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On November 29 2016 03:38 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:On November 29 2016 00:06 Incognoto wrote:On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:Ecological/energy transition would be a good start, France is too slow on renewnable energies. It's called nuclear power. France is already very efficient with its energy, it's quite cheap and CO2 emissions are low. Renewable energy is hardly of primordial importance in France, it's basically the same idiot shit as re-building roads which are already fine. So there goes that. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:It's not necessarily about spending more, even if it's needed in some domains, but about spending better (e. g. the 41 billions of euros of the CICE = wasted money) and above all getting more tax revenues! Between fiscal evasion, tax niches and big companies paying almost nothing (much less, relatively, than small ones!), the State is lacking dozens of billions of revenues each year. Not to mention the fiscal shield for the ultra-wealthy; there's definitely a problem when people who have 30 billions of patrimony pay zero fortune tax… Lol. This is entirely different from Keynesian policies. That's just holding the super rich (people and companies) accountable. Which is, I entirely agree, absolutely necessary. Naturally what doesn't help is when ministers are responsible for tax evasions themselves. Unfortunately all French politicians are rotten to the core. Would be nice to drain that swamp. At very least, we're agreeing here. However this isn't state intervention in the economy, this is supposed to be normal. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:If you're liberal and/or accept the coercitive framework of the European treaties, yes. That's why Hollande's original sin/betrayal is his signature of the TSCG without renegotiating it, as he had promised. Just like Mitterrand, he chose the European Union over social transformation. The result is a TINA policy. So we should tell Europe to fuck off? Leave Europe? Furthermore, do you think that it is responsible, or a good idea, to gamble on short term economic stimulation, with the losing bet being bankruptcy (like Greece... which didn't go bankrupt while applying austerity measures). Also that debt will have to be repaid in the future. For all your hate on the banksters, you sure are keen to have them tighten their grip on our country. Aka trickle down economy… The thing which never worked and is responsible for most of the debt so far. In the fairy land of trickle down economy, lowering taxes → more profits → higher investment → more jobs → more salaries → more activity. In practice, the richest simply pocket the money and gamble it in the financial casino (or lend it back to the State, but with interests!!), while lower and middle classes are forced to pay more taxes to compensate (and/or debt keeps slowly rising, as it did the past decades). I'm not really talking about trickle down economy, I'm talking about economic liberties. Economic liberty is normal, sane and healthy. The "rich" pay more taxes than the lower classes, except for of course they don't, they're hiding their money. I'm not talking about the super rich, I'm talking about normal people starting small companies and growing them. The sub-prime crisis an example of the super rich fucking things up but their economic liberty isn't what I'm talking about, they are above the law either way. Banksters (I like the term) are being held more accountable today than before, which is fine. The private sector is also responsible for huge disasters like the subprime crisis. How is that a sign of competence? Unregulated capitalism always leads to catastrophes, the system is structurally imbalanced and concentrates wealth/power in fewer and fewer hands while the common good is lost (the private sector cares mostly about profit, the rest be damned). See the environmental crisis and rising inequalities following globalization. The 2 richest French possess as much as the 20 millions poorest ones. The 62 richest people in the world possess as much as the 3.5 billions poorest ones. That's absolutely insane and totally useless. That's, again, an issue with the richest being above the rules. They aren't playing the same game as you and I. Apple and co are above the law and write off legal fees as normal operation expenses. THAT is an issue, I completely agree. The issue here is not capitalism, the issue is that the richest people and corporations are above the law. If they respected the law then you can have capitalism and it will be the best thing in the world. But they don't and that is your problem. Some guy who invests in his start-up because he has a good idea is not a filthy piece of shit who is looking to exploit slave labor. Doctors and dentists are not hell-spawn. Working and making money is not a sin. Companies hire when they anticipate activity and profit, that's all. If you massacre solvent demand through wage austerity, they won't hire because there will be no (higher) demand to begin with… There's no link between unemployment and worker rights. Even the OECD, which doesn't exactly fight for international communist revolution, found a negative correlation between the two for France (i. e. the more you deregulate… the more unemployment you produce). The labour market has been deregulated for decades in France; CDDs, stages and intérim dramatically increased and unemployement has never been higher. Direct proof of the ineffectiveness of the liberal approach. Again, it's not the liberal approach which is the problem here. Liberalism doesn't mean that some people shouldn't follow the law. Companies do hire when they anticipate activity and profit and that is perfectly normal. However what you don't seem to understand is that salaries isn't the problem with companies. Companies have no problems paying big money to people if they're worth the money. However companies do not have the flexibility anymore to lay off people during economic trouble. So they don't hire. That is why CDDs, internships and interim work is so high. Companies don't want to take the risk of hiring people who will end up being liabilities. Nor should they. The first function of a company is to make money, not to employ people. I do agree that companies should be held accountable to their employees, to an extent. However in France I think it goes too far. You should be able to lay someone off easily without having to pay them a year's worth of salary or going through lengthy administrative procedures. Nor do I think that you should be able to fire someone on a whim and leave them without a job in a day. I think there's a middle ground somewhere to be found. you shouldn't conflate service industries (dentists and doctors) with "small businesses" selling products. theres a hard cap on income for professionals who sell services. you only have so much time and no one is going to pay you thousands per hour in a market saturated with professionals. its nearly impossible as a professional to make millions per year, for example, unless you own the business and are siphoning money off of new labor blood like law firms do. so when you say, "its not a sin to make money" and run a business, well, it's not so clear. it's impossible to become obscenely wealthy without exploitation and that's just a material fact. you know if you want to look at "true capitalism," or whatever your utopian liberal dream is here with private industry coming up with new products and services, that analysis was done 150 years ago. Marx's Capital is an analytical description of that perfect, steady state economy that some liberals claim to want. so the starting point should be there, not some vague claims about unleashing human creativity to get real competition. or if you are xmz and casually intimate that cyclic business cycles are not a natural law, at least take schumpeter seriously by providing a real critique. these are not new problems. Well, I don't know where you live, but dentists here charge 50 euros per filling. And drilling out a caries and putting in a filling is about 10 minutes of work and 10 cents (probably) of material. I wish I earned 50 euros every 15 minutes, even discounting overhead that's not a bad salary!
its hard for some people to wrap their heads around wealth inequality, i know. orders of magnitude are hard for people to grasp. but your dentist isn't making millions of dollars per year.
