Forum Post: What is Socialism? It is the Solution to the World's Economic Problems
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 27, 2012, 1:15 p.m. EST by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom
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from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
CAPITALISM IS THE PROBLEM
The world's problems are all economic. And the solution to the world's problems has been the same for the past couple of centuries: The solution is for workers to organize so that they have the power to replace capitalism with socialism.
The problem with capitalism is that it exploits workers, because it only pays them a tiny fraction of what they produce.
In capitalism, half of all the income that workers produce gets paid to a handful of owners of capital who got lucky gambling in the market like bankers and entrepreneurs, as shown here, and most of what remains gets paid to a small handful of people who have market bargaining power merely because they are scarce like athletes and celebrities.
The vast majority of the workers who produce everything - the engineers, doctors, construction workers, factory workers, miners, farmers, teachers - have to fight over the little income that remains.
Even though worker productivity is $65 per hour, as shown here, which is enough to make every worker wealthy, most workers are broke because they only get paid a tiny fraction of the $65 per hour they produce. Most of that $65 unfairly gets paid to the owners and scarce workers.
Because of capitalism's exploitation, 50% of Americans are living in or near poverty, according to the latest census.
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SOCIALISM IS THE SOLUTION
The only fair economic system is one which does not exploit workers by paying them 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, by paying no income to owners of capital since they do no work, and by paying workers based on how hard they work, not based on how scarce they are in the market. That economic system is called socialism.
So socialism is just an economic system without exploitation. It is a system that pays workers the full value of what they produce.
It's a system summed up in the socialist slogan, "To each according to their contribution."
Socialism is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as, "a stage of society in Marxist theory between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done."
Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program wrote, "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society...exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor."
Socialism is simply a system where you can only get paid by working and the amount you are paid is based on how hard you work, which you do by limiting differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get them to work hard jobs and to give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
If we allocated income this way:
- it would pay workers from $115,000 to $460,000 per year, as explained here
- for working just 20 hours per week, as explained here.
It would make every worker wealthy and when you make every worker wealthy, you eliminate nearly every problem in society.
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WORKER OWNERSHIP
The key difference between capitalism and socialism is that socialism does not pay any income to owners of capital. No unearned income, such as profit, rent, interest, or dividends, is paid to anyone for merely investing their capital. In order to get paid an income, you must actually work.
Unearned income does nothing but rob workers of half the wealth they produce each year.
It is just welfare for the lucky. It allows guys like Mitt Romney to get paid $20 million per year every year without working a single day merely because he got lucky in the market a few decades ago. Workers produce that $20 million every year, not Mitt Romney.
A system where workers, who produce everything, are paid half the income and a few lucky gamblers, who produce nothing, are paid the other half is absurd.
Of course, you need investment money to run an economy. But just like we don't need to pay people to print their own money in order to make sure there's a supply of money in the economy, we don't need to pay people to invest in order to make sure there's a supply of investment money in the economy.
Just like the central bank can provide the economy with the necessary supply of money, it can provide the economy with the necessary supply of investment money. Workers don't need to pay private investors.
In socialism, all capital and businesses are equally owned by workers. So loans and investment are funded with public investment funds as explained here.
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CHANGING THE SYSTEM
The solution to the world's problems is to educate workers on how much money they are losing to exploitation (most), to educate them on how much more income they would get paid in a system that does not exploit them ($115k-$460k for working 20 hours), and to then organize them politically so they have the power to change the economic system and put an end to the exploitation.
Workers have the basic human right to refuse to work in an economic system that exploits them and that allocates income unfairly. They have the basic human right to freely choose to only participate in a system where they get paid 100% of the income they produce and they get paid based on how hard they work.
Workers should have the freedom to choose whether they want to work in a capitalist sector or in a socialist sector. In order to give workers that choice, workers just need to elect politicians who will enact a very simple policy: Authorize the Fed to provide enough investment funds to launch enough new companies to fully employ everyone who wants to work for a socialist firm which is only fair since they are currently doing that for that for privately owned capitalist firms.
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A FREE SOCIETY SHOULD HAVE FREEDOM OF CHOICE
If we passed a bill that authorized the fed to fund the socialist sector then every worker would have the freedom to choose whether they work for a capitalist firm where they are broke, work 40+ hours per week to make some owner rich, not guaranteed a job or benefits and have a 1 in a million chance of becoming a millionaire, or a socialist firm where you are paid at least $115k, work 20 hours per week, are an equal owner, guaranteed a job, health care and a pension, and guaranteed to be wealthy.
The socialist sector would work largely the same way as the current economy works now. It will have individually run firms that must be profitable and compete for customers in the market. The difference is that 1) workers have equal ownership in not just the firm they work at but in all the firms of the socialist sector and 2) 100% of the income (wages, profit, interest and rent) is paid to workers according to a democratically approved plan that limits differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get workers to do mentally or physically hard jobs and give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
A full explanation of how new companies are launched and how investment works is explained here and a full explanation of how income is allocated is explained here.
This economic system is already proven to work in practice. Mondragon is a good example. They have 100,000 workers who are all equal owners, produce $20 billion in yearly revenue and have out-competed capitalist firms for 50 years. There are thousands of similar worker co-ops in the US. Economics professors Richard Wolff (rdwolff.com and democracyAtWork.info) and Gar Alperovitz (http://democracycollaborative.org/) are two popular advocates of this idea.
A lot of workers need to be organized to get a policy implemented at the federal level, but raising the minimum income to $115,000 and reducing the work week to 20 hours is a deal that enough workers may find worth organizing for.
Some words from Albert Einstein from over 60 years ago :
pax, amor et lux ...
Classic article
Consider Carefully : "Crises of Crapitalism" :
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34459.htm (Video) & :
"Marx's 'Das Kapital' Lives On in Capitalist Age" (Audio) : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16697381 ;
"Nine Myths about Socialism in the US", by Bill Quigley : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25187.htm ;
"How Socialists Built America", by John Nichols : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27907.htm &
"Why I Am a Socialist ?" by Chris Hedges : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21586.htm .
Together We Are Stronger !!! The fkn Corporations & Banksters have been waging a not so covert war on FDR's 'New Deal' for 70 years and have been 'mind managing' and manipulating The US 99% into being 'Turkeys Voting For Thanksgiving' for far too long !! Viva Occupy ! Solidarity and further please consider :
Finally, please research 'The Lewis Powell Memorandum' in due course ~*~
fiat justitia ruat caelum ...
"Concentration of wealth is harmful to Human culture and a threat to our survival. It's perhaps the greatest threat that civilization has always faced. Consider this analogy: In a hypothetical casino card game the house takes 5% of every pot. If 10% of the money at the table is on average played on each hand, then the house takes 0.5% of the money in the game on each rake. After 200 hands, 100% of the money that is on average at the table has been taken by the house. The only way the game may continue is to have new money come to it. The winners, of course, smell the new blood and even anticipate it greedily. And the biggest winner over a time is always the house. Until the free market ideologues took over, the biggest difference between a casino bank and finance was that the gaming house took a bigger cut of the handle."
Excerpt from: “How Does That Work” https://www.createspace.com/3852916
Corrollary: The absence of any concentration of is equally harmful as high concentration.
Here's a post of mine about Einstein's view on it. One of the very first posts I made.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/einstein-and-the-evils-of-capitalism/
Socialism was popular in the US in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the Left gave up on the hope of changing our economic system and instead settled for reforming capitalism with social welfare programs.
Now an entire generation missed out on this important idea. I think it is possible to replace capitalism with socialism and we should again try to pursue that goal.
I wonder if Einstein could afford to live in Alpine, NJ.
Creative contribution can't be valued by time spent or quantity of sweat produced.
Of course you can measure how much time people spend on creative work.
I created an idea that saved my company $1.5 million a year. I was at home watching TV. What is that worth to me?
I have some other ideas. How do I establish their value?
There is a problem I have been working on for a couple of years, but I haven't figured out a solution. What is that worth?
If you spent an hour coming up with that solution and you are a worker that gets paid hourly, you would get paid 1 hour's worth of pay. If you are on salary, you would not get paid anything extra, it would be part of your responsibility.
Value and worth for goods and services are established by consumers when they spend their money. That is different than what you get paid as a worker.
If you can find a company to hire you or a bank to invest in you to work on that problem for 2 years, you would get paid to do exactly that.
Sure I know and agree with that, but I thought you were coming up with something different. I was hourly and got a check for $140.00.
Not exactly. But a gini index of about .36 instead of .45-48 would be about the right goal. So, a mixed system (socialism, plus capitalism, with an appropriate regulation system, more like Denmark or Sweden, with the money scrubbed from governance, would be a great place to start; There is a lot of data from them so the effects of changes can be pretty accurately forecast.
Then you don't have an untried system with a suspect history trying to convince people (like Romney is) to just trust them and somehow, an academic with no tract record, will get the job done.
Does anybody with any significant life experience really believe that will succeed?
I don't know what the benefits are of workers getting exploited some instead of none.
Every aspect of market socialism is already proven to work in practice.
Study the gini index or coefficient and tell me what you think the right number is.Give me the examples that you think are the most successful instances of market socialism. How are prices of products arrived at that are similar but not the same?
Are workers that are lazy, slow, or malcontents exploiting other workers?
Since the purpose of income is to motivate people to work hard, differences in income should be limited to only what is necessary to get people to do hard jobs and give their max performance in performance based jobs. I argue you don't need to pay anyone any more than 4 times more to do that. I don't know what the gini coefficient is for that.
There are, of course, no countries that have market socialism. But all the components are already in practice and proven.
We already have absentee owners in publicly owned companies, pay based on difficulty and performance, market allocation of goods and services, companies that must remain profitable, investors that are paid based on the financial performance of their investments, and worker co-ops where all workers are equal owners.
The only thing new is that the money being invested is public instead of private and it doesn't affect anyone's job where the money comes from.
I argued that Occupy Wall street should become a democratic corporation with full shareholder rights, but instead Occupiers saw my idea as capitalist. Henceforth before socialism can even become viable, individuals will have to learn more about the basics involved in Business Law and Economics.
Does a democratic corporation pay dividends? Compete with other democratic corporations? Borrow money? Pay interest? Recall products?
Hypothetically it can. It all depends on the By laws that the corporation draft when the directors file their articles of incorporation. The concept of Shareholder Democracy begin to take root in the 19th century, and begin to emerge in legislation during the 1930's and 1940's. Unfortunately weak SEC regulation demanded by the corporate elites has impeded the efforts of shareholders. Occasionally You will hear about a piece of legislation going through congress that creates more shareholder rights. Thus Democratic corporations do exist, and they do pay dividends, compete with other corporations, borrow money, pay interest and recall products. Unfortunately, for every right a shareholder has in a corporation, the executive board often has more and can use such things as "Poison Pills", "lobbying", and so forth in order to water down shareholder rights.
I agree that OWS should be organized in a way where every member has a say in what it does. Unfortunately, OWS is structured in a way where it will never have an impact on changing society and there is little anyone can do about that.
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In order for socialism to be viable, workers need to be organized into a single union so that they have power. And then they need to use that power to demand socialism by either passing a law that allocates income according to socialism or to strike until income is allocated according to socialism.
And to get enough workers to join that union, they need to be shown that capitalism rips them off. It pays half the income they produce to a few lucky investors and most of what is left over to a few people who have bargaining power just because they are unique.
Workers have to be shown that they are getting paid just a tiny fraction of what they produce.
So this worker union needs to demand that workers get paid 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, that no income get paid to investors since they do no work, and that workers get paid based on how hard they work, not based on how lucky or unique they are.
If we allocated income this way:
That is a significantly better deal than what more than 95% of workers are getting.
Perhaps, but if a glass of water costs $5,000.00, maybe not.
All we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. We are not increasing the total amount of income that is getting paid out. So it does not cause inflation.
If all we did was increase the minimum wage to $115k, and kept everyone else's income the same, that would cause inflation. But that is not what we are doing. We are also lowering the top pay from hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to just $460k. And we are reducing all the unearned income we pay out (profit, interest and rent) to zero.
The amount we are reducing the top pay and unearned income is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing worker pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. This is simple math.
If you have a $14.5 trillion economy and you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income, it is mathematically impossible to have inflation. How is the economy going to inflate beyond the $14.5 trillion if only $14.5 trillion is being spent? It can't. It is impossible.
However, since incomes will be different, expenses will be different. So some prices will go up. But they will be fully offset by other prices going down.
The idea that the economy works fine when millions and billions are paid to the 1% but the economy doesn't work and has inflation when that same very money is paid to ordinary workers is simply ridiculous.
what would happen to the investors?
Investment income is just welfare for the lucky.
Guys like Mitt Romney who get paid $20 million per year, every year, without working a single day merely because he got lucky in the market a few decades ago will now have to go and get a job and start working.
Of course, you need investment money to run an economy. But just like we don't need to pay people to print their own money in order to make sure there's a supply of money in the economy, we don't need to pay people to invest in order to make sure there's a supply of investment money in the economy.
Just like the central bank can provide the economy with the necessary supply of money, it can provide the economy with the necessary supply of investment money. Workers don't need to pay private investors.
In socialism, all loans and investment are funded with public investment funds as explained here.
Question: How do you enforce socialism without giving the enforcers total dictatorship control, which is what has happened to every socialist system I'm aware of.
Socialism is an economic system. It has nothing to do with dictatorships. I do not advocate a dictatorship and no American wants a dictatorship. So America will never have a dictatorship.
Yes but when you get everything from gov. You then make them a dictatorship. You assume once you give them all the power over you they will be just. I don't trust anyone with that much power......not even myself
You don't get everything from government. You get everything from workers.
