Warren Buffet nails it on inequality

[NobleSavage]

You're the thief--you want to steal the profits that would be reasonably attributed to the invested capital.

Buffet is just an accident of the stock market, not some brilliant social planner.

Even if you are correct that doesn't mean his idea is bad. BTY I hear untermensche has a crush on you

 

[untermensche]

That it is legal to steal from workers, under capitalism, is no argument in its favor.

You're the thief--you want to steal the profits that would be reasonably attributed to the invested capital.

That is only if one values dead capital over living people.

 

[untermensche]

I don't think money means more than human life for most business owners. Getting rid of capitalism won't get rid of greed or inequality: those in charge will just find a way to make sure they have more than anyone else. Have you ever heard about the Iron Law of Oligarchy?

Capitalism fosters and rewards greed and inhumanity, so they thrive.

And it is ridiculous to claim that people will be the same no matter what system they exist under.

That is basically saying humans don't adapt to their environments.

It is an inherent feature of capitalism, which rose, in the US, directly from slavery and is just a baby step from slavery.

We still have masters and wage slaves.

We haven't progressed to anything fair or decent yet. That some think a system is laudable where wage slaves create wealth that is promptly stolen from them and replaced with a market wage is pathetic.

So, you don't have a solution, you are just bitching?...

Where did you pull this knowledge from?

That you can't easily envision a better system is not surprising. Those completely indoctrinated to abusive immoral systems rarely can.

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't understand why anyone would prefer expended government aid to the most obvious and most direct solution of increasing the wages of the poor. Increased government aid has the following problems associated with it.

You are subsidizing low wages. The easiest way of getting more of something is to subsidize it with more government aid. We don't want more low wages jobs, we want fewer of them.

Of course, Warren Buffet wants the government to subsidize wages. Higher wages means lower profits. The government subsidizing lower wages, resulting in more lower wage jobs and in higher profits. At the cost of whoever is taxed to provide the government aid. Is he proposing to tax corporate taxes to pay for the increased government aid.

Products made with the lower wage workers whose wages are subsidized with government aid will have an advantage in the market over products made with higher, unsubsidized wages. This also will increase the number of workers whose wages are subsidized.

Government aid to individuals is always going to be subjected to demonization, unlike government subsidies to corporations. People are going to attack any government aid to individuals as welfare. Look at the barrage of abuse leveled recently at food stamps, the SNAP program.

All very good points. The problem that I see is that in the not to distant future there will simply not be very many jobs left. There is very little a computer and robot can't accomplish. People bitch about Walmart and shitty wages, but look at Amazon, they just automate everything. Have you seen the Kiva robots that run their warehouse? I'll find a video if you haven't. It's just a matter of time before Walmart says "fuck these employees" and boom goes the biggest employer in the US. No way in hell are all these people going to be retrained as "knowledge workers" because I guarantee an algo will take 99% of those jobs as well.

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People thought the last great automation revolution would create tens of millions of unemployed without jobs and the hope of jobs. This was the mechanization of agriculture that saw the number of people employed on the farms reduced from 90% of the workers to less than 3% in about sixty years.

50% of the jobs that people do today didn't exist fifty years ago. It is estimated that it will only take twenty five years for us to reach the same point in the future where 50% of the jobs didn't exist today.

And we will work shorter workweeks and fewer days in the year. And in twenty five years we will be nearing the peak population in the world, the developed world will be riding the back of the curve, declining population,

But automation is a false argument when you are talking about the lower paid jobs. Automation is going to impact these jobs last. The payoff is less.

There is no reason to not just raise the wages of the poor. It's only going to reduce the profits of the companies, if done slowly enough. (no dismal we can't just raise the minimum wage to a hundred dollars an hour.)

We have if anything too much profits being collected by the investor class, this is why we have so many asset bubbles being built why so much of our profits go overseas to boost those economies, usually so that they can compete with our industries and our workers. Profits are intended to be money that is available for investing back into the economy, to build new and better production facilities. For most of the recent past the profits from American businesses have averaged three to four times the amount of business investment. This is a ridiculous and unnecessary amount of profit.