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On November 29 2016 03:37 IgnE wrote:
@nyxisto
what does "as labour vanishes" mean?
the reason that the "central critique" as youve phrased it is not what we see in "actually existing capitalism" is because of the dynamics between state power and private enterprise. monopoly formation, tax avoidance, state subsidies, (de)regulations, legal precedents, etc. all distort markets. people who think that having the state "get out of the way" of private enterprise is the solution to economic malaise are rightly opposed to some of the state's influence on private enterprise, but fail to legitimate or describe the appropriate scope of government, vaguely gesturing towards a laissez-faire economics. my point is that you if you want to take that goal seriously, Marx is the starting point. but even Marx himself knew that that wasn't the whole
description of capital's operation which is embedded in flows of social and cultural materials.
im not sure what that has to do with the labor theory of value
Well one critical argument is that value is derived from labour, and as capitalism innovates labour away profit margins will sink and capitalism will eventually end itself, no?
+ Show Spoiler +Simply put, Marx argued that technological innovation enabled more efficient means of production. Physical productivity would increase as a result, i.e. a greater output (of use values, i.e., physical output) would be produced, per unit of capital invested. Simultaneously, however, technological innovations replaced people with machinery, and the organic composition of capital increased. Assuming only labor can produce new additional value, this greater physical output would embody a smaller value and surplus value, compared to the value of production capital invested. In response, the average rate of industrial profit would therefore tend to decline in the longer term. It declined in the long run, Marx argued, paradoxically not because productivity reduced, but instead because it increased, with the aid of a bigger investment in equipment. The central idea that Marx had, was that overall technological progress has a long-term "labor saving bias", and that the overall long-term effect of saving labor time in producing commodities with the aid of more and more machinery had to be a falling rate of profit on production capital, quite regardless of market fluctuations or financial constructions
wiki summary, I don't really want to dig through Das Kapital now
But this clearly hasn't happened, even sectors that have largely eradicated labour create huge profits, they're actually the most profitable markets around. Say finance, IT and so on. Pushing all of this on distortion, evasion etc.. seems not convincing.
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On November 29 2016 03:40 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:38 Acrofales wrote:On November 29 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:On November 29 2016 00:06 Incognoto wrote:On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:Ecological/energy transition would be a good start, France is too slow on renewnable energies. It's called nuclear power. France is already very efficient with its energy, it's quite cheap and CO2 emissions are low. Renewable energy is hardly of primordial importance in France, it's basically the same idiot shit as re-building roads which are already fine. So there goes that. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:It's not necessarily about spending more, even if it's needed in some domains, but about spending better (e. g. the 41 billions of euros of the CICE = wasted money) and above all getting more tax revenues! Between fiscal evasion, tax niches and big companies paying almost nothing (much less, relatively, than small ones!), the State is lacking dozens of billions of revenues each year. Not to mention the fiscal shield for the ultra-wealthy; there's definitely a problem when people who have 30 billions of patrimony pay zero fortune tax… Lol. This is entirely different from Keynesian policies. That's just holding the super rich (people and companies) accountable. Which is, I entirely agree, absolutely necessary. Naturally what doesn't help is when ministers are responsible for tax evasions themselves. Unfortunately all French politicians are rotten to the core. Would be nice to drain that swamp. At very least, we're agreeing here. However this isn't state intervention in the economy, this is supposed to be normal. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:If you're liberal and/or accept the coercitive framework of the European treaties, yes. That's why Hollande's original sin/betrayal is his signature of the TSCG without renegotiating it, as he had promised. Just like Mitterrand, he chose the European Union over social transformation. The result is a TINA policy. So we should tell Europe to fuck off? Leave Europe? Furthermore, do you think that it is responsible, or a good idea, to gamble on short term economic stimulation, with the losing bet being bankruptcy (like Greece... which didn't go bankrupt while applying austerity measures). Also that debt will have to be repaid in the future. For all your hate on the banksters, you sure are keen to have them tighten their grip on our country. Aka trickle down economy… The thing which never worked and is responsible for most of the debt so far. In the fairy land of trickle down economy, lowering taxes → more profits → higher investment → more jobs → more salaries → more activity. In practice, the richest simply pocket the money and gamble it in the financial casino (or lend it back to the State, but with interests!!), while lower and middle classes are forced to pay more taxes to compensate (and/or debt keeps slowly rising, as it did the past decades). I'm not really talking about trickle down economy, I'm talking about economic liberties. Economic liberty is normal, sane and healthy. The "rich" pay more taxes than the lower classes, except for of course they don't, they're hiding their money. I'm not talking about the super rich, I'm talking about normal people starting small companies and growing them. The sub-prime crisis an example of the super rich fucking things up but their economic liberty isn't what I'm talking about, they are above the law either way. Banksters (I like the term) are being held more accountable today than before, which is fine. The private sector is also responsible for huge disasters like the subprime crisis. How is that a sign of competence? Unregulated capitalism always leads to catastrophes, the system is structurally imbalanced and concentrates wealth/power in fewer and fewer hands while the common good is lost (the private sector cares mostly about profit, the rest be damned). See the environmental crisis and rising inequalities following globalization. The 2 richest French possess as much as the 20 millions poorest ones. The 62 richest people in the world possess as much as the 3.5 billions poorest ones. That's absolutely insane and totally useless. That's, again, an issue with the richest being above the rules. They aren't playing the same game as you and I. Apple and co are above the law and write off legal fees as normal operation expenses. THAT is an issue, I completely agree. The issue here is not capitalism, the issue is that the richest people and corporations are above the law. If they respected the law then you can have capitalism and it will be the best thing in the world. But they don't and that is your problem. Some guy who invests in his start-up because he has a good idea is not a filthy piece of shit who is looking to exploit slave labor. Doctors and dentists are not hell-spawn. Working and making money is not a sin. Companies hire when they anticipate activity and profit, that's all. If you massacre solvent demand through wage austerity, they won't hire because there will be no (higher) demand to begin with… There's no link between unemployment and worker rights. Even the OECD, which doesn't exactly fight for international communist revolution, found a negative correlation between the two for France (i. e. the more you deregulate… the more unemployment you produce). The labour market has been deregulated for decades in France; CDDs, stages and intérim dramatically increased and unemployement has never been higher. Direct proof of the ineffectiveness of the liberal approach. Again, it's not the liberal approach which is the problem here. Liberalism doesn't mean that some people shouldn't follow the law. Companies do hire when they anticipate activity and profit and that is perfectly normal. However what you don't seem to understand is that salaries isn't the problem with companies. Companies have no problems paying big money to people if they're worth the money. However companies do not have the flexibility anymore to lay off people during economic trouble. So they don't hire. That is why CDDs, internships and interim work is so high. Companies don't want to take the risk of hiring people who will end up being liabilities. Nor should they. The first function of a company is to make money, not to employ people. I do agree that companies should be held accountable to their employees, to an extent. However in France I think it goes too far. You should be able to lay someone off easily without having to pay them a year's worth of salary or going through lengthy administrative procedures. Nor do I think that you should be able to fire someone on a whim and leave them without a job in a day. I think there's a middle ground somewhere to be found. you shouldn't conflate service industries (dentists and doctors) with "small businesses" selling products. theres a hard cap on income for professionals who sell services. you only have so much time and no one is going to pay you thousands per hour in a market saturated with professionals. its nearly impossible as a professional to make millions per year, for example, unless you own the business and are siphoning money off of new labor blood like law firms do. so when you say, "its not a sin to make money" and run a business, well, it's not so clear. it's impossible to become obscenely wealthy without exploitation and that's just a material fact. you know if you want to look at "true capitalism," or whatever your utopian liberal dream is here with private industry coming up with new products and services, that analysis was done 150 years ago. Marx's Capital is an analytical description of that perfect, steady state economy that some liberals claim to want. so the starting point should be there, not some vague claims about unleashing human creativity to get real competition. or if you are xmz and casually intimate that cyclic business cycles are not a natural law, at least take schumpeter seriously by providing a real critique. these are not new problems. Well, I don't know where you live, but dentists here charge 50 euros per filling. And drilling out a caries and putting in a filling is about 10 minutes of work and 10 cents (probably) of material. I wish I earned 50 euros every 15 minutes, even discounting overhead that's not a bad salary! its hard for some people to wrap their heads around wealth inequality, i know. orders of magnitude are hard for people to grasp. but your dentist isn't making millions of dollars per year.
