Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Much of the controversy and contention can be traced to several fallacies and flaws that run through the narrative.
Fallacies and flaws
[] Money has value, independent of the marketplace of goods and services.
[] Usury (interest and dividends) is unearned income and good.
[] Equitable division of money tokens will generate prosperity among the workers.
[] Price, denominated in money, is immutable, not relative.
Money is a medium of exchange to facilitate trade beyond barter. It is a holder of value, so that the holder can equitably exchange it for that which he wants at a later date. It does not hold value indefinitely. The fatal flaw of all money tokens is that they remain AFTER all the trades are completed. When the marketplace is empty, how can a money token have a value or hold a non-existent value?
It is patent money madness to believe that wealth has value, when the marketplace is empty.
("Gilligan's Island" scenario- a millionaire's wealth is useless on a deserted island - nothing to buy.)
Usury is mathematically unsustainable in a finite money token system, due to the exponential equation used to calculate interest. It requires an infinite money supply, thus impossible. Short term usury causes a proportion of debtors to default and then lose their pledged collateral, not because they were bad, but that it was never possible for all debtors to pay their debts. However, return on investment is possible if the "gain" is denominated in that which the enterprise can do or produce, regardless of the sum of money tokens in circulation.
Demand for scarce money tokens is what drives people to work and suffer (and steal and prey), in order to acquire them. Equitable distribution of money tokens will not build prosperity. Wealth is not prosperity, and neither is money. Prosperity is the creation, trade, and enjoyment of surplus usable goods and services. If one only makes enough for himself (subsistence), he has nothing left over for trade. And if one believes himself to "have enough money" he will not be compelled to labor while he believes he need not. It's human nature to be lazy and unproductive.
The price, denominated in dollars, is actually denominated in "dollar bills", a repudiated note (no par value) authorized under Title 12 USC sec. 411. They are obligations (debts) of the U.S. government, meaning that only by going deeper into debt, can Congress authorize the printing of more "dollar bills". At this point, one should realize that since interest is charged on this debt, the only way to create new "dollar bills" to pay the usury is by going deeper into debt. (Insane!) But this cannot be challenged, pursuant to clause 4, 14th amendment, USCON. To compound the problem, each enumerated American, via FICA, is a "contributor" underwriting the public debt. This makes each note an obligation on the private American, and thus "legal tender" under the law of notes.
This abbreviated discourse should show that any "solution" that uses worthless IOUs as a medium of exchange, with all the concurrent loss of status, implied skim, and loss to usurers is madness.
However, a "gold standard" is equally unworkable.
Reason #1 : Fort Knox depository holds (allegedly) 147.4 million ounces of gold. If stamped into coin, pursuant to the Constitution and the Coinage Act of 1792, it would amount to roughly 3 billion dollars, or less than $9.50 per capita.
Reason #2 : World wide supply (2007 est.) is 5.3 billion ounces of gold. If divided among the over 7 billion humans, it would amount to less than one ounce per capita - or less than $20 each - definitely too little to be a useful medium of exchange for international trade.
Reason #3 : the public debt, approaching 16 trillion DOLLARS, is not repayable with "dollar bills". Dollar bills are debt. Minus plus a minus is more minus. The debt computes to a sum of gold in excess of 750 billion ounces. At current mining rates, it would take 87,000 years to mine enough gold -IF- the debt and interest were frozen right now.
According to the law, the sum of "dollar bills" cannot match nor exceed the national debt. Which means that the outstanding balances on all the financial ledgers, stock portfolios, etc, whose value is tallied in the hundreds or thousands of trillions of "dollar bills" can never be redeemed in "cash". Ergo, the whole financial system is based on illusion and madness, and when the next "run" begins, the system will implode.
We can't go forward, we can't go back, and we're doomed if we stand still.
Feel better, now?
------------------------
If you're wondering how government has operated "outside" of the rules, it's due to the STATE OF EMERGENCY declared in 1933.
Senate Report 93-549
War and Emergency Powers Acts
"A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years (as of the report 1933-1973), freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency."
Wanting 100% of our income be paid to workers, instead of only half, since they do 100% of the work and allocating that income based on how hard you work instead of on how much exploitation you can get away with is fair. It is not insane.
But claiming that unemployment is a physical force of nature just like gravity that you can do nothing about is bat-s**t crazy.
