Why is FAIR TRADE better than FREE TRADE?

[laughing dog]

As I said, preaching. You're acting as if this is in some way a rebuttal to a strike being extortion.

To be fair, you have not made a reality-based argument that a strike is extortion.

Your entire argument appears to be based on a flawed premise:
1) that workers who do not show up to work intend to harm their employer, and
2) that it is illegal to "disrupt a business:.

The first has no basis in logic, reason or reality. Strikers are are saying "We will not work for the pay you are offering". You have not offered any sane rebuttal to statement of reality.

While you have had some time to offer links to federal, state or local laws to substantiate your claim that it is illegal to "disrupt" a business, you have failed to provide a single link. Which strongly suggests your premise is bunkum.

If it really were just about not working for the pay offered it should be treated as quitting. The company hires others and the ones that left don't get unemployment.

That is not a rebuttal since it does not address either premise.

 

[DBT]

Then why do you scapegoat them?.

I'm not. It is you who is scapegoating workers. I'm doing nothing more than pointing to an imbalance of power between management and individual workers....and that collective goes some way in addressing it. Management desires to keep wage cost down in order to maximize profit and individual workers have no ability to alter that trajectory unless they get together and increase their own bargaining power.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

 

[DBT]

As I said, preaching. You're acting as if this is in some way a rebuttal to a strike being extortion.

What you say is neither an argument or a rebuttal. Your opinion holds no weight.

Consider the conditions for workers at the beginning of the industrial revolution;

''Poor workers were often housed in cramped, grossly inadequate quarters. Working conditions were difficult and exposed employees to many risks and dangers, including cramped work areas with poor ventilation, trauma from machinery, toxic exposures to heavy metals, dust, and solvents. Consequently, progress brought a whole new set of health problems that were widespread in Europe and in America.''

''In the late 1800s, workers organized unions to solve their problems. Their problems were low wages and unsafe working conditions. First, workers formed local unions in single factories. These unions used strikes to try to force employers to increase wages or make working conditions safer.''

You continue to explain why they did it, you aren't addressing why it's not extortion.

I've explained why the mugger does it. If why they do it is enough then the mugger is just as good as the strike.

A balance of power, two separate parties negotiating equally is not extortion. If workers cannot improve their lot through reasonable negotiation, they may have no option but to withdraw their services to the company until an agreement can be reached.

So it could be argued that it is the company that acting unreasonably, that it is the company that extorting the need to work for cheap labour.

Again, before using the word 'extortion,' look at history, look at the wages and conditions for workers before unions were formed out of sheer necessity.

Collective bargaining is a defense against the inequality of power and position.

 

[Jarhyn]

You continue to explain why they did it, you aren't addressing why it's not extortion.

I've explained why the mugger does it. If why they do it is enough then the mugger is just as good as the strike.

A balance of power, two separate parties negotiating equally is not extortion. If workers cannot improve their lot through reasonable negotiation, they may have no option but to withdraw their services to the company until an agreement can be reached.

So it could be argued that it is the company that acting unreasonably, that it is the company that extorting the need to work for cheap labour.

Again, before using the word 'extortion,' look at history, look at the wages and conditions for workers before unions were formed out of sheer necessity.

Collective bargaining is a defense against the inequality of power and position.

I don't even get what the disconnect of understanding is. Shareholders of the company appoint a CEO to see to their collective demands to access the capital. Why should workers, the shareholders of labor, not appoint a union representative to generate collective demands for labor? Why is only one side allowed to organize stakeholder demands through a collective representative?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Then why do you scapegoat them?.

I'm not. It is you who is scapegoating workers. I'm doing nothing more than pointing to an imbalance of power between management and individual workers....and that collective goes some way in addressing it. Management desires to keep wage cost down in order to maximize profit and individual workers have no ability to alter that trajectory unless they get together and increase their own bargaining power.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You continue to explain why they did it, you aren't addressing why it's not extortion.

I've explained why the mugger does it. If why they do it is enough then the mugger is just as good as the strike.

A balance of power, two separate parties negotiating equally is not extortion. If workers cannot improve their lot through reasonable negotiation, they may have no option but to withdraw their services to the company until an agreement can be reached.

So it could be argued that it is the company that acting unreasonably, that it is the company that extorting the need to work for cheap labour.

Again, before using the word 'extortion,' look at history, look at the wages and conditions for workers before unions were formed out of sheer necessity.

Collective bargaining is a defense against the inequality of power and position.

You are continuing to use a necessity defense. Why doesn't the mugger get a necessity defense?

 

[Jarhyn]

Then why do you scapegoat them?.

I'm not. It is you who is scapegoating workers. I'm doing nothing more than pointing to an imbalance of power between management and individual workers....and that collective goes some way in addressing it. Management desires to keep wage cost down in order to maximize profit and individual workers have no ability to alter that trajectory unless they get together and increase their own bargaining power.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

Bullshit. Shovel me some more, maybe, person who shoveled this shit. The CEO is legally required to first and before any other concern maximize value for the shareholders.

Without unionization in symmetry with this, any worker can be fired (edit for asking for more. It is not to say there is no market for workers. But it is a market for workers on the same scale as the market for companies when there is a union.

Without this scale, one side drives the market. It is what the companies, which are legally driven to maximize shareholder value, will set one end of one of the most important parts of a market: the spread.

Without collective bargaining on behalf of labor we end up with the market held to the offer price, capital and ownership interest. The union is necessary to create a spread that makes the market real.

 

[DBT]

Then why do you scapegoat them?.

