ClockworkPenguin:
It wouldn't be so bad, if there was some sense that it was justified, but if we've learned anything since 2009 its that these guys have no more of a clue what's going on than anyone else.

Interesting to note that this all started in the late 70s-80s. Around about the time private sector unions got legislatively hammered (in the UK at any rate).
This bit in particular seems to be a good argument for unionisation.

Workers' wages do not seem to be tied to the success of the companies they work for. As demonstrated by another anaylsis from the EPI, hourly wage and compensation for lower-level employees remained stagnant until 2009, even as worker productivity has risen sharply.

captcha: topsy turvy. Isn't it just captcha, isn't it just.

I'd say if anything they know exactly what the fuck they're doing. They get to cash out twice as much sometimes for making companies fail, with no real penalties 99 percent of the time. Then of course they have 30 to 40 percent of people believing that the economic disparity is earned. Then they roughly half of the country believing in supply side economics, in a round about way of course. They're are paid that much for reason because they know how to get away with it.

JoJo:
IProblem is we don't want to scare off businesses to other countries, these people are tighter than a duck's arse and will happily to move to China if it'll save them a few pence. That said, perhaps it isn't such a big problem after all since I suppose as long as the executives spend their money, it'll get down to the rest of us eventually.

Actually, that's exactly what I'd like to do, scare all of these businesses off to other countries. Why not, they outsource to China, India, Philippines, etc. much of their labor *anyway*. Let them leave, and let innovative new companies with less ridiculous short-term thinking management strategies rise to take their place. We don't *have* a free market, we have a market where titans bully small businesses across the map, treat their workers like shit, outsource half their jobs overseas, and generally leech more off the economy than they contribute. They aren't "job creators", they're too short-term profit oriented for that, unless you want to call them job creators for Mumbai. Piss on them.

And that last sentence is complete hooey. The rich *don't* spend much into the economy, they generally invest their profits. The middle and working classes are the ones out buying the volume of cars, kitchens, homes, computers, furniture, and all of those consumer goods that drive the economy. That's why any sane economic policy wants to increase the middle class, not drive it into poverty.

Stagnant:

Overhead:

Tyler Perry:
There's a solution out there; I just don't really know what it is.

State hiring people to get things done. State owned factories. Entire state owned industries. nationalisation of everything that matters.

And the competition comes from where?

Doesn't. Competition is replaced by other motivations and incentives.

It's an impossible dream, but I'd suggest a worldwide minimum wage, set in each country, so that 35 hour's work covers all basic living expenses and bills, along with a small amount over the top for expenses.

The sad thing being that it shouldn't be, anyone with a full time job, SHOULD be able to expect to get by.

It's slightly off topic, but there's a lovely idea being put into practice at the moment.

For years, in the UK we've been getting screwed by constant price rises, hidden fees etc from our energy companies.

So, about 150,000 customers have pledged to move supplies, IF the energy companies can offer a decent deal, combined with a lock on the price for a period. Suddenly, the buying power is in the hands of the customer, when they get together in enough numbers.

Blablahb:
Everywhere where they tried that, it failed miserably.

You mean like the Soviet Union which in a few decades turned itself from a war torn farmland, the laughing stock of Europe to a Superpower? Or the UK where all of our massive infrastructure investments were run publicly up until a few decades ago, at which point they started massively declining in quality? Or when the Korean government, at the time incredibly poor, created Korea's entire steel industry pretty much single handedly with POSCO, now the fifth biggest steel manufacturer in the world? Or how the NHS is Britain is approximately as effective as the US's massive net of competing healthcare providers but 30 times more economical? Or how competition in the financial sector lead to companies taking risks they otherwise wouldn't, leaving their books severely out of balance with little money to cover their debts if anything should go wrong?

I could go on, but you get the point.

If you do that, there's no more reason to be efficient within such a company. Who cares after all?

There are dozens of reasons for employees to still be efficient. For one, targets can be set for you by government and if you don't meet them you're out of a job - just like you would be in a a private company.

That's not even getting onto a host of other lesser reasons like honesty, self-respect, solidarity, patriotism, loyalty, fondness of their jobs, etc, etc. Make it a democratic workplace and that gives them additional incentives.

The state pays for the company result whether that's a profit or a huge loss.

But the guys who are causing the loss can get fired, while the people making profits can get bonuses. Just like with a public company.

Arguing nationalisation is just as silly as arguing that leaving everything to the free market will magically fix everything.

Arguing competition for everything is even more silly.

These examples all fail for a variety of reasons. Your example of the NHS is nice, but that's not an entire economy, that's one sector of the economy. Nobody is saying that nothing should be the government's job[1], but comparing a government-run industry that is crucially important to citizens and which cannot really be done well at all by the private industry with entire other industry sectors is ridiculous.

So you do concur that all services such as emergency services, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, etc should be state run? Just so we're on the same page there?

Your example of the financial sector is a rather failed example, if only because the financial sector has been wildly successful on its own. What it needs is not socialization, but regulation.

The financial sector has been a complete mess. Most Western countries have seen a re-orientation of their economies since the 80's to move away from manufacturing and into a serve/financial secret orientated ecnonomy. These economies have only delivered a fraction of the growth that was attained before this when economies were nationalised to a much greater extent and the financial sector was much LESS free to compete.

In fact, in face you'd forgotten, it is the financial sector which has caused us to lose years of growth. Not for the first time either, although usually it's been localised to part of a continent, like the asian financial crash of 1997, the 2001 dot com bubble bursting, etc.