I've missed the majority of this thread, but what is the OP's brief summary of how to avoid inflation here???
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.
You can see the calculation in paying out those incomes here:
Sure, some people will break the law and collect unearned income. So should we allow people to print their own money in order to eliminate counterfeiters? Or end taxation to end all the tax evasion? Or make murder legal to get rid of all the murderers?
Holy crap, this is dumb
It is really, really dumb to claim that we shouldn't ban unearned income because it will create people who break the law and collect unearned income, just like it is really, really dumb to say that we shouldn't ban counterfeiting because that will create counterfeiters or that we shouldn't have a tax because that will create tax cheats or that we shouldn't ban murder because that will create murderers.
There is no such thing as "unearned income" except in the minds of word twisters who call public charity "unearned income credit".
Profit or income is that which remains after the cost of doing business is deducted from gross receipts.
The cost of doing business includes labor, materials, overhead and taxes.
Wages are not income nor profit, as they are an equitable trade, for the labor expended.
Wages can be a "source of income", as in the case where an agent receives a percentage of the wages of his client.
Earning wages is a right not subject to taxation.
" The right to labor and to its protection from unlawful interference is a constitutional as well as a common-law right. Every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own industry."
48 Am Jur 2d, Section 2, p. 80
"Where rights secured by the constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them."
Miranda v. Arizona 384 US 436, 491.
Wages are treated as if taxable income because of FICA.
Title 26 § 3101. Rate of tax
(a) Old-age, survivors, and disability insurance
In addition to other taxes, there is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax equal to the following percentages of the wages (as defined in section 3121(a)) received by him with respect to employment (as defined in section 3121(b))
‘The income tax is, therefore, not a tax on income as such. It is an excise tax with respect to certain activities and privileges which is measured by reference to the income which they produce. The income is not the subject of the tax: it is the basis for determining the amount of the tax.’
F. Morse Hubbard, Treasury Department legislative draftsman. House Congressional Record March 27th 1943, page 2580.
‘When a court refers to an income tax being in the nature of an excise, it is merely stating that the tax is not on the property itself, but rather it is a fee for the privilege of receiving gain from the property. The tax is based upon the amount of the gain, not the value of the property.’
John R. Luckey, Legislative Attorney with the Library of Congress, ‘Frequently Asked Questions Concerning The Federal Income Tax’ (C.R.S. Report for Congress 92-303A (1992)).
We Should Raise The Minimum Wage to $115,000 per Year And Reduce The Workweek to Just 20 Hours
Before you jump into your explanation of why the economics of labor markets make this impossible, or that it will just cause inflation, I am not saying this can happen by merely enacting a minimum wage law that pays people that much.
In this post, I will make the case for doing far more than that. I will make the case for a revolution, for overthrowing (peacefully and democratically) our current tyrannical market economic system and replacing it with a fair market system.
If we made our market economy fair, it would enable us to:
* Raise the minimum wage to $115,000 per year (1)
* Raise the minimum wage to $230,000 per year for people who work mentally or physically difficult jobs (science, construction, mining, farming) (1)
* Cut the work week to 20 hours (2)
* Guarantee everyone a job
* Eliminate interest which would cut your mortgage in half (3)
* Guarantee 100% financing to everyone who wants to own a home without the need for a down payment (3)
* Pay students an income to go to school
* Guarantee everyone a pension at retirement
* Make everyone wealthy
* And when you make everyone wealthy, you eliminate nearly every social problem we have
Quick Overview
Our current market economy is tyrannical because it unfairly concentrates income in the hands of a few people through government welfare, institutionalized theft and institutionalized exploitation.
This concentration of wealth not only forces nearly everyone else, the vast overwhelming majority of hard-working Americans, to be broke, it also allows this small group to use their vastly superior wealth and resulting vastly superior power to illegitimately and undemocratically rule over society.
What I will make the case for in this post is that in order to make our market economy fair, we must eliminate that welfare, theft and exploitation by doing the two things that social activists, who understand economics and business, have been saying to do for 150+ years:
1) We must put an end to the world's largest government welfare program - Unearned Income - by eliminating the law that allows people to collect income that they have not worked for. All of our income should be paid to workers since workers are responsible for all of our production.
Allowing people to collect unearned income like rent, interest or profit is just as useful and necessary to a market economy as allowing people to get paid for printing their own money.
