US Politics Mega-thread - Page 764

On January 05 2014 04:25 KwarK wrote:

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.

On January 05 2014 07:23 ziggurat wrote:

I'm responding to your claim that "Trump spending money doesn't give people work." I guess you're not saying that anymore... but I can't figure out what you are saying.

On January 05 2014 07:30 Gorsameth wrote:


"Trump spending money doesn't give people work".
His company can spend money to make work however.
therefor "reducing taxes for the rich job creators so they make more jobs" is bs because there not using there own money for it.
You understand it now?

On January 05 2014 07:56 ziggurat wrote:

No. Do you know what a corporation is? Not trying to be condescending, I didn't really know until 2nd year law school. But a corporation is a vehicle that wealthy people use to invest money. When Trump or some other rich person embarks on a business venture, they do it through a corporation.

Corporations don't have their own money. They only have other peoples' money. So when you say "its his company not him that's spending money" I don't understand you. It's the same thing.

To the guy above who says that Trump doesn't spend much of his money -- that's probably true. A lot of businesses aren't spending money because of the crappy business climate these days.

On January 05 2014 08:05 WhiteDog wrote:

Your definition of a corporation is bullshit. In economy we don't see corporation like that. Your view just completly put aside the question of the distribution of profit between the people within the corporation. Your arguments have no real ground, it is true that rich people don't contribute much to the economy : you used the exemple of the hotel Trump might build, but Trump will eventually invest in such hotel only if there are valid perspective for profit, and that profit is only possible if there is a demand for the hotel.
If no people demand product, then you can build all the hotel you want you will not create any wealth (that's why economists use the concept of utility, because when you build something it is the usefulness of that thing for someone that value it and it is that process that is at the core of creating wealth). The problem with rich people is that they save so much and only invest in sector where they will maximise their profit (sector with lack of competition like monopoly) to a point where a big part of their capital does not contribute in creating any wealth. They even destroy wealth to a certain point by doing everything possible to them to continue to accumulate capital - like destroying competition.

On January 04 2014 18:34 DeepElemBlues wrote:


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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgxxT4xpVNI

On January 05 2014 07:01 KwarK wrote:

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.

On January 05 2014 09:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Yeah if there's no demand the hotel won't be profitable... and Trump will have lost money. That should be obvious!

What isn't obvious is how you're going to redesign the system to be more equitable and yet just as good at building hotels.

On January 05 2014 03:06 darthfoley wrote:


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:



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.

On January 05 2014 08:50 WhiteDog wrote:

You know all your point of view is base on chimera, an hypothetic system called "capitalism", "unique for its unparalleled capacity to inspire people" blablabla. Something that never existed and that cannot exist in the first place. That's why I rarely use the term capitalism, that's why I always feel bored when I hear or read anyone talking about "capitalism".

Creative destruction is a really interesting topic. But why do you use this idea while defending the idea of free market ? The idea of creative destruction was used by schumpeter to explain why the economy goes out of a slump, it is a concept that was used in his theory of the evolution economic, and more exactly a way for him to explain recovery after slump in relation to the existence of economic cycle - an empirical constatation.
The problem is that the idea of slump and economic cycle have never been fully explained by free marketist and it is, by itself, a proof that free market doesn't work. If the economy naturally tend to cycle with slump and recovery, and if the market is always optimal, does this mean that slump are optimal ? (and yes some economists defended this and it was wrong) Why should we not try to act and prevent the cycle from happening ? What's so important about creative destruction that we cannot do with economic policy ? Your answer to that will always be that the economic policy do more arm than good, but that is also not true empirically.

Ho but yeah, reality doesn't matter right. Let the kids die of hunger so that the population regulate itself, and let the economy create and destroy because it is the most efficient way to maximise capital accumulation.

By the way, in a "free" society the iphone would never have appeared, because there would be no incentive for such tool to appear : with no government, no private property, no money, no regulation, no pattern, etc.

On January 05 2014 09:20 Danglars wrote:
Hong Kong for an era, Singapore too. United States in its beginnings, becoming less and less true around the turn of the 20th century. Of course, France is largely in a post-capitalistic era. How's the unemployment working out for you? How about that 75% tax rate? Gerard Depardieu certainly liked it all the way to the airport. Socialism is in its heyday there. I see you've finally cured your society of its ills; congratulations! Try not to mortgage your Eiffel Tower when the new 3bil euro hike in taxes fails to keep pace with spending.

It was talked about by John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, and a host of others more than 100 years ago. It isn't the cure for never experiencing a slump, it is the quickest way back out should an economy find itself in one. Demagogues like you leap from freedom of choice to the dying kids, and it's your right to give us laughs if you choose. Oh yeah, and do us a favor and look up the profit motive. Look up the ideas of Adam Smith on the system existing with such state structures as police force, divisions for public cleanliness of streets etc. Don't be so foolish as to mistake capitalism for anarchy. Don't be so foolish to assume societies just don't develop naturally alongside a division of labor before there were any governments.