Consumers are the ones who have the power. They decide what is produced and what is not based on how they spend their money.
The only thing that changes in socialism is how we allocate income. Socialism is just a system that pays workers fairly.
You are filled with right-wing misinformation.
No I'm filled with self determination, something a socialist would never understand. If self reliance and determination is a right wing thing then yea I'm right wing. If you allow gov to allocate income you are a slave to that gov. Workers do get paid what they are worth and if they don't like it they are free to find another job or start their own company. Only people who have never risked everything to start a business talk stupid shit like allocate income you can start a bus. And your workers anything you . want but we both know that wont happen will it? You cant survive without gov. Holding your hand then I feel sorry for , to have never known freedom. But you will not take me down with you.
So you think life was better for workers 100 years ago before all that "govt reliance" that gave them labor regulations, 8-hour day, overtime, OSHA, social security, medicaid, medicare, etc.?
You think everything you get paid is a product of your own effort and not a product of the society you grow up in and the rules it enforces? You think you would earn the same amount in Liberia where there is no govt interference in anything and you wouldn't be living on a garbage heap? Everyone in Africa is poor because they don't want to work as hard as Americans?
You think everyone can get paid $115k, you just need to be willing to switch to the job that pays that amount? You think people make less than that only because they are turning down the $115k job offers?
You think everyone has the money to start a business and everyone who starts a business makes at least $115k?
Having the govt enforce an economic system that doesn't allow exploitation of workers and guarantees you at least $115k is slavery but having an economic system where businesses allocate income and pay nearly everyone less than that amount is freedom?
You think freedom is imposing a system on everyone where everyone fends for themselves so that the strong can dominate the weak and so that the people with the most money can make the most income until society is eventually ruled entirely by the wealthy?
Freedom is not a system which guarantees you enough income as a right to be able to do anything you want without any financial restraints? A system where most cannot afford school, medicine or a decent home is freedom?
Your worldview is fascinating!
(Hat tip: You have been brainwashed by rich business owners to support a system that benefits them, not you)
Beautifully expressed. Right to the core of the problem. More and more, I am coming to the conclusion that some form of Socialism (as an economic system) is the way things need to be. I am becoming very radical about a number of things -- (1) transition ALL corporations to worker-owned/operated cooperatives, (2) replace the existing rotten money system entirely as in my blog here and (3) establish laws/regulations that make it impossible and will severely punish all forms of abuse designed to circumvent an egalitarian society (not excluding the death penalty) that would result from such restructuring.
Death to the aristocracy!!! Raise up the poor via Socialism. Long live the middle-class!!!
Number 1 can be done by organizing workers into a union. Look at the history of the Industrial Workers of the World (which Tom Morello of Nine Inch Nails is a member).
Although I am not familiar with what you advocate in number 2, market socialism is a peer reviewed, proven system that works.
Number 3 can be accomplished by workers organizing and passing a law that says all income will be allocated according to the democratically approved national compensation plan. The plan pays all income to workers, no income to investors, and differences between workers is limited to only what is necessary to get them to work hard.
But we don't want to turn it into the French Revolution. So we should still make murder illegal!
Socialism would abolish the middle class. Everyone would be wealthy.
You site things like 8 hour day that's great but what since then? You can't survive in a free society, your problem not mine. You claim business exploite you but you seem to trust gov to protect you, yet if gov had the power you want to give they would become the corp. you distrust. You may not be smart enough or work hard enough to ever become rich but I am well on my way to being that rich bus. Owner you rail against.
"I am well on my way to being that rich bus. Owner you rail against."
Like they say, there is a sucker born every minute. So you are the guy that buys those get-rich-quick schemes on late-night infomercials?
The Citigroup economic report, talked about here and here, said this country is a plutocracy, ruled by the rich. And its rich clients will continue to rule this country so long as people like you continue to foolishly think they are going to be rich just like them.
Get rich quick lol really? You need info before you make comments I've been working for over 20yrs and it's now starting to pay off. I am slowly getting rich with hard work and being stupid , it would seem the sukcer here is you.
" You need info before you make comments I've been working for over 20yrs and it's now starting to pay off."
Sounds like a great deal.
So you can continue to promote an economic system where you may get wealthy after 20 years of risking your own money and working hard.
I will promote an economic system where you are guaranteed to be wealthy the day you start working, without having to risk any of your own money.
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"it would seem the sukcer here is you."
Yes, I am the sucker, not the guy who still isn't rich after 20 years of working hard. lol
You promote an economic system where everybody would have a lot of money. Not one where everybody would be wealthy. There is a crucial difference between the two.
This guy, for example, has a lot of money. Not a lot of wealth.
Continuing to repeat the same uninformed comment about a subject you know nothing about is not helping your case.
It is impossible for a $14.5 trillion economy to inflate beyond $14.5 trillion when you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income.
According to web programmers like techjunkie, who have no idea how the economy works, the economy works fine, without any inflation, when you pay millions and billions to investors and unique workers. But when you pay that income to ordinary workers instead of investors and unique workers, the economy no longer works and everything becomes 100 times expensive.
People like techjunkie are clueless and gullible. And our society is unfortunately built on people taking advantage of their ignorance.
Lol promote a system where you don't have to risk your own money sounds like a ponzi-scheme. Who's money are you going to risk? I've done very well over those 20 years (like building a ladder) and because of hard work smart planing its really really paying off an yes if I'm stupid or bad luck comes around I could lose or all, life would go on. I've had nothing (dirt poor) and I've had a lot I can do either but I choose to better myself that has risk you think you can remove all risk and only have reward..... You are naive.
the production and distribution of goods is power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The production and distribution of goods is best in the hands of the people, not corporations, not government, the people.
Nobody has absolute power over production in socialism.
I advocate market socialism. So consumers decide what is produced.
The companies that produce everything are made up of people, so production and distribution is in the hands of people.
your going to have to spell it out a lot clearer than that...or give us a link to a clearly laid out plan.
The links were in the post.
I explain how socialism works in this post and why it opposes capitalism in this post.
How income is allocated is explained in this comment. And how investment works is explained in this comment.
my apologies, I didn't realize you had so much info on the forum. I have to admit your ideas are intriguing. But let me ask you, don't we already have a form of the employee owned company in co-op's?Dosent this conform to your idea of trying multipal economic systems within the country? And isn't the real impediment to the well-being of the people the corporate slave market? In short, I think you have a lot of good ideas but we should keep are eyes on the clear and present danger. Since we can both agree that corporations have to go, lets takle that monster before opening another front that may be hard for people to transcend.
"don't we already have a form of the employee owned company in co-op's?"
Socialism is a type of economic system, it is not a way to run a company. You can't launch a single company and create socialism. Every company in the economy has to be socialist.
Starting a worker owned co-op does not give you full control over the allocation of income. And in order to create socialism, you need full control over the allocation of income so that 100% can be paid to workers based on how hard they work.
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"Dosent this conform to your idea of trying multipal economic systems within the country?"
Co-ops are just companies that exist in a capitalist economic system. It is not an alternative economic system.
In order to create an alternative economic system, you have to build enough companies so that all your purchases can be made from one of those companies. The system has to be able to produce all the goods and services that people need who are participating in that economic system.
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" And isn't the real impediment to the well-being of the people the corporate slave market?"
The real impediment is that we allocate income through the market.
We should allocate goods and services through the market, but not people's income. Your income is your means of survival. It determines your standard of living, the amount of freedom you have, and the amount of political power you have. Allocating income through the market treats people like cattle, like any other commodity. It is inhumane.
Allocating income through the market means your income now depends on how much bargaining power you have, now how hard you work or how much you produce. It allows the lucky and unique, who have all the bargaining power, to exploit and take advantage of the people who do not have bargaining power because they are not lucky or unique.
Workers should have a basic human right to get paid fully for their work, regardless of how lucky or unique they are.
In order to pay workers fully you must pay 100% of our economy's income to workers since they do 100% of the work (capitalism only pays half the income to workers and pays the other half to investors) and you must allocate that income among workers based on how hard you work which you do by limiting differences between workers to only what is necessary to get people to do difficult jobs and give their maximum performance in performance based jobs (capitalism allocates income based on how unique you are which allows athletes or celebrities like Kim Kardashian to get paid hundreds of times more per hour than a brain surgeon).
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"Since we can both agree that corporations have to go, lets takle that monster before opening another front that may be hard for people to transcend."
Corporations are not the problem. Capitalism and its system of allocating income through the market, which allows a tiny minority at the top to take most of the income workers produce merely because they are lucky or unique, is the problem.
"corporations are not the problem"
so, you would leave corporations in control, leaving them in full possession of all goods and services. Workers salaries woud go up to 100-400k but since we all know that the world cant sustain everyone cursing around in yachts and living in multiple mansions, inflation nocks the value of that down to 10-40k and we are stuck in a corporately controlled stagnant market. No thanks.
"so, you would leave corporations in control, leaving them in full possession of all goods and services."
You should read the post again.
Socialism is an economic system where workers own the means of production equally.
It is not a system where the means of production are owned by corporations.
There are no corporations in socialism.
The point I was making by saying corporations are not the problem was that eliminating corporations is not going to solve anything. It won't end exploitation, unemployment, poverty or financial struggle.
The only way to solve those problems is by replacing the entire system of capitalism (corporations included) with socialism.
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"inflation nocks the value of that down to 10-40k "
All we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. We are not increasing the total amount of income that is getting paid out. So it does not cause inflation.
If all we did was increase the minimum wage to $115k, and kept everyone else's income the same, that would cause inflation. But that is not what we are doing. We are also lowering the top pay from hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to just $460k. The amount we are reducing the top pay is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing the minimum pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. This is math 101.
If you have a $14.5 trillion economy and you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income, it is mathematically impossible to have inflation. How is the economy going to inflate beyond the $14.5 trillion if only $14.5 trillion is being spent? It can't. It is impossible.
Unfortunately, it's not all paid to workers. Much of it is put back into investments in an attempt to gain an even larger slice of the pie. The "workers" includes billionaires. Also. about 600 billion is leaked out to the trade deficit.
It is important to separate investment from investment income.
Investment is needed in every economy, including socialism. What is not needed is to get that investment by borrowing someone's savings and then having to pay them an investment income.
That income should be paid to the workers producing the investment, not to the people who provided the investment money.
Allowing people to collect investment income concentrates income, causes the inequality and is nothing more than gambling.
If a billionaire works, they are entitled to the $115k to $460k income just like every other worker. Anything they get paid beyond that is unearned income from investment which would not be paid in socialism.
On your general thesis, I don't disagree. It's just that GDP numbers are seriously flawed. You have to wade through this article to get to Trumkas explanation. Here is part of it from page 2............ "But here’s the rub: both of these corporate strategies— domestic productivity improvements and global supply chain management—show up as productivity gains in U.S. economic records. When federal statisticians calculate the nation’s economic output, what they are actually measuring is domestic “value added”—the dollar value of all sales minus the dollar value of all imports. “Productivity” is then calculated by dividing the quantity of value added by the number of American workers. American workers, however, often have little to do with the gains in productivity attributed to them. For instance, if Company A saves $250,000 simply by switching from a Japanese sprocket supplier to a much cheaper Chinese sprocket supplier, that change shows up as an increase in American productivity—just as if the company had saved $250,000 by making its warehouse operation in Chicago more efficient." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_myth_of_american_productiv034576.php?page=1
American workers are not the most productive, Norway workers are by a large margin since they have a lot of oil per capita.
I agree with the premise of the article that a lot of our gains have come from productivity gains in other countries or using cheaper labor.
But I don't think that makes GDP a flawed number. Americans clearly are getting an increase in goods and services because of this increase in productivity, regardless of its source.
You likely would see a lot of inflation. Even though the total number of dollars paid out is the same, the percentage of that money actually being spent is going to be much higher. Today, that $14.5 trillion goes to very few wealthy families. They don't spend much of it at all relative to what they bring in. Compare that to a family making $30K which likely spends every dime.
The vast majority of people are much closer to the later family than the former, though the former controls nearly all the money and usually just sit on it. As the lower income families see their income rising at the expense of the wealthy families, the proportion of money actually being used to purchase goods climbs very quickly.
This increase in aggregate demand would almost surely cause significant inflation.
"Today, that $14.5 trillion goes to very few wealthy families. They don't spend much of it at all relative to what they bring in."
If all of that $14.5 trillion was not spent, GDP the following year would go down.
Not only do we spend all of that $14.5 trillion, we break out the credit card and spend more. We spend more than we get paid in income.
Although the wealthy may not spend all of the income they get paid, the money that they save gets loaned out to people who do spend it. We actually borrow more than we save.
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"This increase in aggregate demand would almost surely cause significant inflation."
Inflation happens when you spend more income than you produce in goods and services.
In 2010 we produced $14.5 trillion in goods and services. You have to spend $14.5 trillion just to keep pace with production. So paying out $14.5 trillion in income does not cause inflation.
Under your plan, married couples would make at least $230K. Married couples who currently make $230K usually have 2 nice cars. Your average American family usually has 1 or 2 crappy cars. Now every couple would want to have a BMW and big SUV to cart the kids around in. There are only so many BMWs and big SUVs (and the gas that they guzzle) to go around. Why would you think the price for the BMW and the gas will not go up since so many more people want them?
Even if we went to full employment it would still not increase the supply of BMWs and produce enough gasoline to keep up with the demand now that everyone has $115K.
So even if you do not seen true inflation, if everyone was making $115K they would not be able to get what $115K gets you now because the demand for such luxury products would rise very quickly.
Is this type of system something that you honestly think you will ever see or is more of your Utopian fantasy?
Price does not go up when demand goes up. Price goes up when demand goes up and supply does not.