I will demonstrate that a central bank can provide investment money to the market more efficiently than private investors can just like it can deliver enough money to the market more efficiently than allowing private individuals to print their own money can. I will also demonstate that paying private investors unearned income is not just inefficient, it is also illegitimate since all the capital that they are getting paid unearned income on is actually produced with stolen resources.
Unearned income should be banned, just like printing money should be banned, because it is inefficient and illegitimate. All income should be paid to workers in exchange for working only. Since nearly 50% of our total economy(4) gets paid as unearned income, banning it will double the amount of income that gets paid to workers.
2) We must put an end to allocating income based on how much bargaining power you have and instead, allocate total income based on how hard you work by legally limiting differences in income to only what is necessary to get people to do undesirable jobs and to give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
Paying people based on bargaining power is a scam. It is just a way to allow a very small handful of wealthy people at the top to exploit the entire rest of the labor force. It has nothing to do with making our economy work well.
In summary, the only way to have a fair market economy is by paying 100% of our income to workers and allocating that income based on how hard you work. Doing that will deliver all of the benefits listed above and more than quadruple the average worker's income.
Our Current Market System Does Not Work
With 50% of all Americans living in or near poverty(5) and 97% of all workers earning a below average income(6) and the govt releasing data on wage earners for the first time ever which shockingly shows 50% are making less than $26k(7), it is clear that the economy does not work at all for the overwhelming majority of workers.
The vast majority are broke. And the fact that they are broke is the cause of nearly every problem in society.
But people don't lack income because they are lazy, or because they don't want to work or because there is not enough income or resources to go around. People lack income because a very small minority use their ability to exploit and their ability to collect unearned income to unfairly take so much of the available income for themselves that there is simply not enough income left over to pay everyone else.
Everyone in the US in 2012 should be wealthy. We produce $15.4 trillion(8) in goods and services every year.
That is just under $50,000 per year for every man, woman and child(9). That is $200,000 per year for a family of 4. That is $65 per hour(10) 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.
And not only is our current system making everyone broke, it is also incredibly inefficient.
All of our production comes from labor and you cannot manage our available labor any more inefficiently than how our tyrannical market system has. 18% of all available workers(11) cannot find a full-time job. And 55% of the people who do work are being wasted(2) by having them do pointless jobs that machines can already do. That means our economy is wasting just under 70% of our potential labor/productivity.
Our economic system simply does not work.
And it does not work because it is based on institutionalized theft, government welfare and institutionalized exploitation.
Institutionalized Theft
The first problem with our economic system is that it is based on theft.
There is a significant, fundamental problem with our version of a market economy: It is based entirely on the privatization of the planet and its resources.
Since Mother Nature does not have a store where you can purchase the planet, 100% of this privatization came by way of pillage and plunder. Like Mark Twain said, "There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed."
Privatization of the Earth and its resources means you are claiming control over a portion of the planet for your own private benefit to the exclusion of everyone else and using whatever force is necessary to maintain your control. That is unjust and barbaric.
When you privatize a part of the planet, you are stealing that part of the planet from everyone else.
Every single good and service we produce in our economy are produced using these stolen resources. Every single business is essentially trafficking in stolen goods. So our entire economy is based on ill-gotten gains. That's a problem!
The planet and its rich resources should not be privatized. It rightfully belongs to everyone which gives everyone a natural right to be able to participate in converting the planet's resources into useful goods and services and a natural right to get paid fairly for that work.
As equal owners of the planet, you have a natural right to a job and a fair income. And the first step in paying every worker a fair income is to pay 100% of the income to workers.
Privatization is happening, of course, because the government allows people to do it. But not only has the government institutionalized this theft of the planet, they have also set up history's biggest government welfare program for these thieves: Unearned Income.
The government allows owners of capital to collect trillions of dollars every year, roughly half of the entire economy(12), without ever working for it! It is called Unearned Income. It is the income paid for rent, interest and profit.
We don't need to pay any of this income in order for our market economic system to work. I am well aware that this claim will be vehemently disputed by most people who think interest and profit are what a market economy is based on. But I submit that whatever case you can make to justify paying profit and interest you can make to justify paying people to print their own money.
And just like it is absurd to claim that we need to pay people to print their own money, it is absurd to claim that we need to pay people interest and profit to make our market economic system work.