In places like the Soviet Union, the big one was "I dislike the gulags". Those places were dictatorships. I mean, you can commend the Chinese all you want for being able to slam down a massive airport in the middle of nowhere in a few months time, but they were able to do this because the people who used to live there were told "move or we'll just drive the bulldozers over your corpose."

The only places where competition and the free market have delivered any of the neo-liberal promises of high growth have been capitalist dictatorships like Chile. Even there this growth of the economy went hand in hand with falling living conditions for the vast majority of people.

Also lets not forget, the reason there aren't practical examples of socialism/communism in action under anything other than a dictatorship is pretty much all down to the US and other Western powers. A socialist president like Allende gets into power? The US and the CIA back a coup to overthrow it with a capitalist military junta. A democratic president of Iran tries to nationalise private services which were sold to foreign countries by a previous corrupt monarchy, while still offering to compensate those foreign firms? The president is overthrown by the US and UK and the authoritarian puppet monarchy is reinstalled. Even in the Russia Revolution, when peasants, workers and academics overthrow the Tzarist dictatorship and try to establish democratic rule, what happens? 17 foreign powers invade to help reinstall the autocratic regime.

That's not even mentioning how foreigners were treated, like possibly over a million Kikuyu being put in camps by the British colonial government where thousands were tortured, beaten to death, raped and used for slave labour.

Communism and nationalised governments by no means held a patent on atrocities for economic purposes.

And besides, while Russia and North Korea made it to the industrial revolution pretty fast,

North Korea? Should I use the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example of a capitalist nation?

not only did they pretty much get there on slave labor,

Pretty much like the Capitalist nations, such as the US then?

and then ended up worse off than the west by a massive degree.

North Korea is a cesspool.

For Russian, you do know what the R in BRIC, or hell, even the C stand for though right?

...except that nobody is doing that

My bad, got you confused with another posted in another thread. On the other hand, aside from bringing up dictatorships and gulags you haven't really offered anything else.

We're arguing that competition should be used where it works exceedingly well (most private industries),

Could you show your working?

complemented by government regulation,

How do you intend for government regulation to stay in place and not be eroded over time by the disproportionate power afforded to the bourgeois?

and where that doesn't cut the mustard, then we socialize.

I'd say it isn't cutting the mustard. Just look at the rising inequality, lack of jobs, failing industries and exploitation of the third world.

It's worth debating whether or not we should socialize certain existing financial institutions (the big banks we bailed out come to mind), but socializing all industry? That's insane.

Well your main concerns about this seem to be dictatorships and choice. Seeing as you've stated you're not really going on about choice and I don't think we're going to give up on democracy just because we nationalise stuff, especially seeing as there are plenty of examples of capitalist dictators, you haven't really given a good reason why it is insane.

JoJo:

Exactly you've hit the nail on the head. Since there's only a limited number of good jobs, everyone has to compete to be the best they can and thus productivity is maximised.

Ironically, the only stable equilibrium in any company that runs on "promotion by cometence" is that everyone is incompetent for the position they are in.

I will not comment on your use of the phrase "good jobs" because it has the unfortunate implication that some jobs are just "inferior" and by extension so must be the people who work them. I'll just assume you were a bit clumsy there.

Everyone who does honest work should make enough to live, not merely enough to survive. That is not so nowadays.

Blablahb:
....at the expense of millions of lives, only to collapse somewhere mid 60's despite its massive size and resources.

It was engaged in literal and economic warfare with the world's largest superpower. No country wouldn't have faced the same problems.

Proof of this extremely unlikely claim will be needed.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235402001879
http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/2000/10296250.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0084.1995.mp57003006.x/abstract
http://www.kouvola.lut.fi/files/download/Tutkimusraportti169_OP_B.pdf

A sample quote form one of the above texts to give you flavour: "Generally all of the analyzed literature from UK railway sector considers (see Table 2) that railway deregulation as a major failure, and identifies that market forces are just too short-term oriented, as social implications and replacement investments are needed to be considered through longer-term perspective. Numerous different reasons are mentioned; mostly market forces are experienced to be too crude for complex and fragmented transportation system, which European railway typically represents."

Don't forget to compensate for other factors like population age. Healthcare use for instance will have increased dramatically for instance, so if health services didn't heavily decline in quality while becoming more expensive, it's actually improved.

This wasn't my own calculations, I stole them form the World Health organisation when they did a comparison of health care effectiveness some years back.

You might've noticed Korea is an extremely capitalistic industrial powerhouse.

It got there with agrarian land reforms in the 1940s and economic planning in the 1960s. The P

Dumb comparison. The US has staggering costs because of how people are forced to postpone medical treatment and then have to pay for a lot of emergency medical care. Also Britain has less trouble because of the obesity epidemic.

The postponement and paying for medical care is part and parcel of having a privatised health sector. It is part of the point being made.

Compare it to the Dutch healthcare system. Also good quality, and the costs have risen only a little despite an aging population. If you look at the cost growth 1995-2001 before the privatisation reforms, and 2001-2011 after the reforms, one would have to conclude the Netherlands would've had to spend more than twice (+118% in 2010) as much on healthcare if the pre-privatisation trends had continued.

Before 2000 healthcare expenditure as a % of GDP was steady at around 8%. From 2001 onwards it has jumped up to 10% and rising.

So pretty much the opposite of what you're saying:

http://tinyurl.com/c2ocdzl

Why would someone want to set targets if nobody up the chain gives a shit what the end result is?

Why would no-one up the chain give a shit?