Of course, the wealthy want us subsidize low wages with government aid. It seems to address the problem with the least impact on profits, the income of the wealthy. But as I said in the long run it will only guarantee us more lower wage jobs.

 

[NobleSavage]

So, you don't have a solution, you are just bitching?...

Where did you pull this knowledge from?

That you can't easily envision a better system is not surprising. Those completely indoctrinated to abusive immoral systems rarely can.

I specifically asked what is your solution and you only bitched. What is your solution? Got anything better that regurgitated Marxism?

 

[untermensche]

Where did you pull this knowledge from?

That you can't easily envision a better system is not surprising. Those completely indoctrinated to abusive immoral systems rarely can.

I specifically asked what is your solution and you only bitched. What is your solution? Got anything better that regurgitated Marxism?

You obviously have never read Marx if you think this is regurgitated "Marxism".

I really don't like to throw pearls before swine.

If you even showed a glimmer of open mindedness I might bother to show you a better way.

Hint: Top down dictatorships have been replaced with democracies, albeit flawed democracies, all over the world, and this is a human advancement.

 

[NobleSavage]

....
If you even showed a glimmer of open mindedness I might bother to show you a better way.

.....

Oh man, that's awesome. Look this thread is about inequality and the EITC. Do you think extending the EITC is a good idea or not? No one really gives a shit about your opinion of Warren Buffett, nor is it relevant.

 

[arkirk]

Where did you pull this knowledge from?

That you can't easily envision a better system is not surprising. Those completely indoctrinated to abusive immoral systems rarely can.

I specifically asked what is your solution and you only bitched. What is your solution? Got anything better that regurgitated Marxism?

George Bernard Shaw had some good ideas about a socialism that does not torture people. The idea he had was to socialize our society without a bloody revolution. What put his idea down...the rich and powerful narcissistic capitalists who said..."No socialism without a fight. We enjoy being masters of humanity and aim to keep it that way." Shavianism is not Marxism. Neither is the system suggested by John Rawls in A System of Justice which was published in the 70's. This treatise was about an approach to egalitarian democracy. It is clear you still believe in masterminds and people endowed with special powers, so it may not interest you, but it is there if you wish to see some modern thinking on socialization of our government.

 

[untermensche]

....
If you even showed a glimmer of open mindedness I might bother to show you a better way.

.....

Oh man, that's awesome. Look this thread is about inequality and the EITC. Do you think extending the EITC is a good idea or not? No one really gives a shit about your opinion of Warren Buffett, nor is it relevant.

Do you somehow think you speak for anybody but yourself?

Are you that deluded?

Buffett represents a bad system.

A system where people who do no work can get incredibly rich by stealing a little from a lot of people who do.

 

[NobleSavage]

I specifically asked what is your solution and you only bitched. What is your solution? Got anything better that regurgitated Marxism?

George Bernard Shaw had some good ideas about a socialism that does not torture people. The idea he had was to socialize our society without a bloody revolution. What put his idea down...the rich and powerful narcissistic capitalists who said..."No socialism without a fight. We enjoy being masters of humanity and aim to keep it that way." Shavianism is not Marxism. Neither is the system suggested by John Rawls in A System of Justice which was published in the 70's. This treatise was about an approach to egalitarian democracy. It is clear you still believe in masterminds and people endowed with special powers, so it may not interest you, but it is there if you wish to see some modern thinking on socialization of our government.

Much better. Why don't you start a thread on some of those ideas? I'll participate and it will be fun.

Now, what do you think of the idea of extending the EITC?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're the thief--you want to steal the profits that would be reasonably attributed to the invested capital.

That is only if one values dead capital over living people.

In your world we would distribute the capital to the workers--and there would be no more investment. Give it a few hundred years and there probably wouldn't be any humans, either.

You would probably love that--no more exploited workers.

 

[untermensche]

That is only if one values dead capital over living people.

In your world we would distribute the capital to the workers--and there would be no more investment. Give it a few hundred years and there probably wouldn't be any humans, either.

You would probably love that--no more exploited workers.

In my world the fruits of labor belong to the laborer.

Not a market wage, which is just the slimy capitalist way of saying the lowest possible wage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Capitalism fosters and rewards greed and inhumanity, so they thrive.

