Taxes and political economy


The problem with full-on equal-opportunity capitalism (which sounds like a good idea) is that equal opportunity doesn't guarantee equal results.
I don't think that's as much of a problem as it is the nature of a free market. No one's guaranteed to succeed anyway, but they can boost their chances. Maybe some of them can get a whole gov't to bail them out, but what are the odds of that? ;)
 
I meant that it is possible to work hard in an equal-opportunity economy, yet still be unable to earn enough to live. That isn't fair.
 
Defending oneself against a set group of known enemies is a flawed concept which is truly beneath human intelligence on every level.

It is the same thing as defining someone as a slave. There is perceived freedom and there is a scaled level. To that extent even human rights are arbitrary.

We like to think they arent, but they are.

People have freedom to the extent they arent afraid of death. Thats the only stability we have.

There is nothing to be done about that but to erode it on a very basic level, mass surveilance, more uneven distribution of force. A total removal of power in the communes of people.

People at large are really useless with total freedom, i think a perceived threat and a laudable goal that is more than anything convenient is how to fail or win.
So many of your posts on so many subjects just make me think of the Illuminati... 
 
I
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what you did there.

Relevant: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4t1jvpg7U1rxnap4o1_500.jpg
 
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I meant that it is possible to work hard in an equal-opportunity economy, yet still be unable to earn enough to live. That isn't fair.
Oh. In that case, I do agree. Wage theft/stagnation is indeed a very real and terrible problem.
Wage theft IS a problem: That is when government takes away your wages.

Wage stagnation IS a problem: That is when government inflates the money supply, thus raising prices of everything, and your wage doesn't keep up.
 
Exploitation IS a problem: That is when workers are paid less than the value their work adds. It is considered normal in a capitalist economy though.
 
Thread derailment IS a problem: That is when the conversation has little or nothing to do with the thread topic :p

This conversation is interesting and I like following it (and taking part at times), but could a mod split this to off topic?
 
Exploitation IS a problem: That is when workers are paid less than the value their work adds. It is considered normal in a capitalist economy though.
Of course the enterpreneur reaps profit. It is the owner who takes risk in starting a business venture. Socialists and communists imagine there is no risk in an enterprise, therefore the workers should get ALL the income. That is, frankly, pure ignorance. It ignores the fact that businesses can and do fail, so there is a risk premium to any investment in a company.

Communists are simply children: imbecelic, ignorant.
 
Exploitation IS a problem: That is when workers are paid less than the value their work adds. It is considered normal in a capitalist economy though.
Of course the enterpreneur reaps profit. It is the owner who takes risk in starting a business venture. Socialists and communists imagine there is no risk in an enterprise, therefore the workers should get ALL the income. That is, frankly, pure ignorance. It ignores the fact that businesses can and do fail, so there is a risk premium to any investment in a company.

Communists are simply children: imbecelic, ignorant.
Addendum: And if you really believe that workers deserve all the profits, then you need to resign as moderator and have nothing to do with the Pyra, because if the Pyra is successful, the investors will earn a profit. Not 100% of the profits will go to the laborers. Are you ready to call EvilDragon an "exploiter"? You HAVE TO in order to be consistent with your own ideology.
 
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EvilDragon has stated that he wishes to pay everyone involved a fair salary. A greedy capitalist will keep as much as he can to himself.

Let capitalism run free and unhindered, cruel exploitation of the workforce will soon be a fact. Take a look at the free-trade zones around the world. In Bangladesh for example. A significant portion of the clothes sold in the west are made there. They have to live 4 people in a closet to even afford paying rent. Their only reason for staying, is that they can't afford to get out of there. Zones where normal laws don't apply, zones created to let trade commerce run free, is where you should take a peek if you want a look at capitalism at work.
 
therefore the workers should get ALL the income
So far arguments have been interesting, but here you're making a very bad leap of logic. Saying that workers deserve fair compensation is very far from suggesting that workers deserve all the profits and the entrepreneur deserves none.Doublecheck your reasoning, and carry on.
 
therefore the workers should get ALL the income
So far arguments have been interesting, but here you're making a very bad leap of logic. Saying that workers deserve fair compensation is very far from suggesting that workers deserve all the profits and the entrepreneur deserves none.
Doublecheck your reasoning, and carry on.
This is Marxism 101. Exactly what communists preach.
 
I know I've said this already, but many of the posts here are seeing the socialist/capitalist issue as a binary one.

Many of the above posts boil down to:

  1. Rampant capitalism is unfair and doesn't work, so we should all be communist
  2. Rampant communism is unfair and doesn't work, so we should all be capitalist.