I'm not. It is you who is scapegoating workers. I'm doing nothing more than pointing to an imbalance of power between management and individual workers....and that collective goes some way in addressing it. Management desires to keep wage cost down in order to maximize profit and individual workers have no ability to alter that trajectory unless they get together and increase their own bargaining power.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

You ignore both the history of the labour movement, the reason why collective bargaining was formed, and real life examples of exploitation of vulnerable workers...all of which has been provided but ignored.

 

[laughing dog]

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

You ignore both the history of the labour movement, the reason why collective bargaining was formed, and real life examples of exploitation of vulnerable workers...all of which has been provided but ignored.

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

Bullshit. Shovel me some more, maybe, person who shoveled this shit. The CEO is legally required to first and before any other concern maximize value for the shareholders.

Without unionization in symmetry with this, any worker can be fired (edit for asking for more. It is not to say there is no market for workers. But it is a market for workers on the same scale as the market for companies when there is a union.

Without this scale, one side drives the market. It is what the companies, which are legally driven to maximize shareholder value, will set one end of one of the most important parts of a market: the spread.

Without collective bargaining on behalf of labor we end up with the market held to the offer price, capital and ownership interest. The union is necessary to create a spread that makes the market real.

Any worker can be fired, any employee can quit. That still doesn't show an imbalance.

Just because it's not where you want it doesn't make it imbalanced.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

You ignore both the history of the labour movement, the reason why collective bargaining was formed, and real life examples of exploitation of vulnerable workers...all of which has been provided but ignored.

You're still taking it on faith rather than trying to prove it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

You ignore both the history of the labour movement, the reason why collective bargaining was formed, and real life examples of exploitation of vulnerable workers...all of which has been provided but ignored.

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

You've got it backwards--he's the one arguing a faith-based position. Assertion: It is imbalanced. Evidence: <preaching>.

 

[laughing dog]

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

You've got it backwards--he's the one arguing a faith-based position. Assertion: It is imbalanced. Evidence: <preaching>.

"Strikes are extortion" is faith-based nonsense.

Still waiting for you to back up your claim that "disrupting" business is illegal with a link to a federal, state or local law. So far, nothing but crickets from you on that.
S

 

[DBT]

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

You've got it backwards--he's the one arguing a faith-based position. Assertion: It is imbalanced. Evidence: <preaching>.

No, for all the given reasons, you are wrong.

Real life examples, history of Labour, exploitation of workers (which is evidence), etc, have been provided time and time again...but you cannot face the fact of being wrong. You ignore all the evidence and just assert your belief wih emotional terms such as 'extortion' without rhyme or reason.

That is True Faith for you!

 

[DBT]

Workers desire to keep wages up and companies have basically zero ability to drive wages below market level. Obviously we have an imbalance of power in favor of the workers!

(In other words, you haven't proven there's an imbalance in the first place.)

You ignore both the history of the labour movement, the reason why collective bargaining was formed, and real life examples of exploitation of vulnerable workers...all of which has been provided but ignored.

You're still taking it on faith rather than trying to prove it.

You either don't recognize evidence, or you refuse to consider the given evidence. Why is that?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The argument for higher wages = Snake-Oil Economics or Crybaby Economics --

-- and other Nutcase Wacko theories designed to humor the idiot masses needing recognized authority figures to confirm their employer-scapegoating neurosis. And there are several fraudulent economics gurus (beyond Marx) who meet this demand of the idiot masses for employer-bashing economic theory.

The graph, as with the article, deals with the fact that wage growth has not kept up with productivity. That wages are running at significantly below market value. Meanwhile, salaries at the top end of town have increased significantly. The rich are getting richer, while wages stagnate or decline in value.

You're just repeating what I'm saying. The reason is because increasingly productivity comes from capital, not labour. So the wages are following actual market value. Nothing is wrong in the graph. Workers ARE being paid a fair wage, based on what they are contributing. You can argue that they should have more than their fair share. But then you should be aware that you are manipulating market value, and that never ends well.

When us lefties introduce reforms to help workers and the poor, we need to be very careful so we don't also throw a wrench into the wheels of the economy preventing them from turning.

The Scandinavian countries are quite good at the government staying the fuck away from the market. And helping the poor in other ways. We're not perfect by any means. But that's a good way to do socialism IMHO. Don't fuck with wages. That'll never end well.

Lefties must also point out that the purpose of the economy is not to produce ever-increasing profits to increase the incomes of the already rich.

No, its purpose is to increase the benefit for everyone, but this includes allowing profit to those who are more productive, including any rich or poor who might be incentivized to improve their performance even more. So there is a proper role for profits, even very high profits, as long as these are a reward for better performance, or better production, to serve the demand.

The purpose of the economy is to provide for the greatest number of people in society. That the rewards of the economy should be widely shared in the economy, by more of those who make the surplus happen.

I.e., the decision-makers who make good decisions, and also the technologists who create the better systems to produce the surplus. I.e., those without whom the better production would not happen, i.e., those whose role cannot as easily be done by someone else, or without whom their function would not be fulfilled or would not be performed as well. E.g., someone superior to the traditional factory workers, who are expendable and are becoming more replaceable by machines and by cheap labor.

It is not only a social imperative, it is an economic one too.

It is ironic that the people who claim to be champions of capitalism seem to have the least faith in its strongest trait, its ability to adapt. As expressed in "we (lefties) need to be very careful so we don't also throw a wrench into the wheels of the economy preventing them from turning" or in "Don't fuck with wages. That'll never end well."

Certain wages/salaries might need to increase -- those of the highly-specialized workers, the elite professionals, scientists, who are much more irreplaceable may need to increase in order to keep those more valuable worker/producers. In some cases it's good to "fuck with" (increase) those wages in order to encourage more of those workers who have greater value. And for the most part this is the case anyway. So the wage/salary increases we need do happen. But an argument could be made that we need to give more incentive to the best scientists, engineers, professionals, etc. (but not to all wage-earners as a class).

