How does capitalism have a happy ending?

The whole situation is (*)(*)(*)(*)ed up. The right says if the minimum wage employees want more money then they should learn the skills necessary to get the higher paying job. However, there aren’t enough of those higher paying trade or white collar jobs to go around. Nor could the economy support all of those people starting their own businesses. Our society needs people to prepare and serve the food and to wash the dishes at restaurants, to be janitors, to work the cash registers, to pick the crops, and all the other jobs many of us consider menial. Those jobs are important. Our society needs those jobs. They contribute to the morale or wellbeing of all of us to one extent on another. So simply telling them to get higher paying jobs is disingenuous. And saying that those jobs are intended for part-time school kids and retirees is ridiculous because there are nowhere near enough school kids and retirees to fill those jobs part-time. The right says people in those jobs don’t DESERVE more than what they get. If you are giving up a substantial portion of your time and labor for a company then you DESERVE to be able to support yourself and your family. They DESERVE healthcare and a home and to not go hungry.

But then the left says the solution is to raise the minimum wage and for their bosses to offer benefits. But many of the reasons the right cites for that not working are correct. All raising the minimum wage does is cause prices to go up, causing the purchasing power of the dollar to go down. Those who earned more than minimum wage before effectively get a pay cut due to the reduced purchasing power. Some people will get raises in proportion to the increase in minimum wage. But in the end, the new minimum wage ends up with the same or less purchasing power as before. It’s a vicious cycle.

Personally, I can’t for the life of me figure out how capitalism is supposed to work without a poor class. And as automation increases that becomes even more the case. Menial jobs will continue to be automated. I can easily envision a day coming when, for example, a McDonalds is completely automated. And even if the people that the machines are replacing rack up student loans to go to college, there won’t be enough jobs to take them all in.

Capitalism has its advantages. It is great at spurring innovation, for example. And back in the day before extensive automation and when practically all businesses were small businesses that paid living wages before being priced out by giant chains, capitalism was probably ideal. But I see no way in which capitalism has a happy ending. Because, you see, one of the “great” innovations of capitalism is the reduced need for workers.

 

Capitalism works if there is a big middle class, that sees improvement, it doesn't have to be much, but things have to get better, or populism takes over.
If you think Obama is left wing, wait til you see a real populist in the White House.
If you want to see what happens when populism sweeps a democracy, look at the example of Chavez in Venezuela.
He got sufficient majorities to change the constitution, to pass whatever laws he wanted, not because he was a dictator, because he had that kind of popularity.
He was all strictly by the oldest constitution in South America.

There is nothing in the US constitution that forbids nationalizing the oil reserves, there is nothing in the constitution that forbids high effective tax rates on the wealthy.
And the country doesn't need to move very far to get to where a real left wing government could be elected.
Gerrymandering builds a dike, but when that dike gets overtopped, it's an overwhelming event.
It happened in 2008, it can happen again, and the electorate is shifting with the demographics, the GOP needs like 75% of the white male vote to break even.
Romney did as well with white males as anyone ever did, but the demographics have shifted, it takes more than that to win.
And 2016 will be even harder, and 2020 harder still.

 

There is no such thing as a "living wage". There is supply and there is demand. Wages are reflected in the supply of people available to work in relation to the need for workers. In the good old days, women stayed home, so the worker pool was only half as big at best and actually even smaller because more people were largely self-sufficient by providing for the bulk of their own food, buying only basic staples, with the women doing the work of Applebee's and McDonalds today.

 

here


[video=youtube;UifIPnDaCVA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UifIPnDaCVA [/video]


Imagine that, using the wealth attained through capitalism to set a basic standard of living for the very bottom classes of society. The idea is not to end capitalism, but to remedy the evils and preserve the benefits that have arisen from it

 

Imho it's important not to confuse freedom/free enterprise with crony capitalism and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. Command economies like in the former Soviet Union, and Keynesianism on Steroids economies like Zimbabwe haven't had happy results, either. Consider John Lennon's request to Imagine there's no countries. Might individual sovereignty result in spontaneous order, creativity, prosperity, the good life for all?

 

What does a happy ending means? it will end that's for sure and the masses will be happy it ended .
Separating capitalism with "crony" capitalism isn't working , only you believe it.
Ending wage slavery and the private ownership of capital will soon be the only solution .

 

a world without countries would most likely mean a world without private property, which is in fact a vital part of capitalism (Native Americans did not have private property)

 

Yes, mutmekep, as was well-established academically during the last century, freedom is actually slavery.

 

[video=youtube;JzmxQOonnGE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzmxQOonnGE[/video]

down below are the 35 highest countries in human development, and in bold are the ones who are ranked as having a very free market according to the 2013 Index Of Economic Freedom (that is the nations that are ranked as one of the 35 freest markets in the world)


1 Norway
2 Australia
3 United States
4 Netherlands
5 Germany
6 New Zealand
7 Ireland
8 Sweden
9 Switzerland
10 Japan
11 Canada
12 South Korea
13 Hong Kong
13 Iceland
15 Denmark
16 Israel
17 Belgium
18 Austria
19 Singapore
20 France
21 Finland
21 Slovenia
23 Spain
24 Liechtenstein
25 Italy
26 Luxembourg
27 United Kingdom
28 Czech Republic
29 Greece
30 Brunei Darussalam
31 Cyprus
32 Malta
33 Andorra
34 Estonia
35 Slovakia


http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev elopment_Index

 

Capitalism's "happy ending?" Labor movements that help spread the prosperity to all participants.

 

And your point is?

