try 6 or 9
face
retirement crisis in america
- Thread starter rickyb
- Start date
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The incentive to work harder under capitalism is you gain more capital a la material wealth. There is a correlation between how hard you work and pay if you think in the long term and understand the mechanisms by which hard work is rewarded instead of only focusing on the hourly pay. As long as people are paid for the work done at the negotiated amount during the hiring process. Along with inflation I included market forces for setting a practical price on labor, I don't think you should leave that out.
This idea that the poor don't pay taxes is a myth. The only tax they might get off on is income taxes, but assuming they're not doing anything illegal they will be paying payroll and excise taxes which, unfortunately in most cases, were setup to fund specific government projects but then were spent on other projects. You can make the case that tuition funded colleges are a good deal for the poor but seems to me like you'd be letting the same problems that affect k-12 to also influence colleges, which are under achieving and trying to get more money either from tax revenues or corporations.
I'm assuming you've listened to enough Ron Paul to know the argument for free markets, so if after listening to him you still remain unconvinced then don't know how to help you there.
Not sure where you get that Thomas Sowell advocates corporate tyranny and anarchy. Corporations do not hate government, they love the fact that politicians are willing to sell out their constituents for pennies on the dollar. Corporations aren't tyrannies, they don't have a gun to your head coercing you to buy their products. Give the corps the middle finger and become a conscientious consumer, don't buy from them and go out of your way to buy from good sellers. Whatever problems corporations have, I say if you think it can be done better then go for it. If you think corporations are doing it wrong then start an S-corp or LLC and show people how to do it right. And before thinking up reasons why not to, I've tried it and quit because the major problems I had always involved my customers and the government (licenses, taxes, inspections, accessibility, etc.) not other businesses and it's less stress to just let others handle it.
America's not the only country that's been meddling in other countries. On 9/11 we'll just have to agree to disagree since the same statements are just being rehashed.
The government doesn't have to fund USPS, it just has to make it illegal to compete directly, which it is. And honestly, who doesn't like government when it makes them money? Which is why having politicians that won't sell out is important, but that's a different thread.
Corporations are allowed to influence k-12 because the DoE allows them to. Like I said, all that nonsense could be stopped immediately if the DoE bothered to care, because of money, and perpetuation of the department, yada yada. Might have to agree to disagree on this one too.
Orwell is a good writer, kind of skewed in his biases since he criticizes capitalism's vulnerability to fascism while at the same time watching socialism in Russia deteriorate into communism and self proclaimed socialists in Germany also talk about overthrowing capitalism and he never seriously addresses how to prevent that in the future as a socialist himself; he points out the faults of capitalism without addressing the same faults of socialism. Maybe if he lived longer he would have, so I look at his writings about politics as just a road stop.
In his later 1941 essay "Shopkeepers at War" during WWII he seemed to have a different gripe about capitalism:
"What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler's conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result."
He never addresses what would happen to a country that is both capitalist and unable to lose a war. So when he says things like, "If one collaborates with a capitalist- imperialist government in a struggle ‘against’ Fascism, i.e. against a rival imperialism, one is simply letting fascism in by the back door." he's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. By the same reasoning the case could be made that socialism let's communism in by the back door.
Not trying to invoke Godwin's law or compare Orwell to Nazis with the following quote, just pointing out that the people who Orwell called fascists called themselves socialists while being anti-capitalist.
"We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!" -Gregor Strasser
Personally I think if Orwell lived long enough he would've been a libertarian socialist. He'd still be wrong though.
Most people don't try to study and practice hermeneutics, so that might be the differential.
again its nice to have a serious conversation with you.
i dont think u necessarily gain wealth under capitalism if you work harder as an employee. so when i worked at a railway, i was paid $30/hr whether I went fast or worked to rule. it sometimes rewards you but often does not. and thats why alot of employees do as little work as possible to keep their jobs.
ive never heard any of the guys i listen to mention "market forces for setting a practical price on labor" so you'd have to elaborate and im skeptical of it. they only mention that the real wage reached its peak in 1973 i believe.
right i disagree with alot of ron paul's economic theory. the whole argument for "free markets" has been completely taken out of context; chomsky quotes the book where free markets and the invisible hand are actually mentioned. i believe free markets in teh long term are destructive and concentrate wealth. piketty just wrote a book showing how capitalism systematically concentrates wealth over time. on top of that they emphasize private property too much and i think the climate catastrophe dictates in part that we find a way to share resources more like a library, or subway which markets dont offer. marx was right that capitalism will consume the environment until it consumes itself and ceases to function. anyways free markets are supposed to come with free movement of labor across borders and we dont have that either.