You seemed to think small business owners do better than service professionals. That's all I was trying to dispute. Not wealth inequality. Most small business don't become Facebook. They are your corner grocery store (and if your city is like mine, it is owned and run by Chinese now, because the locals sold it due to not being profitable enough).
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On November 29 2016 03:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:37 IgnE wrote:
@nyxisto
what does "as labour vanishes" mean?
the reason that the "central critique" as youve phrased it is not what we see in "actually existing capitalism" is because of the dynamics between state power and private enterprise. monopoly formation, tax avoidance, state subsidies, (de)regulations, legal precedents, etc. all distort markets. people who think that having the state "get out of the way" of private enterprise is the solution to economic malaise are rightly opposed to some of the state's influence on private enterprise, but fail to legitimate or describe the appropriate scope of government, vaguely gesturing towards a laissez-faire economics. my point is that you if you want to take that goal seriously, Marx is the starting point. but even Marx himself knew that that wasn't the whole
description of capital's operation which is embedded in flows of social and cultural materials.
im not sure what that has to do with the labor theory of value
Well one critical argument is that value is derived from labour, and as capitalism innovates labour away profit margins will sink and capitalism will eventually end itself, no? + Show Spoiler +Simply put, Marx argued that technological innovation enabled more efficient means of production. Physical productivity would increase as a result, i.e. a greater output (of use values, i.e., physical output) would be produced, per unit of capital invested. Simultaneously, however, technological innovations replaced people with machinery, and the organic composition of capital increased. Assuming only labor can produce new additional value, this greater physical output would embody a smaller value and surplus value, compared to the value of production capital invested. In response, the average rate of industrial profit would therefore tend to decline in the longer term. It declined in the long run, Marx argued, paradoxically not because productivity reduced, but instead because it increased, with the aid of a bigger investment in equipment. The central idea that Marx had, was that overall technological progress has a long-term "labor saving bias", and that the overall long-term effect of saving labor time in producing commodities with the aid of more and more machinery had to be a falling rate of profit on production capital, quite regardless of market fluctuations or financial constructions , I don't really want to dig through Das Kapital now But this clearly hasn't happened, even sectors that have largely eradicated labour create huge profits, they're actually the most profitable markets around. Say finance, IT and so on. Pushing all of this on distortion, evasion etc.. seems not convincing.
Is it that wrong though? Value has to be seen in relation to each other, right? If we take resource-intense products like energy, heating, living space, food, water... all of that has increased drastically in the past 30 years. So products that require little refinement in relation to their cost, hence labor makes up for the smallest part of their cost are the motors behind inflation.
The service sector - very labor intense - is exploding, more and more people are just there to entertain or serve or educate one another.
Meanwhile our actual physical products are getting more and more high-tech - so you'd expect higher costs -, yet their prices are not increasing, because we manufacture them with less and less labor but the same amount of resources. Products that would have required lots of manual work in the past, they are the ones that are slowing the inflation.
Financial services are exploding because there is more and more capital on the capital market, more and more rich people. In the end this comes down to services, a specialist is investing for a rich person or developing computer programs to invest for him/her.
IT is obviously exploding in size, but much of its income goes back to advertisments, which is once again basically services - someone telling you what to buy for what reasons. The product itself often very cheap if not free.
You can obviously say that capitalism is not collapsing. However, besides the power and influence inequality between those with money and those without, which makes the rich richer and poor poorer and may lead to some quite radical political movements, capitalism is going some very odd way nowadays, providing less and less physical products and more and more services that often just come down to paid social interactions with a professional.
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Since when are the poor getting poorer? Please provide some evidence.
The movement towards services has been going on for decades. It's no different than thw movement towards industry before that. I don't see anything unusual in it. Our economies aren't providing less physical products just less as percentage of GDP.
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On November 29 2016 03:36 Makro wrote:
i don't think you're hated by some french fellow posters here just because they are in a clear disagreement
the reasons i don't agree with your are quite different than the others, and it's quite simple : france has a specific culture and history of doing things and a certain idea of what the society should be
you can't copy pasta an anglo saxon type of society into france like fillon(or insert whatever names here btw) wants to do and hoping for the best, that's too simplistic and as said before that's not gonna work because you don't take into consideration the society itself
struggle within the nation on a daily basis between lobbies and such will remain and it happens in every country, even the one that you would count as A+ in your book
your post seems like a copy of a generic comment on le figaro, i don't even know where to start actually
i'll just end saying that if you want the country to be in a better shape, try to vote for someone who has some political awareness and a plan, someone that would lead the country above the melee instead of pushing the agenda of their party (such as both candidate we will have in the second round)
sadly today you don't have any type of person like that, someone that would incarnate the State
I'm not a fan of Fillon or anything, it's just that he comes closer than others to what I think society should be like. I strongly believe in personal individual freedom (e.g. I'm pro-firearms). These beliefs of mine stem from the fact that people should have the room to do what they please. If your favored life-style is working easy hours, earning a bit less but gaining more free time, then that is your prerogative and you should be able to pursue that. If you want to become a hardcore businessman or if you want to start your own company because you have a good idea, then you should be able to do that.
Society is nice and all, but all societies should strive to let individuals flourish as they see fit. If you're gay, then you get to be gay, other people should not shit on you for being gay. If you're into making money, then you are free to pursue that without other people calling you a Nazi slave-driver (which is disgustingly prevalent in France).
