 05 2014 03:36 Gorsameth wrote:On January 05 2014 03:32 Yoav wrote:On January 04 2014 22:05 KwarK wrote:On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:
some kind of wealth creator Isn't wealth creator a troll term invented to parody the way free market ideologues see the world? As in "poverty is caused by the 1% not having a great enough proportion of all the money so we need to give them more money so they can create money and jobs for us". Is there some kind of right wing reclaiming the term going on here or am I missing something? Wealth is created over time, and people create it. I won't argue it's the rich who are solely (or even mainly) responsible for this, but life, and economics, is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits from an efficient, competitive economy that prevents oligopolies and monopolies from dulling competition. As is apparent to everyone, there is something broken in our current system that causes our monumental inequality, and surely middle class entrepreneurs need more help in our economy. But the super rich spending money by creating and expanding businesses is certainly a good thing. Except the super rich don't spend there money on making jobs. Gates spending money doesnt give more people work. Trump spending money doesnt give people work. How do you mean? If Trump decides to build a giant new hotel in Las Vegas to try to make money for himself, he has to hire thousands of people to build the hotel, and the hundreds (or thousands) to manage and work in the hotel. That's a lot of work for people. If Bill Gates decides he wants to make some new software and sell it at a profit, he has to hire people to write it. If they decide that the regulatory/tax climate is shitty (business ventures aren't as likely to be profitable) then I guess they just keep their money in a swiss bank account. Or maybe build the hotel in Macau instead... I think Marx was more or less right with the wealth being created by those who put their labour in and the financier class basically just skimming off the lion's share. Now obviously investment carries risks and requires expertise but suggesting that Trump is creating the wealth generated by the profits of the new hotel in Las Vegas is ignoring the hundreds of employees who are receiving less for their labour than the client is paying for their services. The top 1% now have a record 39% of all wealth, something is going wrong and it certainly isn't going to be fixed by calling them job creators and pleading for society to make life a little bit easier for them. The "increase the size of the pie" argument ignores the fact that a small group of people are eating a bigger and bigger slice of it. Wealth is created by labour but the American ideal is the attainment of a state whereby a life of leisure can be achieved, not by the consumption of wealth preserved from earlier labour, but rather from the creation of wealth from wealth without the input of labour. The elusive "making your money work for you". This is a sickness, the money doesn't work for you, other people work for your gain while you do nothing but receive increased amounts of money which are fed back into a never ending cycle while the labour of the individual is marginalised and expendable. The financiers are not a benevolent class using their powers to create jobs for the average worker. Recent years have seen employees increasingly outsourced or replaced with machines, entire cities have been left to rot by dying industries, all justified in the name of wealth creation which never leaves the hands of the few. Political influence is for sale as campaign budgets increase year or year, public opinion becomes a commodity sold by the media and legal accountability for the actions of the rich disappears. I'm not blaming one political party for this, Bill Clinton sold Presidential pardons in exchange for donations to his wife's senate campaign for example, the disease crosses party lines. The idea that the problem is that the rich just aren't rich enough is funny until the labourers start parrotting it unironically. Interesting post. Just to clarify, I'm not asserting that financiers are benevolent. I'm not asserting that "the rich aren't rich enough". And it seems to me that you're just arguing semantics when you say "Trump is not creating the wealth, the workers are". OK ... if that's how you want to describe it ... so what? Romney said something in one of the debates that stayed with me. He said, "The rich will be just fine no matter which of us becomes president". Of course -- the rich will always be fine no matter how the laws change. I don't care about whether the rich do well for themselves or not. I care about having a society where normal people have a fair chance to make a good life for themselves. So the question then is, what can government do to help move us towards that society? When we think about this, we need to realize that high taxes, unpredictable rules, and transfers of wealth from the rich to the poor create a climate in which less wealth is created. You say that we shouldn't just focus on growing the pie. But we should also be careful not to shrink it.