The money that is now being spent on BMWs used to be spent on purchasing other things. So the productive capacity that used to be used to produce those other things will now be used to produce more BMWs.
I have no idea whether socialism will happen. The 1% have done a pretty effective job at brainwashing the masses to vote against their best interest.
You advocate capitalism not because you are an expert on economics and know what works and what does not. You do it because you have been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda that says capitalism is the best system.
If you were brought up in a socialist society, you would likely be writing about how capitalism cannot work because it will cause inflation or whatever reason you came up with against socialism.
Have you heard of the multiplier effect?
Are you referring to the money multiplier from fractional reserve lending? If so, yes.
No, the Keynesian multiplier. "Multiplier effect" and interest rates Main article: Spending multiplier Two aspects of Keynes's model has implications for policy:
First, there is the "Keynesian multiplier", first developed by Richard F. Kahn in 1931. Exogenous increases in spending, such as an increase in government outlays, increases total spending by a multiple of that increase. A government could stimulate a great deal of new production with a modest outlay if:
The people who receive this money then spend most on consumption goods and save the rest. This extra spending allows businesses to hire more people and pay them, which in turn allows a further increase in consumer spending. This process continues. At each step, the increase in spending is smaller than in the previous step, so that the multiplier process tapers off and allows the attainment of an equilibrium. This story is modified and moderated if we move beyond a "closed economy" and bring in the role of taxation: The rise in imports and tax payments at each step reduces the amount of induced consumer spending and the size of the multiplier effect.
Second, Keynes re-analyzed the effect of the interest rate on investment. In the classical model, the supply of funds (saving) determines the amount of fixed business investment. That is, under the classical model, since all savings are placed in banks, and all business investors in need of borrowed funds go to banks, the amount of savings determines the amount that is available to invest. Under Keynes's model, the amount of investment is determined independently by long-term profit expectations and, to a lesser extent, the interest rate. The latter opens the possibility of regulating the economy through money supply changes, via monetary policy. Under conditions such as the Great Depression, Keynes argued that this approach would be relatively ineffective compared to fiscal policy. But, during more "normal" times, monetary expansion can stimulate the economy.[citation needed]
[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#.22Multiplier_effect.22_and_interest_rates
There are a lot of things you can do to fiddle with capitalism. But none of it is going to end worker exploitation and the poverty and financial struggle it causes.
People who make millions and billions of dollars spend a lot of money but they don't spend the whole kit and caboodle. You can bet that if wages are increased to 100-400k a lot of people will spend it all. This increases demand and prices rise. This is economics 101. You say that all income goes to the workers, but who or what then is providing the physical structures and raw materials needed by these workers. Call them corporations, the government, or supreme beings it amounts to the same thing, absolute power.
" You can bet that if wages are increased to 100-400k a lot of people will spend it all. This increases demand and prices rise."
Yes, 100% of that income will be spent. But that does not increase total demand. We already spend 100% of our income. If someone currently gets paid $1 million but only spends half of it, that other half will be loaned out to someone who will spend it. We actually borrow more money than we save. So all income that is saved is spent.
If we paid everyone $115k to $460k it will total $14.5 trillion in income. We spent $14.5 trillion in 2010.
I go over all these numbers in this comment here.
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" You say that all income goes to the workers, but who or what then is providing the physical structures and raw materials needed by these workers."
Other workers!!
When you buy copper, you are not giving your money to a mountain that has a copper mine. You are putting it in the pockets of workers who are working the mine.
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"Call them corporations, the government, or supreme beings it amounts to the same thing, absolute power."
There are no corporations in socialism. The federal government does not do the production in socialism. And nobody has absolute power in socialism.
Socialism is a collection of individually run organizations, regulated by democratic bodies, that must produce what consumers want to buy at a price consumers are willing to pay.
food for thought. :)
statism is a dictatorship. socialism /communism/ fascism are proven failures.
My friend that one statement you made has given me hope that not everyone here is drinking the koolaid
So let me get your worldview straight.
An economic system that pays you at least $115k for working 20 hours so that you have the money and time to freely do what you want without economic restraint is slavery.
And an economic system where nearly every worker is broke and works long hours, so they do not have the time or money to do anything, because most of the income they produce gets paid to a small handful of lucky investors, business owners and celebrities so they can be multi-millionaires and billionaires, is freedom.
And you were told this from a bunch of billionaires and the social movement they fund which they hilariously call libertarianism.
Are you familiar with the term gullible? Gullibility is a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action.
Did it occur to you that perhaps these billionaires were lying to you and that being paid at least $115k for working 20 hours really is not slavery and that they only told you that because they want to continue to fleece workers and rule over the world?
Ok, you are looking at this like a child. If you paid every worker $115k a can of coke would cost 200k and then your 115 would be worthless. The fact you don't understand this is disturbing.
"you are looking at this like a child"
Even children can see how gullible you are.
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"If you paid every worker $115k a can of coke would cost 200k and then your 115 would be worthless"
More lols.
So, to add to your gullible worldview, half the country must live in or near poverty and the few at the top have to take most of the income the workers produce because otherwise soda would be unaffordable!?!
When the 1% spend their billions and millions, the economy works just fine. But when that money is paid to ordinary workers instead, the economy no longer works, the price of everything becomes unaffordable and money becomes worthless.
At what point do you realize that your worldview is moronic?
Anyway, to answer your inflation question:
All we are doing is re-allocating EXISTING income. We are not increasing the total amount of income that is getting paid out. So it does not cause inflation.
If all we did was increase the minimum wage to $115k, and kept everyone else's income the same, that would cause inflation. But that is not what we are doing. We are also lowering the top pay from hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to just $460k. The amount we are reducing the top pay is exactly equal to the amount we are increasing the minimum pay. The net result is no increase in price on average. This is math 101.
If you have a $14.5 trillion economy and you only pay out $14.5 trillion in income, it is mathematically impossible to have inflation. How is the economy going to inflate beyond the $14.5 trillion if only $14.5 trillion is being spent? It can't. It is impossible.
However, since expenses will be different, prices will be different. Some prices will go up. But they will be fully offset by other prices going down. So, although your expenses will be different, your total expenses will remain the same.
Expenses will not stay the same, the only moron here is you. When you give the gov the power to control your life you will get exactly what you deserve. What you call math 101 is wishful thinking.
"Expenses will not stay the same, the only moron here is you"
I didn't say expenses will stay the same. I said since incomes are different, clearly expenses will be different.
But since the total income paid out is not increasing, total expenses are not increasing.
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"When you give the gov the power to control your life you will get exactly what you deserve"
You need to start thinking critically for yourself and stop mindlessly repeating slogans taught to you by billionaires who want to take your money.
Socialism is not a system where government has the power to control your life.
It is just an economic system where workers get paid the full product of what they produce without exploitation.
It is just an economic system which pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, which pays no income to investors since they do no work, and which pays you based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are.
What you do with your money and your life is your own business and has nothing to do with socialism.
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" What you call math 101 is wishful thinking"
You are going to need to do better than that to debunk my claims.
the wet dream of socialism NEVER works. cuba ?
Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses.
socialism doesnt work, get over it.
Not surprisingly, you have no facts to back up that claim.
However, capitalism does not work and here are some facts to back up that claim:
Nearly the entire world is capitalist and nearly the entire world lives in abject poverty.
Half the world lives on less than $2.50 per day and 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
In the US, after 200+ years of industrializing, thanks to capitalism, it still has 50% of the population living in or near poverty, and 97% of all workers earning a below average income, and 50% of wage earners making less than $26k, and 18% of all available workers unable to find a full-time job, and 55% of the people who do work being wasted by having them do pointless jobs that machines can already do.
It can't even do the simple task of housing all our kids. 1800 kids, from just one Florida county alone, are living in cars.
Nearly everyone in the US is broke.
But they are not broke because there is not enough income or resources to go around. They are not broke because workers are not productive enough. They are broke because capitalism is a system that lets a tiny ruling class to use their power to exploit the entire workforce by taking most of the income they produce.
Everyone in the US in 2012 should be wealthy. We produce $15.4 trillion in goods and services every year.
That is just under $50,000 per year for every man, woman and child. That is $200,000 per year for a family of 4. That is $65 per hour for each hour every worker works. That is $135,000 per year for every full-time worker.
No matter how you slice it, that is clearly enough income to make everyone in this country wealthy.
So where is capitalism working?
It is working by concentrating the wealth that the workers of the world produce into the hands of a tiny, wealthy, ruling class.
This wealthy class then use their wealth to rule over the world. There is no democracy. We live in a plutocracy.
So capitalism just swapped one ruling monarchy for another.
money is a way to control others
Amen! Socialism Fails!
It's not a system of gov. Ohh but it is when gov has that much power they do abuse it. You need to stop mindlessly repeating the extrem left, debunking your claims ie easy because your has not worked anywhere in the world.
"Ohh but it is when gov has that much power they do abuse it"
Socialism is an economic system. It is not a government. Stop mindlessly repeating right wing slogans.
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" You need to stop mindlessly repeating the extrem left"
My posts and comments are arguments backed by evidence, citations to credible sources and math. They are not slogans. All you do is write slogans without any explanation or evidence. You are brainwashed.
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"debunking your claims ie easy because your has not worked anywhere in the world."
Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses.
You stop chanting the left wing bullshit, if you love socialism go live where it is being put in action. I love when people tout how good a system is that have never lived under it
Workers do not need to live in an economy that pays them at least 4 times more to know that getting paid 4 times more is a better system.
This is simple common sense.
This may be hard to grasp but people get paid exactly what their worth and if they feel otherwise they are free to leave that job.
In capitalism, people are paid based on how lucky and unique you are. Half our income is paid to investors, like entrepreneurs, which you get paid for being lucky. And most of what remains gets paid to those with bargaining power merely because they are unique like athletes and celebrities.
A much fairer system is one which pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, which pays no income to investors since they do no work, and which pays you based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are.
For the workers that produce all the world's wealth, that it is a significantly better deal.
You could become an investor if you wanted, maybe you were not taught how to manage or grow the money you do have. When you work for others you will never get what you think you are worth, but you don't have to stay at the job you can leave. Workers risk little to nothing If the company goes under they just move to the next job; the investors lose everything they put in.
The difference between Zuckerberg and everyone else is not that he was willing to invest and everyone else was not. The difference is that he got lucky. Paying half our economy to people based on how lucky they are is absurd.
And the reason why half of all workers get paid less than $16 per hour is not because they are turning down jobs that pay $65 per hour. It is because higher paying jobs are not available to them.
Yes, if you have an economic system that requires people to invest their private savings, you have to pay people to put their savings at risk. But having an economic system that requires people to invest their private savings is idiotic. Investment should come from public funds, not private savings, and workers would then no longer have to pay half the income they produce to investors.
You should have a right to a job and a right to full pay, without having to pay anything to investors, and a pay based on how hard you work and how much you contribute, not how lucky or unique you are.
Zuckerberg - Alma mater Harvard University
face book is successful because it was pushed by Big Media news and movies
Dozens, if not hundreds of people have pointed this out over the year that he's been promoting this plan. He just doesn't believe in inflation.
Not only do you not understand economics, you also don't understand the way science works. A fact is not a fact because a lot of people believe in it. A fact is a fact because it is supported by evidence.
Your claim that hundreds of people have pointed out that socialism and re-allocating income creates inflation is not a fact. Hundreds have not pointed this out. But it would not matter if they did. It doesn't make something a fact.
And none of your claims about inflation are facts neither.
You are not an economist. You have shown you do not even understand what GDP is. You don't understand what inflation is. Your claims are never supported by any facts. Your claims are all wrong.
Constantly repeating your same comment above over and over and over again does not eventually make it true.
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What I have pointed out to you every time you make the above comment is that in 2010 we paid out $14.5 trillion in income as reported by the government here.
As a result, we had a GDP of $14.5 trillion, as reported by the government here.
Since income is what we use to buy what we produce, GDP always equals the total income we pay out as explained here.
And if we pay everyone from $115k to $460k we will also pay out a total of $14.5 trillion in income which is simple math anyone can verify here.
When you spend a total $14.5 trillion in income, it is physically impossible to inflate the economy above $14.5 trillion.
Inflation is only possible when you pay out more income than you produce.
If, for example, we paid everyone $230k to $920k, that would cause inflation, because we would have paid out $29 trillion in income in an economy that only produces $14.5 trillion in GDP. You would likely have 100% inflation.
You need to get better informed as to how the world works. People are taking advantage of your ignorance.
I probably should feel guilty for being so entertained by this whole thing. Lots and lots of people have pointed out the inflation problem to you over the last year. Me included. I've seen more people point it out to you than I can even remember. People have tried to show why your plan would cause price increases using hypothetical scenarios and citations and all kinds of other attempts to get through to you. If everybody in the country were to be paid $100k - $400k then $100,000 would be the new poverty line. A Big Mac would cost $100. A Honda Civic would cost $200,000. But in your world, the value of a dollar is fixed, regardless of the money supply. I already know what you believe and I already know from trying a year ago that it's hopeless to try to talk about inflation with you. So just keep pushing your plan and I'll keep being entertained.
" If everybody in the country were to be paid $100k - $400k then $100,000 would be the new poverty line. A Big Mac would cost $100. A Honda Civic would cost $200,000."
Not surprisingly, these claims are not supported by any evidence.
So let's add some facts to these claims.
If the price of everything increases by 100 times, like you are claiming, GDP will also increase by 100 times. GDP will go from $14.5 trillion to $1450 trillion.
What you don't understand, since you don't understand the way an economy works, is that it is impossible for people to buy $1450 trillion in goods and services with only $14.5 trillion in income.
The only way to increase the price of everything 100 times is to increase the total amount we are paying out in income by 100 times. To inflate the GDP to $1450 trillion, we would have to pay out $1450 trillion in income.
