RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes

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Artisculation2 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 8:24:41 AM)
Capitalism is a process of redistributing wealth upwards by exploiting labour and the resurces of others. It is not for nothing the west got rich through the expansionist 17th and 18th centuries. The captured markets of European colonies and US manifest destiny, which was a similar process. The myth of creating wealth through free markets doesn't stand up to a modicum of scutiny. The USA was the biggest infringer of copyrights and patents in the 19th century with the US government protecting American companies which effectively stole new products and made the US the China of its day. Now China is doing precisely the same and being villified for it. Not the Europeans were any better, with their forcing of trade on reluctant markets. Post war, while there was an ideological enemy, western Europeans were effectively bribed to be capitalists and not to be seduced by socialism. Now the ideological war has been won, its back to the future as capitalism takes us back to the 19th century where the elite were super rich and the vast majority were dirt poor. This state of affairs is a choice made by governments who represent corporations not the people, it is not an economic inevitability. You skew and manipulate the economy for the outcomes you want. As is often said by East Germans; the communist government lied to us about everything, except capitalism.

DesideriScuri -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 10:15:09 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Artisculation2 Capitalism is a process of redistributing wealth upwards by exploiting labour and the resurces of others. It is not for nothing the west got rich through the expansionist 17th and 18th centuries. The captured markets of European colonies and US manifest destiny, which was a similar process. The myth of creating wealth through free markets doesn't stand up to a modicum of scutiny. The USA was the biggest infringer of copyrights and patents in the 19th century with the US government protecting American companies which effectively stole new products and made the US the China of its day. Now China is doing precisely the same and being villified for it. Not the Europeans were any better, with their forcing of trade on reluctant markets. Post war, while there was an ideological enemy, western Europeans were effectively bribed to be capitalists and not to be seduced by socialism. Now the ideological war has been won, its back to the future as capitalism takes us back to the 19th century where the elite were super rich and the vast majority were dirt poor. This state of affairs is a choice made by governments who represent corporations not the people, it is not an economic inevitability. You skew and manipulate the economy for the outcomes you want. As is often said by East Germans; the communist government lied to us about everything, except capitalism. The wealth of the US wasn't created by capitalism? Really? LMMFAO!!!! Btw, welcome to P&R!

Lucylastic -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 10:35:15 AM)
slavery, murder, manipulation, corruption genocide created by capitalism.... keeping the poor down and upwardly mobile arrogant

Yachtie -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 11:05:42 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Artisculation2 Capitalism is a process of redistributing wealth upwards by exploiting labour and the resurces of others. If one wishes to never have their labor and/or resources exploited, never be an employee... or a serf to some feudal lord, or a subject under any guise to some government. Now, if it's merely the "upwards by exploiting" you take exception with... how in the hell might you redestribute wealth solely from the top down? How could the top acquire any wealth to be redistributed? All exploitation is either by agreement, which can be fraudulent, or by conquest. A man who is willing to trade his labor for some renumeration gets what he agrees to get. The other party, the one employing, gets something quite different. The employee gets a wage, his only risk being his employment. The employer is risking his capital, and his reward, if done right, is increasing it. Both can achieve a rise in their standard of living, though to different degrees. Here in the US, for instance, the poor have far more of a standard of living than, say, those living on the Savannah in grass huts carrying their water daily in buckets. When it comes to the standard of living, no civilization has ever achieved what the West has. The myth of creating wealth through free markets doesn't stand up to a modicum of scutiny. While correct in that there have never been absolute free markets, the West has come the closest, especially here in the US. It was working quite well for quite some time, and being improved upon, till a few, namely bankers, figured out they could get fabulously wealthy pulling more consumption from tomorrow to today. The PTB got greedy, which the regulations and laws put in place should have alleviated till scoundrels got themselves voted into office. They've killed the golden goose by speeding it all up. Oh yes, it surely does stand up to scrutiny. It's not capitalism that failed.

kdsub -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 11:39:48 AM)
Lucy but wouldn't you say that a good portion of industry then and now just wanted and wants to make a good product for a good price with a good profit...with decently paid content employees? I know that sounds corny but I have worked with employers like that in the past and I was one on a small scale. In fact most I know were that way. Believe me I am not blind to the injustices and greed but I hate to see all business lumped together as greedy predators. You don't have to be a bad person to own a business... even a profitable one. But you do , like it or not, have to compete and this sometimes makes for misunderstandings with employees. What I would like to see is more communication between management and employees. It could make things a lot easier in todays market. Now what did the above have to do with anything...hmmm don't know just came to me. Butch

GotSteel -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 1:30:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie It's been shown that artificially raising the minimum wage hurts employment, basically for the same reason raising prices hurts consumption. I think it's fairly ridiculous to repeatedly use the word artificially to describe an action within an entirely artificial system. Lets face it you'd probably be dead within a few days if subjected to your natural environment. Your lifestyle, environment and the system of rules to prop the former things up are all highly artificial. Complaining that tweaking one variable is artificial in an entirely artificial system which we routinely tweak is just plain silly.