Poverty is a strictly economic problem. The poor are being paid too little for the work that they do, often holding more than one job and working more . . .

Here we go again, with the whining Crybaby Economics. There's a reason they're paid so little -- haven't you figured it out yet? It's that they're not worth as much, and their value keeps decreasing, as they become more and more replaceable, by machines and cheap labor. It's called "Supply and Demand" -- go look it up. Go back to the 7th grade where they should have taught it to you (maybe 12th grade, but it should be earlier) in school where every little snot-nosed brat should have learned the facts of life, supply-and-demand, the Real World out there instead of the fantasyland they think they live in and their parents keep whining for.

. . . more than one job and working more than forty hours . . .

Oh, you're talking about the LUCKY ONES who have a job. You're totally oblivious to the ones who can't even find a job because the employer doesn't want to pay the excessive high wages required. Why do you just wipe those ones off your radar screen and pretend they don't exist?

. . . working more than forty hours a week.

Some independent contractors have to work 70 hours a week, and are worse off than the wage-earners you're obsessed with. They are worse off, suffering more hardship, working longer and harder than the wage-earners you're pandering to. Why does your solution ignore these others and instead target only select victim groups, such as particular unionized wage-earners only? Your select victim group is limited to only a certain segment which you want to shower pity upon, at the expense of many others who are even worse off and which you pretend don't exist.

All to guarantee profits that are reaching obscene levels.

Maybe some profits are too high, but what's the solution to that? not to make all employers pay wage-earners more than they're worth. If some capitalists are gaining profits higher than they really earned, then the solution is to increase taxes on them, so that ALL the excess profits are taxed. The solution is not to force all employers rich and poor to pay workers more than they're worth. Not all the super-rich gaining excess profits are employers, so punishing only employers does not fix the excess profits problem. It punishes some employers who are not rich but are struggling to survive. How do you correct excess profits to some super-rich by just pouncing on all employers, many of whom are not the super-rich?

Poverty is inherited. This means that poverty wastes the most valuable economic resource of all, the people. The resource that European economies are running out of with the US close behind.

Then propose a solution to poverty, instead of demanding higher cost of production (higher labor cost) which must be paid by everyone, including all consumers and all workers who must pay the higher cost of production, which is passed on to them in higher prices.

Increased wages don't produce higher costs for goods, they reduce profits.

Same thing, it causes BOTH higher cost (and higher prices for goods) and lower profit -- if those higher wages are not due to improved performance or better production but are imposed by something other than the supply-and-demand market conditions -- e.g., if they are paid out of pity to those select wage-earners and the employers must find some source from which to pay this extra cost imposed on them which doesn't produce any return. In that case the increased wage level means higher cost -> higher prices AND reduced profit.

E.g., to pay the imposed higher labor cost, the producers have to reduce some of the production, which the higher labor cost makes less profitable to them. So they redirect some of their capital elsewhere, away from that more costly production to something less costly or more profitable. Anything made to cost more becomes less attractive, and the buyers of it look for something else, something less costly, to invest in. They do not automatically leave everything the same when a cost goes up. No, they look for an alternative elsewhere which costs less, and redirect some of that investment to something less costly.

It is common for the commenters here to insist that the market sets wages and prices one moment only to turn around the next moment and insist that higher wages means higher prices, as if . . .

No, those are the same -- i.e., "market sets wages and prices" and "higher wages means higher prices" -- these are the same, nothing contradictory. Those higher wages, especially if simply mandated by law rather than supply-and-demand, are simply another market condition, i.e., a new cost imposed onto the business, and any new cost drives up the prices. The price for something is never a fixed quantity never changing. It's a constantly-changing quantity always subject to any new condition coming from the outside causing it to go up or down.

. . . means higher prices, as if the market mechanism that determines prices switched off in that case.

No, nothing determining prices switched. The prices are always dictated by the costs, and if these change, then the prices change accordingly. The higher production cost makes those products more scarce and thus more costly or higher-priced, because a greater sacrifice is necessary in order to make them possible.

Profits are important in a capitalistic economy. They provide the capital needed for companies to invest in research for innovation to improve existing products and to develop new products. Profits are also needed for the investments needed to improve productivity and to meet the production required to make new products and to meet the increased demand for the existing products. And yes, profits are needed to reward the owners of the company to provide the incentives for their investments in the company.

Historically, the profits needed to do the above is twice the amount of business investment in the year. In the pre-COVID-19 US economy profits were seven times the amount of business investment, or three and a half more than is needed to keep the economy healthy and growing.

Capital doesn't improve the workers productivity. It is the workers who do it.

No, it's the new technology or improved production system which improves the productivity. Mostly it's the better machine or computer or robot the workers operate. This improved technology/production makes the output increase or improve -> higher productivity = not due to the worker doing anything special, but to the employer providing better machinery for the worker to operate. You can't name any example where the workers overall did anything to improve the productivity. What you might name are particular cases where an individual worker, probably a specialist, did some innovation, and then this improved the technology which is then placed into the system for the general lower-level workers to operate, often making their job easier, and much more productive, so that fewer of these lower-level workers are now needed in order to produce the same output as before, so that they become more easy to replace and even less valuable than before. That's what most of the improved "workers productivity" is all about.

Take an amount of money, financial capital, and put it in a safe on the doorstep of any factory in the world and come back in six months. Are you going to have better productivity in the factory? I don't think so.