But most importantly, paying this money robs the workers, the people who are actually doing all of the work in our economy. For every dollar in unearned income you pay to owners of capital, that is one less dollar in earned income you can pay to workers.
Because of the institutionalized theft of privatization and the unearned income welfare program, workers are only getting paid half the income they produce.
The first step in turning our current tyrannical market economy into a fair market economy is to stop paying investors unearned income, income that they did not work for, on capital that is made from resources stolen from the public, and pay 100% of the economy's available income to workers.
Since roughly half of our income is paid as unearned income(12), this first step will double the income paid to workers.
Ending The Unearned Income Welfare Program
We don't need to pay investors interest on their savings in order to make investment money available any more than we need to pay people to print their own money in order to make enough money available.
A much more effective system is to just provide banks with enough public funds, taken from whatever the natural savings rate is, to meet whatever their demand for investment funds is.
This is a trivially simple task to accomplish for a central bank, especially in today's digital banking system. Just like the central bank can manage the money supply, they can manage the investment supply.
And just like our natural capital - the planet and all its resources - should be democratically owned, our investment capital - which makes use of the planet and its resources - should be democratically owned.
Keep in mind this does not mean government does the investing, runs the banks or runs the businesses. This is still a free market economic system. Investing will still be done by individually run banks, the people in charge of investing will still be paid based on how well their investments perform, they will still invest in entrepreneurs who launch individually run companies, and those entrepreneurs will be paid based on how well the companies they launch perform. It just means the funds they use will be public funds.(13) Requiring companies to use public investment funds is no different than requiring everyone today to use public money.
More detailed information on how investing would work can be found in this footnote.(13)
Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between privatization and private property. Privatization is just an excuse to pay wealthy people unearned income for not working.
Everything you buy with your income is your private property. You can do whatever you want with it, including sell it. The only thing you cannot do is sell it for more than what you paid for it, unless, of course, you spent time working on it to increase its value.
If you buy a house for $400,000, you cannot sell it for more than $400,000. If you add a $20,000 kitchen, you cannot sell it for more than $420,000. If you spend 100 hours fixing it up and the rate for construction workers under the current compensation plan is $100 per hour (as explained below), you cannot sell it for more than $410,000.
Institutionalized Exploitation
The third and final problem with our economic system is that it is based on exploitation.
We currently allocate income based on bargaining power. It is not based on fairness or how hard you worked. This allows a very small minority of rich people at the top to use their bargaining power to unfairly exploit everyone else - all the people who have no bargaining power including nearly everyone reading this post - by taking most of their income.
Let's be clear on what exploitation is. Exploitation is using another person's labor without paying them an adequate compensation.
And the only way you can get away with exploitation is by having an economic system where you allocate income based on bargaining power. Otherwise, a worker would never accept a lower pay. The only reason why workers accept a lower pay than what they deserve, than what is fair, is that their alternative is no pay. They are desperate. They have no bargaining power. So they accept the lower, unfair inadequate pay.
The reason why some worker in a third world country readily accepts a job that pays $1 per day is not because he thinks this is fair or because he only delivers 1% of the work effort an American worker gives. He accepts it because the alternative is death from starvation. He has no bargaining power to demand a fair, adequate pay.
Although American workers do not get exploited as badly as workers in third world countries do, they are still getting exploited.
Even though the bottom 97% of workers do nearly all of the work in this country, the top 3% are taking nearly all of the income. That is because of exploitation.
The top 3% are using their bargaining power to command higher incomes than they deserve. And the only way to pay them these higher incomes is to pay the bottom 97% less than they deserve.
The bottom 97% of workers have to be exploited in order to pay the inflated incomes of the top 3%.
The top 3% are getting paid 50 to 50,000 times more than others and this is undeserved because:
1) They don't work 50 to 150,000 times harder than everyone else.
2) They didn't earn this money from willing consumers in the market. It is important to understand that when consumers purchase a product, they are not doing it because they love the way that company allocates its revenue among its workers. Consumers do not in any way endorse the way companies allocate income in the economy simply because they buy things.
Yankees fans buy Yankees tickets because they think the game is worth the ticket price. That is it. They don't buy tickets because they believe they should make $80k less at their job so that A-Rod, the Yankees third baseman, can make $25 million at his. When you pay A-Rod $25 million, that is $25 million less that every other worker in the economy can make.