tj444 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 1:53:02 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: kdsub Lucy but wouldn't you say that a good portion of industry then and now just wanted and wants to make a good product for a good price with a good profit...with decently paid content employees? I know that sounds corny but I have worked with employers like that in the past and I was one on a small scale. In fact most I know were that way. Believe me I am not blind to the injustices and greed but I hate to see all business lumped together as greedy predators. You don't have to be a bad person to own a business... even a profitable one. But you do , like it or not, have to compete and this sometimes makes for misunderstandings with employees. What I would like to see is more communication between management and employees. It could make things a lot easier in todays market. Now what did the above have to do with anything...hmmm don't know just came to me. Butch I agree with you but too many times certain things don't make sense.. one that leaves me scratching my head.. a non-profit charity builds 32 tiny homes (154sqft each- garden shed size) & a 2,700sqft community building for the homeless and it costs $3.1 million dollars.. that is a cost of $405/sqft.. I know of a few builders that can build (better housing) for as little as $50/sqft.. and the land is being leased for $1/yr!.. it took 6 years to finally get it approved and built.. its not just injustice, its insanity..

LookieNoNookie -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:15:37 PM)
quote: .....and for those 50 years wherever the community they go...small businesses have been going out of business. And they (WalMart) started out as a small, 900 sf business. One location. Like every carpet cleaning, window washing, shoe shining, parking lot repair and landscaping business before it....and after it. Anyone can do it and history shows that new businesses do it every year. Wanna be successful? Do what successful people and businesses do. Microsoft outdid IBM with Windows. When Microsoft opted to go with Windows (when they were developing "WARP" for IBM) and told IBM "Say listen guys....what you're asking us to develop for you....it's not what consumers want" and IBM said "Listen you little pipsqueak....you do what we tell you to do and leave it at that" and Microsoft said "we'll finish our contract but...we're going to introduce a product called 'Windows' and we think it's what consumers want". When Microsoft did that....their entire ANNUAL SALES were smaller than IBM's travel budget. Talk about "betting the ranch". Boeing, in 1967 decided they were going to build something called the 747....5 times the carrying capacity of ANY other airplane on Earth. By the time they introduced the plane, they had 5 orders and, the entire globe was in recession. One airline (Pan Am) ordered all of those 5 planes. The plane was introduced in 1971. If it didn't sell 100 airplanes, Boeing would be no more. In a worldwide recession thanks to the Arabs and their oil embargo in 1972-3, within 5 years Boeing was producing 75 every year at a profit of a then unheard of 20 million per plane (a 737, then, the world's most sold airplane, sold for a TOTAL of 9 million dollars). Woolworths, in the late 50's and early 60's, the largest retail corporation on Earth didn't believe that Daytons (later Target), K-Mart and of course, WalMart were a threat. But for a very small derivative in Canada, they don't exist today, nor does ITT, Tucker Automobile, TWA, Pan Am, and others. DisneyLand excoriated every small town amusement park in 1955....under so much debt, their debt was classified as CC-. That is essentially what was later in the mid 80's, considered "Junk bonds". Guaranteed to fail. Playboy was just a startup in 1953, yet in less than 10 years they were ripping up the advertising world. "Creative destruction", coined by Joseph Schumpeter, a brilliant economist, born in the late 1800's when economics was barely a science defined the existence of movement in business based on self interest...those of the actual economy....that businesses who recognized a need (and fulfilled it) would in fact destroy all that preceded it, and.....succeed. And these people destroyed the interests of the "robber barons" of their time because...the market demanded it. And the market therein, benefited. Wanna blame WalMart for destroying American business? Blame every successful business person that has ever existed (or will) who has found a way to provide a great product that buyers wanted to buy. Don't like it? Stop buying their products.

Artisculation2 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:38:51 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri The wealth of the US wasn't created by capitalism? Really? LMMFAO!!!! I never said it wasn't. What I did say was American wealth like European wealth was made by imperial expansion, conquest, captured markets and forced trade and stolen products and that the free market theory doesn't stand up to a modicum of scrutiny. In fact, China is getting rich through many of the same tricks by which European and the USA got rich. Choosing smartly between free markets, protected markets, exploitation of its own population and imperial expenasion. You can laugh your fucking arse off but it doesn't change the facts of how capitalism operates. In fact, the US middleclass is the fastest shrinking middleclass in the developed world. That should tell you something about capitalism now the ideological threat is no more.

Artisculation2 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:43:20 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie If one wishes to never have their labor and/or resources exploited, never be an employee... The secret is, never to buy into the system and never allow yourself to be used and be exploitative on your nation's capitalist establishment, as your nations capitalist establishment would be exploitative you. The fact is, according to the OECD report into social mobility, the USA and UK has the least social mobility in the developed world. That's because, both countries are the most capitalistic.