The state should not be there on a daily basis in peoples' lives. They should be there to help educate the young, help people overcome personal difficulties (professional or health issues), provide justice and security services, defense services, etc. You can say it's anglo saxon or whatever, to me I'm just saying that people should do what they want to do and the government should take the back-seat.
I'm just as French as the rest of you so I'm allowed to try to skew my country into a more liberal (gasp!) one.
The funny thing is that so many people keep pretending that I and every other liberal condone the super-rich evading taxes. I don't, thank you very much.
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On November 29 2016 04:46 RvB wrote:
Since when are the poor getting poorer? Please provide some evidence.
Two effects:
What goes into the CPI changes based on the average person. If you earn less than an average person, the basic things of life like eating, living, heating make up for a much bigger part of your consumption than what is represented by the CPI. So if your wage is not increased at the rate with the goods you actually (have to) consume, but just the average inflation, you essentially lose out year after year after year. Which is why the rate of working poor is increasing, and if they are not working poor it is often nowadays that we have a man and a woman working 1.5 to 2 jobs for the same living standard that a single working man with a stay-home mum used to have.
Here is a chart for the inflation rate which shows how drastically different that is and what you get if you take a (much more cost of basic living focused) CPI from the 80s.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
The second one can be observed with the nominal CPI alone. The real wages have been hardly increasing, but the upper (non-capital) incomes of higher-qualified (i.e. rare) workers have increased more than the average. Hence, to get to a low average increase or a stagnation overall, lower wages have to be stagnating or worse. So even if they would consume "on average" - which they are often far from - they would be losing out.
The movement towards services has been going on for decades. It's no different than thw movement towards industry before that. I don't see anything unusual in it. Our economies aren't providing less physical products just less as percentage of GDP.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Less in terms of GDP, less in terms of what the "average job" of the "average person" is, which is composed much more of services. And in comparison to labor and resourceheavy jobs the prices for those goods are dropping a lot. Now as a thought-experiment, let's assume for a moment that instead of servicing each other we would just have a basic income to buy goods and we would be supernice and share our services... well, that is what Marx said. Since we are not supernice, since we do not have a basic income and since someone else is better at cutting my hair than I am he is wrong, but not that fundamentally in my opinion. The service sector is simply the left over part that is the little bit of value we create through expertise on the little things, but actually just leeching from everything else. You can take a coffee bar from Paris to Botswana and the value you are creating would drop by a lot. Not because your labor changes, but because the ecnomical net from which a service job is leeching, which is fueld by machinery, is much less developed.
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On November 29 2016 03:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:37 IgnE wrote:
@nyxisto
what does "as labour vanishes" mean?
the reason that the "central critique" as youve phrased it is not what we see in "actually existing capitalism" is because of the dynamics between state power and private enterprise. monopoly formation, tax avoidance, state subsidies, (de)regulations, legal precedents, etc. all distort markets. people who think that having the state "get out of the way" of private enterprise is the solution to economic malaise are rightly opposed to some of the state's influence on private enterprise, but fail to legitimate or describe the appropriate scope of government, vaguely gesturing towards a laissez-faire economics. my point is that you if you want to take that goal seriously, Marx is the starting point. but even Marx himself knew that that wasn't the whole
description of capital's operation which is embedded in flows of social and cultural materials.
im not sure what that has to do with the labor theory of value
Well one critical argument is that value is derived from labour, and as capitalism innovates labour away profit margins will sink and capitalism will eventually end itself, no? + Show Spoiler +Simply put, Marx argued that technological innovation enabled more efficient means of production. Physical productivity would increase as a result, i.e. a greater output (of use values, i.e., physical output) would be produced, per unit of capital invested. Simultaneously, however, technological innovations replaced people with machinery, and the organic composition of capital increased. Assuming only labor can produce new additional value, this greater physical output would embody a smaller value and surplus value, compared to the value of production capital invested. In response, the average rate of industrial profit would therefore tend to decline in the longer term. It declined in the long run, Marx argued, paradoxically not because productivity reduced, but instead because it increased, with the aid of a bigger investment in equipment. The central idea that Marx had, was that overall technological progress has a long-term "labor saving bias", and that the overall long-term effect of saving labor time in producing commodities with the aid of more and more machinery had to be a falling rate of profit on production capital, quite regardless of market fluctuations or financial constructions , I don't really want to dig through Das Kapital now But this clearly hasn't happened, even sectors that have largely eradicated labour create huge profits, they're actually the most profitable markets around. Say finance, IT and so on. Pushing all of this on distortion, evasion etc.. seems not convincing.
the tech sector's profits aren't just market distortions. you are conflating several things. the profit making of advanced industries has more to do with the high organic composition of their capital than what we were talking about. high tech essentially pulls profit from low-profit industries in traditional manufacturing which use extremely cheap, unskilled labor and so whose captal investment mostly is inorganic, or dead labor.
but in the face of grim economic growth prospects around the world its funny to hear people talk about how silly Marx's falling rate of profit supposedly is. when humans are fully replaced by slave-machines capitalism will be dead.