That's not what happens. What happens is that the capital is spent on new technology, which requires the work of specialists, engineers, scientists, professionals -- not the traditional factory workers -- and this one-time cost is then invested in the new system to which the low-level workers are added, who are easily available in oversupply and easily replaceable, and this new system then produces the higher and better output than before, producing the extra return, which goes to paying back the original investment and higher profit. Most of the new workforce had no greater value than before, being low-level workers like the traditional factory workers under the previous less productive system. So the new revenue generated goes mostly to the higher-level decision-makers and the few select specialized workers, who are paid more in order to attract more of them for future work needed to create more of the same in the future. But it's not wasted on paying increased wages to the lower-level workers who are not needed any more than before, or who are needed even less than before, as the number of them required for the new production is less than before.

When the need for something gets less, then the value of it decreases.

I think that the money is still sitting there not doing anything.

It was not just placed there doing nothing. It was invested in what was needed, not in the same workers as before who did nothing to improve the production. It went to the few workers who were needed to produce the new technology.

Money is stupid, lacks arms and legs to get around, doesn't work well with others, and is at best a abstraction for value. How does it increase productivity? [/only a little facetious]

Money increases the productivity by being paid to the few who know how to increase the productivity. Not to the mass of workers who are no more valuable than the workers 100 years earlier.

It takes workers to decide what steps to take to improve productivity and it takes workers to do the work to increase productivity.

Only a select few, not the vast majority of them. Only certain specialists with specialized knowledge. The average traditional factory worker does nothing to cause the increase in productivity.

Workers can improve productivity without any capital investment, training one another, for example.

Only the specialized workers have the higher value necessary to improve the technology, and these higher-level workers cost more. Whereas the traditional lower-level factory workers who can train each other are no more valuable than the factory workers 100 or 200 years earlier, and are just as replaceable and expendable as ever. Even more replaceable now, as fewer of them are needed.

Plus we now have a flexible fiat monetary system that creates the needed money for any credit-worthy endeavor, unlike when we had a gold standard. Yet the conservative party in the US, the Republicans, routinely call for a return to a gold (and silver) standard.

The modern industrial economy is not limited by the available capital to invest. This is simple. Corporations don't invest in new plants just because they have the money available to invest. They invest when they are convinced that the demand for the additional product will exist when the new plant is operating.

And lowering . . .

There is no need to increase demand.

And lowering the share of GDP that goes to wages reduces that demand and . . .

There is no need to put GDP into wages or into anything to increase the demand, or to prop up the demand. The existing demand is at whatever level it is, or changes however it's going to change, without any need to manipulate it up or down. No economist has ever proved that there is any need to manipulate the demand to make it go up or down. Many of them accept as an article of faith that there is such a need, but nothing has ever been demonstrated that there is some need to make the demand go higher or lower. No economist has ever claimed to have proved that there is any such need. They just present this need as something everyone knows by instinct, or by Divine Fiat, or some other abstraction which cannot be tested or verified.

The only need for "demand" to go up is the need of a particular producer trying to sell their particular product, for which they need customers, or demand, so their product can become valuable in the market. It's only that particular producer's problem to find this demand for their product, not a problem for society in general, or for the economy in general, or for the nation. For the economy generally it is no problem if that particular producer loses profit and even goes out of business, because their product could not find a market.

. . . lowering the share of GDP that goes to wages reduces that demand and reduces the economic activity and the growth in the economy, . . .

There are 2 falsehoods here.

1) The "share" going to wages can just as well go to something other than wages, such as to profit of independent contractors or some other kind of production than that of wage-labor.

The "demand" of wage-labor consumers is not something sacred which must be maintained artificially by the society, by artificially propping up the wages of some workers. The reality is that there's little or no reduction of wage-labor demand generally, but there may be reduction of certain wage-labor demand such as the demand of factory-labor consumers, who become a smaller part of the productive economy, as the need for factory workers decreases, and so perhaps the consumer demand coming from this kind of consumer, whose income came from factory labor, decreases.

Or even if over a long period, 100 or 200 or 300 years, there is a gradual decrease in the wage-labor population, as workers transition into other forms of income earning than that of wage labor, this is not something which must be lamented as an evil trend or a destructive pattern to be prevented. If the need for wage labor decreases, then so be it. Let there be other forms of social interaction than that of wage labor, or employer-employee interaction. There is nothing in economics which ordains that wage-labor work is the best kind of work, or is divinely-inspired and must be maintained at certain levels in order for society to be healthy and thrive.

2) Even if something "reduces that demand and reduces the economic activity and the growth in the economy," this is not necessarily something bad which must be prevented.

What is the "demand" or the "economic activity" or the "growth in the economy" that is being reduced? Why does it matter if something is reduced? Some parts of the economy should be reduced and are not something which has to be propped up artificially.

If there is a need for something to increase, then let the consumers, or the state, or the businesses increase it, because of the particular need for that item. Not every imaginable "demand" or "economic activity" or "growth in the economy" is necessarily desirable and needing to be propped up as something which must be maintained.

So unless you name which particular "demand" or which particular "economic activity" or "growth" you're anxious about preserving, by identifying what the need is for it, and why society cannot live without it, you're not giving any reason why something has to be done, like paying someone higher wages, in order to preserve that particular "demand" or "activity" or "growth" you have in mind. These abstractions like "demand" or "activity" or "growth" are not sufficient reason to justify paying any higher cost, such as higher wages, in order to prop something up which society might not really need.

These buzz-words like "demand" or "growth" are often used in order to justify spending on something which serves only a special-interest demand for the benefit of a limited class rather than the benefit of the whole society, and something which is actually a net cost on most of the population, making the society overall worse off, to the benefit of only a few.