Why must high taxes go alongside unpredictable rules? Also why does transferring wealth from rich to the poor necessarily involve less wealth creation? I see absolutely no reason for that. The rich don't act to maximise wealth creation, they act to maximise wealth creation for them. They don't care if, for example, moving jobs overseas leaves an entire city idle as the loss of employment causes dependent businesses to fail because those are negative externalities which become the problem of society as a whole. The overall output of society may have gone down as groups of people find themselves outside the business models of the financiers but the wealth of the few has grown. Wealth is created when people engage in productive labour, redistribution stimulates and revitalises economies. It allows parents to work fewer hours and spend more time raising decent kids, it strengthens community bonds and injects capital into the local economy that creates productive labour where before there could be none.
Unless you advocate the abolition of the minimum wage, working hour legislation, employee rights, workplace safety and so forth Americans are not going to be able to compete on an even playing field with Chinese people and this is only going to get worse as mechanisation replaces the Chinese. There is a surplus of American labour that capitalism has no use for, its creation dismissed as a societal externality with the associated loss of wealth not appearing on any balance sheet. Normal people are not getting a fair chance to make a good life for themselves. A great many are condemned to unemployment by a capitalist system that has discarded them. If there is more than enough pie for everyone but people are going hungry then why is the concern not making sure everyone gets fed? At the end of it all there won't be an awards ceremony with a prize for biggest pie.
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On January 05 2014 06:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 06:42 GreenHorizons wrote:The idea that business owners are "job creators" struck me as ridiculous the first time I heard it. If anything people in the top 20% of income earners (more egregiously the top 1%) are job killers. We know that for people to work, people have to want to consume something (food, shelter, entertainment, luxuries, etc...) Well when we look at income we see a ratio of about 1:15, when comparing the avg income of the bottom 20% to the avg income of the top 20%. Meaning the average household on top about 15x as much as a household on the bottom. On it's own, not necessarily a devastating problem for our economy... But when you breakdown the numbers and look at consumption between those same groups you can see a far more frightening picture. While taking in about 15x more than a household in the bottom 20% a household in the top 20% only consumes about 2x more (per person). So if more compensatory consumption means more jobs, than the income derived by the "job creators" would actually create far more jobs in the hands of the average Joe than it ever will in someone like Trumps bank account. So by concentrating wealth so much at the top, people are actually killing jobs (or at very best preventing jobs) not creating them + Show Spoiler +Image SourceSource Sure, but don't forget about capital goods
edit: I'm sick and am starting to get words mixed up
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On January 05 2014 06:47 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 06:42 GreenHorizons wrote:The idea that business owners are "job creators" struck me as ridiculous the first time I heard it. If anything people in the top 20% of income earners (more egregiously the top 1%) are job killers. We know that for people to work, people have to want to consume something (food, shelter, entertainment, luxuries, etc...) Well when we look at income we see a ratio of about 1:15, when comparing the avg income of the bottom 20% to the avg income of the top 20%. Meaning the average household on top about 15x as much as a household on the bottom. On it's own, not necessarily a devastating problem for our economy... But when you breakdown the numbers and look at consumption between those same groups you can see a far more frightening picture. While taking in about 15x more than a household in the bottom 20% a household in the top 20% only consumes about 2x more (per person). So if more compensatory consumption means more jobs, than the income derived by the "job creators" would actually create far more jobs in the hands of the average Joe than it ever will in someone like Trumps bank account. So by concentrating wealth so much at the top, people are actually killing jobs (or at very best preventing jobs) not creating them + Show Spoiler +Image SourceSource Sure, but don't forget about capital goods
"Capital goods: The sector of the economy that includes capital-goods-producing businesses such as Boeing, Caterpillar and Lockheed Martin. Aerospace, defense, construction and machinery businesses make up most of the capital goods sector."
Not a whole lot of individuals or households making those kind of purchases. Seeing as how I was talking about individuals/households not corporate entities your point is not really relevant.
If the idea was that instead of a few handfuls of individuals having ownership of the massive corporate wealth, that those corporations be more equitably owned by the masses i.e. more aggressive employee ownership models then I think you might be able to make sense of your one-liner. But then it would still be in support of my point which I doubt is what you intended.
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EPT