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On November 29 2016 04:06 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:40 IgnE wrote:On November 29 2016 03:38 Acrofales wrote:On November 29 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:On November 29 2016 00:06 Incognoto wrote:On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:Ecological/energy transition would be a good start, France is too slow on renewnable energies. It's called nuclear power. France is already very efficient with its energy, it's quite cheap and CO2 emissions are low. Renewable energy is hardly of primordial importance in France, it's basically the same idiot shit as re-building roads which are already fine. So there goes that. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:It's not necessarily about spending more, even if it's needed in some domains, but about spending better (e. g. the 41 billions of euros of the CICE = wasted money) and above all getting more tax revenues! Between fiscal evasion, tax niches and big companies paying almost nothing (much less, relatively, than small ones!), the State is lacking dozens of billions of revenues each year. Not to mention the fiscal shield for the ultra-wealthy; there's definitely a problem when people who have 30 billions of patrimony pay zero fortune tax… Lol. This is entirely different from Keynesian policies. That's just holding the super rich (people and companies) accountable. Which is, I entirely agree, absolutely necessary. Naturally what doesn't help is when ministers are responsible for tax evasions themselves. Unfortunately all French politicians are rotten to the core. Would be nice to drain that swamp. At very least, we're agreeing here. However this isn't state intervention in the economy, this is supposed to be normal. On November 28 2016 23:37 TheDwf wrote:If you're liberal and/or accept the coercitive framework of the European treaties, yes. That's why Hollande's original sin/betrayal is his signature of the TSCG without renegotiating it, as he had promised. Just like Mitterrand, he chose the European Union over social transformation. The result is a TINA policy. So we should tell Europe to fuck off? Leave Europe? Furthermore, do you think that it is responsible, or a good idea, to gamble on short term economic stimulation, with the losing bet being bankruptcy (like Greece... which didn't go bankrupt while applying austerity measures). Also that debt will have to be repaid in the future. For all your hate on the banksters, you sure are keen to have them tighten their grip on our country. Aka trickle down economy… The thing which never worked and is responsible for most of the debt so far. In the fairy land of trickle down economy, lowering taxes → more profits → higher investment → more jobs → more salaries → more activity. In practice, the richest simply pocket the money and gamble it in the financial casino (or lend it back to the State, but with interests!!), while lower and middle classes are forced to pay more taxes to compensate (and/or debt keeps slowly rising, as it did the past decades). I'm not really talking about trickle down economy, I'm talking about economic liberties. Economic liberty is normal, sane and healthy. The "rich" pay more taxes than the lower classes, except for of course they don't, they're hiding their money. I'm not talking about the super rich, I'm talking about normal people starting small companies and growing them. The sub-prime crisis an example of the super rich fucking things up but their economic liberty isn't what I'm talking about, they are above the law either way. Banksters (I like the term) are being held more accountable today than before, which is fine. The private sector is also responsible for huge disasters like the subprime crisis. How is that a sign of competence? Unregulated capitalism always leads to catastrophes, the system is structurally imbalanced and concentrates wealth/power in fewer and fewer hands while the common good is lost (the private sector cares mostly about profit, the rest be damned). See the environmental crisis and rising inequalities following globalization. The 2 richest French possess as much as the 20 millions poorest ones. The 62 richest people in the world possess as much as the 3.5 billions poorest ones. That's absolutely insane and totally useless. That's, again, an issue with the richest being above the rules. They aren't playing the same game as you and I. Apple and co are above the law and write off legal fees as normal operation expenses. THAT is an issue, I completely agree. The issue here is not capitalism, the issue is that the richest people and corporations are above the law. If they respected the law then you can have capitalism and it will be the best thing in the world. But they don't and that is your problem. Some guy who invests in his start-up because he has a good idea is not a filthy piece of shit who is looking to exploit slave labor. Doctors and dentists are not hell-spawn. Working and making money is not a sin. Companies hire when they anticipate activity and profit, that's all. If you massacre solvent demand through wage austerity, they won't hire because there will be no (higher) demand to begin with… There's no link between unemployment and worker rights. Even the OECD, which doesn't exactly fight for international communist revolution, found a negative correlation between the two for France (i. e. the more you deregulate… the more unemployment you produce). The labour market has been deregulated for decades in France; CDDs, stages and intérim dramatically increased and unemployement has never been higher. Direct proof of the ineffectiveness of the liberal approach. Again, it's not the liberal approach which is the problem here. Liberalism doesn't mean that some people shouldn't follow the law. Companies do hire when they anticipate activity and profit and that is perfectly normal. However what you don't seem to understand is that salaries isn't the problem with companies. Companies have no problems paying big money to people if they're worth the money. However companies do not have the flexibility anymore to lay off people during economic trouble. So they don't hire. That is why CDDs, internships and interim work is so high. Companies don't want to take the risk of hiring people who will end up being liabilities. Nor should they. The first function of a company is to make money, not to employ people. I do agree that companies should be held accountable to their employees, to an extent. However in France I think it goes too far. You should be able to lay someone off easily without having to pay them a year's worth of salary or going through lengthy administrative procedures. Nor do I think that you should be able to fire someone on a whim and leave them without a job in a day. I think there's a middle ground somewhere to be found. you shouldn't conflate service industries (dentists and doctors) with "small businesses" selling products. theres a hard cap on income for professionals who sell services. you only have so much time and no one is going to pay you thousands per hour in a market saturated with professionals. its nearly impossible as a professional to make millions per year, for example, unless you own the business and are siphoning money off of new labor blood like law firms do. so when you say, "its not a sin to make money" and run a business, well, it's not so clear. it's impossible to become obscenely wealthy without exploitation and that's just a material fact. you know if you want to look at "true capitalism," or whatever your utopian liberal dream is here with private industry coming up with new products and services, that analysis was done 150 years ago. Marx's Capital is an analytical description of that perfect, steady state economy that some liberals claim to want. so the starting point should be there, not some vague claims about unleashing human creativity to get real competition. or if you are xmz and casually intimate that cyclic business cycles are not a natural law, at least take schumpeter seriously by providing a real critique. these are not new problems. Well, I don't know where you live, but dentists here charge 50 euros per filling. And drilling out a caries and putting in a filling is about 10 minutes of work and 10 cents (probably) of material. I wish I earned 50 euros every 15 minutes, even discounting overhead that's not a bad salary! its hard for some people to wrap their heads around wealth inequality, i know. orders of magnitude are hard for people to grasp. but your dentist isn't making millions of dollars per year. You seemed to think small business owners do better than service professionals. That's all I was trying to dispute. Not wealth inequality. Most small business don't become Facebook. They are your corner grocery store (and if your city is like mine, it is owned and run by Chinese now, because the locals sold it due to not being profitable enough).
my point was that service providers like the professional classes are qualitatively different enterprises from industry, that's all. so to talk about the dynamism of capital and then complain that dentists are having a hard time unleashing economic energies is nonsensical
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On November 29 2016 05:43 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 03:45 Nyxisto wrote:On November 29 2016 03:37 IgnE wrote:
@nyxisto
what does "as labour vanishes" mean?
the reason that the "central critique" as youve phrased it is not what we see in "actually existing capitalism" is because of the dynamics between state power and private enterprise. monopoly formation, tax avoidance, state subsidies, (de)regulations, legal precedents, etc. all distort markets. people who think that having the state "get out of the way" of private enterprise is the solution to economic malaise are rightly opposed to some of the state's influence on private enterprise, but fail to legitimate or describe the appropriate scope of government, vaguely gesturing towards a laissez-faire economics. my point is that you if you want to take that goal seriously, Marx is the starting point. but even Marx himself knew that that wasn't the whole
description of capital's operation which is embedded in flows of social and cultural materials.
im not sure what that has to do with the labor theory of value
Well one critical argument is that value is derived from labour, and as capitalism innovates labour away profit margins will sink and capitalism will eventually end itself, no? + Show Spoiler +Simply put, Marx argued that technological innovation enabled more efficient means of production. Physical productivity would increase as a result, i.e. a greater output (of use values, i.e., physical output) would be produced, per unit of capital invested. Simultaneously, however, technological innovations replaced people with machinery, and the organic composition of capital increased. Assuming only labor can produce new additional value, this greater physical output would embody a smaller value and surplus value, compared to the value of production capital invested. In response, the average rate of industrial profit would therefore tend to decline in the longer term. It declined in the long run, Marx argued, paradoxically not because productivity reduced, but instead because it increased, with the aid of a bigger investment in equipment. The central idea that Marx had, was that overall technological progress has a long-term "labor saving bias", and that the overall long-term effect of saving labor time in producing commodities with the aid of more and more machinery had to be a falling rate of profit on production capital, quite regardless of market fluctuations or financial constructions , I don't really want to dig through Das Kapital now But this clearly hasn't happened, even sectors that have largely eradicated labour create huge profits, they're actually the most profitable markets around. Say finance, IT and so on. Pushing all of this on distortion, evasion etc.. seems not convincing. the tech sector's profits aren't just market distortions. you are conflating several things. the profit making of advanced industries has more to do with the high organic composition of their capital than what we were talking about. high tech essentially pulls profit from low-profit industries in traditional manufacturing which use extremely cheap, unskilled labor and so whose captal investment mostly is inorganic, or dead labor. but in the face of grim economic growth prospects around the world its funny to hear people talk about how silly Marx's falling rate of profit supposedly is. when humans are fully replaced by slave-machines capitalism will be dead.