But paying everyone from $115k to $460k does not increase the amount of total income we are paying out by a single cent.
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We are not just raising the minimum wage to $115k. We are also reducing top pay to $460k and reducing the amount companies pay in rent, interest, profit and dividends to zero. The latter represents roughly half the expenses companies pay out as reported by the government here.
The amount we are increasing the pay of ordinary workers is exactly equal to the amount we are reducing the income of investors and unique workers. So the total income we are paying out is the same. We are just re-allocating existing income.
However, according to web programmers like techjunkie, who have no idea how the economy works, the economy works fine, without any inflation, when you pay millions and billions to investors and unique workers. But when you pay that income to ordinary workers instead of investors and unique workers, the economy no longer works and everything becomes 100 times expensive.
People like techjunkie are clueless and gullible. And our society is unfortunately built on people taking advantage of their ignorance.
Let's say I run a corner store and make from the business 230k. I would like not to work 16 hours a day so I would like to hire a helper. But I have to pay him 115k minimum. Where does that come from without price increase or volume increase, or without cutting my income in half? Even if we split the hours, there is only so much income from the business. According to your posts, the new hire would also become an owner of means of production, so does the new hire become entitled to half the income in my store, effectively cutting my income in half, would be half of the decision process, etc? Why would anyone agree to that when the new hire has not paid capital into the business to have that ownership right. No one would start a business with their own capital to have a reduced ownership of that capital with each hired employee. How does the employee get that right to someone else's money, which is really their stored labor from past earnings.
"Demand never exactly equals supply."
In economics, it means that purchasing power equals production. It does not mean you produced exactly what everyone wants. That is impossible to do in any economic system. It is impossible, for example, to predict the success of a new product.
In a market socialist system, demand will equal supply because the total income paid out equals the total price of everything produced.
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"There are lag and lead times that severely constrain your proposed world. There is inventory. There is change in habits, preferences, something new replacing something old. Not all people are working all the time (transition workers)."
All of that also exists in capitalism. And none of that makes an economy unworkable!
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"You assume each worker owned widget business is exactly the same with exactly the same product, quality, costs, etc."
No I don't. Companies compete against each other. The ones that do not perform well and remain financially viable get shut down.
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"Sorry, your system is impossible to work. We do not agree."
This system has been peer reviewed in mainstream economics journals for the past 100 years.
Oskar Lange demonstrated in the famous Economic Calculation Debate with Mises and Hayek that a socialist market is more efficient than a capitalist market.
That carries more weight than your random, unsupported statement on an internet forum.
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"Nor do the majority of other knowledgeable people commenting to your posts."
You mean the trolls who just write pro-capitalist slogans they learned from billionares and are unable to formulate actual arguments?
Or do you mean TheRazor, the 12-year old, who thinks that when you buy resources, the money goes into the mountain?
Or do you mean TechJunkie, the web programmer, who thinks that when you pay the 1% millions and billions, the economy works fine. But when you pay that same money to ordinary workers, that causes inflation.
I'm pretty sure a peer reviewed economist who taught at the University of Chicago is more knowledgeable.
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"Your system is extremely divisive instead of uniting."
Capitalism, a system which exploits workers and keeps half the population in or near poverty, is divisive. A system which divides the population into the haves and have-nots is divisive.
Socialism, a system where you are guaranteed a job at full pay so that everyone in society has the freedom to do whatever they want with their life, is not. It does not divide people. It treats them as equal owners of the economy.
One final comment for now: if your system is so wonderful as said peer review,etc. for the last 100 yrs, where is the system implemented? If so wonderful, why has it not been implemented, or demanded by everyone? Show me a success of this system for a long period, say at least 25 years, with a large population, say at least 10 million people.
"where is the system implemented"
Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses.
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"If so wonderful, why has it not been implemented, or demanded by everyone?"
You think everyone is fully informed on what socialism and capitalism is?
"Everyone" thinks socialism is either a tyrannical, totalitarian dictatorship with no freedom or a system where government runs your life or a system where the government takes money from the hard working and gives it to the lazy.
People have no clue what socialism is. They have no clue how much they get exploited in capitalism.
And this is by design.
The 1% who benefit from all of capitalism's exploitation use their income to own all the businesses, politicians, governments, and media. So they have full control over the public discourse which they have successfully used to not only convince the vast majority that the raw deal they are getting is fair, but to also make it taboo to actually question it.
What benefit does a capitalist billionaire get from using his media empire to explain to the public why socialism is superior to capitalism?
If the media gave the same amount of time to the benefits of socialism as they do to the benefits of what the republicans and democrats offer, everyone would be demanding socialism.
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" Show me a success of this system for a long period, say at least 25 years, with a large population, say at least 10 million people"
Using that standard, we would never have any progress in anything.
There is lots of progress, just not in the things you want. There are plenty of educated people that do not want anything to do with it either. But Always interesting discussions even though we mostly do not agree. I do learn something each time (though more usually to reinforce my view). Talk to you again in another thread.
"There are plenty of educated people that do not want anything to do with it either"
Yes, they are the enemy of labor, the working class and the 99%. They are the reason why half the country lives in or near poverty.
The capital you invested is your stored labor. But the investment income you get paid is not. If you did make an investment in a socialist system, you would be entitled to getting your investment money returned. But nothing more.
Since socialism does not pay investment income, very few people will invest their own money. But having people invest their own money is unnecessary.
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Here is the relevant part of the post that explains investment:
The biggest difference between capitalism and socialism is that socialism does not pay any income to investors. No unearned income, such as profit, rent, interest, or dividends, is paid to anyone. In order to get paid an income, you must actually work.
Investment income does nothing but rob workers of half the wealth they produce each year.
It is just welfare for the lucky. It allows guys like Mitt Romney to get paid $20 million per year every year without working a single day merely because he got lucky in the market a few decades ago. Workers produce that $20 million every year, not Mitt Romney.
Investing is gambling and the economy should not be used as a casino. Workers shouldn't have to work for free for 6 months every year just to pay off the gambling winnings of investors.
A system where workers, who produce everything, are paid half the income and a few lucky gamblers, who produce nothing, are paid the other half is absurd.
Of course, you need investment money to run an economy. But just like we don't need to pay people to print their own money in order to make sure there's a supply of money in the economy, we don't need to pay people to invest in order to make sure there's a supply of investment money in the economy.
Just like the central bank can provide the economy with the necessary supply of money, it can provide the economy with the necessary supply of investment money. Workers don't need to pay private investors.
In socialism, all capital and businesses are equally owned by workers. So loans and investment are funded with public investment funds as explained here.
I have already read all that before and now it is repeated. Answer the questions in my scenario. Your answers are always assuming factory type operations where something physical is produced. That is not the real world. Your dodging the question related to hiring and how to pay someone these minimum wage levels. So again. Explain how the corner store would operate in your world. And then explain who has the risk of the investment when a business fails. Who looses the money.
I think all your questions are answered in the comment.
The corner store is no longer privately owned. It is publicly owned. You and everyone else who works at the corner store gets paid according to the national compensation plan which is explained in detail here.
Nobody gets paid any unearned income like profit, rent, interest or dividends.
The investment money does not come from anyone's private savings. So nobody's money is at risk. Investment money comes from the central bank. How that works is explained in detail here.
No, everyones money s at risk. If i borrow money from a cental bank and cant pay it back, everyone loses.
You don't lose any of your savings or income when a loan you did not borrow goes bad.
No, you will get taxed to cover the loss.
Nothing answers the question related to hiring a worker. How does a business add a worker and not reduce everyone else income? If a business has net income of 230k, how do you pay the added worker the minimum? We will never agree on the issue of private and public ownership. Your system can never be implemented unless you take every company from its owner. You are taking every small single business from its owner. You are taking every single farm from its owner. You are taking every authors work. You are taking every musicians music. You are taking every artist's artwork. You are taking every patent. You are stealing from millions of the 99% You will never get any consensus on that. If every worker was in a single union, they would be striking against themselves. All the rich would not have any issues as they have plenty to survive, and the the rest would be in misery. Not a very good solution. You are proposing to take everything owned (businesses, patents, copyrights, etc.) and making them publicly owned. That would never happen without force, and then that would be civil war, which would then destroy just about everything. I have read most everything you have posted on this topic in one form or another. This will never happen. To implement this theory is not possible nor practical. You expect every country to comply. If just one country says no, your whole concept collapses. If just one state votes no, your concept collapses. If one town says no, your concept collapses. They have chosen democratically and you can not deny them their choice. To do so would be dictatorship and statism. End of story.
" Why would the owner hire anyone if it cuts his income in half?"
The owner wouldn't. That is why there is so much inequality.
What I am talking about in this post requires that we abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism.
There are a lot of different ways socialism can replace capitalism. But the most common method advocated among socialist is for workers to form a single union that refuses to work for privately owned firms.
So that owner would no longer have any workers to hire and exploit.
Workers will only get the deal outlined in this post in a socialist system where the entire means of production were owned equally by the workers.
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" How does the company pay the employees a minimum of 115k with out raising prices?"
Since incomes will be different, prices will be different. Some will go up and some will go down.
However, since total income paid out is the same, total prices overall will be the same. So any increase in price for some goods and services will be offset by prices decreasing for other goods and services.
We are not increasing the amount of income that is getting paid out. We are just allocating that income differently.
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" If you lay off to meet minum wage, who decides? Would the workers agree to make less in order to not lay off ? How is that even allowed of the rules are minimum wage levels as stated?"
Workers are guaranteed a job at the wage set by the national compensation plan.
However, they are not guaranteed any particular job at any particular company. They can only be employed in companies that have the revenues to afford them.
The Fed will always invest enough money to fully employ everyone who wants to work as explained in the investment comment.
Keep in mind that demand will always equal supply. Consumption will always equal production.
That is because if we pay out incomes of $115k to $460k, the total income paid out will amount to $14.5 trillion. The total price of all goods and services produced in 2010 was $14.5 trillion.
The total income we pay out will always equal the total price of all goods and services sold. So demand will always equal supply.
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" so where does the magical money come from to meet the wage requirement in your world?"
See the question I just answered above.
In 2010, we paid out a total of $14.5 trillion in income to everyone. If we pay out $115k to $460k in income to workers, we will pay out a total of $14.5 trillion in income.
So we are not increasing the total income paid out. We are just allocating that income differently. This comment goes through the math of paying out the $115k to $460k income.
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"it is the voters that are deciding, not the workers. There is a difference. Not all voters are workers, but all people are voters."
There are 220 million adults, 150 million are workers. So workers make up a majority of voters.
But voting becomes secondary when the workers refuse to work for capitalist companies. You can't vote to force people to work at some job they do not want to do.
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"Your answers to copyrights, patents etc. show your ignorance. You assume that they are all owned by the 1%."
I never said all IP was owned by the 1%. I said all business owners who made over $115k, the amount you would get paid in a socialist system, were in the 1%.
Why would an IP owner who lives in poverty want to continue in capitalism?
If you are a musician, getting paid at least $115k for 20 hours at some job enables you to spend more of your free time creating music. So socialism will have the same appeal to IP owners as it does to workers.
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"You simply do not have nor will ever get the numbers that you perceive to ever get support for this concept."
Half of all Americans live in or near poverty. Half of all wage earners get paid less than $26k.
Most of them would rather get paid at least $115k for working 20 hours. Not all of them have been brainwashed by the 1% to think Bill Gates's wealth is more important than theirs. That's enough people.
Nothing is that perfect. Demand never exactly equals supply. There are lag and lead times that severely constrain your proposed world. There is inventory. There is change in habits, preferences, something new replacing something old. Not all people are working all the time (transition workers). You assume each worker owned widget business is exactly the same with exactly the same product, quality, costs, etc. That alone makes prices different, sales volume different, and ultimately, wages (shared income) different. Sorry, your system is impossible to work. We do not agree. Nor do the majority of other knowledgeable people commenting to your posts. Systems do not work just because of a math equation. Your system is extremely divisive instead of uniting. I could go on on every point again, but I am done for now. But I will be back with additional scenarios. So far, I have been generally disappointed in your answers.
" How does a business add a worker and not reduce everyone else income? If a business has net income of 230k, how do you pay the added worker the minimum?"
You take $115k of that $230k and pay the new worker. I'm not sure where the confusion is.
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" Your system can never be implemented unless you take every company from its owner."
We currently have a system that forces workers to work for private business owners that pay them a fraction of what they produce.
If workers decide they no longer want to be exploited and decide they will only work in a system that no longer exploits them, every single business will go under. They are worthless without workers.
Workers won't take anything. Business owners will lose their companies through bankruptcy.
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" You are stealing from millions of the 99% You will never get any consensus on that."
Business owners who make more than $115k make up a tiny minority of the population. They don't need a consensus from them. A tiny minority doesn't have the power or authority to force 95%+ of workers to work for them for less pay.
If they want to continue to live in a system that exploits workers, they are free to move to China. But they no longer will have the ability to exploit American workers.
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" If every worker was in a single union, they would be striking against themselves."
That makes no sense. They are striking against their private employers and a capitalist system that allocates income based on how unique you are instead of how hard you work.
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"All the rich would not have any issues as they have plenty to survive, and the the rest would be in misery."
The rich would have nothing. All production comes from workers. When workers stop working, all production comes to an end. GDP goes to zero.
If the rich want anything, they will have to get a job in the system now run and owned equally by all workers.
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"You are proposing to take everything owned (businesses, patents, copyrights, etc.) and making them publicly owned. That would never happen without force, and then that would be civil war"
The 1% conquered and privatized this country by slaughtering the Native Americans.