. . . lowering the share . . . to wages reduces . . . that demand and . . . the economic activity and the growth in the economy, because the rich tend to save more of the money that they receive, . . .

There is never any harm done by someone saving money rather than spending it. There may be reasons to say "the rich" (or some of them) get too much, and so should get less, but it is NEVER simply because they save too much of it. You have to give a different reason than this for claiming that "the rich" are getting too much. The idea that it's somehow bad for someone to SAVE money rather than spend it is perverse and degenerate.

. . . because the rich tend to save more of the money that they receive, removing it from the economy.

This is Nutcase Economics. There is never anything wrong with putting money into a place where it just stays there, thus "removing it from the economy." There is never any need to prevent people from doing this, i.e., to discourage someone from putting their money into an idle condition somewhere, like in their "mattress" or other place where it just rots there.

No one, no economist or scientist or expert of any kind, has ever proved in any way that some kind of harm is done by someone who puts their money into a mattress or an idle bank account or other place where it is somehow REMOVED from the economy. This is pure NUTCASE Goofball Brain-dead Economics, and it's an abomination that some wacko economists have promulgated this sick depraved retarded false doctrine.

Of course there are cases where an eccentric who put away their money like this would have done themselves better by investing it in something profitable. But it's only that eccentric who lost anything from it. And in some cases it was actually better than investing it, because they would have put it into something foolish which would have been a net loss.

Let's assume the extreme, that millions of rich people start doing this, by putting their money -- trillions of dollars -- into something totally inactive, so that money is taken out of circulation. And some kind of mass DEFLATION happens, or lack of dollars in circulation.

In any such case, if we take it to the extreme, the simple solution is to just print more money, perhaps even just run the printing presses, if you exaggerate the problem, i.e., because there is a need to infuse more printed currency into the economy. This is not any problem at all, even if such a mass disappearance of money should ever happen, which it doesn't, or won't.

So it is just nutty and Wacko Economics to speak of IDLE MONEY as being any kind of problem for society, as if some of the money is not getting spent as needed in order to keep the economy going. This is purely an imaginary problem, bordering on hysteria and hallucination.

The non-rich are much more likely to spend than to save it.

And spending it makes them better citizens than saving it? No, stop this Snake-Oil Economics! There is no need to get people to SPEND money rather than save it. This kind of Economics is the extreme of nuttiness and wacko-brain idiocy, for economic retards only.

There may be many reasons to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Some ideas of redistribution of wealth are legitimate. But not based on this nuttiness, that there's a need to make people get off their duffs and spend money rather than save it. As if somehow they're being LAZY to not get out there and SPEND that money like they're supposed to. Like they're shirking their DUTY TO SPEND the money rather than SIT ON IT like lazy bums. No, you're not being a lazy good-for-nothing just because you choose to save your money rather than spend it.

And no, the money saved deposited in a bank account or in T-Bills or in stock or by buying REITs, doesn't find its way "somehow" back into the economy "eventually," as some here have suggested in a less than stellar argument.

Anyone who tries to make such arguments is suffering from the same retarded brain-dead Nutcase Economics as the fool who thinks the sky is falling because too much is being saved rather than being spent. In fact, anyone who tries to make these silly arguments, that T-Bills or other instruments are valuable because they PUT MONEY TO USE rather than letting it go to waste in a savings account, or in a mattress, are just humoring the retards preaching that the rich should spend more rather than save so much.

All of them are either liars or fools. There is no need to worry about anyone saving too much or spending too little. This is not about economics but about some people needing psychotherapy to treat their delusionalism, or (in a futureworld) brain surgery to treat their mental retardation.

 

[DBT]

-- and other Nutcase Wacko theories designed to humor the idiot masses needing recognized authority figures to confirm their employer-scapegoating neurosis. And there are several fraudulent economics gurus (beyond Marx) who meet this demand of the idiot masses for employer-bashing economic theory.

Lefties must also point out that the purpose of the economy is not to produce ever-increasing profits to increase the incomes of the already rich.

No, its purpose is to increase the benefit for everyone, but this includes allowing profit to those who are more productive, including any rich or poor who might be incentivized to improve their performance even more. So there is a proper role for profits, even very high profits, as long as these are a reward for better performance, or better production, to serve the demand.

The purpose of the economy is to provide for the greatest number of people in society. That the rewards of the economy should be widely shared in the economy, by more of those who make the surplus happen.

I.e., the decision-makers who make good decisions, and also the technologists who create the better systems to produce the surplus. I.e., those without whom the better production would not happen, i.e., those whose role cannot as easily be done by someone else, or without whom their function would not be fulfilled or would not be performed as well. E.g., someone superior to the traditional factory workers, who are expendable and are becoming more replaceable by machines and by cheap labor.

It is not only a social imperative, it is an economic one too.

It is ironic that the people who claim to be champions of capitalism seem to have the least faith in its strongest trait, its ability to adapt. As expressed in "we (lefties) need to be very careful so we don't also throw a wrench into the wheels of the economy preventing them from turning" or in "Don't fuck with wages. That'll never end well."

Certain wages/salaries might need to increase -- those of the highly-specialized workers, the elite professionals, scientists, who are much more irreplaceable may need to increase in order to keep those more valuable worker/producers. In some cases it's good to "fuck with" (increase) those wages in order to encourage more of those workers who have greater value. And for the most part this is the case anyway. So the wage/salary increases we need do happen. But an argument could be made that we need to give more incentive to the best scientists, engineers, professionals, etc. (but not to all wage-earners as a class).

Poverty is a strictly economic problem. The poor are being paid too little for the work that they do, often holding more than one job and working more . . .