Artisculation2 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:48:00 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LookieNoNookie And they (WalMart) started out as a small, 900 sf business. One location. Walmart did it by effectively playing one population off against another. That's how capitalism works. American workers couldn't compete with the low wages of China. Wonderful capitalism, Wonderfully exploitative. Basically, capitalists get away with what they get away wiuth because they have bought and paid for anbd own so called western democracy, which is really, gerrymandered shamocracy.

Artisculation2 -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:49:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Lucylastic slavery, murder, manipulation, corruption genocide created by capitalism.... keeping the poor down and upwardly mobile arrogant Well put.

Lucylastic -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 2:57:28 PM)
heh, I was just going to post the same to you:) Welcome to the boards

tweakabelle -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 4:53:22 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie It's been shown that artificially raising the minimum wage hurts employment, basically for the same reason raising prices hurts consumption. This claim fails to withstand scrutiny. Despite it being one of the standard claims of Right wing economic discourse, repeated endlesslly as though it were an established incontestable truth, it is disproven by the evidence (like so many of the claims of market economics ...) Australia has one of the highest minimum wages in the world, currently c$17 AUD (cUS $15). Our unemployment rate has been hovering around the 5% mark for most of the past decade. Economists regard a 5% unemployment rate here as "full employment" - if it were to fall any lower there would be widespread labour shortages. Even as things stand there are labour shortages in many skilled areas. For all practical purposes, any one who wants a job can get one. In stark contrast to the Australian situation, the USA has a very low minimum wage (at c $9 US, approx 60% of the Australian minimum wage) and a far higher unemployment rate (at >8%, over 60% greater than the Australian rate) . So it is simply untrue to claim that high minimum wages hurts employment. It may well be the case that the opposite is far more accurate - a high minimum wage means a lot more $ being spent, boosting consumption and creating a need for more jobs to meet those higher consumption demands

Lucylastic -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 5:00:03 PM)
can someone show me actual" proof" of it hurting the system? or are "facts"....part of the equation at all?

DesideriScuri -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 5:14:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tweakabelle quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie It's been shown that artificially raising the minimum wage hurts employment, basically for the same reason raising prices hurts consumption. This claim fails to withstand scrutiny. Despite it being one of the standard claims of Right wing economic discourse, repeated endlesslly as though it were an established incontestable truth, it is disproven by the evidence (like so many of the claims of market economics ...) Australia has one of the highest minimum wages in the world, currently c$17 AUD (cUS $15). Our unemployment rate has been hovering around the 5% mark for most of the past decade. Economists regard a 5% unemployment rate here as "full employment" - if it were to fall any lower there would be widespread labour shortages. Even as things stand there are labour shortages in many skilled areas. For all practical purposes, any one who wants a job can get one. In stark contrast to the Australian situation, the USA has a very low minimum wage (at c $9 US, approx 60% of the Australian minimum wage) and a far higher unemployment rate (at >8%, over 60% greater than the Australian rate) . So it is simply untrue to claim that high minimum wages hurts employment. It may well be the case that the opposite is far more accurate - a high minimum wage means a lot more $ being spent, boosting consumption and creating a need for more jobs to meet those higher consumption demands "Full employment" is considered to be 5% unemployment in the US, too. Just an FYI. How do you explain the <5% unemployment enjoyed under the Bush Administration? Musta been the high minimum wages, right? How many people are paid minimum wage in Australia? Could it be that unemployment and the minimum wage aren't quite as strongly related as you seem to imply? (The answer to that question is "yes," btw).

tweakabelle -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 5:25:40 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri Could it be that unemployment and the minimum wage aren't quite as strongly related as you seem to imply? (The answer to that question is "yes," btw). I'm glad to see that we both agree that Yachtie's original claim - high minimum wages hurts employment - is invalid. The claim that there strong connection between unemplyment and minimum wage levels is not mine. This claim was advanced in Yachtie's original claim, which I disputed. I simply pointed out that the opposite claim can be argued and may be more accurate.

DesideriScuri -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/3/2014 9:12:31 PM)
Deleted

graceadieu -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/4/2014 9:21:58 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Moonhead It is very strange that Republican economists still insist that trickle down theory works. You'd think after forty odd years of it conspicuously failing to do any good they'd have given up on that one by now. It's like having chemistry teachers still teaching the phlostigon theory, or physicists claiming that light is a wave in the ether at this point: a blatantly and inarguably false assumption. Well, it does a lot of good - to the people who are paying them.

Yachtie -> RE: the poor are eating their bottom line....oh noes (2/4/2014 11:51:17 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tweakabelle quote: ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri Could it be that unemployment and the minimum wage aren't quite as strongly related as you seem to imply? (The answer to that question is "yes," btw). I'm glad to see that we both agree that Yachtie's original claim - high minimum wages hurts employment - is invalid. The claim that there strong connection between unemplyment and minimum wage levels is not mine. This claim was advanced in Yachtie's original claim, which I disputed. I simply pointed out that the opposite claim can be argued and may be more accurate. Low minimum wage hurts employment. So jack, instead of paying what he thinks an employee is worth, would rather pay a higher price. Makes sense[8\|] DOH!

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