And like I pointed out earlier: they've tried to make people work 'for patriotism' or 'for being social', but it ussually just ended up with horrible labour productivity and work being something you did as little as possibly possible.

No, these are all practices that are used across the world, even in capitalist countries 0 although not overwhelmingly. Go read the biography of a CEO or buy a book on business management. See how many say you should treat your employees like drones who just need a paycheque dangled in front of their face and see how many say that you need inspire them, connect with them, promote teamwork, etc.

The Capitalists of the early mass production era thought like you when they tried to deprieve workers of control over the speed of the shiny new conveyor belts. They quickly found their workers becoming passive, unthinking and even uncooperative when they were deprived of their autonomy and dignity.

Starting with the Human Relations School in the 30s, which highlighting the need for communication with and among workers, loads of new managerial approaches have emerged that emphasise the complexity of human motivation and suggest ways to bring the best out of workers.

One of the best known if the Japanese or Toyota production system. It exploits the goodwill of creativity of workers by giving them responsibilities and trusting them as moral agents. Workers are given a considerable degree of control over the production line. They are also encouraged to make suggestions for improvements to the production process. This approach has enabled japanese firms to get such production efficiency that many non-Japanese firms are now imitating them.

By assuming that there are lots of other motivations besides self-interest, Japanese companies have got the best out off their employees.

Overhead:

chronobreak:
So there would be no more billionaires to establish charities and donate millions of dollars every year?

The money doesn't disappear from the economy. It can be spent for positive benefits by ordinary people who are now getting paid more, the government, etc.

What would you propose someone do after they make their 400k in a few months, work for free?

Limit people's hourly salary/monthly wage. They can't earn 400 K in a couple of months because although the annual pay limit is 400,000K, the monthly pay limit is 33,333K.

How would limiting what someone else makes solve income disparity when there would still be people in relative poverty?

Because the money isn't eliminated from the economy. It can be directed towards exactly those kind of problems.

The obvious question here is if I'm a rich businessman, what incentive do I have to keep working after I get my 400k for the year? They would make their yearly "allowance" and stop working until next year. I know that's what I'd do. Huge businesses like WalMart (which are, not coincidentally, much cheaper than regular stores) only get established because the potential to make obscene profits is extant. Also note that it takes more work to establish a multi billion dollar corporation as opposed to, say, becoming a doctor. The whole point of capitalism is that we harness everyone's natural greed to drive innovation.

Then that's a matter of increasing minimum wage and/or benefits, not wage disparity.

It is both. If the low paid employees get a pay rise, that's money that isn't going to the CEOs and vice versa. Money also has to be funnelled into the continued operation of the business, research, organic growth for the future, etc.

Wage increases don't take place in a vacuum.

Exactly you've hit the nail on the head. Since there's only a limited number of good jobs, everyone has to compete to be the best they can and thus productivity is maximised.

Since there are a limited number of jobs, many people know they will not get the better jobs and productivity is minimised.

I thought you were against pay disparity? Yes a senior manager should get paid more than a miner because the former has a more skill demanding job than the latter.

Ideally there shouldn't be pay at all. Less ideally but still quite nice, pay would be decided on democratically.

Also no, a miner should get paid more than the senior manager because it's more socially productive work, it's life threatening and it's harder. They don't get paid more because people are forced to work to survive and miners boots can easily be filled in developing countries by economically coercing people into them. A moral injustice.

I take issue with your whole idea of a "seizure" or revolution. In the 20th century there were many attempts at communist revolutions and all ended up failing, usually becoming horrible dictatorships before eventually collapsing. Given the millions of men, women and even children who were murdered because they were "class enemies" or "traitors" or "spies", how could you be sure the same wouldn't happen to your hypothetical revolution?

1) The US doesn't seem to be trying to destablise communist nations anymore. Would Russia have turned authoritarian if 17 armies hadn't have invaded it? What would have happened to Cuba if America has just worked with Castro in those early years when the ruling group compromised a broader group of society? You'll note that the peaceful democratic socialist and communist countries got overthrown by the US or stopped from competing in free and fair elections. The only countries where this didn't happen are the ones which turned authoritarian to fight off US influence.

2) People turn to communism when capitalism/feudalism get too bad. This by virtue of how the world works means most communist countries sprang up in the ass end of the world where there was no history of democracy. Would the Uk, with hundreds of years of democratic tradtion turn to authoritarianism in the same way that the USSR, which had been Tsarist for centuries did even though we are all used to the principles of democracy and have all the democratic institutions in place? obviously not.

3) In the kind of areas where communist countries sprang up, we had just as many capitalist dictators as communist ones who engaged in murder and torture of their civilians to just as great a rate per capita as their counterparts.

From the number of Indians I get whenever I call up tech support, probably none ;-)

As a manager at a market research company which involves a lot of telesales and call centres, their are still a lot of UK based ones.

I concede that you have listed some reasons why transfer of business would take some time but there are many historical examples of this taking place, look at how the British mining industry has declined over time, or the American car industry which has been undercut by cheaper and often better models on the international market. There's a good reason every other object you buy has a "made in China" tag printed on the back.

British mining declined because a) We don't have a huge amount of natural resources compared to other countries like the DR Congo b) Thatcher smashing and closing down the mining industry.