If consumers had a direct say on how workers were valued, no worker would ever be able to earn thousands of times more income than another worker because they would never be able to convince consumers to take a huge pay cut at their job in order to pay their inflated salaries.
3) They shouldn't have the power to force the rest of society into poverty or financial struggle. When A-Rod takes $25 million in income, that is $25 million less the rest of the workforce can make. The top 3% take so much of the available income, they leave 97% of all workers earning a below average income and the bottom 50% of all Americans in poverty or close to it.
4) There is no economic justification that requires us to pay them this amount in order for the economy to work well. The only economic reason for paying one person more than another is to get them to do undesirable work and to give their maximum effort. We don't need to pay people 50 to 150,000 times more income in order to get people to do that.
5) It makes society undemocratic. Democracy is a society where people have equal political power and equal freedom. Since your political power and freedom depends on the amount of income you have, their 50 to 150,000 times greater income gives them 50 to 150,000 times greater political power and greater freedom than everyone else.
What advocates of exploitation would say in defense of exploitation is that the reason why some people are paid far more, the reason why some have far more bargaining power is because they deliver far more value. So the extra income is fair. It is not exploitation. But this, of course, is nonsense.
Let's continue with our baseball example. There is no question that one of the most visible members of the Yankees is A-Rod and he may have a direct impact on millions of dollars in increased sales by helping the Yankees win more games.
All of this obviously gives him bargaining power. And that is why he is able to command an enormous salary. But is he responsible for all that extra value and extra millions in revenue alone?
Let's take away the vendors who provide food while you watch the game, take away the landscapers who maintain the beautifully manicured field, take away the camera operators that film the game for television, take away the thousands of menial workers who deliver that video to your home, and take away the construction workers who built that palatial stadium.
Take away all those people who supposedly provide relatively little value and what you have left is a bunch of guys nobody knows playing a game nobody is watching. Without all those people, A-Rod has zero ability to add millions in revenue to some baseball team. So his ability to increase the revenue of the Yankees depends on all those other workers who are getting paid a fraction of what he does.
The claim that A-Rod alone is responsible for all that extra revenue is bogus. A-Rod is getting paid more because all the other workers are being exploited. They are getting paid less in order to pay A-Rod's unfair and inflated salary.
The way to end this exploitation is to put an end to allocating income based on bargaining power. In order to make our market economy fair, not only should 100% of the income be paid to workers, but that income should be allocated among workers based on how hard they work.
Allocate Income Based On Hard Work Instead Of Based On Bargaining Power
The whole point of income is to motivate people to work and work hard. It is an incentive system. So it should only be used as an incentive system. That means we must allocate income based on how hard you work, not based on how much exploitation you can get away with. That is the only fair way to allocate income.
The way to allocate income based on how hard you work is by limiting differences in income by law to only what is necessary to get people to do undesirable jobs and to give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
The way we would do this is we would use the political process to filter out reasonable, national compensation proposals where differences in income are legally required to be limited to just what our best scientific evidence says is necessary to be an effective incentive and then the worker population votes directly on its approval in a national vote.
We would perhaps vote on a new compensation plan every 4 years so that we can continually update it based on current market conditions. If we have a shortage of workers in some job, that means we would need to increase the pay for that job in order to attract enough workers. So the market would be the ultimate arbiter of how income gets allocated.
We can't predict what the exact final plan will be. But what we can predict is that you will not come up with any valid scientific study that says we need to pay people much more than twice the amount as everyone else in order to get them to do undesirable jobs or that we need to pay people much more than four times the amount as everyone else in order to get them to give their maximum effort in performance based jobs.
You do not have to pay someone 150,000 times more income in order to get them to build a social networking website or a better cell phone. In fact, we know you don't even have to pay people anything at all when you see all the free open source software and maker faire inventions.
We also know that studies show the general public wants equality, not inequality. So they will never vote to lower their own income in order to give movie actors or Kim Kardashian or athletes or bankers or anyone else the ability to earn, say, 50 times what they make, let alone 150,000 times.
So for the sake of example, if we paid 100% of our income to workers and if we determined that paying the top performers in performance based jobs four times more is enough incentive and that doing physically or mentally difficult jobs were undesirable and that paying the people who did these jobs two times more is enough incentive and this income distribution plan was democratically approved and passed the legal test, that would enable us to pay $460,000 per year to the top 2.5% of all workers; $230,000 per year to the 12.3 million workers who do the mentally or physically difficult work of science, computers, engineering, medicine, construction, mining, and farming; and $115,000 to everyone else.