I am saying as an employee corporations are tyrannies. I mean as an employee if you dont do what they tell you, they can call the cops with guns. if capitalism was democratic, then the workers would vote on how to run the company including voting in managers. they are traitors as well, they pack up jobs to 3rd world dictatorships, take government subsidies, often dont pay taxes, rip off workers on their pensions and wages. i think these behaviors are expected and are what the system capitalism drives towards.
o i know. the terrorism in france is because they invaded some other countries cant recall what the names were. the terrorists hate american forgien policy which is to overthrow democracy, install dictators, do mass murder, and steal resources.
i agree corporations are allowed to influence education because teh government allows it. even if the public education system was doing good, they'd still want in on it.
so i havent looked into sowell since the beginning of this conversation but one ridiculous thing he said was that even though the walton family has all kinds of wealth (more than the bottom 40% of the US popuilation) they dont have power simply because consumers can choose not to buy there. i think thats ridiculous. im sure if u or i looked at alot of other arguments he said we could easily say the same thing.
if orwell lived long enough to become a libertarian socialist (not sure if he was, it sounds like he was, im no expert but ive looked into this stuff full time since late 2011) then he would be right. thats what i am. i agree that russias "communism" and the nazi's "socialism" were just names they applied to their political economy for their own agendas. these words hardly mean anything nowadays because their definitions have been so badly skewed by the above mentioned and the american propaganda.
satellitedriver
Senior Member
You are showing your ignorance of the written English language.
Your is not a contraction of you are.
Also, so should have written coattails, period after teamsters, capitalized the W in what and placed a question mark after say.
Having said all that,
I hope you stay a teamster all your life.
If that is how you define/limit your potential, then I wish you well.
rickyb and I have had discussions, not arguments.
Granted, ricky can only work off reading/cut and paste, with little life experience.
You on the other hand are all you will ever be.
It must suck to be you.
please i dont even think you read: alot of what you said was post reagan rhetoric. if u think everything should be privatized your nuts. theres all kinds think tanks and people who are funded by big money
satellitedriver
Senior Member
I could not have said it better.
I was talking about working hard as a payoff in the longterm since working hard isn't something you just do out of the blue, it's an attitude you carry with you no matter what you do and where you go.
"Market forces for setting a practical price on labor" just means setting price for practical reasons like if it takes me as an employee $20 in gas to drive to work then I'm not going to work for anything less than at least $50 per day. However if the work is only paying $30 then I'll have to commute via public transportation or carpool. The "market" in this example is the environment that the employer and employee have to work within and the "practical price on labor" is the agreement on wage, basically what the employer is willing to pay and what I'm willing to be paid to do the work.
Terms like "free market" and "capitalism" along with other economic and political terms assume certain things. These two terms specifically assume that no one is being coerced to take action and cheating the system is penalized with force. If people are being forced at the point of a gun to participate or cheating the system is rewarded rather than penalized, then it's no longer "free market" or "capitalism". That being said, there is no system of economics or government that inherently prevents degradation into the worst outcome, which is why the economic woes in Greece, Spain, France, etc. were expected. Capitalism, like other economic models, will concentrate wealth into specific groups if consumers/voters stop caring about who they shop from. So yes, capitalism is democratic, you just vote with your dollars and where you put your labor efforts. I've already mentioned other ways to influence your employer or become the employer yourself. And yes, free market is supposed to include certain things which we don't have, hence we don't have a free market which is why current problems aren't a result of the free market. A better description of what's going on would mercantilism or corporatism. The way to have shared resources isn't to force people with taxes through the government (why would you expect corrupt people to respect your interests?) it's to promote a culture of sharing within your local community.