However, I do not think they are willing to slaughter the workers when their illegitimate rule comes to an end. When the workers refuse to work for them and all their companies go bankrupt, I don't see Trump, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Tiger Woods taking up arms and fighting the police who are now enforcing the bankruptcy results or murdering workers because they no longer want to work for them.
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"You expect every country to comply. If just one country says no, your whole concept collapses."
I do not expect every country to comply. And it does not rely on other countries complying. China could care less how the American economy is organized when it sells us their goods and services.
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" If just one state votes no, your concept collapses"
It is not up to the state or town. It is up to the workers in that state.
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" They have chosen democratically and you can not deny them their choice."
Socialism will only happen when a majority democratically decide they want it.
You continue miss the point on wages in a small business. Why would the owner hire anyone if it cuts his income in half?
Here is another scenario: company A has an owner with 9 workers. The owner makes 200k for the company. The employess make an average of 60k. The sales volume is steady. Net income for wages after expenses is 740k which pays the said wages. How does the company pay the employees a minimum of 115k with out raising prices? Assuming now in your world, everyone now gets equal shares of the income, you are short by 410k. (1,150,000 - 740,000). So what do you do? If you lay off to meet minum wage, who decides? Would the workers agree to make less in order to not lay off ? How is that even allowed of the rules are minimum wage levels as stated? If you raise prices, you lose sales and then income is further reduced. so where does the magical money come from to meet the wage requirement in your world?
You are incorrect on the answer to town, state, etc, it is the voters that are deciding, not the workers. There is a difference. Not all voters are workers, but all people are voters.
Your answers to copyrights, patents etc. show your ignorance. You assume that they are all owned by the 1%. Not true. There are millions of 99% people that have these. And all the small business, farms, etc. yet you answer about native Americans from more than 100 yrs ago and name a couple of rich people. They would not go bankrupt. They have the cash to live quite comfortably. You simply do not have nor will ever get the numbers that you perceive to ever get support for this concept. You know that.
It's a great idea if you live in a place where unicorns live and little fairies fly around. If something is wrong (it is wrong) basically if a million people say 1+1= 3 it doesn't make it so.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html
He really should get some points for persistence though. That's one thing that he's definitely got going for him. He'll immediately go ad hominem on you if you actually try to discuss his plan with him though. So not really the best marketer.
What a shock! If it makes him happy then he can stay in la la land I just can't afford to.
Have you seen the strange ponzi petition that he's running?
http://demandthegoodlife.com
It's perplexing in a really entertaining way. He likes to make up these fantasy economies where unlimited money is printed out of thin air but there is no inflation.
Ohh look a unicorn! Lol no I have just recently come across his theories.
Well if you want to earn $7000 then go and sign up.
It's not exactly a ponzi scam since he's not actually collecting any money from anybody. It's all imaginary money. It's some kind of new thing entirely.
Hmm invest my fake money in his fake system Naaa ill just hang with my fake girlfriend. Lol I'm sorry I can't not laugh at what he says.
No no no, he pays YOU. All you have to do is sign up. Read the web site, it's truly entertaining.
You sure are clueless on a lot of things.
That website is not mine. And that website is part of a GAME.
Not surprisingly, both you and podman73 are really gullible!
DemandTheGoodLife.com is a game. You said it, not me.
I'll take a look, but I'm setting my expectations low.
Doesnt matter what system you introduce to a public that is unwilling to educate and study for themselves, be invovled, and think for themselves. They will be led down the road of banker dominated depression.
I can sympathize with your frustration. Change is difficult, but it does happen.
A union that raises worker income to at least $115k and reduces the week to 20 hours will appeal to most people you talk to and is something that people can actually get excited about.
Explaining the concepts in this post is not difficult. If you can do the work of just recruiting 1 person to agree to support this and if we can get everyone we recruit to do the same, we can change the world.
Recruiting 1 person to the cause is feasible for anyone.
Your system wont work and is foolish to the core. In your system no one would ever start a small business. Most small businesses lose money in the initial stages. If the owners had to pay $55/hr for labor and not get a salary themselves, why do it? I owned several Baskin Robbins ice cream shops, I was lucky to earn $50000 per shop. It was supposed to be passive income but it was anything but.
I guess you missed this part of the post:
Of course, you need investment money to run an economy. But just like we don't need to pay people to print their own money in order to make sure there's a supply of money in the economy, we don't need to pay people to invest in order to make sure there's a supply of investment money in the economy.
Just like the central bank can provide the economy with the necessary supply of money, it can provide the economy with the necessary supply of investment money. Workers don't need to pay private investors.
In socialism, all capital and businesses are equally owned by workers. So loans and investment are funded with public investment funds as explained here.
Do you understand that running a business and mnaging people is very difficult? Plus you never answered a simple qustion : a pediatric brain surgeon is 100s of times more valuable than a hotl maid yet you would pay her only 4 times the salary. you are wrong. iIf a motel aid dies, she is easy to repace. a pediatric surgeon would take 15 years to replace.
"Do you understand that running a business and mnaging people is very difficult?"
As someone who has owned and run small and medium sized businesses, I do understand it is difficult.
What is your point?
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"Plus you never answered a simple qustion : a pediatric brain surgeon is 100s of times more valuable than a hotl maid yet you would pay her only 4 times the salary. you are wrong"
That is not a question.
You did raise that point in another comment and I did address it.
If you do not think paying a maid is worth the price, then you are free not to hire a maid. But if you do hire one, you will pay them their full wage.
A brain surgeon does not deserve to get paid hundreds of times more than a maid because they do not work hundreds of times the hours or put in hundreds of times the effort. And we don't need to pay doctors hundreds of times more money in order to get enough doctors.
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" iIf a motel aid dies, she is easy to repace. a pediatric surgeon would take 15 years to replace."
That is true.
But in a fair economy you should be paid based on how hard you work, not based on how long training is.
The purpose of income is to motivate you to work and work hard, it is not to motivate you to train the longest.
You dudnt answer the cardiology issue. Cardiologists now make scores and scores more money than motel maids, yet cardiologists are quitting the profession in such numbers that there are 7000 cardiologists needed right now. They work very long hours, give up 15 years of their life in study, and have to take call in the middle of the night and so even tho they can earn oner $500000 now, they quit the profeesion.
Why? The work is too hard and the pay too low.
And contrary to what you humorously keep saying, working hard doesnt entitled you to anything. Working hard and having a special skill entitles you to a very affluent lifestyle. And investing capital shrewdly makes one rich. Saving money and owning rental property is how to get filthy rich.
inventing a tool or writing a popular book makes one filthy rich. I LOVE filthy rich people. They got rich by working harder and smarter than some dumb motel maid or assembly line loser.
As we speak, there are 7000 cardiology openings in America. The work is too hard, the traini g too hard and the pay too low so your unresearched off the cuff comment that we dont need to pay doctors more is foolish wrong. Try again.
If there is a shortage of doctors because the work is too hard, paying them more is not going to change that.
You have zero evidence that there is a shortage of doctors because the pay is too low.
Socialism will pay doctors more on average than capitalism. Doctors earn $177k on average, shown here which is less than the $460k they would get paid in a socialist system.
In the soviet union and cuba, being a doctor was a lower paying job than others. But they still had more doctors per capita than the West. People do it for reasons other than money.
The AMA deliberately limits the amount of doctors that get admitted into med school so that there is a shortage of doctors which is necessary to keep doctor salaries high.
Socialism is not a system that pays doctors 4 times more than maids.
It is a system where 100% of the income is paid to workers and income between workers is limited to whatever is necessary to get people to do hard jobs and give their maximum performance in performance based jobs.
If we need to pay doctors more than 4 times more than maids to get enough doctors, that is what we will do.
However, there is zero evidence that says we need to pay doctors 100 times more.
Our cleaning lady gets like $35 an hour. She is doing pretty well for herself.
How would you measure what she produces though so that she can get 100% of it? She doesn't produce a product or something that is easily valued.
"I believe the competition that capitalism breads is healthy and good for the economy."
I agree. The competition that exists in capitalism will also exist in socialism. Companies will still compete for customers. And many of the people who work at those companies will be paid based on how well their companies perform. What changes is how income is allocated.
We can and should pay the Mark Zuckerbergs a significant bonus if the company they helped build becomes the company most customers choose. Paying them 5 to 10 times more income than everyone else is plenty of motivation to be the best.
We just don't need to pay them billions more. We don't need to pay the person who came up with the facebook idea 50,000 times more money as an incentive. And we don't need to pay half our economy to the people who risked their savings.
I advocate market socialism, where there is competition, because market socialism has been rigorously peer reviewed in mainstream economics journals for the past 100 years, beginning with Oskar Lange demonstrating that a socialist market is more efficient than a capitalist market in the famous Economic Calculation Debate against Mises and Hayek. And every component is already proven to work in the real world.
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"We just have a very corrupt political system right now that gives control of our government to those who can pay the most for it."
And that will always be the case so long as we have a government where politicians have to get elected and we have an enormous inequality of income.
Aristotle believed that a representative democracy will always end in a plutocracy because only the wealthy have the money to win a national election. In Ancient Greece they had a government that was chosen by lot, like our jury system. This way you were always guaranteed to have a government that represented a cross-section of the public.
However, the problems in society are all economic. Too many people lack income because too much income is being concentrated in the hands of the few. So regardless of how government is formed, at some point you have to address the financial struggle people face which can only be done by putting an end to the concentration of income which means a significant overhaul of our capitalist economic system.
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"Capitalism has always served me well and I am far from a member of a tiny, wealthy, ruling class."
If that was the case for everyone else, there would be no OWS and I would not be making this post. Socialism is necessary because the majority will never be served well in capitalism.
What is to make you think that people won't be able to take advantage of the system you describe?
It seems as if throughout nearly all of human history there have been certain groups of people taking advantage of others. What makes you think such behavior can be changed?
I find it hard to believe such a system, which would require so much regulation and oversight, would not have corruption that leads to some people having so much more than others.
Socialism is not utopia or the perfect system or a system with no crime or corruption. It is just infinitely better than capitalism.
Of course there will be corruption. But that doesn't mean socialism does not work or that it isn't significantly better than capitalism.
People evade taxes. But that doesn't mean we should do away with taxes.
Yes, people will find a way to steal money from the company they work for so that they can have more money. But very, very, very few people steal. Many will get caught. There is less motivation to steal when you are already wealthy. And none of that means you can't have a socialist economic system. People steal in capitalism too. Does that mean we can't have capitalism?
Allocating income in a socialist system will not require any more regulation or oversight than there already is in the allocation of income among government workers.
Government worker theft has not made government unworkable. There is no reason to think theft will make socialism unworkable.
I see
Socialism means 100% of the income is paid to workers and you are paid based on how hard you work. That amounts to $115k to $460k per year given the assumptions made in this comment where I go through the calculations to arrive at those income numbers.
A maid would likely be paid hourly and qualify for the $115k which is $55 per hour.
But even at $35 per I would personally like to get rid of the maid, my wife insists we keep her around though. At $55 I would almost positively win out and she would be gone.
Something like a maid is pretty discretionary. Wouldn't she rather have the work for $35 an hour than have no job at all? $35 an hour isn't bad.
The difference between socialism and capitalism is how income is allocated.
In capitalism, your pay depends on your bargaining power. If the alternative for the maid is unemployment, she is going to take what you offer. That is why workers get exploited. They don't have bargaining power. So half of all workers get paid less than $26k in an economy where workers produce $65 per hour on average.
In socialism you are guaranteed full pay as a right. You cannot exploit workers. Your pay does not depend on your bargaining power. The maid is guaranteed a job at $55. If you want to hire a maid, you have to pay the $55.
However, they are not guaranteed to work as a maid. You are still free not to pay maids $55. If there is not enough maid work to employ her, she will get a job doing something else that consumers are paying for.
But what if she wants to work for $35 an hour and I agree to pay it, just like we do now.
Would you really deny them the right to work for $35 an hour if that is what they want to do? What about freedom to do what one wants to do? I can understand wanting to protect workers but taking away their right to work for something they feel is fair is not a way to do it.
Capitalism definitely has its flaws but I would take it in a heart beat compared to this system you propose. And, fortunately, most Americans would agree with me.
You are certainly free to work for less as explained in the investment section. If the maid would rather work for you for $35 per hour instead of somewhere else for $55 per hour, she is free to do that.
The key difference is that it is voluntary.
Workers in capitalism don't take $15 per hour jobs because they are turning down $55 per hour jobs. They do it because they have no other choice.
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"I would take [capitalism] in a heart beat compared to this system you propose...most Americans would agree with me"
I do not think that is true at all.
Half of all Americans getting paid a wage are getting paid less than $26k. Half of all Americans live in or near poverty. I think most of them would rather get paid at least $55 per hour.
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"Capitalism definitely has its flaws "
Capitalism is more than flawed. It has been a dismal failure.
Nearly the entire world is capitalist and nearly the entire world lives in abject poverty.
Half the world lives on less than $2.50 per day and 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
In the US, after 200+ years of industrializing, thanks to capitalism, it still has 50% of the population living in or near poverty, and 97% of all workers earning a below average income, and 50% of wage earners making less than $26k, and 18% of all available workers unable to find a full-time job, and 55% of the people who do work being wasted by having them do pointless jobs that machines can already do.
It can't even do the simple task of housing all our kids. 1800 kids, from just one Florida county alone, are living in cars.
Nearly everyone in the US is broke.
But they are not broke because there is not enough income or resources to go around. They are not broke because workers are not productive enough. They are broke because capitalism is a system that lets a tiny ruling class to use their power to exploit the entire workforce by taking most of the income they produce.
Everyone in the US in 2012 should be wealthy. We produce $15.4 trillion in goods and services every year.