But it's not like profits are falling overall. In some industries in the developed world it seems reasonable that certain sectors might be squeezing the labour of others, but both global profits and also the amount of labour in the world seems to rise. A falling rate of labour and unemployment through technological innovation is also something that this thesis would predict but it's not happening. The world economy added about a billion jobs or something between 1980 and 2015. Even Marxists don't seem so convinced of this any more. Here's a paper by Harvey, don't know if you've read it.
https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/harvey-on-ltrpf.pdf
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its not a simple case of "squeezing," it has to do with organic composition of capital. im not sure you are really understanding, but im using terms of art that have definite meanings. this originally came up because incognito was talking about how he wants to liberalize the french economy. he made a couple of jejune comments about how trickle-down economics "makes sense" to him and argued that recent data showed "keynesian" economics doesnt work and is a waste of money because bureaucrats are lazy people who dont know how to innovate.
next thing i know we are suddenly talking about whether marx's idea of the falling rate of profit has been discredited because the global economy added a billion jobs or whatever in the last 40 years. the law of the falling rate of profit is only applicable under a very narrow set of conditions. none of the stuff youve brought up says much of anything about those conditions except perhaps that those conditions arent currently obtaining. people who try to boil down Marx to the application of these simplistic laws are missing the complexity of his actual positions. i don't understand why such people misapply things like the falling rate of profit before completely dismissing Marx but are willing to believe a bunch of hocus pocus from orthodox economists and love malcolm gladwell
it is odd though that you can say that technological advances haven't led to rising unemployment with a straight face.
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Technological advance generally hasn't lead to rising unemployment, just displacement of workers into other sectors and sometimes not even that. On many occasions technological advance has turned some luxury into a general consumption good and actually created many new jobs along the way. Take for example weaving jobs which were displaced by weaving machines but in turn the goods became so accessible that the number of people working in the industry after some time increased. There's probably more jobs around literature and writing now than there was before we invented printing.
Digitisation and the modern econmy actually might bring about many scenarios in which demand for labour rises. Your dentist is maybe going to be replaced by a machine but there'll be guys who provide services around that, and dentistry might become much more accessible than it is now increasing demand.
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are you serious right now? you think youth unemployment in europe is just a cyclical trend? still recovering from 2008?
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On November 29 2016 00:06 Incognoto wrote:
It's called nuclear power. France is already very efficient with its energy, it's quite cheap and CO2 emissions are low. Renewable energy is hardly of primordial importance in France, it's basically the same idiot shit as re-building roads which are already fine. So there goes that.
? Our nuclear park is aging and has tons of problems, and the nuclear branch is killing EDF. Our only way to deal with nuclear waste is “bury and pray”. Nuclear isn't cheap at all when you factor indirect and future costs (I thought you were worried about debt!?): it will cost hundreds of billions to dismantle old plants, and we don't even know how to proceed. On top of that, it makes us dependent on uranium supply.
Lol. This is entirely different from Keynesian policies.
If you want to specifically discuss this, it should have been done in 2011 instead of austerity killing the resumption of growth (most of the trade is done within the EU, so it was particularly stupid to drag each other to the bottom). The problem is that it should have been done in the whole eurozone, in a coordinated way—but there was (is) no political union/consensus about that, because the EU and the eurozone are lame ducks.
So we should tell Europe to fuck off? Leave Europe?
Change or leave, yes. We voted no to the 2005 referendum, but the PS and UMP députés voted yes in 2008 against our will. The TSCG was adopted without a referendum while it has major impact on our sovereignty. The French people never said yes to the last orientations taken by the EU, so actually our pro-EU politicians are the ones who told the population to f*ck off.
The European Union, and especially the eurozone, are dysfunctional at almost all levels. We don't have the same social models, the same political culture, the same economic strategies, the same conceptions regarding currency, etc., so I don't see why we should all obey to the same rigid institutional framework, especially when it was adopted in such an undemocratic way and is clearly failing for several countries.
That's, again, an issue with the richest being above the rules. They aren't playing the same game as you and I. Apple and co are above the law and write off legal fees as normal operation expenses. THAT is an issue, I completely agree. The issue here is not capitalism, the issue is that the richest people and corporations are above the law. If they respected the law then you can have capitalism and it will be the best thing in the world.
Yeah, except it's a typical development of capitalism: the emergence of monstruously powerful entities which then have the possibility to bend the laws and the economic environment to their advantage. With money you buy influence/power, directly or indirectly.
However companies do not have the flexibility anymore to lay off people during economic trouble.
If that was true, we wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of ruptures conventionnelles per year, and we wouldn't see Goodyear (just taking an example) lay off abusively hundreds of workers even if the whole company was performing decently or well.
If procedures are lengthy, it is simply because we're lacking personal to handle all the cases.
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QUOTE]On November 29 2016 07:29 IgnE wrote:
are you serious right now? you think youth unemployment in europe is just a cyclical trend? still recovering from 2008? [/QUOTE]
Well its cyclical in some way though that is a very long cycle and not the cycle people usually mean. I do think that the youth unemployment in Europe has very little to do with technological advancement. It has more to do with globalization,which increases competition world wide.
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Norway28695 Posts
'necessary man-hours to operate society' is obviously going to decrease as digitization and automatization increase.It's true that there are areas where societal development points towards more, not less required laborers (an aging population needs more health workers, manufacturing of clean energy sources, recycling), but overall there's just no doubt about it; there is going to gradually be less and less demand for human work. factories and warehouses operate significantly more efficiently than they did 50 years ago. Farming, oh boy. Sure, there's emerged a new demand for 'app developers', there's a demand for human grunt work to help computers wherever the algorithms fall short.. But eventually, people actually will have developed most apps that there is demand for. And the algorithms will become sufficiently intelligent. And while infrastructure needs to be improved upon every now and then, we're hopefully not ever gonna see the type of demand for infrastructure rebuilding we saw during the late 40s and 50s.