Like I said, gonna have to agree to disagree about this blow back myth.
But consumers do have the power not to buy from Walmart. I'm poor as hell and I do it, haven't gone there in forever and actively discourage my friends and family from going there too and avoid franchises like the plague. And not because they're evil corporations, but because there're other people who run businesses that need that money. The problem is the general public just doesn't care as long as the product is cheap and decent, which has more to do with the general attitude of the culture rather than economics or government.
If i remember right Orwell described himself as a democratic socialist, which I think is nuts since I have my own gripes against democracies and intersecting that with socialism sounds like throwing garbage into a tornado. I said he'd still be wrong because he and many socialists seem to believe that people are either inherently or tend towards "good" when history and experience contradicts those assertions.
i think being able to choose your dictator doesnt make it democratic. again, say you have 2 dictators and you get to choose which one tells you what to do: is that democratic? i dont think so, although a choice between dictators is preferable to having no choice at all. i think if capitalism was democratic you would have people choosing which enterprise to buy from + the internal structure of such enterprises would be more bottom up in terms of power, 1 person 1 vote by the workers.
its chomsky, but trust me. i think chomsky is wrong about the federal reserve though.
"Market forces for setting a practical price on labor" i should have been able to figure it out without u explaining but thanks. the real wage takes that into account, I mean the real wage is really the result of that. Wages arent tied to productivity because if they were americans would be far better off.
gar alperovitz starts at 4:10
send me some of the best videos and articles im interested in what your guys have to say about markets but im extremely skeptical. not to say i dont agree with even sowell about many things.
heres hedges on 9/11. he worked in the middle east for the new york times and was fired when he spoke out against the iraq war. on a side note he just wrote a book about free markets called "days of destruction days of revolt".
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nationalism_in_the_aftermath_of_9_11_20110910
chris hedges and bill moyers about free markets and days of destruction days of revolt:
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https://www.salon.com/2018/03/18/so...y-do-not-think-capitalism-will-exist-by-then/
this article mentions the current mediocre economy.
"
“In general, I regard the future as a multitude of possibilities, but most of them don't look good,” Elias Schwartzman, 29, a musician, told me. “When I'm at retirement age, around 2050, I think it's possible we'll have seen a breakdown of modern society.” Schwartzman said that he saw the future as encompassing one of two possibilities: an apocalyptic “total breakdown of industrial society,” or “capitalism morphing into a complete plutocracy.” “I think the argument can be made that we're well on the way to that reality,” he added.
Wood, 32, a political consultant, told me via Twitter that she felt similarly. “I don’t think the world can sustain capitalism for another decade,” she explained. “It’s socialism or bust. We will literally start having resource wars that will kill us all if we don’t accept that the free market will absolutely destroy us within our lifetime [if] we don’t start fighting its hegemony,” she added."
i enjoyed this quote:
Frank Furtschool ☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭ @kulturalmarx
my investing style is i give five bucks to chapo in the hope that their dumb asses will create socialism by the time i retire
this article mentions the current mediocre economy.
"
“In general, I regard the future as a multitude of possibilities, but most of them don't look good,” Elias Schwartzman, 29, a musician, told me. “When I'm at retirement age, around 2050, I think it's possible we'll have seen a breakdown of modern society.” Schwartzman said that he saw the future as encompassing one of two possibilities: an apocalyptic “total breakdown of industrial society,” or “capitalism morphing into a complete plutocracy.” “I think the argument can be made that we're well on the way to that reality,” he added.
Wood, 32, a political consultant, told me via Twitter that she felt similarly. “I don’t think the world can sustain capitalism for another decade,” she explained. “It’s socialism or bust. We will literally start having resource wars that will kill us all if we don’t accept that the free market will absolutely destroy us within our lifetime [if] we don’t start fighting its hegemony,” she added."
i enjoyed this quote:
Frank Furtschool ☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭☭ @kulturalmarx
my investing style is i give five bucks to chapo in the hope that their dumb asses will create socialism by the time i retire
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