The American car industry was a failure of the capitalist model itself. Look at GM, once the biggest company in the entire world. 50 years later bankrupt. It didn't invest in research, instead letting itself fall behind and then trying to buy up smaller firms like Saab or Daewoo. It didn't invest in making better quality cars at competitive prices, instead starting up a financial arm GMAC which by 2004 was bringing in 80% of the companies profits and ignoring the fact that no-one wanted to buy cards. It didn't bother to respond to growing energy problems by researching and developing new lines of cars, instead carrying on with its current models. It spend $20.4 billion buying back its own shares to keep its shareprice high, which William Lazonick has calculated would have left it with enough to weather its 2009 bankruptcy. It continually downsized staff to maximise returns and therfore investment. It gave out massive packages of bonuses to senior directors, even though it was known the business was declining.

At every stage is maximised short term profits for its shareholders, which it has to do because since the advent of the stock market Capital can flee from an unattractive proposition in moments.

Unfortunately, short term benefits for a company are not the same as long term benefits. Every positive short term decision cut down the company's long-term prospects. But what does a shareholder who can just pull out and invest in another company care? Or a CEO who has already made millions and in a few years can just become chairman at another company and receive a salary of millions.

it was a failure of Capital, not of Labour.

Lower taxes and people have more to spend in the first place, which boosts the economy.

Raise taxes and the government has more to spend in the first place, which boosts the economy.

I happen to believe that people should have to work for their money if they want a living standard beyond a basic one and it's unfair on people who work hard to then have lots their money taxed to be given to people who don't work as hard.

I happen to believe that people should have to work for their money if they want a living standard beyond a basic one and it's unfair on people who work hard to then only receive a minimum wage while the rich exploit their labour.[/quote]

I think a good compromise between your and my ideas would be for people on benefits or low-incomes to be required to do extra-work for the state if they want more hand-outs, nothing technical, just cleaning the streets or wiping off graffiti for a few hours a week would do. I had this idea when I went up to London recently and saw how dirty it was, if we have so many people on the state payroll we might as well put them to good use!

That is a godawful idea. Someone on minimum wage working 40 hour weeks needs to then to extra work because they're being so exploited by their employer that not even a full time job is enough?

I think a better idea is abolishing public property and democratisation of the workplace.

Vryyk:

The obvious question here is if I'm a rich businessman, what incentive do I have to keep working after I get my 400k for the year? They would make their yearly "allowance" and stop working until next year.

You wouldn't make 400k before the year is up, because your monthly/daily/houry pay would be limited to at most 20 times of what the people who get paid least in your company make, that's kind of how it would work under such a limitation. So if you wanted to make 400k in a month, your lowest-paid workers would need to make 20k in a month. If you wanted to make 500/hour, your least paid workers would need to make 25/hour.

Stagnant:

Overhead:
The only places where competition and the free market have delivered any of the neo-liberal promises of high growth have been capitalist dictatorships like Chile.

Says the guy posting on the internet from somewhere that presumably isn't a communist nation.

Growth figures can easily be looked up from a variety of independent online sources, regardless of which country you are in.

Funny, I thought South Korea was a democracy with a free market.

Land reform in the 40's, planned economy in the 60's. Private enterprise growing rich of public work, as usual

Hi, have you ever heard of this place known as "Europe"?

Yeah I live there and I'd still like you to back up your statement with something like I've done every time someone in this thread has requested it.

Pretty much like the Capitalist nations, such as the US then?

And we're done here.

Sorry, the slave trade and the genocide of Native Americans isn't something you get to pretend didn't happen.

Vryyk:

Overhead:

chronobreak:
So there would be no more billionaires to establish charities and donate millions of dollars every year?

The money doesn't disappear from the economy. It can be spent for positive benefits by ordinary people who are now getting paid more, the government, etc.

What would you propose someone do after they make their 400k in a few months, work for free?

Limit people's hourly salary/monthly wage. They can't earn 400 K in a couple of months because although the annual pay limit is 400,000K, the monthly pay limit is 33,333K.

How would limiting what someone else makes solve income disparity when there would still be people in relative poverty?

Because the money isn't eliminated from the economy. It can be directed towards exactly those kind of problems.

The obvious question here is if I'm a rich businessman, what incentive do I have to keep working after I get my 400k for the year? They would make their yearly "allowance" and stop working until next year. I know that's what I'd do. Huge businesses like WalMart (which are, not coincidentally, much cheaper than regular stores) only get established because the potential to make obscene profits is extant. Also note that it takes more work to establish a multi billion dollar corporation as opposed to, say, becoming a doctor. The whole point of capitalism is that we harness everyone's natural greed to drive innovation.

Okay, I'm going to try one last time because this isn't even a point I was making, I was clarifying someelse's point. The limit isn't just per year. It is also per month and per day and per hour. If you can earn a max of 400K a year, this means you can earn a max of 33K a month, a max of 8K a week, a max of 1.6K a day, a max of £200 an hour. You can't just earn £400K in a day and then not work.

Also I've covered the whole greed thing quite a few times just today.

chronobreak:
So there would be no more billionaires to establish charities and donate millions of dollars every year? What would you propose someone do after they make their 400k in a few months, work for free? How would limiting what someone else makes solve income disparity when there would still be people in relative poverty?

First off let me state that in practical terms my idea holds no merit, it's an opinion based on somewhat philosphical views. No more billionaires to donate to charity? That's alright by me, the money left over would be vastly more than what billionaires would donate anyway. Besides that charity suffers from logistical problems and are often not really efficient. A government funded branch of charity has much more means to make sure the right kind of help is offered and to make sure the help actually arrives where it is needed rather than in the pockets of an already wealthy oil baron. The money brought in by upper limit salary of 400k is just another chunk towards the government treasury, if well spent I believe it could drastically change society.

Vryyk:

The obvious question here is if I'm a rich businessman, what incentive do I have to keep working after I get my 400k for the year?