Here we go again, with the whining Crybaby Economics. There's a reason they're paid so little -- haven't you figured it out yet? It's that they're not worth as much, and their value keeps decreasing, as they become more and more replaceable, by machines and cheap labor. It's called "Supply and Demand" -- go look it up. Go back to the 7th grade where they should have taught it to you (maybe 12th grade, but it should be earlier) in school where every little snot-nosed brat should have learned the facts of life, supply-and-demand, the Real World out there instead of the fantasyland they think they live in and their parents keep whining for.

. . . more than one job and working more than forty hours . . .

Oh, you're talking about the LUCKY ONES who have a job. You're totally oblivious to the ones who can't even find a job because the employer doesn't want to pay the excessive high wages required. Why do you just wipe those ones off your radar screen and pretend they don't exist?

. . . working more than forty hours a week.

Some independent contractors have to work 70 hours a week, and are worse off than the wage-earners you're obsessed with. They are worse off, suffering more hardship, working longer and harder than the wage-earners you're pandering to. Why does your solution ignore these others and instead target only select victim groups, such as particular unionized wage-earners only? Your select victim group is limited to only a certain segment which you want to shower pity upon, at the expense of many others who are even worse off and which you pretend don't exist.

All to guarantee profits that are reaching obscene levels.

Maybe some profits are too high, but what's the solution to that? not to make all employers pay wage-earners more than they're worth. If some capitalists are gaining profits higher than they really earned, then the solution is to increase taxes on them, so that ALL the excess profits are taxed. The solution is not to force all employers rich and poor to pay workers more than they're worth. Not all the super-rich gaining excess profits are employers, so punishing only employers does not fix the excess profits problem. It punishes some employers who are not rich but are struggling to survive. How do you correct excess profits to some super-rich by just pouncing on all employers, many of whom are not the super-rich?

Poverty is inherited. This means that poverty wastes the most valuable economic resource of all, the people. The resource that European economies are running out of with the US close behind.

Then propose a solution to poverty, instead of demanding higher cost of production (higher labor cost) which must be paid by everyone, including all consumers and all workers who must pay the higher cost of production, which is passed on to them in higher prices.

Increased wages don't produce higher costs for goods, they reduce profits.

Same thing, it causes BOTH higher cost (and higher prices for goods) and lower profit -- if those higher wages are not due to improved performance or better production but are imposed by something other than the supply-and-demand market conditions -- e.g., if they are paid out of pity to those select wage-earners and the employers must find some source from which to pay this extra cost imposed on them which doesn't produce any return. In that case the increased wage level means higher cost -> higher prices AND reduced profit.

E.g., to pay the imposed higher labor cost, the producers have to reduce some of the production, which the higher labor cost makes less profitable to them. So they redirect some of their capital elsewhere, away from that more costly production to something less costly or more profitable. Anything made to cost more becomes less attractive, and the buyers of it look for something else, something less costly, to invest in. They do not automatically leave everything the same when a cost goes up. No, they look for an alternative elsewhere which costs less, and redirect some of that investment to something less costly.

It is common for the commenters here to insist that the market sets wages and prices one moment only to turn around the next moment and insist that higher wages means higher prices, as if . . .

No, those are the same -- i.e., "market sets wages and prices" and "higher wages means higher prices" -- these are the same, nothing contradictory. Those higher wages, especially if simply mandated by law rather than supply-and-demand, are simply another market condition, i.e., a new cost imposed onto the business, and any new cost drives up the prices. The price for something is never a fixed quantity never changing. It's a constantly-changing quantity always subject to any new condition coming from the outside causing it to go up or down.

. . . means higher prices, as if the market mechanism that determines prices switched off in that case.

No, nothing determining prices switched. The prices are always dictated by the costs, and if these change, then the prices change accordingly. The higher production cost makes those products more scarce and thus more costly or higher-priced, because a greater sacrifice is necessary in order to make them possible.

Profits are important in a capitalistic economy. They provide the capital needed for companies to invest in research for innovation to improve existing products and to develop new products. Profits are also needed for the investments needed to improve productivity and to meet the production required to make new products and to meet the increased demand for the existing products. And yes, profits are needed to reward the owners of the company to provide the incentives for their investments in the company.

Historically, the profits needed to do the above is twice the amount of business investment in the year. In the pre-COVID-19 US economy profits were seven times the amount of business investment, or three and a half more than is needed to keep the economy healthy and growing.

Capital doesn't improve the workers productivity. It is the workers who do it.

No, it's the new technology or improved production system which improves the productivity. Mostly it's the better machine or computer or robot the workers operate. This improved technology/production makes the output increase or improve -> higher productivity = not due to the worker doing anything special, but to the employer providing better machinery for the worker to operate. You can't name any example where the workers overall did anything to improve the productivity. What you might name are particular cases where an individual worker, probably a specialist, did some innovation, and then this improved the technology which is then placed into the system for the general lower-level workers to operate, often making their job easier, and much more productive, so that fewer of these lower-level workers are now needed in order to produce the same output as before, so that they become more easy to replace and even less valuable than before. That's what most of the improved "workers productivity" is all about.

Take an amount of money, financial capital, and put it in a safe on the doorstep of any factory in the world and come back in six months. Are you going to have better productivity in the factory? I don't think so.

