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Stop being ridiculous. How is it unreasonable to expect a wage high enough to afford a minimum standard of living (meaning a single family dwelling, utilities, and nutritious food), when each one of us produces about 47k of goods a year, including our unemployed?
There is absolutely no reason why every single person working a full time job in this country should NOT be making at least 30-40k a year. Why is it that 47% of people make less then 25k?
Instead, we have a handful making 100's of thousands or millions, while the rest make relatively dirt.
It's not so much what people make that's important, but what they're able to do with it.
Our biggest problem IMO is inflated housing costs. This is something that has been self-inflicted. Because of the availability of financing, we bid housing prices through the roof, and all it really amounted to was a huge transfer of wealth from the younger to the older generation. And now the debts people took on to pay these high prices are ruining them.
And capitalism continues to work exactly how it was designed. To filter the wealth to the top.
i don't know why i get roped into these silly discusions but here goes. in a pure capitalist society when companies make huge profits what they're actively doing is encouraging other business. eg- if someone opens a burger joint where there isn't one and it's succesful beyond belief, it's only a matter of time before more places open nearby.
if that's the way it works for burger joints, one wonders why the same isn't so for health insurance companies, automakers, utility companies, banks, media corporations etc. one would think that when these corprations make huge profits there would be thousands of entrepreneurs biting at their heals to get a piece of the pie. i think the question we need to be asking is why that isn't happening.
i personally believe that it's all the regulations. if someone wants to start a small health insurance business they first have to navigate all the financial regulations (if they're going to the market for funds). next they have to navigate insurance regs, employment regs, and it goes on and on. the result is that the majority of their seed capital goes into compliance and this makes them cannon fodder for the big guys. i relish the opportunity of taking on big business, for the advantage they have in terms of economies of scale is weighed down by the disadvantage of being slow, bureaucratic, unimaginative, inefficient, wasteful etc. it's one thing beating down goliath but it's impossible to beat goliath and the umpire!
i personally believe that it's all the regulations.
Regulations are an inherant part of capitalism and cannot be avoided. For one thing capitalism involves abuses of the public that must be rectified by regulation lest there be a breakdown of political stability----the laws of ballistics can trump the laws of economics. Another thing is that when capitalists gather wealth and political power they favor regulations that favor their economic interests and power.
Regulations are an inherant part of capitalism and cannot be avoided. For one thing capitalism involves abuses of the public that must be rectified by regulation lest there be a breakdown of political stability----the laws of ballistics can trump the laws of economics. Another thing is that when capitalists gather wealth and political power they favor regulations that favor their economic interests and power.
i disagree with that. regulators almost always just jump to the front of the parade and take all the credit. i'll use the madoff ponzi scheme as an example.
after madoff, many hedge fund and private equity investors came to terms with the FACT that the regulators, in this case the sec, were not up to the task of protecting them from fraud as some investors had previously believed. investors are now far more likely to perform thorough due dilligence. another thing people have learned, after listening to the sad stories of people who lost their entire life savings, is that one shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket. (ain't that a novel idea?) i believe that this will significantly limit fraud in a cheaper(for the taxpayer) more effective way.
it's not that simple though. the regulators will soon step in with reams of new financial speed bumps and they will claim the reduction in fraud as their victory when in fact madoff proved their failure!
i disagree with that....... i'll use the madoff ponzi scheme as an example........
I'm not claiming regulation is always effective, just that it's inevitable. Abuses that capitalists refuse to correct on their own will be addressed sooner or later by government. And there will always be abuses capitalists won't address; indeed a lucrative market for capitalists is finding new abuses which in their turn will bring forth new regulations.
I'm not claiming regulation is always effective, just that it's inevitable. Abuses that capitalists refuse to correct on their own will be addressed sooner or later by government. And there will always be abuses capitalists won't address; indeed a lucrative market for capitalists is finding new abuses which in their turn will bring forth new regulations.
i agree with you that there will always be abuses and the intuitive reaction is to regulate. as far as i'm concerned, i believe the best way to iron out abuse is through competition. if something is that big an issue, some newcomer will eventually rise up and address the problem. as regulation is fundamentally "anti competition" i believe that it always makes us worse off.
as regulation is fundamentally "anti competition" i believe that it always makes us worse off.
Not always. For instance work in the building trades is much safer since OSHA. Competition failed to make such work safe. Same with mining and many other industries.
I think one problem with politics and economics is that many people (on both the Right and Left) are looking for "always" solutions and this leads to inflexible thinking and political and economic logjams. I think you just have to muddle through and use whatever methods work best for a particular time and problem and then be willing to use different methods if the ones you've used eventually cause worse problems than they may have solved.
Thanks for being such a good government employee. But you weren't involved in the market economy and you're not qualified to lecture those of us that were.
Do not agree. As I stated before, I worked in the civilian world before I enlisted.
Also, I am not lecturing you or anyone else. Seems you took offense on something I said you do not agree with.
I did not live in a bubble where I did not see what is going on in the nation and see the results of different economic systems not only in the U.S. but in places like Kiev, East Berlin, and as I stated before in the Republic of Georgia. I not only saw the results of other economic systems but also talked to people that lived under those systems.
Because I spent a big part of my life away from the market economy does not mean I cannot learn about economics (so far have earned 18 MBA hours of my second masters that include a few hours on national and international economics).
People that never played a sport have become good coaches.
Can a man be a rape and sexual assault and victim advocate? Yes they can as I am one.
Does a man have to be a woman to be a successful gynecologist? Yes, there are man of them.
I do thank you for the praise but I must say your logic is flawed as far as I am concerned.
Your comment reminds me of something that I experienced a long time ago when I worked as an electrician before I enlisted. I was working at a construction site and there was the need to correctly identify the bottom of the column that had to be built. The top of it was identified at the ceiling. Well, this engineer was looking for a plumb bob to find the spot. He was asking people where he could get one. No one had one at the moment. One bricklayer quietly got on a ladder with a small rock in his hand and from the spot on the ceiling he let go of the rock and when it hit the ground he said "that is the spot". The engineer did not want to accept that and said he wanted to make sure and was still going to get a plumb bob. He finally got back and the plumb bob verified the bricklayer was correct. Gravity applies to a rock or a plum bob! The engineer could very well thought he was an engineer so those of us with less education are not ones to be 'lecturing' because we are not engineers. I guess he would say something similar to what you said "It is great you are great bricklayer but you are not qualified to lecture us involved in the engineer world".
Thanks for being such a good government employee. But you weren't involved in the market economy and you're not qualified to lecture those of us that were.
Oh, by the way. If I was not qualified as you incorrectly concluded I would not have so many business cards of industry companies that I have dealt with that told me that when I get out of the service to give them a call to run their businesses and work for them as their managers. It is interesting to see so many employment ads in military newpapers and magazines that state "We want people getting out of the military or retiring". I guess they do not share your flawed logic.
When I worked part time in the business world I was told to please bring more military people to work for them because they said we were more disciplined than many of their employees.
Oh, by the way. If I was not qualified as you incorrectly concluded I would not have so many business cards of industry companies that I have dealt with that told me that when I get out of the service to give them a call to run their businesses and work for them as their managers.
I assume they want you as a trumpet player, you display quite a talent for blowing your own horn.
You still haven't explained my faulty logic.
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