And it is ridiculous to claim that people will be the same no matter what system they exist under.

That is basically saying humans don't adapt to their environments.

Sure they adapt, but their basic nature doesn't change.

People still look out for themselves over society. People are also unable to accurately evaluate their own ability at doing things.

That you can't easily envision a better system is not surprising. Those completely indoctrinated to abusive immoral systems rarely can.

We have this little handicap that we expect systems to actually be workable. We don't like utopias.

 

[untermensche]

Sure they adapt, but their basic nature doesn't change.

The basic nature of humans is they adapt to their environment.

The basic nature of humans is when they live under decent conditions they tend to be decent, and when they live under repressive conditions, like capitalism or slavery, they become hardened and less decent.

We have this little handicap that we expect systems to actually be workable. We don't like utopias.

It is delusional to think that the only thing better than immoral capitalism is utopia.

 

[Starman]

Nervous laughter from Michael Shermer precedes his socialist ideas being shredded by Dinesh D'Souza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEM4NKXK-iA

Shermer then agrees with D'Souza, remarking "Indeed."

"That's the problem." - Shermer

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't understand why anyone would prefer expended government aid to the most obvious and most direct solution of increasing the wages of the poor. Increased government aid has the following problems associated with it.

Because he recognizes that a high minimum wage causes unemployment.

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...Of course, Warren Buffet wants the government to subsidize wages. Higher wages means lower profits....

Yes.

What is somebody like Buffet anyway?

Just somebody who got rich by taking a lot of money that really belongs to workers.

You just don't believe in profits.

Once again, raising the minimum wage doesn't result in higher unemployment. No one has shown this in empirical studies. Auxlus made a big deal about a study that tried to say that a higher minimum wage results in slower employment growth for the first year after the wage goes up. This is considerably different than your claim that it results in higher unemployment.

If it were true that an increase in the minimum wage results in higher unemployment among minimum wage workers then the converse would have to be true, lowering the minimum wage would have to result in more minimum wage workers. We have a thirty year experiment in effectively lowering the minimum wages. In current dollars the minimum wage is $3.50 lower than it was at it highest, when LB Johnson was president. How many more minimum wage workers do we now than in 1965? Your Nobel prize awaits, but be prepared for a disappointment.

There is no economic theory that holds up to say that higher wages result in more unemployment. The people who argue that a higher minimum wage results in higher unemployment depend on marginal productivity to provide theoretical support for the assertion. But MP tells us that any increase in wages should result in higher unemployment. It is one reason among many that marginal productivity is considered to be bogus. Besides, the people who developed the theory said that it is only valid at general equilibrium, full employment.

All that we are talking about doing is increasing the wages of minimum wage workers and those near minimum wage workers by 19 billion dollars a year for a minimum wage increase to $10.50 an hour. The CBO says that this will result in profits being reduced by about 17 billion dollars a year. Corporate profits, not including profits from small businesses, are running about 1.7 to 1.9 trillion dollars a year. The decrease in profits won't even threaten the rounding error

If we have learned anything from the supply side economics of the last thirty five years it is that the income distribution in the country is capable of being modified by national economic policies. We have successfully shifted something on the order of 20 trillion dollars total from wages that would have been paid under the old policies to profits under the supply side policies. It is time to start shifting them back.

 

[NobleSavage]

nm

 

[NobleSavage]

In my world the fruits of labor belong to the laborer.

Not a market wage, which is just the slimy capitalist way of saying the lowest possible wage.

If the fruits belong to the laborer, I guess the losses do to. So when a business goes under the workers should expect a big bill?

 

[Starman]

What "slimy capitalist" of the 20th century killed remotely as many humans as communist Stalin, or communist Mao?

All over the world, people in third world cesspools are risking their lives to get to "slimy capitalist" countries most particularly
the United States. Unfortunately we have far too many ingrates like untermensche.

 

[laughing dog]

In my world the fruits of labor belong to the laborer.

Not a market wage, which is just the slimy capitalist way of saying the lowest possible wage.

If the fruits belong to the laborer, I guess the losses do to. So when a business goes under the workers should expect a big bill?

When a business goes under, most workers do lose a "big bill" relative to their earnings.