Neither of them work.

For example:

Unfettered capitalism results in a slave-like exploitation of workers.

Total social/communism deprives people of their right to property.

Society should be (and often is) somewhere in the middle.

---

In response to the most recent posts:

Workers deserve financial rewards and compensation for their work. Perhaps even a direct share of the profits would be suitable (and this has been shown to work well in the (John Lewis / Waitrose cooperative here in the UK)

Business owners and entrepreneurs also deserve to profit from their enterprise, for their work in running it, and for taking on the financial risk.

Both can have, and must assert their rights to, a share of the money.
 
I know I've said this already, but many of the posts here are seeing the socialist/capitalist issue as a binary one.

Many of the above posts boil down to:

  1. Rampant capitalism is unfair and doesn't work, so we should all be communist
  2. Rampant communism is unfair and doesn't work, so we should all be capitalist.

Neither of them work.

For example:

Unfettered capitalism results in a slave-like exploitation of workers.

Total social/communism deprives people of their right to property.

Society should be (and often is) somewhere in the middle.

---

In response to the most recent posts:

Workers deserve financial rewards and compensation for their work. Perhaps even a direct share of the profits would be suitable (and this has been shown to work well in the (John Lewis / Waitrose cooperative here in the UK)

Business owners and entrepreneurs also deserve to profit from their enterprise, for their work in running it, and for taking on the financial risk.

Both can have, and must assert their rights to, a share of the money.
your the moderator and are continuing the thread derailment. how about splitting this discussion off to the off-topic section?
 
It was indeed about time to split this into a new thread.

Now, to continue the discussion...
 

Exploitation IS a problem: That is when workers are paid less than the value their work adds. It is considered normal in a capitalist economy though.
Of course the enterpreneur reaps profit. It is the owner who takes risk in starting a business venture. Socialists and communists imagine there is no risk in an enterprise, therefore the workers should get ALL the income. That is, frankly, pure ignorance. It ignores the fact that businesses can and do fail, so there is a risk premium to any investment in a company.
 
Yes, there is risk, but the question is: who really takes the risk? I'm a bit tired of this "risk needs to be rewarded" rhetoric.
 
In a small start-up, or when someone is self-employed in a small company with a perhaps a few other workers, then sure, the business owner takes risks and I'm fine with rewarding them with potential profits.
 
In marxism, not all companies are per definition run by capitalists. The self-employed and their small companies are typically not run by capitalists, because essentially anyone can create those: no real capital is needed for that. It's a different story when you want to, say, start a new company that produces cars, airplanes, or nuclear power. There's no way you can do that without access to significant capital.
 
In large companies, run by capitalists, who takes the risk? When a large company announces mass layoffs, it's usually because the big shareholders (aka the capitalists) were pushing for it, and typically even just the announcement causes the company value on the stock market to go up. It's not the shareholders who take the risk: they just demand a certain return on investment and if the company does not meet that target, they move elsewhere. For small shareholders there is of course an element of risk involved, but for the large ones, there is not that much risk involved really -- they can afford to do essentially statistical expectation maximization and for them the law of large numbers applies.

So who really takes the risk? Not the shareholders. Also not the CEO and the other company leaders: the top managers get paid well, regardless of whether their company fails or not -- they tend to get paid best when they fire lots of people and when they get fired themselves. If they screw up, they are called courageous stress-resistant crisis managers and it becomes just another bullet on their CV; they get a nice golden parachute and typically immediately find a new job (another company to screw up).

It's the workers who really take the risk: they need their job to live, and when their company restructures or fails, they are the big losers -- not the top managers, not the shareholders. After mass layoffs, it can be very hard for the workers to find a new job since they are saturating the local job market and often only have experience and skills in an industrial sector that is not doing well.
 
In the very big companies (e.g. big banks) we now also have the phenomenon of "too big to fail", meaning essentially that whatever risk they take, if all goes well, they get the profits, while if things go wrong, we (the taxpayers) all pay the debts. Privatized profits, nationalized risk.

Communists are simply children: imbecelic, ignorant.
If you are still claiming today, after we've had Lehman Brothers etc etc, that mega-profits are justified by the courageous risk-taking of our captains of industry, then I'm not very impressed by your accusation of ignorance.

Also, are you implying that children can be characterized as imbeciles? Not only is your terminology outdated, but that is also obviously wrong: children, just like adults, by definition have an average IQ of 100, and by definition only about 0.1% of them are imbeciles, that is, have an IQ in the range 21-50. By the way, you misspelled the word "imbecilic".
 
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