That is just under $50,000 per year for every man, woman and child. That is $200,000 per year for a family of 4. That is $65 per hour for each hour every worker works. That is $135,000 per year for every full-time worker.
No matter how you slice it, that is clearly enough income to make everyone in this country wealthy.
So where is capitalism working?
It is working by concentrating the wealth that the workers of the world produce into the hands of a tiny, wealthy, ruling class.
This wealthy class then use their wealth to rule over the world. There is no democracy. We live in a plutocracy.
So capitalism just swapped one ruling monarchy for another.
Well you certainly defend your position well and I give you a lot of credit for it.
Personally, I believe the competition that capitalism breads is healthy and good for the economy. We just have a very corrupt political system right now that gives control of our government to those who can pay the most for it. Capitalism has always served me well and I am far from a member of a tiny, wealthy, ruling class.
Another contradiction. You are full of them. You whole premise is that we only need to pay workers enough to get them to work hard. To get dctors to work hard, $177k isnt working.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/14/news/economy/health_care_doctors_quitting/index.htm
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/pediatricians-primary-care-doctors-leave-medicine.html
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/PHY-282762/1-in-3-Physicians-Plans-to-Quit-Within-10-Years.html
In America, Drs work for MONEY. Who cares about Cuba or the USSR, howver I find it hysterically funny that I couldnt use the USSR AS AN EXAMBLE of a failed socialist system but you cite it to make a point. So that means I can repeat, since you opened it up, that socialism is a utter failure and we have the USSR to prove it, since now YOU used the USSR as an example. If YOU accept it for one illustration, you buy the farm. SOCIALISM HAS BEEN TRIED BY YOUR EXAMPLE THE USSR AND IT, THEREFORE SOCIALISM IS A FAILURE.
You lose.
"Another contradiction. You are full of them"
I have not ever contradicted myself. You keep saying it, and I keep asking to give me an example. So far you haven't provided any. I don't think you know the definition of the term.
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"To get dctors to work hard, $177k isnt working."
The income you get paid in a socialist system is $460k. $460k is GREATER THAN $177k. Like I said, doctors on average get paid less in capitalism.
Read this actual post. Capitalism robs workers, including doctors, of most of the income they produce.
You are not following along.
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"http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/14/news/economy/health_care_doctors_quitting/index.htm"
You are linking to articles that substantiate my point. Did you even read the article?
Here is a quote, "she took a pay cut every year from 1993 onward, to eventually take no salary for two months prior to permanently shutting her office."
Capitalism does not work. In socialism, you would not be expected to work for free. You would be guaranteed an income of at least $460k per year.
Here is another quote which contradicts your claim that it is all about the money for doctors, "While some enter medicine because they believe it pays well, most choose it as a career because they feel it's their calling."
Here is another quote:
"For many it's not about the money. They have a passion for it, to take care of people," said Mosley. "It's not easy to feel that passionately for another career after medicine."
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"In America, Drs work for MONEY"
Not according to the article you linked to! You should have actually read the article before you linked to it. lol
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"Who cares about Cuba or the USSR"
Cuba and the USSR are not examples of socialism. They are examples of economies that paid doctors less than other professions and still generated more doctors than the West where they pay doctors more.
It is proof that your claim that people become doctors for the money is not true.
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"So that means I can repeat, since you opened it up, that socialism is a utter failure and we have the USSR to prove it, since now YOU used the USSR as an example"
Just like the USSR is not an example of socialism even though it has the word socialism in its title, North Korea is not an example of democracy even though it has the word democracy in its title.
I know the world is complicated and you have to go beyond just looking at labels, and that is hard for you to do, but if you don't, the smart people are going to continue to take advantage of your ignorance.
I'm considering getting a job transporting disabled people
the pay won't be great but the work itself s good
400% is a generous number. A house thats four times as big. a car thats four times more expensive. Having four times the money to spend on vacations. There is plenty of incentive hear without someone becoming a filthy pig.
400% isnt remotely enough to train for 15 years as a doctor.
you sound like you've got some entitlement issues.
Ask any doctor. Ask them if they would sacrifice 15 years of their life, ages 18-33 mind you studying till 11 at night when the could have dropped out of school at age 15 and earned $155k right away as a motel maid or order taker at Wendys.
Sounds like you want mommy to make it all better by letting you not try hard. You are too weak to try and strive for exellence.
There are a couple of points that you are missing.
Students are workers and in socialism students are paid just like workers.
And doctors also become doctors because they want to help people and because they enjoy science.
They would rather get paid 4 times more than a maid, spending their days studying science and training to become a doctor than cleaning buildings.
Kids go to med school to become affluent. To bath in money on the backs of uneducated dolts who only got a high school education. Stupid, useless high school grads and drop outs, we should lower the minimum wage and really make them think how dumb they were to not become doctirs or investment banksters.
High school dropouts are not the only workers being exploited in capitalism. College graduates, including doctors, are being exploited too.
Plus can you please answer this question: Isnt reduced labor costs a pure example of efficient business practices?
Your whole premise demands that labor hourly wages cant be cut, but off course thats nonsense. If I am a manager and it takes 5 employees at $50/hr to build a widget that i sell for a $1000, if i can find 5 employees to work for $25/hr, I can sell the widget for $900. Thats an efficient fabrication. Of course there are efficiencies to be had in other areas, but nowadays almost every technical efficiency has been wrung out to the extreme, leaving labor as the big variable.
Face it, socialism absolutely depends on a closed, non competitive market.
Your formula is not grounded in reality. All of GDP cant be paid out as income. Some of it gets paid out for supplies, some for utilities, some for materials.
That's right. I was wrong. Clearly you are an expert on economics.
All GDP is not paid out as income like I thought.
When you buy raw material, that money does not go in the pocket of the person who sold you the raw material as income. It gets placed in the mountain where you mined the material.
When you buy utilities, that goes in the pocket of the Utility Fairy.
And when you buy supplies, it goes in the pocket of the Supply Monster.
I may have been absent in college the day they brought in Sesame Street to cover this topic. So thanks for clearing that up.
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Here is a list of countries that have been socialists - tell me which one do you want to move to to improve your quality of life?
List of socialist countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_countries
I have no interest in moving.
Let me know how many of those countries in that article, whose factual accuracy is disputed, are countries that have a democratic, market socialist system that pays workers 100% of the income based on how hard they work.
Who should get paid, and how much?
One lumberjack, working by and for himself, using a hand axe, felling one tree a day but working very hard.
Lumberjack #2, working for a timber company, the timber company provides for him a highspeed chainsaw, a log splitter and chipper, and a truck and bucket to lift and move the cut wood. He can clear 20 trees a day.
Lumberjacks will get paid the same. Some jobs, lumberjacks may be one of them, will be performance based. So your pay depends on how you perform on the job. Faster lumberjacks will then get paid more than slower ones.
A bank is never going to fund a timber company that wants to use old, ineffective tools. But if they did, the lumber being produced by the slower lumberjacks will be higher priced because more labor is being used to produce it.
Since customers are unlikely to buy the higher priced wood, eventually they will go out of business.
How can anything in socialism be performance based? capitalism is performance ased.
Socialism is a system where you can only get paid by working and the amount you are paid is based on how hard you work, which you do by limiting differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get them to work hard jobs and to give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
There are no economic problems. Only political ones.
The 18% who are underemployed and 50% in or or near poverty would say they have significant economic problems.
You don't understand. There are no economic problems. Only political ones. For once in your life actually THINK about what someone else said.
I did think about it.
I think the unemployed and the people living in poverty have an economic problem.
Never mind. You don't have the brain power to understand. Go back to watching reality TV.
The burden of explanation is yours. If you can't make sense, make sarcasm.
Hat tip: Nobody has the brain power to read your mind and understand what you are saying without you explaining yourself.
There is no political solution to a cultural problem.
If you believe that then you are truly lost.
If you think there is, then you need to go out this Friday around town, take a stroll. Let me know your plan to get this population back into self governing. Because that is what it takes to get the political changes needed.
Its ALWAYS starts with the people. Power doesnt just change for the hell of it. It has to be forced into it. And this population is simply not interested in playing the game.
And everything you just said is politics. The population will have to play the game. Your problem is you can't think outside of the present system.
Haha, thats a good one. It is all politics. And the power structure doesnt change without pressure.
"The population will have to play the game". You are correct. And currently, the population has ZERO interest in playing the game.
Its always about the people. Which is why there is no political solution to a cultural problem. Nothing political happens when a population doesnt care. Its right in front of their eyes.
Okay. So the population doesn't care. So in your view it's all hopeless. And you are bitching about? What?
Its not hopeless, in a all inclusive sense. If you realize its going to keep getting worse, then you have the ability to look at things differently and position yourself and your ability to provide for your family better than the ones who are going to get caught with their pants down.
But are we going to see some kind of massive awakening that is going to lead to monumental change? Probably not. Is that stopping me from doing my thing with 3rd parties and trying to educate people? No. I dont care if I lose. I only care that I gave effort.
Not caring if you lose is defeatist. Go away.
Its not about winning or losing, because this situation is bigger than the individual. Its about understanding whats going on, how these things usually tend to turn out, and then doing your absolute best to contribute in a positive way.
A lifelong activist said at the RNC "Be active, be aggressive, but dont get married to the result.".
Fearlessness in the eye of defeat is what leaders are made from dude. Let me know when you are ready to get serious.
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I'm sorry, but this far from the truth. Capitalism is what made this country so prosperous. It creates opportunity. There is a pie that is huge, and people can attempt to take as much out of it as they'd like. Socialism fails. Look at countries with socialism. They have failed in comparison to the United States. The pie then becomes smaller, and the government decides where your money goes. It's totally not fair. Whats the point in working hard if you won't make more money than someone else with a crappy job? Is it fair that the government says that your money isn't yours anyways, and redistributes it to other people? It makes the standard of living lower, it punishes success, and is against what America stands for. Why do you think so many people have immigrated here? If they worked hard, they could be successful and prosperous. If we were socialist, people would have limited opportunity for success. There would be no "American dream." No other country was like us. There will still be corruption. There will still be an elite class. AKA our government leaders and people closely tied to them. You think left wing billionaires like George Soros would be willing to fork over their cash? Nonsense. It's not capitalism that's bad; it's people who have power that can be corrupt. Socialism is a failure though. Things would get worse than they are now in a socialist economy.
"Capitalism is what made this country so prosperous. It creates opportunity."
Workers created all our wealth, not capitalism. And workers are motivated to produce all our wealth because they take take pride in what they do and because they are getting paid to do it, in some cases getting paid based on performance.
And all our worker increase in productivity has come from science, not capitalism. Workers are motivated to do science because they take take pride in what they do and because they are getting paid to do science, in some cases getting paid based on performance.
Capitalism just takes all the wealth that our workers and science has produced and unfairly pays it to a small group of people merely because they are lucky or unique.
Socialism, instead, pays all that wealth to the workers since they produced it all and pays it based on how hard they worked, not based on how lucky or unique they are.
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"Socialism fails. Look at countries with socialism. They have failed in comparison to the United States"
Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses.
Some countries have some degrees of socialism. And the countries with the most socialism are the countries that are performing the best. The Nordic countries have the highest amount of socialism in the world and they all deliver a higher standard of living than the US.
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"The pie then becomes smaller"
The pie does not get smaller when workers no longer get exploited. Workers do not produce less when they are paid more.
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"and the government decides where your money goes. It's totally not fair"
Socialism is not a system where the govt decides where your money goes.
It is a system that pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, which pays no income to investors since they do no work, and which pays you based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are.
Read the post again.
That is the only fair economic system.
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"Whats the point in working hard if you won't make more money than someone else with a crappy job? "
Everyone is not paid equally. Read the post.
The rest of your comment and your complaint against government has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism is just an economic system where workers are not exploited by lucky investors or those with bargaining power because they are unique or government or anyone else.
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"It's not capitalism that's bad"
An economic system that allocates income based on how much exploitation you can get away with is bad. The economic system should pay you based on how hard you work instead.
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"Socialism is a failure though. Things would get worse than they are now in a socialist economy."
When workers are rightfully paid the full product of what they produce and paid based on how hard they work, their income will go up to at least $115k per year for working just 20 hours per week.
That will make things significantly better for them.
You need to stop listening to capitalist propaganda and learn how an economy works.
False.
Entrepreneurial spirit, a plethora of natural resources,combined with inventiveness and a desire to help ones fellow man did that.
Capitalism has always attempted to suck the life out of us.
Ha ha, do you recall America was the greatest nation on Earth when we were very capitalistic? You also mention "entrepreneurial spirit". Entrepreneurs have much more opportunity for success and prosperity in a capitalist society than a socialist society. How many businesses do well in Cuba? Their government controls everything. If we become socialist, our government will have that much more corrupt control over us. Why should the government tell me what to do with my money? Can you name me countries that are so great that are socialist/communist?
I'ii take that one.Denmark. http://www.alternet.org/story/152673/why_danes_are_so_much_happier_than_americans
You do understand what an actual capitalist is?
A capitalist, is one who survives purely on his capital.
A capitalist doesn't work, he doesn't innovate.
He sucks the life out of those that do.
'Socialism is the solution', $115k for each worker and a 20 hour work week. Quite frankly, this is the kind of thing that makes OWS look like a joke. And is nothing but an impediment to change. The 1% love you for it I'm sure. Keep up the great work.
Not surprisingly, your claim comes with no reasons or evidence.
Explain why it is a joke for workers to not want to give up to the 1% most of the $65 per hour on average they produce.
And explain why it is a joke to continue to have half our workforce doing jobs they have no interest in doing and that machines have the capability of doing.