That's not what happens. What happens is that the capital is spent on new technology, which requires the work of specialists, engineers, scientists, professionals -- not the traditional factory workers -- and this one-time cost is then invested in the new system to which the low-level workers are added, who are easily available in oversupply and easily replaceable, and this new system then produces the higher and better output than before, producing the extra return, which goes to paying back the original investment and higher profit. Most of the new workforce had no greater value than before, being low-level workers like the traditional factory workers under the previous less productive system. So the new revenue generated goes mostly to the higher-level decision-makers and the few select specialized workers, who are paid more in order to attract more of them for future work needed to create more of the same in the future. But it's not wasted on paying increased wages to the lower-level workers who are not needed any more than before, or who are needed even less than before, as the number of them required for the new production is less than before.

When the need for something gets less, then the value of it decreases.

I think that the money is still sitting there not doing anything.

It was not just placed there doing nothing. It was invested in what was needed, not in the same workers as before who did nothing to improve the production. It went to the few workers who were needed to produce the new technology.

Money is stupid, lacks arms and legs to get around, doesn't work well with others, and is at best a abstraction for value. How does it increase productivity? [/only a little facetious]

Money increases the productivity by being paid to the few who know how to increase the productivity. Not to the mass of workers who are no more valuable than the workers 100 years earlier.

It takes workers to decide what steps to take to improve productivity and it takes workers to do the work to increase productivity.

Only a select few, not the vast majority of them. Only certain specialists with specialized knowledge. The average traditional factory worker does nothing to cause the increase in productivity.

Workers can improve productivity without any capital investment, training one another, for example.

Only the specialized workers have the higher value necessary to improve the technology, and these higher-level workers cost more. Whereas the traditional lower-level factory workers who can train each other are no more valuable than the factory workers 100 or 200 years earlier, and are just as replaceable and expendable as ever. Even more replaceable now, as fewer of them are needed.

Plus we now have a flexible fiat monetary system that creates the needed money for any credit-worthy endeavor, unlike when we had a gold standard. Yet the conservative party in the US, the Republicans, routinely call for a return to a gold (and silver) standard.

The modern industrial economy is not limited by the available capital to invest. This is simple. Corporations don't invest in new plants just because they have the money available to invest. They invest when they are convinced that the demand for the additional product will exist when the new plant is operating.

And lowering . . .

There is no need to increase demand.

And lowering the share of GDP that goes to wages reduces that demand and . . .

There is no need to put GDP into wages or into anything to increase the demand, or to prop up the demand. The existing demand is at whatever level it is, or changes however it's going to change, without any need to manipulate it up or down. No economist has ever proved that there is any need to manipulate the demand to make it go up or down. Many of them accept as an article of faith that there is such a need, but nothing has ever been demonstrated that there is some need to make the demand go higher or lower. No economist has ever claimed to have proved that there is any such need. They just present this need as something everyone knows by instinct, or by Divine Fiat, or some other abstraction which cannot be tested or verified.

The only need for "demand" to go up is the need of a particular producer trying to sell their particular product, for which they need customers, or demand, so their product can become valuable in the market. It's only that particular producer's problem to find this demand for their product, not a problem for society in general, or for the economy in general, or for the nation. For the economy generally it is no problem if that particular producer loses profit and even goes out of business, because their product could not find a market.

. . . lowering the share of GDP that goes to wages reduces that demand and reduces the economic activity and the growth in the economy, . . .

There are 2 falsehoods here.

1) The "share" going to wages can just as well go to something other than wages, such as to profit of independent contractors or some other kind of production than that of wage-labor.

The "demand" of wage-labor consumers is not something sacred which must be maintained artificially by the society, by artificially propping up the wages of some workers. The reality is that there's little or no reduction of wage-labor demand generally, but there may be reduction of certain wage-labor demand such as the demand of factory-labor consumers, who become a smaller part of the productive economy, as the need for factory workers decreases, and so perhaps the consumer demand coming from this kind of consumer, whose income came from factory labor, decreases.

Or even if over a long period, 100 or 200 or 300 years, there is a gradual decrease in the wage-labor population, as workers transition into other forms of income earning than that of wage labor, this is not something which must be lamented as an evil trend or a destructive pattern to be prevented. If the need for wage labor decreases, then so be it. Let there be other forms of social interaction than that of wage labor, or employer-employee interaction. There is nothing in economics which ordains that wage-labor work is the best kind of work, or is divinely-inspired and must be maintained at certain levels in order for society to be healthy and thrive.

2) Even if something "reduces that demand and reduces the economic activity and the growth in the economy," this is not necessarily something bad which must be prevented.

What is the "demand" or the "economic activity" or the "growth in the economy" that is being reduced? Why does it matter if something is reduced? Some parts of the economy should be reduced and are not something which has to be propped up artificially.

If there is a need for something to increase, then let the consumers, or the state, or the businesses increase it, because of the particular need for that item. Not every imaginable "demand" or "economic activity" or "growth in the economy" is necessarily desirable and needing to be propped up as something which must be maintained.

So unless you name which particular "demand" or which particular "economic activity" or "growth" you're anxious about preserving, by identifying what the need is for it, and why society cannot live without it, you're not giving any reason why something has to be done, like paying someone higher wages, in order to preserve that particular "demand" or "activity" or "growth" you have in mind. These abstractions like "demand" or "activity" or "growth" are not sufficient reason to justify paying any higher cost, such as higher wages, in order to prop something up which society might not really need.

These buzz-words like "demand" or "growth" are often used in order to justify spending on something which serves only a special-interest demand for the benefit of a limited class rather than the benefit of the whole society, and something which is actually a net cost on most of the population, making the society overall worse off, to the benefit of only a few.

. . . lowering the share . . . to wages reduces . . . that demand and . . . the economic activity and the growth in the economy, because the rich tend to save more of the money that they receive, . . .