If, for example, we voted on a plan to pay the top performers 10 times more, they would get paid $1 million per year and the bottom earners would drop to $100,000 per year.
You can view all the calculations in footnote 1.
So entrepreneurs or investors at investment banks will be paid an income just like any other worker. We don't need to pay entrepreneurs a profit in order to get them to launch and run businesses successfully. We can simply pay them a performance based income, just like any other worker. We don't need to pay hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in order to get them to perform.
Entrepreneurs will have the chance to earn the top income which, depending on what the final compensation plan is, could be as much as $1 million per year. To claim that a Mark Zuckerberg or a Steve Jobs won't be as motivated to build Facebook or Apple because they no longer are able to earn billions and can only earn $1 million or $460,000 is simply false.
In fact, when a business generates a huge net income, this should not be something that is celebrated. If a company generates $1 billion in profits, all that means is that they overcharged their customers by $1 billion!
Entrepreneurs and managers should be incentivized to grow their company and to make sure their company generates enough revenue to pay its expenses. But there is nothing inherently worthwhile about maximizing its net revenue. And most importantly, they don't need to get paid billions to do this.
The desire to earn $1 million (or whatever the top pay is) every year will motivate entrepreneurs and executives to not only build new companies but to make sure those companies remain the top performing companies in the market every year.
Our Current Market Economy Is Tyrannical
Changing minds about our economic system is no easy task. Everyone has been brainwashed since birth to believe this is the best system there is and changes to it will turn society into a totalitarian nightmare where everyone is a slave and destitute.
But having a market economic system based on theft, welfare and exploitation is unfair. It unfairly makes most workers broke. It unfairly concentrates more and more of our income into the hands of fewer and fewer people, people who do not deserve that extra income or who have fairly earned it.
Perhaps even more troubling is that this is not just unfair, it is also tyrannical.
The people who are getting rich off of this welfare, theft and exploitation are using their vast wealth to not only convince everyone that this welfare, theft and exploitation is not happening, but to also put in laws to enable them to maximize their ability to exploit and steal.
Since they have most of the income, they also own all the businesses and all the politicians and all the governments and all the newspapers and all the radio stations and all the tv stations and all the rest of the media. They have full control over the public discourse which they naturally use to not only convince the public that the raw deal they are getting is fair, but to also make it taboo to actually question it!
Their system of propaganda is mighty and effective.
The few at the top have deliberately made our version of a market economy a sacred cow in this country. They have turned privatization, investment and exploitation into a religion that people are not allowed to question.
That is because they know that if we ever had a real debate about the merits of a system that allows a few people to unfairly take nearly all the income using theft, welfare and exploitation and to force everyone else to be broke, there would be an unstoppable public outcry to put an end to it.
We need to change our market system from one that is tyrannical to one that is fair. And the way to make markets fair is to pay 100% of our income to workers and to limit differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get them to do undesirable jobs and to give their maximum effort at performance based jobs.
Fair Markets Makes Society Genuinely Democratic
Not only will ending theft, welfare and exploitation make our market economy fair, it will finally make our society democratic.
Democracy is a Greek word. But it is not a Greek word for "voting" or "mob rule" or "majority wins". It is Greek for "people power". It means power rests with everyone equally(14). And the modern, liberal version of democracy means a society based on equal political power and equal freedom.
Since everything you do in society requires money, your income determines how much political power you have and determines how much freedom you have.
A person with $1 billion has 50,000 times more power than a person with $20,000 to get someone elected to government or to lobby government to their cause or to use the media to lobby the public to their cause. And they have 50,000 times more freedom to live how they want - to live in whatever house or neighborhood they want, to drive any car they want, to attend any school they want, to get any medical treatment they want, to pursue any hobby they want, to travel to any place they want or to work any job they want.
A society where some have 50,000 times more political power and freedom than others is not democratic.
In order to have democracy, a society where power and freddom rests with everyone equally, income must rest with everyone equally. But income is also our incentive system. That is why we must limit differences in income to only what is absolutely necessary for income to remain as an effective incentive in order to have a genuinely democratic society.
How To Change The System
One way to make this change possible is with a general strike.