Just a few days ago I read that one of the biggest potato chip producers in Norway only have 21 employees because their factory is so automated. Some of the grocery stores I go to similarly have less employees - self-checkout lines are becoming increasingly common. Driverless cars taking over taxis and trucking. Bank tellers disappearing, because everyone is transferring money online. Salaries are so high here (especially Norway, but the west in general) that the best way to increase profit is to have as few employees as possible, so you see these efforts from pretty much every single involved party.
Basically only ways to have as big of a labor force as we did in the past is either to a) stop thinking that 8 hours is the amount of time people should have to work per day or b) demand that people spend their days doing entirely unproductive shit at work. The fully automated post-scarcity society is still far away, but it seems clear to me that we're eventually gonna have to completely rethink redistribution models because 'letting stuff run its course' is just gonna lead to wealth concentration at levels we haven't seen before.
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On November 29 2016 08:29 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 00:06 Incognoto wrote:
It's called nuclear power. France is already very efficient with its energy, it's quite cheap and CO2 emissions are low. Renewable energy is hardly of primordial importance in France, it's basically the same idiot shit as re-building roads which are already fine. So there goes that. ? Our nuclear park is aging and has tons of problems, and the nuclear branch is killing EDF. Our only way to deal with nuclear waste is “bury and pray”. Nuclear isn't cheap at all when you factor indirect and future costs (I thought you were worried about debt!?): it will cost hundreds of billions to dismantle old plants, and we don't even know how to proceed. On top of that, it makes us dependent on uranium supply. If you want to specifically discuss this, it should have been done in 2011 instead of austerity killing the resumption of growth (most of the trade is done within the EU, so it was particularly stupid to drag each other to the bottom). The problem is that it should have been done in the whole eurozone, in a coordinated way—but there was (is) no political union/consensus about that, because the EU and the eurozone are lame ducks. Change or leave, yes. We voted no to the 2005 referendum, but the PS and UMP députés voted yes in 2008 against our will. The TSCG was adopted without a referendum while it has major impact on our sovereignty. The French people never said yes to the last orientations taken by the EU, so actually our pro-EU politicians are the ones who told the population to f*ck off. The European Union, and especially the eurozone, are dysfunctional at almost all levels. We don't have the same social models, the same political culture, the same economic strategies, the same conceptions regarding currency, etc., so I don't see why we should all obey to the same rigid institutional framework, especially when it was adopted in such an undemocratic way and is clearly failing for several countries. Show nested quote +That's, again, an issue with the richest being above the rules. They aren't playing the same game as you and I. Apple and co are above the law and write off legal fees as normal operation expenses. THAT is an issue, I completely agree. The issue here is not capitalism, the issue is that the richest people and corporations are above the law. If they respected the law then you can have capitalism and it will be the best thing in the world. Yeah, except it's a typical development of capitalism: the emergence of monstruously powerful entities which then have the possibility to bend the laws and the economic environment to their advantage. With money you buy influence/power, directly or indirectly. Show nested quote +However companies do not have the flexibility anymore to lay off people during economic trouble. If that was true, we wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of ruptures conventionnelles per year, and we wouldn't see Goodyear (just taking an example) lay off abusively hundreds of workers even if the whole company was performing decently or well. If procedures are lengthy, it is simply because we're lacking personal to handle all the cases.
Future costs? What is this senseless fear mongering? Out of all the possible energy sources, nuclear power is by far the best one until sustainable renewable energy come into play. This is especially true for France since infrastructure and technique is already here. What would you have us do? Be reliant on coal? On Russia's natural gas? Screw that, CO2. Solar energy? Condemn Brittany to the stone age? That doesn't work either. Nuclear is by far the best stop-gap option we have, but I digress, this isn't about nuclear power, it's about what investments would help France's economy. So far, you've come up just a random ecological tangent on how nuclear power is bad, which is hilarious to say the least.
Ah, OK, so now you're proposing Frexit. "Fuck Europe, if they don't have OUR stupid values and OUR way of doing things, they're RETARDS because FRANCE IS THE ONLY WORKING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD". How silly that sounds, I'm wondering if you're going to vote for the FN?
If we have a common currency, then it makes sense to have a common fiscal and monetary policy. So, yes, Europe gets to call the shots. That's part of what it means to be a part of the EU. France is one country out of 28. Why should Europe cater towards France and ignore 27 other countries? This is absolute silliness. The gist of what you're saying is that you are more important than the rest of Europe. How entitled can you get? :/
Yeah, except it's a typical development of capitalism: the emergence of monstruously powerful entities which then have the possibility to bend the laws and the economic environment to their advantage. With money you buy influence/power, directly or indirectly.
What a dishonest argument. There is obviously an issue with deregulated capitalism where companies are able to evade taxes and playing the game fairly. Obviously. However you take a shit on the entirety of capitalism and economic freedom because the richest players are above the law. This argument is so dishonest. You're saying the game is shit, instead of realizing that the game is being hurt tremendously by the fact that there is cheating. Is corruption a non-issue in communist regimes? So, so dishonest.
If procedures are lengthy, it is simply because we're lacking personal to handle all the cases.
Hahahaha! Hilarious. Are you serious? If procedures are lengthy it's because procedures are fucking stupid. There shouldn't be a court case every time someone gets laid off. Whether it's economic reasons or it's the person being a useless shit, the company should be able to separate themselves from that employee easily. It shouldn't be USA level of "get your things I want you gone in an hour", but nor should it be "we're firing you so here is a year's worth of salary, enjoy your 3 years of unemployment salary oh and don't forget to drop by the prud'hommes for an extra €5k". There is obviously a middle ground between the two and you're so dishonest that you willingly fail to see that I am trying to nuance what I say.
Your attitude is very dishonest and prevalent in French society. You think you are the only person who is right and that everyone disagrees with you is a mouth-breather. Your arguments are mostly dishonest rhetoric (nuclear power is bad!! no sources; rich people are bad!!; europe should follow FRENCH values!!) without any real substance.
I did however learn that there is apparently not a real correlation between unemployment and substantial labor protection, though even that I question because the very definition of unemployment is often changed around to most suit whatever the person is arguing. Confirmation bias.
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On November 29 2016 17:51 Liquid`Drone wrote:
'necessary man-hours to operate society' is obviously going to decrease as digitization and automatization increase.It's true that there are areas where societal development points towards more, not less required laborers (an aging population needs more health workers, manufacturing of clean energy sources, recycling), but overall there's just no doubt about it; there is going to gradually be less and less demand for human work. factories and warehouses operate significantly more efficiently than they did 50 years ago. Farming, oh boy. Sure, there's emerged a new demand for 'app developers', there's a demand for human grunt work to help computers wherever the algorithms fall short.. But eventually, people actually will have developed most apps that there is demand for. And the algorithms will become sufficiently intelligent. And while infrastructure needs to be improved upon every now and then, we're hopefully not ever gonna see the type of demand for infrastructure rebuilding we saw during the late 40s and 50s.