There is never any harm done by someone saving money rather than spending it. There may be reasons to say "the rich" (or some of them) get too much, and so should get less, but it is NEVER simply because they save too much of it. You have to give a different reason than this for claiming that "the rich" are getting too much. The idea that it's somehow bad for someone to SAVE money rather than spend it is perverse and degenerate.

. . . because the rich tend to save more of the money that they receive, removing it from the economy.

This is Nutcase Economics. There is never anything wrong with putting money into a place where it just stays there, thus "removing it from the economy." There is never any need to prevent people from doing this, i.e., to discourage someone from putting their money into an idle condition somewhere, like in their "mattress" or other place where it just rots there.

No one, no economist or scientist or expert of any kind, has ever proved in any way that some kind of harm is done by someone who puts their money into a mattress or an idle bank account or other place where it is somehow REMOVED from the economy. This is pure NUTCASE Goofball Brain-dead Economics, and it's an abomination that some wacko economists have promulgated this sick depraved retarded false doctrine.

Of course there are cases where an eccentric who put away their money like this would have done themselves better by investing it in something profitable. But it's only that eccentric who lost anything from it. And in some cases it was actually better than investing it, because they would have put it into something foolish which would have been a net loss.

Let's assume the extreme, that millions of rich people start doing this, by putting their money -- trillions of dollars -- into something totally inactive, so that money is taken out of circulation. And some kind of mass DEFLATION happens, or lack of dollars in circulation.

In any such case, if we take it to the extreme, the simple solution is to just print more money, perhaps even just run the printing presses, if you exaggerate the problem, i.e., because there is a need to infuse more printed currency into the economy. This is not any problem at all, even if such a mass disappearance of money should ever happen, which it doesn't, or won't.

So it is just nutty and Wacko Economics to speak of IDLE MONEY as being any kind of problem for society, as if some of the money is not getting spent as needed in order to keep the economy going. This is purely an imaginary problem, bordering on hysteria and hallucination.

The non-rich are much more likely to spend than to save it.

And spending it makes them better citizens than saving it? No, stop this Snake-Oil Economics! There is no need to get people to SPEND money rather than save it. This kind of Economics is the extreme of nuttiness and wacko-brain idiocy, for economic retards only.

There may be many reasons to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Some ideas of redistribution of wealth are legitimate. But not based on this nuttiness, that there's a need to make people get off their duffs and spend money rather than save it. As if somehow they're being LAZY to not get out there and SPEND that money like they're supposed to. Like they're shirking their DUTY TO SPEND the money rather than SIT ON IT like lazy bums. No, you're not being a lazy good-for-nothing just because you choose to save your money rather than spend it.

And no, the money saved deposited in a bank account or in T-Bills or in stock or by buying REITs, doesn't find its way "somehow" back into the economy "eventually," as some here have suggested in a less than stellar argument.

Anyone who tries to make such arguments is suffering from the same retarded brain-dead Nutcase Economics as the fool who thinks the sky is falling because too much is being saved rather than being spent. In fact, anyone who tries to make these silly arguments, that T-Bills or other instruments are valuable because they PUT MONEY TO USE rather than letting it go to waste in a savings account, or in a mattress, are just humoring the retards preaching that the rich should spend more rather than save so much.

All of them are either liars or fools. There is no need to worry about anyone saving too much or spending too little. This is not about economics but about some people needing psychotherapy to treat their delusionalism, or (in a futureworld) brain surgery to treat their mental retardation.

Still wrong. The simple fact is that those who are in the best position to profit do profit, enriching themselves while others struggle to make ends meet even while working full time.

The system is rigged in favour of the few.

A small percentage of super rich own or control most of the worlds wealth.

That is not 'crybaby economics,' it is simply obscene.

 

[laughing dog]

All of them are either liars or fools. There is no need to worry about anyone saving too much or spending too little.

That is ignorant.

At the individual level, saving everything would mean that person would not consume anything and thus die. Consuming everything at the individual level would mean that person would have nothing to fall back upon if they could not work, so they would die.

At the macroeconomic level, too much aggregate consumption means that the growth in capital stock is lower and productivity growth tends to be lower which reduces the growth in income - lowers the growth in the average standard of living. At that level, too much saving means much less consumption which can reduce the average standard of living since people's well-being depends on consumption.

There is a mix of consumption and saving that maintains a good standard of living and its growth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

You've got it backwards--he's the one arguing a faith-based position. Assertion: It is imbalanced. Evidence: <preaching>.

"Strikes are extortion" is faith-based nonsense.

Still waiting for you to back up your claim that "disrupting" business is illegal with a link to a federal, state or local law. So far, nothing but crickets from you on that.
S

I've presented evidence of how extortion is defined. Nobody has even attempted to rebut it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

LP's view is basically a deeply religious belief: it is faith-based instead of reality based.

You've got it backwards--he's the one arguing a faith-based position. Assertion: It is imbalanced. Evidence: <preaching>.

No, for all the given reasons, you are wrong.

Real life examples, history of Labour, exploitation of workers (which is evidence), etc, have been provided time and time again...but you cannot face the fact of being wrong. You ignore all the evidence and just assert your belief wih emotional terms such as 'extortion' without rhyme or reason.

That is True Faith for you!

1) Your "evidence" is from long ago, the issue is the current situation.

2) All it says is bad things happened, it says nothing about the balance of power. You seem to be falling for one of the standard leftist fallacies here--the idea that there always is a good outcome if you look hard enough.

Note that what we actually see is the balance of power shifts based on supply and demand. The "best" thing for workers that has ever happened was the Black Death. It killed off a lot of workers, thus making the survivors more valuable and raising working conditions substantially.

Yes, early factory workers had it bad--but there has to be some reason they left the farm for the factories. The situation on the farm must have been worse.