If workers organized into a single union, demanded that they get paid 100% of the income since they are doing 100% of the work and demanded that this income be allocated based on how hard you work so they were no longer exploited, and were willing to strike until their demands were met, the economy would have no choice but to change.
It obviously takes a lot of workers willing to strike in order to change an economic system, but benefits like raising the minimum income to $115,000 and reducing the work week to 20 hours is a deal that enough workers may find worth striking for.
Labels
Labels, for some reason, are very important to people and some may say that what I am advocating is socialism.
If after all this explanation, you want to call this socialism because the planet is no longer privately owned and you cannot get paid unearned income like profits, I am fine with that because you at least now understand that it is nothing like the socialist systems of the Soviet Union or China. In fact, it is not even as socialist as our current schools or fire departments since they are monopolies that do not compete in the market and do not have to be profitable.
It is impossible to get everyone to agree on definitions of political terms like capitalism, socialism and democracy.
What I have made the case for in this post is to make three changes to the economy: Pay 100% of the income to workers, allocate that income based on how hard you work and use public funds for investment.
But aside from these 3 differences, the economy would work exactly as the current economy works now.
All the features of our current economy that make it perform well as a consumer responsive, decentralized, dynamic, efficient system of innovation and progress remain in place. All we are doing is just making sure that the system is always working well and fairly for everyone.
So what I advocate here can be reasonably argued to be capitalist since companies are still individually run and owned; they are not government run. They must compete in the market; they are not monopolies. The market determines what gets produced; it is not centrally planned. And consumer spending still rules the economy; companies can only remain in business if they generate enough revenue to cover their expenses.
This reasoning will not satisfy all the people obsessed with labels. Some capitalists will call this socialism and some socialists will call this capitalism.
But regardless of what you call it, it is the only way to have a fair and effective economy and it is the only way to have a democratic society.
footnotes:
Unfortunately this forum doesn't allow me to link to my citations. I already got banned for spam the first time I tried making this post. I think it was because I linked to other websites.
At first I thought it was a right winger trying to be sarcastic. However, after reading it, I saw that the OP was way too intelligent to be a right winger. I must say the shear volume of the thread gave me a good laugh this morning.
This has to get the medal for the most substantive post ever published on CD.
I am the author of that OWS post. I am only posting here because somebody at that OWS forum asked me to. That person who asked me made that known in one of the comments in this thread.
If you want more information than I respond with here in my comments, just point that out and I will give more detailed information.
Let me see if I have this straight:
1. You posted this thread on CD with the user name "FairnessIsGlorious".
2. When someone found an identical post on an OWS site, you claimed to be the author of that post as well under the user name "DemandtheGoodLifedotCom".
3. When someone found a website called "Demand the Good Life", you claimed to not be the owner of that site, but that you knew the owner.
Why would you use the name of someone elses website as your user name? That makes no sense. And if you really did do that, why not do it again on CD or was "DemandtheGoodLifedotCom" not available as a user name?
And having someone else claim that you are the original author doesn't mean squat.
That is not my premise. That is not what I said. I said all privatization of the planet came by way of theft. I never said everything anyone has ever achieved was accomplished by theft.
Why would destroying everything return the planet to its rightful owners? And why are some indigenous people the rightful owner?
Since Mother Nature does not have a store where you can purchase the planet, nobody can legitimately claim to be the rightful, private owner. The planet and its rich resources rightfully belongs to everyone which gives everyone a natural right to be able to participate in converting the planet's resources into useful goods and services and a natural right to get paid fairly for that work.
As equal owners of the planet, you have a natural right to a job and a fair income. And a fair income is paying 100% of the total income to workers and allocating that income based on how hard they work.
Let's return the earth to as close to the state it was in before some wicked humans began to steal it. Since, in your view, no individual has a right to privatize the planet, that's the only thing that makes sense. Wipe it all out and let "everyone" participate in building it back up. Then "everyone" can share in the profits.
To do what you suggest is stealing the fruits of other's labor. It's like someone stealing a bag of chocolate chips from me and me claiming that the only "fair" repayment is giving me Mrs. Field's company. Clearly, if someone hadn't nabbed my chips, I would have parleyed those chips into a cookie empire. Mrs. Field's had nothing to do with her success and did nothing for it other than steal chips from poor, pitiful workers like me.
I know as much about economics as anyone. Do you have any facts to back up your claim?
Clearly you don't.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There is no such thing as "unearned income".