Apart from what everyone else has pointed out, if you earned your yearly allowance in a month and took eleven months off... you'd return to find that you've been massively outpaced by your less lazy competitors or worse.

the return to feudalism (aka plutocracy/oligarchy) was predicted as the inevitable result of the free regin of human greed back when Capitalism was first institutionalised.

i was specifically adopted and institutionalised (by the mercantile classes) to prevent that.

unfortunately very few people actually read enough of The Wealth of Nations to understand the fact it had a societal purpose.

they get to the "invisible hand" bit and run with it.

they very rarely get far enough in to get to bits like:

"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."

or this little doozy:

"...when war comes [politicians] are both unwilling and unable to increase their [tax] revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war [...] The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment [...] By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes [to pay the interest on the debt], to raise annually the largest possible sum of money [to fund the war]. ...The return of peace, indeed, seldom relieves them from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war. These are mortgaged for the interest of the debt contracted in order to carry it on."

30 years ago we ripped all the checks and balances out the system. we embraced "laissez-faire" because, we had been led to believe, that was supposedly the purest form of "Capitalism".

was it fuck.

"the interest of [the owners]..in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public...The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention."

it was simply the rich making a grab for wealth and power.

power they have been denied for everyone else's benefit for hundreds of years.

and with the new laws enacted in the US that allow unrestricted political donations they have virtually seized it within the worlds only "super power".

very soon they are likely to go after the public schools and start turning them over to "worker drone" production. after all its in "the economys" interest right ? . .

if we don't change something soon the course of our and our descendants lives will be dictated via government for the betterment of a very, very few people who quite simply are not ourselves.

that's not the purpose of democratic government or Capitalism and nor is it "Freedom" or "Liberty".

there were always those who thought "'is lordship" was "awesome", who worshipped at their font and who where overly keen to "dock their cap" and do anything asked of them in the thin hope of personal advancement.

but we gave up being sycophants when we had our revolutions (either expeditiously or gradual) and eventually settled in favour of democratic government that worked in our favour as opposed to theirs.

that there are so many people around who make the counter argument and who cannot see the long term historical parallels and how kowtowing to the "super rich" who are defacto running their countries is not actually that surprising, after all "lords" have long since managed to raise armies of mugs to do their fighting for them...

revolution is very possibly coming.

we seemingly can't change this as it should be changed through the ballot box.

we are on a course now who's only end is the course of our lives being governed by the rich and the quality of life being constantly eroded over time so that they might turn constantly ever larger profit.

ultimately that state of affairs is simply unsustainable.

i dunno about you but i can't shit completed Toyotas and even if i could learn to do so by the time we collectively reach that point they wouldn't pay me enough to be able to buy one.

what is required is a full reset and unequivocal assertion that government serves the people and merely facilitates business and that's probably not going to come without it coming to a crunch and very possibly blood being spilled.

i for one have no intent of competing with a wage slave of a Chinese and "offering up the same value" by basically becoming one which is basically the only mid term plan "they" and their political stooges of all hues have for us atm in the wake of globalization.

so head my words: prepare your children well and teach them there is more to life than serving the needs of the masters.

Stagnant:

Overhead:
Growth figures can easily be looked up from a variety of independent online sources, regardless of which country you are in.

...And are we better off than we were in, say, the 50s (by a considerable margin)? YES!

Yes.

Land reform in the 40's, planned economy in the 60's. Private enterprise growing rich of public work, as usual

...What?

They had land reform from '45-;50 and a planned economy in the 60's.

Private enterprise benefits from public work. The bourgeois buy up public work at below actual value, raking in massive amounts of profit. Chile, Russia and China are good examples off the top of my head.

The free market system with regulation and light redistribution has worked wonders for the financial prosperity of virtually everyone in Europe and the USA. I really don't know what else to say.

The free market era has never managed to grow as fast as the 'golden area of capitalism'. According to World Bank data, the world economy used to grow in per capita terms of over 3% during the 60's and 70's. Since the 80's it has been growing at a rate of 1.4% per year.

The pro-rich policies have more than halved the world's rate of growth.

[quote]And you don't get to pretend that the massive expansion of wealth between the civil war and now didn't happen either.

Indian massacres continued well after the civil war. Wounded Knee was 1890. That's not even mentioning the outsourcing of murder and terror necesary for the US to maintain it's international hegemony which runs into the millions.

Blablahb:

Mr.Mattress:
I can assure you I am a Libertarian; but I am a realistic One. I do favor cutting Regulations, allowing Businesses to do more, Making Social Security Private, and reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and the overall Welfare System to be more self Reliant. But since I am realistic, I know that the Government is needed here and there, and I know that Too Much Business is bad. There needs to be some regulations to keep work and merchandise safe. [...]
And fixing the gap is easy, you just gotta force the poor to be middle class. Make them get a job, make it so their pay doesn't suck, make it so that they don't rely on the Government like they do. That's how you fix it, and it's easy as 5 laws.

Those two fragments are highly conflicting. First you argue, assumedly about the already heavily underregulated US, that it should be even more left to sheer chance and the free market, then you argue something that would require a lot of additional regulations to ensure it's actually possible. For instance it would require a radical reform of labour rights so that people are paid a fair minimum wage from which they can live with only one job, can't be fired on a whim, radical reform of criminal codes that seal criminal records to employers, set up rehabilitation services, set up universal healthcare so that health is no longer an issue holding people back.

Basically you'd have to turn every aspect of the US inside out to be able to fix the extremely unfair distribution of wealth.