 

repressed markets are less successful at reducing poverty and setting a better living standard than free markets?

as mentioned in the video, global poverty has been reduced to half of what it was just 20 years ago, the very thing you are criticizing has created a better opportunity for the general populous.. but it has however left the people living on the very bottom in worse shape

The solution should not be to abolish private property, unless you're fond of bringing down the living standards for the general populous. It would be more practical to use the wealth we have successfully produced to set a minimum living standard for the bottom classes.

 

I have a problem with unregulated markets. But I also have a problem with basic incomes.

With unregulated markets, you'll end up with a handful of people owning all of the wealth. With basic incomes, the standard of living will increase, so costs will increase, so the basic income will have to be continually raised.

I'm sure there can be a healthy balance with good, smart progressive taxation.

 

The main issue is not poverty but inequality and i am not only talking about standards of living . You may wanna read THIS and consider that you can be jailed for robbing a lemonade stall .


Opportunities are for casinos and casino economies not civilizations .
I don't see why "the bottom classes" should bite the bullet and accept this situation and not go 14 of July every day , everywhere . It will be greatly more practical to eliminate the useless bloodsucking capitalists .
Abolishing private property (stocks & bonds) and waged labor is one step but it will not work if not backed by direct democracy .

 

Nature is our teacher.
Without dung beetles and microbes; nothing would grow and life would end.
Similarly, society must have poor prols to clean up, work as maids, flip burgers and so on.
As it happens, there are plenty of thick people out there who are no where near good enough to do anything but the really dirty, messy and unpleasant jobs.
I sometimes wonder if people of such low intelligence realise how stupid they are but I believe they don't as we see with the demi communist posters on forums such as this.

People are NOT equal so all the Proudhon, Marx and other left leaning fools can spout on all they want but the thick will still be thick and still serve the better members of society.

I'm assured by those wanting a communist society; all attempts at communism have been corrupted and that's why they failed.
This is absolutely true; they were corrupted by capitalists who saw an opportunity to make themselves better and use the myth of communism to fool the idiots who wanted it.

No matter what you do; some men will always rise to the top and rule the lower classes.

 

The basic income in itself is a balance, as it works to use the capital gained to pay for the bottom living standard. So say prices do go up, that means more capital is being produced, and more capital produced means more money to redistribute so we can set a decent minimum standard of living. As for regulations, I wouldn't advocate for a market absolutely free of regulations either.. the market that requires regulation the most are the lending institution, that is the businesses that run on debt. Debt leaves to inflation, and inflation leads to economic bubbles

see the housing market for example, a big part of the incentive to allow commercial banks and investment banks to operate under the same roof was to make loans more accessible, and the result was an inflation of the housing market, which lead to an eventual bubble, and then finally recession. (we used housing loans as a means to make homes more affordable, when really loans only work at making things more payable)

However, we should also be selective with our regulations, we should not put too much strain on the entrepreneur.. if you want to start your own shoe shop from the ground up for example, we should not make regulations an additional obstacle for that new business. Starting a new business should be an easier thing to do

 

I'm well aware of the fraudulent tactics practiced by big banks.. but eliminating private property and the free market entirely is something on a whole new level

to you I'd recommend reading an old piece of underrated political literature http://www.constitution.org/tp/agjustice.htm

you must understand how having running water and electricity as a common standard is a creation of the free market economy, whether the rich are living a better life or not is of no concern to me so long as the poor are living a better life too.

 

It is not only banks you know... inequality was, is and will be always the main reason behind revolutions .
I posted the exact same thing above (from the link you gave)

I don't see how stocks , bonds and constant "growth" contribute anything to the betterment of mankind. I think you already know the example with the chopped forest ....

Knossos had free running water and public toilets more than 3500 years ago while being a theocracy , Samos had free water while being a democracy and so did Rome while being a monarchy , so not a creation of "free market economy" .

The rich are useless antisocials and we should not tolerate them .

 

no, they had to go to the public fountain or the public toilets/bathhouses for those things


having access to running water and electricity in your own home as a basic standard is something that evolved from the implementation of private property... it simply would not be a basic standard without it

 

Here are some nice facts : 780 million people lack access to an improved water source; approximately one in nine people. Over 1.2 billion people - 20% of the world's population - are still without access to electricity . 2.5b people do not have access to toilets .

Obviously in all cases we are talking about people exploited by capitalists and "free markets" .

There is no way capitalism can be saved , it is time to move on into the next thing.

 

if you watched the video I first posted, it talks about how the free market system has also helped reduce the number of people who do NOT have access to clean drinking water in half over the past 20 years (just as it has reduced poverty worldwide)

and again, when you look at the list of nations with freer markets, they do much better in human development than the nations with less free markets, not to mentions the nations with repressed markets

 

I suggest you to go and tell the poor, the unemployed , the exploited and the third wolders about the value of the freer markets.

 

exploited?


their working conditions are lousy because their nations are poor... and the only sufficient way to reduce their poverty is through the free market, just look at Hong Kong, they went from being a third world country to having one of the highest standards of living in all of Asia through the free market. It is also how nations like China, India, and Brazil are cutting their poverty. They are trading more, and their markets are gradually becoming more free.

Cutting those people off from our trade definitely doesn't help their poor working conditions (yet you seem to think it's epxlotation), and shutting down the establishments where they are working certainly would not be an act of compassion

 

Darn, I wish they had a basic income with "good, smart, progressive taxation" when I was growing up. Could have moved into a single-wide trailer with a couple of friends and not worry about working or paying taxes again.

 

Well i am reading that there are over 3000 riots per year in China and Brazilians are protesting for months now , it looks like the "elimination of poverty" does not help your cause , you can show as many statistics as you like ... this is what they are doing in Europe and in the next EU parliament skeptics will outnumber "freer market" supporters .
Again , it is a lost case and when the masses get over denial we will be ready to move on unless of course you think you can bribe the exploited with bidets .