Explain why. That's simple. Because half the country still believes in the myth of trickle down economics. That's just for starters! I'm not going to go through the gazillion reasons why socialism, even in the best possible of circumstances, quite possibly, and most probably, won't work. Let alone trying to convince a majority of people that it 'might'.
On the other hand, trickle-down economics, neo-liberal economics, Ayn Rand, libertarian free market bullshit, kleptocratic oligarchic corporatocracy - some of the biggest reasons for our lack of broad based prosperity, middle class wage stagnation and wealth inequality - focusing on these things, would do far more good for the vast majority of people. Far more realistic and achievable than trying to convince people to adopt socialism. Even simply dispelling the myth of trickle down will be an uphill battle. Let alone trying to convince people of socialism.
And you wouldn't have to convince 300 million people. You'd only have to change the minds of a few million or so swing voters to move the needle with each election.
If you insist on dreaming of socialism go ahead. But instead of thinking and trying to leap there in one fell swoop, which is wildly unrealistic, think about making change through incremental steps. Start with something like supply side economics. Not nearly so dreamy I know. Chances are - more people will listen in a more serious way.
" Because half the country still believes in the myth of trickle down economics. That's just for starters!"
I don't understand how that makes it a joke to pay workers fairly and end their exploitation.
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" I'm not going to go through the gazillion reasons why socialism, even in the best possible of circumstances, quite possibly, and most probably, won't work."
How about giving just one.
Market socialism has been peer reviewed in mainstream economics journals the past 100 years. Every aspect of it already works in practice. And Oskar Lange has demonstrated that a socialist market is more efficient than a capitalist market in the famous Economic Calculation Debate with Mises and Hayek.
So it would be interesting for you to explain what the economics community has missed.
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" Let alone trying to convince a majority of people that it 'might'. "
Nobody needs to be convinced that the economy can't work when workers get a bigger share of the pie.
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"focusing on these things, would do far more good for the vast majority of people"
Focusing on problems doesn't change anything. Changing the economic system does.
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" Far more realistic and achievable than trying to convince people to adopt socialism"
Convincing workers to join a union so that they can raise their income to at least $115k for working 20 hours per week is far more achievable since it actually improves their lives.
Explaining why trickle down economics doesn't work is not going to do anything to improve anyone's life.
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" You'd only have to change the minds of a few million or so swing voters to move the needle with each election."
Move the needle where and to do what!?!
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"think about making change through incremental steps"
The 50% who live in or near poverty need dramatic change immediately and they have enough numbers to make it happen.
You, like Obama, probably need a better strategy for incremental change.
You don't negotiate by asking for a little and settling for practically nothing.
You negotiate by asking for everything and settling for an enormous amount.
You think FDR got the biggest progressive policies through by slowly creeping up to it? He got it because he said the alternative was the end of capitalism. Socialism was a huge force in society.
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" Start with something like supply side economics. Not nearly so dreamy I know. Chances are - more people will listen in a more serious way."
If you want to move ordinary people, you don't explain supply side economics to them. You tell them a union is going to increase their income to at least $115k and reduce their week to 20 hours.
People are not motivated by economic theories. They only care about their bottom line.
Before I listen to anything else you have to say, I want you to explain how you can afford to live in Alpine, NJ.
Where I live and how much I make is not relevant.
What perhaps is relevant is that I have a graduate level education in economics, worked for the fed, worked as an investment banker and owned several companies. So I understand how an economy works.
How much you make is extremely relevant. If it's so bad for some to have so much while others have so little, I have to wonder how much you give to those less fortunate. Maybe you should sell that mansion of yours and spread the wealth around. Put up or shut up.
And nice try changing your location you hypocrite.
I'm not a hypocrite. I don't advocate capitalism and individual charity. That's what Ron Paul advocates. I don't advocate for the 1% to donate their money to anyone or to sell their homes or to spread their wealth around.
I advocate replacing capitalism with socialism so that workers don't need anyone's handout and will live within that socialist system if it comes to fruition.
Replace it sure, as long as you get to keep all of your money you earned through evil capitalism.
Yes, advocating socialism is the diabolical plan I came up with to keep the money I made in capitalism. You got me.
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There are no workable absolute absolutes.
But we should acknowledge our current socialism (which we already have a lot of) and beef it up.
"There are no workable absolute absolutes."
I don't know what you mean by that.
"But we should acknowledge our current socialism (which we already have a lot of) and beef it up."
We have welfare capitalism, not socialism. We should replace welfare capitalism with socialism.
Stealing the majority of pay workers produce and then giving them a little welfare in return is an unfair deal that should be abolished.
Workers should get paid in full based on how hard they work as described in this post.
There are always exceptions?
We have lots of socialism (bail outs, NFL, Cops, public services, etc.) I'm all for expansion and coming out. Or the other way around.
Labor needs prominence. But rigid demands need compromise, unless you're willing to murder all opposition. That's not nice, or workable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLuzeXqMeJg&feature=em-subs_digest-newavtr-vrecs
"There are always exceptions?"
I don't know what you mean by that!
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"We have lots of socialism (bail outs, NFL, Cops, public services, etc.) "
That is not the socialism I am interested in. I'm interested in the real socialism which pays workers the full product of what they produce and pays them based on how much labor they contribute.
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" I'm all for expansion and coming out. Or the other way around."
I don't know what that means either!
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"Labor needs prominence. But rigid demands need compromise, unless you're willing to murder all opposition."
Labor should never have to compromise on how much they get exploited. Exploitation should be illegal. You don't have to murder anyone to ban exploitation.
Well, one out of four will have to do. At least it's labor.
Sorry, this isn't the Butter Ball help site. Nor is Socialism a cafeteria from which you can pick and choose what meets your preferences.
Go labor!
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/
And I don't know what that comment means either!
can't help ya
try 411
This video has handily refuted your premise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8rx_SDeaao&feature=plcp
There is no video on youtube, or anywhere else, that refutes the premise that it is unfair to exploit workers.
There is no video that justifies a system that forces half the population into or near poverty.
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Taking from one worker to give to another worker is the inherent exploitation of one worker for the benefit of another. This defies logic. You're merely switching who gets exploited, not removing exploitation.
Half of all the income workers produce gets taken by investors who produce nothing. That is exploitation. Since investors did no work in producing that income, it is not theirs to take.
And most of what remains gets taken by a small handful of people who have bargaining power merely because they are unique like athletes and celebrities. That is further exploitation. Being unique does not mean you work harder or produce more, so that extra income is not theirs to take.
Returning that income to workers, because it is their money since they produced it all, is not exploitation! It is righting a wrong.
Using your logic, you would say returning a stolen car would be stealing from the thief.
Why don't workers just make their own companies then and skip investors altogether? Oh, because of land and violence monopolies. Why don't you address the real issues, instead of some superfluous complaint. It's intellectually dishonest.
"Why don't workers just make their own companies then and skip investors altogether?"
That is the goal of socialism. It is to work in an economic system where you don't have to pay investors.
But keep in mind socialism is an economic system, it is not a way to run a company. You can't launch a single company and create socialism. Every company in the economy has to be socialist.
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"because of land and violence monopolies"
As I write in this post, the two fundamental problems with capitalism are that it is based on theft and exploitation. The theft comes from capitalism's privatization of the planet and its resources.
So I agree that is a problem. But it is only one of the problems. We also have to eliminate the exploitation.
why does every company have to be socialist? Why cant some be worker wned andsome investor owned. Most big corsare owned by the people anyways, not by a handful of rich people.
Socialism is an economic system, not a way to run a company in a capitalist system.
Socialism is a system where 100% of the economy's income is paid to workers, none is paid to investors, and workers are paid based on how hard they work, instead of how unique they are. The only way to have control over how total income is allocated, every company must be socialist.
If only 10% of the companies are socialist, 90% of the income will be allocated according to capitalism. 90% of the exploitation and problems will still exist.
Thats your problem. You endlessly conflate socialistic economy with the free market competition. You cant have a totally socialistic economy and subject the companies within that system to a free market competition.
Simple example which of course you will dispute: In your socialstic economy company A makes widgets and company B makes widgets. They can only compete on cost or quality. If they cant match quality, they have to compete on cost by loweringthem, by reducing worker salaries, or cutting corners.
you dont take that into consideration. Your system allows no flexibility.
"You cant have a totally socialistic economy and subject the companies within that system to a free market competition. "
Yes you can. There is nothing within socialism that prevents 2 organizations from competing against each other for customers.
You can offer better service or better quality or better features or a cheaper price. You can make your price cheaper by developing genuine efficiency, which means using less labor in your production.
Paying your workers less is not creating efficiency. Paying your workers less does not mean you used less resources in production!
I am waiting for an answer. Its your model. You said there is nothing that prevents 2 companies from competing for customers. Free market. That means labor cost reductions are allowed. The only 2 ways to reduce labor costs are 1) lower wages or 2) Reduce the number of employees i.e. work them harder and increase unemployment. But you said there would be no unemployment.
So what it it? Lower wages? Higher unemployment?
"So what it it? Lower wages? Higher unemployment?"
You don't understand the way an economy works.
You are supposed to use as little labor as possible in the production of any good or service so that the freed labor can go on to produce something else. That is how we increase our wealth.
If you have 1000 workers making cars and figure a way to make those cars with 300 less workers, those 300 workers can now go on to make boats.
So that increase in efficiency enables us to now produce both cars and boats instead of just cars.
You are wrong. Finding a way to reduce labor costs either thru automation or lower wages is the text book definition of increased efficiency.
you just contradictted yourself, again. You said a company could reduce labor in your production. Thats correct. Either you make more people unemployed or you kerp the same number, just pay them less.
Thank you, finally for agreeing that labor is simply an expense that must be reduced inorder to gain market share.
Now you understand.
"You are wrong"
I am not wrong.
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"Finding a way to reduce labor costs either thru automation or lower wages is the text book definition of increased efficiency"
Automation may increase efficiency. But paying workers less does not increase efficiency. Efficiency means using LESS resources, not paying less for the same amount of resources. In order to increase efficiency, you have to use less labor.
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"you just contradictted yourself, again"
I haven't contradicted myself in this comment or in any other.
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"Thank you, finally for agreeing that labor is simply an expense that must be reduced inorder to gain market share. "
Labor must be reduced to increase efficiency and increase our wealth, not increase some organization's market share.
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"Now you understand."
Understand what?
I see you avoided my clear truth, as usual. Paying workers less is a form of efficiency. It reduces the cost of an item so more people can buy it. bythe way, service industries mainly have labor as a cost so they MUST compete on cost. And their cost is labor. Thats why we have Cost Cutters haircuts or Fantastic Sams. Most industries are very efficient and thats why many industries are offshored, like cars, electronics, clothes. Every efficiency was brought to bear, so the only place left to cut costs was labor.
Its all right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
Unless you answer, your theory has no validity. I have proven it to be false.
Efficiency also means efficiency of PRICE. Reducing price increases efficiency. If i decrease labor costs i can decrease price which means i can make more widgets cheaper. Thats efficiency.
"Efficiency DOES mean paying less money for resources"
You are awfully confident in a subject you know little about.
What benefit do you get from making uninformed statements about economics?
If everyone was paid half their income, productivity would not go up. Everyone would still continue to produce exactly the same amount. Paying less for labor does not make labor more productive. You need to get more production out of labor in order to gain efficiency, not pay less for it.
I am awfully confident because I am right. Anyone can make rules to suit their whim as you do, but it doesnt change reality. Productivity isnt the only metric for a successful enterprise. Cost of production is also an important measurable.
If everyone were paid half their initial salary, the cost of the item would be less to produce. The price if the item would be more favorable.
Price elasticity of demand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
This is an economic basic so since you refuse to acknowledge, you are the truly uninformed one. The cost of cars is very elastic. If I could make a BMW that only cost $1000, I would sell millions. If I could get workers to work for a $1/hr. my productivity per man hour would sky rocket
"Wrong again. If paying less money for your resources snt being efficient, you are a fool. How can one make stuff cheaper if he cant cut employee expenses?"
Like I said several times, you gain efficiency by using less labor. You have to minimize your workers or minimize your expenses.
Producing with half the workers is a gain in efficiency, paying your workers half their pay is not.
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"BTW, if cutting laborcosts doesnt lead to price efficiency, why do companies offshore production?"
So they can make more profits.
Producing the same output with half of the money is an increase in productivity.
Efficiency means using less resources in production, not paying less money for your resources.
If everyone accepted half the income they do today, we would still only be able to produce exactly what we are able to without everyone accepting a pay cut. Everyone taking a 50% pay cut is not going to enable us to produce twice as much!!
I know I said this several times to you but it is bizarre how confident you are in a subject you know little about.
Efficiency DOES mean paying less money for resources, sorry. If I make cherry furniture and I finda source of cherrywood for half price, I have made the efficiency of furniture construction better by reducing cost. Labor is no different than wood. If I can find cheaper labor, I can reduce prive and sell more chairs.
Twist it any way you like, but labor is simply a tool.
BTW, if cutting laborcosts doesnt lead to price efficiency, why do companies offshore production?
Wrong again. If paying less money for your resources snt being efficient, you are a fool. How can one make stuff cheaper if he cant cut employee expenses?
You mean they are owned by shareholders, with a board of directors?
The shareholers are the workers and the board is culled from the workers.
In that situation, the board is pressured by the shareholders to maximise profit.
That leads to the current problems we are experiencing with that system; outsourcing, mainly.
Huh? Thats a circular argument. The company is employee owned. Why would they outsource?
To maximise profit, of course.
The same reason they are doing it now.
The only difference being, the board votes themselves pay rises.
In your scenario, the board would have to ask for a pay rise.
Yeah Socialism. We all know how that went for Mother Russia.