It isn't that hard really. Sure, they are regulations, but you can easily make a Fair Minimum Wage Law and a "You Can't Fire A Person unless they suck at their job" using an Executive Order. Criminals don't have to be hired still, and I would never force businesses to accept Criminals. Crime Laws, however, would indeed need to be changed, so that way charges like DUI, Drug Possession, and Possession of (Fake) Child Porn aren't illegal. Businesses can and do Rehabilitate people already. And a great way to reform Healthcare without making it Governmental is to simply do these three things:

1) Force Healthcare Providers to Not Screw Over People! The answer is obvious, force them to pay for everything! They got into the job of providing people health care, they should realize that that's not something you can make a bajillion dollars from.

2) Make it so that Healthcare Providers Can't turn away people no matter what. If your poor, but you want health insurance, then yeah, you can get it no matter what. Pre-Existing Conditions? No problem.

3) Make it so that people who don't want Health Insurance Don't need it. Making Health Insurance as cheap as possible, with or without insurance, will be a difficult challange, but it is the only way to fix the issue.

I will admit, this does seem like a lot of regulations. However, like I said, for a Capitalistic Society to work, it does need laws or it screws over people. And Health care is different then Mining Corporations, Or Video Game Corps, or others. Health is essential, and should be regulated. Other things are more like Commodities, and should be less regulated.

JoJo:
It's possible for everyone to get a reasonable wage and for there to still be wage diparity, there's no need for extreme action.

It is possible, but the greater the disparity the less likely it is. There is a finite amount of profit to be spent. The more that is given on massive bonuses, the less that can be spent on wages.

Since there are a limited number of jobs, many people know they will not get the better jobs and productivity is minimised.

Wat. How is productivity mimized exactly, I don't follow your logic?

Since there's only a limited number of good jobs, everyone has to compete to be the best they can and thus productivity is maximised.

Wat. How is productivity maximized exactly, I don't follow your logic?

(FYI, this is a point that I really disagree with, really gets my goat and will never be settled without a big long EFFORT POST on the issue that I can't be bothered to do, so I'm gonna be pretty passive aggressive here simply because the point you're trying to make annoys me so much. Soz)

Senior managers often work longer hours, have more responsiblity and more intellectually challenging work, so I support them being paid more.

The first one is true and could be a good reason for them getting paid more per hour. The second and third points are reasons they should get paid less. There is hardly a lack of people who want responsibility or intellectually challenging work. Those are positive aspects and especially high in demand even in the current Capitalist society as the places available to university-educated labourers has dried up.

Also, y'know, doesn't really override the awful hardship and the danger of death a miner suffers.

It also encourages the best miners to work hard enough to become a senior manager themselves, which is good as then they'll actually know what their employees get up to perfectly.

Good wages at the miner level encourage miners to work hard in their current job, because if they're not productive no-one will want them to carry on as miners in their good well paid jobs.

Promotion can be an incentive, but only under certain circumstances and it doesn't work as a meritocratic method or ensuring people who hard do well - which is more to the original point, as I think we were going off on a tangent.

Or we can flip this whole thing on its head. The better pay miners get will encourage people in management to be promoted to miners! Workplace democracy kind of makes the standard hierarchy irrelevant.

Lowering someone's pay for a promotion will just encourage the workers to slack off since they won't want to be promoted!

In a democratic working environment like a Worker's co-operative, these kind of things are decided on mutually.

1) The US doesn't seem to be trying to destablise communist nations anymore. Would Russia have turned authoritarian if 17 armies hadn't have invaded it? What would have happened to Cuba if America has just worked with Castro in those early years when the ruling group compromised a broader group of society? You'll note that the peaceful democratic socialist and communist countries got overthrown by the US or stopped from competing in free and fair elections. The only countries where this didn't happen are the ones which turned authoritarian to fight off US influence.

2) People turn to communism when capitalism/feudalism get too bad. This by virtue of how the world works means most communist countries sprang up in the ass end of the world where there was no history of democracy. Would the Uk, with hundreds of years of democratic tradtion turn to authoritarianism in the same way that the USSR, which had been Tsarist for centuries did even though we are all used to the principles of democracy and have all the democratic institutions in place? obviously not.

3) In the kind of areas where communist countries sprang up, we had just as many capitalist dictators as communist ones who engaged in murder and torture of their civilians to just as great a rate per capita as their counterparts.

I find it a little disturbing that you think it's "obvious" that the UK couldn't slip into authoritarianism, our history of real democracy is only a couple of hundred years at best and honestly it seems very risky to go for a revolution when who knows what would happen?

Obviously not turn to Communism in the same way. Any place can slip into authoritarianism, turning Communist doesn't have anything to do with it.

It's human nature for people to exploit each other and I can't believe that would stop under communism,

It's also human nature to love, care, have friends, feel nationalistic pride for your country, loyalty to things you know, etc. all these can also be harnessed.

the "pigs" of this world will always end up back on top.

They haven't under Capitalism?

At-least under captialism we can harness that greed for good :-)

Also you're leaving out that in Capitalism greed is also harnessed for a hell of a lot more evil than it is good. There's the exploitation of workers by the bourgeois to increase profits, the imperialistic rape of developing countries for profit, wars and murders conducted to help turn a buck, etc, etc. The only 'good' part of capitalism is that people are forced to work so they don't starve rather than encouraged to work.

Given history, there's no way I'll support risking millions of Britons lives in trying an untested system. Life isn't perfect here but at-least no-one gets shot for wearing glasses, or being born in the wrong family, under the captialist system.