Just a few days ago I read that one of the biggest potato chip producers in Norway only have 21 employees because their factory is so automated. Some of the grocery stores I go to similarly have less employees - self-checkout lines are becoming increasingly common. Driverless cars taking over taxis and trucking. Bank tellers disappearing, because everyone is transferring money online. Salaries are so high here (especially Norway, but the west in general) that the best way to increase profit is to have as few employees as possible, so you see these efforts from pretty much every single involved party.
Basically only ways to have as big of a labor force as we did in the past is either to a) stop thinking that 8 hours is the amount of time people should have to work per day or b) demand that people spend their days doing entirely unproductive shit at work. The fully automated post-scarcity society is still far away, but it seems clear to me that we're eventually gonna have to completely rethink redistribution models because 'letting stuff run its course' is just gonna lead to wealth concentration at levels we haven't seen before.
Sørlandschips is about 30 employees now that they've moved to the new factory site, and the automation requires expertise to operate and maintain, but you're right of-course. Less people, and more / larger machines, and the machines they get produce more.
http://frifagbevegelse.no/nnnarbeideren/cecilie-fikk-jobb-pa-dagen-6.158.398116.57f35927e3
I worked in Hennig Olsen is, and the top icecream line used to produce about 12.000 icecreams per hour. When I moved my employment elsewhere they had begun installing a new top of the line production line that could do 18.000 to 22.000 icecreams per hour.
The best we can do is stop thinking that 8 hours is the amount of time people should work per day. That's why LO is pushing for 6 hours max workday's.
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On November 29 2016 17:51 Liquid`Drone wrote:
'necessary man-hours to operate society' is obviously going to decrease as digitization and automatization increase.It's true that there are areas where societal development points towards more, not less required laborers (an aging population needs more health workers, manufacturing of clean energy sources, recycling), but overall there's just no doubt about it; there is going to gradually be less and less demand for human work. factories and warehouses operate significantly more efficiently than they did 50 years ago. Farming, oh boy. Sure, there's emerged a new demand for 'app developers', there's a demand for human grunt work to help computers wherever the algorithms fall short.. But eventually, people actually will have developed most apps that there is demand for. And the algorithms will become sufficiently intelligent. And while infrastructure needs to be improved upon every now and then, we're hopefully not ever gonna see the type of demand for infrastructure rebuilding we saw during the late 40s and 50s.
Just a few days ago I read that one of the biggest potato chip producers in Norway only have 21 employees because their factory is so automated. Some of the grocery stores I go to similarly have less employees - self-checkout lines are becoming increasingly common. Driverless cars taking over taxis and trucking. Bank tellers disappearing, because everyone is transferring money online. Salaries are so high here (especially Norway, but the west in general) that the best way to increase profit is to have as few employees as possible, so you see these efforts from pretty much every single involved party.
Basically only ways to have as big of a labor force as we did in the past is either to a) stop thinking that 8 hours is the amount of time people should have to work per day or b) demand that people spend their days doing entirely unproductive shit at work. The fully automated post-scarcity society is still far away, but it seems clear to me that we're eventually gonna have to completely rethink redistribution models because 'letting stuff run its course' is just gonna lead to wealth concentration at levels we haven't seen before.
We have to wait for a government to try the basic income. Finland unfortunately settled for a smaller basic income in their experiment which will show absolutely nothing. Swiss said no etc etc But the idea is in the air, if one of those rather small but rich country launch it succesfully, it will open some great opportunities for humanity.
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On November 29 2016 05:22 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 04:46 RvB wrote:
Since when are the poor getting poorer? Please provide some evidence. Two effects: What goes into the CPI changes based on the average person. If you earn less than an average person, the basic things of life like eating, living, heating make up for a much bigger part of your consumption than what is represented by the CPI. So if your wage is not increased at the rate with the goods you actually (have to) consume, but just the average inflation, you essentially lose out year after year after year. Which is why the rate of working poor is increasing, and if they are not working poor it is often nowadays that we have a man and a woman working 1.5 to 2 jobs for the same living standard that a single working man with a stay-home mum used to have. Here is a chart for the inflation rate which shows how drastically different that is and what you get if you take a (much more cost of basic living focused) CPI from the 80s. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-chartsThe second one can be observed with the nominal CPI alone. The real wages have been hardly increasing, but the upper (non-capital) incomes of higher-qualified (i.e. rare) workers have increased more than the average. Hence, to get to a low average increase or a stagnation overall, lower wages have to be stagnating or worse. So even if they would consume "on average" - which they are often far from - they would be losing out. Show nested quote +The movement towards services has been going on for decades. It's no different than thw movement towards industry before that. I don't see anything unusual in it. Our economies aren't providing less physical products just less as percentage of GDP. Yeah, that's what I meant. Less in terms of GDP, less in terms of what the "average job" of the "average person" is, which is composed much more of services. And in comparison to labor and resourceheavy jobs the prices for those goods are dropping a lot. Now as a thought-experiment, let's assume for a moment that instead of servicing each other we would just have a basic income to buy goods and we would be supernice and share our services... well, that is what Marx said. Since we are not supernice, since we do not have a basic income and since someone else is better at cutting my hair than I am he is wrong, but not that fundamentally in my opinion. The service sector is simply the left over part that is the little bit of value we create through expertise on the little things, but actually just leeching from everything else. You can take a coffee bar from Paris to Botswana and the value you are creating would drop by a lot. Not because your labor changes, but because the ecnomical net from which a service job is leeching, which is fueld by machinery, is much less developed.
A good source please. Shadowstats gives negative economic growth for the last 10 years which is obviously wrong. It's also data from the US and not the EU. Here's the BLS defending the CPI if you want to read it.
www.bls.gov
Do you have any data supporting your claim that low skilled workers have lower wages? I can only find average real wages sadly.
The 2nd part of your post I dont really know what you're trying to say sorry. Leeching from everything else? Is industry leeching from agriculture as well? I don't get your dislike of services. What does it matter when services is not actually creating physical goods. If we have enough machines to create them an increase in non physical goods is fine. Don't you prefer personal advice for your mortgage as well? Does that make these people less valuable because they don't provide you something physical?
Yes a coffee shop in Paris is worth more than in Botswana but that is because France is more productive than Botswana. This isn't just in capital but also in education, a strong government, the rule of law etc. Someone in Botswana simply produces less for the same amount of labour so they get paid less. I don't see anything wrong with that.
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