Too many stupid claims in your post
"In capitalism, half of all the income that workers produce gets paid to a small handful of gamblers who got lucky investing in the market like bankers and entrepreneurs" - I wasnt aware there was some rule that said half of all income should go to 'bankers' and 'entrepreneurs'. Why half? WHy not 90% or even 10%? As a former banker and a current entrepreneur, I can tell you there is no gambling involved, just educated guesses. Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, so is Bill Gates.
"Even though worker productivity is $65 per hour, as shown here, which is enough to make every worker wealthy" - Its the average GDP per hour per capita. And its an average number. The guy who serves burger at your local Mc Donalds outlet wouldn't be generating $65 per hour while an qualified engineer would be easily generating upwards of $200. But you want to pay the burger guy and the engineer equal? Wow.
"If we allocated income this way:
•it would pay workers from $115,000 to $460,000 per year, as explained here •for working just 20 hours per week, as explained here."
The posts you link to don't really explain anything. Besides that post says a family of 4 would be making $200,000 assuming every person makes $50,000. So you mean to say, the kids too would be working and making $50,000? Great thinking dude.
FYI, 50% of Americans are not living in poverty. The International poverty line is at $2 per day.
"The only fair economic system is one which pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work" - Firstly you cant pay off 100% of all profits, you would need to save some part at least for expansion or other contingencies. Secondly, define a worker. The guy who sweats it out in the factory floor is a worker but so are the people in Legal or HR or Marketing, even the guys manning the cafeteria. All of them are 'workers'.
"Investing is gambling and the economy should not be used as a casino." - All investments have risks. A father investing in his child's education too is risky, not every kid goes to grad school after all. Without investers there won't be any capital which when combined with labor results in production. The investor is paid for his risk. The guys who have invested in my startup are all taking risk by putting their money on me and my team. You only see what happens if it works out. What if it doesnt? The startup goes kaput and everyone loses money. And those investors wont whine like you,
"Just like the central bank can provide the economy with the necessary supply of money, it can provide the economy with the necessary supply of investment money" - Ah, so you want Ben Bernanke to sit and decide which startup to invest in? You want your friend who wants startup capital to open a restaurant to go to the Fed for help? Wow. What have you been smoking?
Entrepreneurship has never worked under a socialist economy.
"Yeah Socialism. We all know how that went for Mother Russia. "
Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses.
Some countries have some degrees of socialism. And the countries with the most socialism are the countries that are performing the best. The Nordic countries have the highest amount of socialism in the world and they all deliver the highest standard of living in the world.
Russia was an undeveloped peasant society. They did have a socialist revolution. But the revolutionaries were kicked out of the country, put on trial or murdered. Trotsky, the leader of the revolution was murder by Stalin. Stalin then implemented an oppressive, totalitarian dictatorship. Open a history book.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was as socialist as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic.
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" I wasnt aware there was some rule that said half of all income should go to 'bankers' and 'entrepreneurs'. Why half? WHy not 90% or even 10%?"
There is a rule that says investment must come from private savings. This enables the lucky and wealthy to take income that the workers produce without having to work. If they could take 90%, they would. But so far they have only been able to take half, which you can verify by clicking on the link in the post.
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" I can tell you there is no gambling involved, just educated guesses"
There is a word we use for taking educated guesses: gambling.
The people betting on football are taking educated guesses too.
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"Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, so is Bill Gates."
And they don't work 10,000 times harder or longer than any other worker. So they don't deserve to get paid 10,000 times more. They only make tens of thousands of times more because we have an unfair economic system that pays gamblers half the money workers produce.
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" But you want to pay the burger guy and the engineer equal? Wow. "
That is not what I said. Read the post again. Workers are not paid equally.
Differences in income are limited to only what is necessary to get workers to do difficult jobs. I argue that you only need to pay engineers twice as much income to get people to become engineers, but we may have to pay them more. However, engineers get just as exploited in our system as burger flippers.
Also, nobody should flip burgers. It is a waste of human life. We have machines that can do that.
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"So you mean to say, the kids too would be working and making $50,000? Great thinking dude."
That is also not what I said. You need to read the post again. Nowhere do I say kids are paid $50k.
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"FYI, 50% of Americans are not living in poverty. The International poverty line is at $2 per day."
That is also not what I said. You need to read the post again. Your comprehension is terrible.
I said 50% live in or near poverty according to the latest government statistics which you can view here.
The poverty line for Americans is not the same internationally since the cost of living in the US is so much higher.
But since you brought it up, nearly the entire world is capitalist and nearly the entire world lives in abject poverty.
Half the world lives on less than $2.50 per day and 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
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"Firstly you cant pay off 100% of all profits, you would need to save some part at least for expansion or other contingencies."
Profit is income that needs to get paid to workers instead of investors.
What you are referring to is investment. Roughly 10-15% of our income will be spent on investment which will come from whatever the natural savings rate is as explained in the investment link.
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"Secondly, define a worker. The guy who sweats it out in the factory floor is a worker but so are the people in Legal or HR or Marketing, even the guys manning the cafeteria. All of them are 'workers'."
That is correct.
What is not a worker is someone who invests their savings and gets paid a return on that investment. Half our income gets paid to investors in exchange for investing their savings, not working.
That money should be paid to workers since they are responsible for producing everything. Workers don't have to give half their income to investors.
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"so you want Ben Bernanke to sit and decide which startup to invest in?"
The fed also supplies our entire economy with all its money. That doesn't mean Ben Bernanke decides what everyone buys.
They just figure out how much investment money is available. Individual investment banks decide where to invest that money and the people working there are paid based on how well those investments turn out.
Read the post.
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" You want your friend who wants startup capital to open a restaurant to go to the Fed for help?"
No, they would go to an investment bank. Read the post.
"Socialism, the system where everyone gets paid based on how hard they work, has never existed anywhere. Every country has been ruled by a 1% that exploits the masses."
And why should people get paid based on how hard they work? Say we are both programmers, and I can solve a problem in 10 hrs while you can do it in 2 hours and then take the rest of the day off, should I get paid more because I worked 'harder'? Should a construction worker be paid more than say a teacher because the construction worker's job is physically more taxing?
I am sorry, but I never cared how hard people worked, i cared how smart they worked. As an investment banking analyst, I went against pretending to work and look busy. I left office early (in relative terms because work hours in ibanking are exceptionally long) whenever I was done with my work. And hey I did well enough,
Finance is not gambling. But I am sure you won't understand that, after all it requires a very good understanding of maths and statistics. So we can agree to disagree. You can maintain your layman view and feel good and righteous about it and I can laugh at you.
As for profits, if investors invested in you then you gotta give them their worth. FYI, I have my own startup with a few investors and I dont hate them. In fact, I brought them on board because I needed their money, advice and contacts.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are/were visionaries. And to implement a vision you need to take great risk. And they got paid for the risk they took. There are many other like Jobs and Gates who took similar risks but you have never heard of them. A lot of advancements in science and tech that you enjoy today is due to the risks taken by various visionaries. And they deserve every bit of what they got. Because if they failed you wouldn't compensate them. So don't whine about their success.
Yes I checked out your article about 50% living in poverty and I quote this bit from it
"Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far. He said some people described as poor live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs."
Being poor and in poverty are two different things.
"That money should be paid to workers since they are responsible for producing everything. Workers don't have to give half their income to investors."
Thats just stupid. Without capital no production is anyways possible. Besides some of these "investors" are also pension funds where the so-called "workers" deposit their money. If there are no investors, setting up a business will be very tough. Of course you wouldn't know that. You never tried one. I have and I sure as hell need every penny my investors are providing.
You think Gates and Jobs didnt work hard. Spend a week at a early stage startup and then we shall see. I have spent 7 years in investment banking, a profession that is considered very stressful and demanding. And yet, I find myself stretched and skipping sleep for two or more days. Not to mention the constant fear of failure and competition. You free loaders wouldn't know that.
I probably had too much coffee. I was thinking what is the Catholic Church, the people that live in the Church, get free food & Housing from the Church. Is it a Corporation or is it Socialism/Communism.
The Catholic Church is a lot like an Empire. But you could call it a corporation. Maybe there is a word that Marries church & State & Financial Empire.
Just adding on .... Corurption seems the Real Issue. How did the Church get Corrupt? Sounds like the Roman Church was Corrupt and Controling people before Christianity.
Corruption seems like a Predicatable Human Trait ... Everyone has been watching in in American since the begining. First it was proably the European Empires or Rich Lords ... and the Charters given to a few people to own land in the New World.
http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black-why-nobody-went-to-jail.html
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7926
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Akerlof
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Smith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
http://ideas.repec.org/a/bin/bpeajo/v24y1993i1993-2p1-74.html
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn't work longer or harder than anyone else? Are you nuts? They certainly worked more than me or the people i know. Maybe the millionaires you live and hang out with worked as hard as those two did, which would explain how they can afford to live in your neighborhood.
It is impossible for Jobs or Gates or anyone else to work 10,000 times harder or produce 10,000 time more than anyone else, so they don't deserve to get paid 10,000 times more.
Any of your claims to the contrary are simply false.
10,000 times harder than me and my friends is an understatement.
You must really hate Sean Penn and the other multi-millionaire actors then. Remind me, how did you earn your millions?
"10,000 times harder than me and my friends is an understatement."
Prove it.
They don't work 10,000 times the hours or expend 10,000 times the energy or produce 10,000 times the product.
I don't hate anyone.
Sean Penn did not invent capitalism or impose it on us. It was here long before anyone alive today was born.
If you are telling me that i can live the Alpine, NJ life without having to work harder, I'm with you. Let's get those capitalists! Can you organize a march on Alpine? I mean, since you know the area better than we do. I'm sure we can get a big crowd. We can meet at your house!
Yes, everyone can live the Alpine life who works hard. We have more than enough rock to give everyone a 50,000 square foot house if they wanted it.
If everyone was given a 1 acre plot of land we would only use up 5% of our country's land. You can easily build a 5,000 sq ft home on that if you want to live in a large home. It takes an acre of wood to build a 5k sq ft home, so there is plenty of wood.
There are plenty of resources, productive power and income for everyone to live a wealthy lifestyle. Lower and middle classes only exist because of the unequal allocation of income.
Marching does not solve anything. Workers need to form a single union and demand an end to their exploitation.
Its pulling teeth getting them to come out and campaign or protest for two hours a month. good luck getting them to start donating massive time and resources to organizing.
Yes, but Demand the Good Life (aka Captain Socialism) lives there. He can help us out, right in the 1%'s backyard.
In 2012, Forbes ranked Alpine as America's most expensive ZIP code with a median home price of $4.25 million,[13] after being ranked 4th in the magazine's 2010 listing of "America's Most Expensive ZIP Codes", with a median home price of $3,814,885.[14] In 2009, Forbes ranked Alpine first, along with Greenwich, Connecticut, with a median home price of $4.14 million.[15] Alpine was tied with Greenwich for first in both 2006 and 2007 on the ABC News list of most expensive ZIP codes, with a median home sale price of $3.4 million.
Like I said, Captain Capitalism, workers need to organize into a union and then change the economy to socialist once their numbers reach a majority, not protest in anyone's backyard.
Certainly not your backyard. Hate for your property values to go down. Might bump you out of the 1%.
Occupy Alpine NJ! Let's take it to the 1% right where they live! We can do this.
"Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit." Alenander Solzhenitsyn
From one who lived it.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." Winston Churchill
And thus the simpleton sheeple are lead to slave for their capitalist masters because they are gullible enough to be persuaded by meaningless and inaccurate slogans.
You should really learn how to think for yourself.
you live in alpine? nice neighborhood, home of the " 1%".churchill was among the most brilliant leaders to have ever lived. he inspired his countrymen during the horrors of the battle of britian.
Churchill is a right-wing shill for the 1%.
"is"? though Winston Churchill has been dead for quite awhile(47 yrs) his words live on and still ring true.
Yes, "is." Even though he is dead, he is still a right-wing shill for the 1%. See Justoneof99's comment above for an example of his continued use as a shill for the 1%.
Right wing shill. The Nazis that he fought against we're far right wing. Are you saying that he( Churchhill) was wrong for opposing the nazis?
Read the comment.
I said he is a right wing shill because of his statement that, "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." And because he is right-wing.
He means Bob Churchill. Bob lives down the block in a $3.9 million mansion. Demand mows his lawn on weekends.
thanks for the info, its nice to know that dots mommy and daddy let him out of their basement from time to time.
Check it out. Homeboy's trying to cover his tracks and hide his hypocrisy. Either that or he just moved out of state five minutes ago.
dot is a plant or perhaps he's one of michelles mandated vegetables that gets thrown out
In 2012, Forbes ranked Alpine as America's most expensive ZIP code with a median home price of $4.25 million,[13] after being ranked 4th in the magazine's 2010 listing of "America's Most Expensive ZIP Codes", with a median home price of $3,814,885.[14] In 2009, Forbes ranked Alpine first, along with Greenwich, Connecticut, with a median home price of $4.14 million.[15] Alpine was tied with Greenwich for first in both 2006 and 2007 on the ABC News list of most expensive ZIP codes, with a median home sale price of $3.4 million.
given those stats, makes you wonder if demandthegoodlife is a "capitalist master" or lives with mommy and daddy.
churchill was a brilliant man. his observations just as relevant today as when they were first made. every generation has people who think that socialism is the " answer" that when it was tried in the past , the leaders just didnt get it right, and "they can do it better. there is no " better". they're delusional , only they dont know it.
Wooaaa man hey common sense is not allowed in this disc. You are just supposed to trust the soc. know what's best for you, don't question just take what they make you take trust them they know best.
lol
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Yikes, we should flush that racism from this website.
That's a racist comment. You should be banned.