Capitalism is tested and has failed. The only advantage of capitalism over even the crappiest forms of 'communism' is that under capitalism the death and suffering is outsourced to foreign countries so you don't have to deal with it.

Also those things you mention are relevant to Britain's democracy, not its capitalism. There have been plenty of capitalist dictators who have unleashed absolute bloodshed on their own and other nation's citizens.

It was a joke but really a manager? I wouldn't have guessed that, out of interest have you given out your excess wages to your employees yet, if not why not?

I tell them that we should go on strike and hold the office to ransom, because as long as me and a couple of managers are onboard (which I think I could swing) the business literally could not run. No takers yet. Plus my pay is still below the UK median, even as a manager.

By less of an extent though, as money has to put through an additional layer of transfer when collected as taxes and so more will be lost due to government inefficiency.

How do you think this money is lost? Paid to some idiot to do a non-job where they headbutt a wall all day? Even if that happens, that person has money in their pocket and they then go out and spend it. Plus most of the 'non-jobs' are actually incredibly socially productive, like the fall prevention officrs that save a couple of hundred thousand pounds a year by stopping older people from having accidents and breaking their hips.

Well at-least you agree with me that the free-loaders shouldn't be given an easy ride. You're being rather harsh on rich people though, they do provide us jobs after-all.

Rich people specifically limit jobs based on making themselves the maximum profit. At the place I work we have plenty of empty equipped desks and we could get, say, an extra receptionist so people aren't kept on hold all time time. That isn't cost effective so the job that would improve the service isn't created and some person on the dole who would otherwise be employed sits at home. Granted market research isn't that important, but the same applies to all other sectors of business. Why give a better service with 110 people if the CEO makes more money with 100, even if it's a socially necessary or important job?

Capitalism only focuses on the greatest profit, not the best social outcome.

Moreover, unemployment is guaranteed by the current capitalist orthodoxy because it drives down wages. Also, in the current capitalist economic setup a certain level of unemployment is considered necessary to control inflation.

Under my ideal system, someone working 40 hours a week would already have enough money to support themselves. Work-for-benefits would be reserved for those who don't work at-all, or work part-time. It'd sure make better use out of them for society than letting them lie on the couch all day watching Jeremy Kyle.

I don't see how this isn't just a weak sauce version of nationalisation, seeing as it is basically admitting that all the market incentives won't get jobs created and the government has to just directly hire millions of people to do stuff.

Also with approaching 3 million people unemployed and masses more underemployed, I can't see how bringing all of them into full employment would be compatible with the current strain of capitalism.

Overhead:

JoJo:
It's possible for everyone to get a reasonable wage and for there to still be wage diparity, there's no need for extreme action.

It is possible, but the greater the disparity the less likely it is. There is a finite amount of profit to be spent. The more that is given on massive bonuses, the less that can be spent on wages.

Since there are a limited number of jobs, many people know they will not get the better jobs and productivity is minimised.

Wat. How is productivity mimized exactly, I don't follow your logic?

Since there's only a limited number of good jobs, everyone has to compete to be the best they can and thus productivity is maximised.

Wat. How is productivity maximized exactly, I don't follow your logic?

(FYI, this is a point that I really disagree with, really gets my goat and will never be settled without a big long EFFORT POST on the issue that I can't be bothered to do, so I'm gonna be pretty passive aggressive here simply because the point you're trying to make annoys me so much. Soz)

Senior managers often work longer hours, have more responsiblity and more intellectually challenging work, so I support them being paid more.

The first one is true and could be a good reason for them getting paid more per hour. The second and third points are reasons they should get paid less. There is hardly a lack of people who want responsibility or intellectually challenging work. Those are positive aspects and especially high in demand even in the current Capitalist society as the places available to university-educated labourers has dried up.

Also, y'know, doesn't really override the awful hardship and the danger of death a miner suffers.

It also encourages the best miners to work hard enough to become a senior manager themselves, which is good as then they'll actually know what their employees get up to perfectly.

Good wages at the miner level encourage miners to work hard in their current job, because if they're not productive no-one will want them to carry on as miners in their good well paid jobs.

Promotion can be an incentive, but only under certain circumstances and it doesn't work as a meritocratic method or ensuring people who hard do well - which is more to the original point, as I think we were going off on a tangent.

Or we can flip this whole thing on its head. The better pay miners get will encourage people in management to be promoted to miners! Workplace democracy kind of makes the standard hierarchy irrelevant.

Lowering someone's pay for a promotion will just encourage the workers to slack off since they won't want to be promoted!

In a democratic working environment like a Worker's co-operative, these kind of things are decided on mutually.

1) The US doesn't seem to be trying to destablise communist nations anymore. Would Russia have turned authoritarian if 17 armies hadn't have invaded it? What would have happened to Cuba if America has just worked with Castro in those early years when the ruling group compromised a broader group of society? You'll note that the peaceful democratic socialist and communist countries got overthrown by the US or stopped from competing in free and fair elections. The only countries where this didn't happen are the ones which turned authoritarian to fight off US influence.

2) People turn to communism when capitalism/feudalism get too bad. This by virtue of how the world works means most communist countries sprang up in the ass end of the world where there was no history of democracy. Would the Uk, with hundreds of years of democratic tradtion turn to authoritarianism in the same way that the USSR, which had been Tsarist for centuries did even though we are all used to the principles of democracy and have all the democratic institutions in place? obviously not.

3) In the kind of areas where communist countries sprang up, we had just as many capitalist dictators as communist ones who engaged in murder and torture of their civilians to just as great a rate per capita as their counterparts.

I find it a little disturbing that you think it's "obvious" that the UK couldn't slip into authoritarianism, our history of real democracy is only a couple of hundred years at best and honestly it seems very risky to go for a revolution when who knows what would happen?

Obviously not turn to Communism in the same way. Any place can slip into authoritarianism, turning Communist doesn't have anything to do with it.

It's human nature for people to exploit each other and I can't believe that would stop under communism,

It's also human nature to love, care, have friends, feel nationalistic pride for your country, loyalty to things you know, etc. all these can also be harnessed.

the "pigs" of this world will always end up back on top.

They haven't under Capitalism?

At-least under captialism we can harness that greed for good :-)

Also you're leaving out that in Capitalism greed is also harnessed for a hell of a lot more evil than it is good. There's the exploitation of workers by the bourgeois to increase profits, the imperialistic rape of developing countries for profit, wars and murders conducted to help turn a buck, etc, etc. The only 'good' part of capitalism is that people are forced to work so they don't starve rather than encouraged to work.

Given history, there's no way I'll support risking millions of Britons lives in trying an untested system. Life isn't perfect here but at-least no-one gets shot for wearing glasses, or being born in the wrong family, under the captialist system.

Capitalism is tested and has failed. The only advantage of capitalism over even the crappiest forms of 'communism' is that under capitalism the death and suffering is outsourced to foreign countries so you don't have to deal with it.

Also those things you mention are relevant to Britain's democracy, not its capitalism. There have been plenty of capitalist dictators who have unleashed absolute bloodshed on their own and other nation's citizens.

It was a joke but really a manager? I wouldn't have guessed that, out of interest have you given out your excess wages to your employees yet, if not why not?

I tell them that we should go on strike and hold the office to ransom, because as long as me and a couple of managers are onboard (which I think I could swing) the business literally could not run. No takers yet. Plus my pay is still below the UK median, even as a manager.

By less of an extent though, as money has to put through an additional layer of transfer when collected as taxes and so more will be lost due to government inefficiency.

How do you think this money is lost? Paid to some idiot to do a non-job where they headbutt a wall all day? Even if that happens, that person has money in their pocket and they then go out and spend it. Plus most of the 'non-jobs' are actually incredibly socially productive, like the fall prevention officrs that save a couple of hundred thousand pounds a year by stopping older people from having accidents and breaking their hips.

Well at-least you agree with me that the free-loaders shouldn't be given an easy ride. You're being rather harsh on rich people though, they do provide us jobs after-all.

Rich people specifically limit jobs based on making themselves the maximum profit. At the place I work we have plenty of empty equipped desks and we could get, say, an extra receptionist so people aren't kept on hold all time time. That isn't cost effective so the job that would improve the service isn't created and some person on the dole who would otherwise be employed sits at home. Granted market research isn't that important, but the same applies to all other sectors of business. Why give a better service with 110 people if the CEO makes more money with 100, even if it's a socially necessary or important job?

Capitalism only focuses on the greatest profit, not the best social outcome.

Moreover, unemployment is guaranteed by the current capitalist orthodoxy because it drives down wages. Also, in the current capitalist economic setup a certain level of unemployment is considered necessary to control inflation.

Under my ideal system, someone working 40 hours a week would already have enough money to support themselves. Work-for-benefits would be reserved for those who don't work at-all, or work part-time. It'd sure make better use out of them for society than letting them lie on the couch all day watching Jeremy Kyle.

I don't see how this isn't just a weak sauce version of nationalisation, seeing as it is basically admitting that all the market incentives won't get jobs created and the government has to just directly hire millions of people to do stuff.

Also with approaching 3 million people unemployed and masses more underemployed, I can't see how bringing all of them into full employment would be compatible with the current strain of capitalism.

How I love when people can represent my views better than I can. Keep fighting the good fight comrade and try not get banned!

ChairmanFluffy:
How I love when people can represent my views better than I can. Keep fighting the good fight comrade and try not get banned!

;0

Keep fighting the good fight comrade.

Blablahb:
3) Make it so that people who don't want Health Insurance Don't need it. Making Health Insurance as cheap as possible, with or without insurance, will be a difficult challange, but it is the only way to fix the issue.

But that will shoot down the entire system. It relies on everybody paying to cover the collective medical costs. Not only that, but the people who don't need it also will on occasion have accidents and such and suddenly need to make a lot of medical costs.

That's how the current US medical aid budget is so out of control: So many people are left without insurance by force or by choice in a few dumb cases, and the state gets to pay for when those people are admitted to a hospital.

Healthcare doesn't work without some provision to ensure everybody pays their share, and that involves either increasin taxes, or obligatory insurance. The latter is the situation in my country, and according to health cost developments over the years, the system is a smashing succes.

The secret in that is to ban unfair business practises. For instance to be allowed to operate as a health insurer at all, one must offer the 'basic insurance', a pre-set package that covers all necessary health costs, and for which every applicant must be admitted, there's no refusing no matter the reason.

So health insurers make their profits by investing in their clients in the form of sponsoring stuff like healthy lifestyle initiatives, preventive care. They operate mostly on the financial market for money, they don't try to screw customers to try and save money. There's even one provider without a profit motive on the market.[/quote]

Why would the Health industry go along with this when it restricts profits? If it did go through thanks to popular support, why would they stick with this when they have influence over healthcare policy? How could this be permanently maintained in a capitalist system where the bourgeois have disproportionate power to influence policy thanks to their capital?