Why is FAIR TRADE better than FREE TRADE?

[DBT]

Thou shalt pay higher wages, for the mouth of Karl Marx hath spoken it!

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are the "jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs!" missionaries.

"Fair trade" and Labor union crusaders are the "Sons of Light"

Employers are the "Sons of Darkness" and Satan, or devils which must be cast out.

Why Aren't Wages Keeping Up? It's Not The Economy, It's Management

''In this article, I’d like to explain why this may not a problem of economics, but rather an issue of management – and one which we can address by changing the nature of the discussion.

Point 1: Wages Are Not Keeping up.

Let’s just discuss the issues of wages: they are not keeping up with inflation. Consider the data below. While the GDP has risen (after inflation), real incomes have barely budged.
Wages not keeping up with inflation.

Wages not keeping up with inflation. NY Times

In fact, if we look at U.S. wages over the longer term, wages after inflation have barely budged over the last 44 years.

It’s frightening to consider, but my parents, who were a young couple in the 1960s, could buy a house for less than 25% of their take-home pay. They owned two cars and put my brother and me through college on a middle-income salary. (My father was a scientist with a mid-level job.) That dream is elusive today.

As Heather Boushey, an economist with The Washington Center for Equitable Growth puts it,

The economy is growing. Why aren’t people feeling it?” Boushey says. “The answer is: Because they literally aren’t feeling it.

And it seems to be getting worse. Despite an increase in wages most recently (2.9% as of August of 2018), income inequality has increased, leading even more to feel they aren't keeping up. While the stock market has benefited those with savings and 401(k)s, most don’t feel it.''

Point 2: Workers Are Struggling

The second piece of evidence I want to point out is the level of financial stress we see among workers. Look at some of these statistics:

40% of Americans had trouble paying for food, medical care, housing, or utilities in the last year.
Nearly half of Americans have no retirement savings, creating increases in stress-related illnesses and heart disease
63% of Americans do not have $500 of cash on hand to handle emergencies or other significant expenses
70% of college grads have $15,000 or more of loans outstanding in their first year of work
4 in 10 Americans now have a “sides hustle” to make more money to help make ends meet[9]
Employers like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Ubers, and Outback Steakhouse are now building programs to pay people every day, so they can better manage their cash.



Point 5: This Is A Management Issue, Not an Economic Issue

The bottom line is this: lagging wages in the U.S. is not an economic issue, it’s really about management. The spirit is there, but the actions are not.

translation: The employers ("management") are bad people who should feel sorry for the workers and pay them higher, out of pity for them. Crybaby Economics 1A

fundamental premise/religious commandment: wage-earners must be paid higher, the 11th Commandment -- Thou shalt pay wage-earners higher wages.


None of the above crybaby-pandering answers our basic question: Why should any wage-earners be paid more than their value determined by supply-and-demand, or determined by the market, where competition causes prices (including wages) to go up or down, or remain stagnant?

Since the market determines the prices of everything bought and sold, based on supply-and-demand, why shouldn't it determine the wage levels of different workers, based on their value, or the need for them, on their replaceability, on their scarcity? "Fair trade" usually requires that the wages somewhere be increased, in one way or another, and that "free trade" driven only by market supply-and-demand tends to underpay some wage-earners.

But the judgment that some workers are underpaid is not ever explained. It's just a crybaby demand without anyone ever explaining what justifies any workers being paid above what the market says is their value.

Why should we just start with this religious premise that wages are too low? It makes no sense really, because the truth is that many workers are paid high wages, because they are more valuable. Just because there might be a general trend toward low or stagnant wages does not change the fact that workers who are more competitive are paid very high, because their higher value is rewarded.

So before whining that wages are too low, you first have to identify WHICH ones, or which workers are underpaid, and then explain how you know they're underpaid. How do you know it's not just that their value is lower, or is stagnating? If their value has stagnated, or even decreased, then shouldn't their wage level also stagnate, or decrease?


Is something wrong in the economy, causing some wage stagnation?

Maybe something has gone wrong with the U.S. economy, or the global economy, such that the living standard has not increased for everyone as it should, and that only a tiny minority elitist class has benefited recently.

It's a legitimate theory that there is something wrong somewhere. But it doesn't seem to have anything to do with wage-earners per se as being the victims. Rather, you could say there's an inequality gap which is too large, and it's not only wage-earners, but also independent contractors who are suffering some bad result from it.

Also, there are a few "workers" who are well-paid who are in the elitist class which benefits.

If so, then let's stop the obsession on wage-earners, and the scapegoating of employers (many of whom are middle-class and poor), and instead figure out if something is wrong with the economy. The above Forbes article by Josh Bersin doesn't sound like anything other than just a crybaby-pandering appeal to feel sorry for wage-earners, because they're a majority of the producers, and it's always popular to say whatever the idiot masses want to hear, regardless whether it makes any sense. He doesn't name any problem in the economy, but just seems to want to scapegoat employers, because this wins applause from the mass of wage-earner crybabies out there.

You want an explanation for what's wrong with the economy? Alright, here's a theory which makes sense, and fits the facts:

The problem is caused by the
extreme debt addiction, beginning in the 1930s in the U.S., and in most other countries also in the 20th century.

This extreme debt did not exist prior to the 1930s, and the extent of it has gradually increased, with some ups and downs along the way, ever since it began almost 100 years ago. These high debts, way out of line from anything ever thought reasonable prior to 1930, can be causing constant ANTIstimulus shocks to the economy, regularly happening, because that debt has to be paid back, and is paid back, with perhaps a small percent of increase in the unpaid balance, but still there is no default (or virtually none), so that it's all paid back regularly, on schedule, and every repayment of debt (principle and interest) is just another ANTIstimulus to the economy every time it happens, which is just about all the time.

Why shouldn't this be doing constant damage to the economy? Not only to the U.S., but to most other countries also? especially the ones which have the higher chronic debt level?

Doesn't the STIMULUS benefit the economy short-term, causing new jobs and businesses to expand? That stimulus happens when the debt money is increased, so that taxes are lower and there's more spending to GOOSE the economy. Now, that being the case, doesn't it make sense that the OPPOSITE, a payback of the debt, paying off the bond-holders regularly, has the OPPOSITE effect on the economy, causing an ANTIstimulus equal to the stimulus caused earlier when the money was borrowed?

And with these constant ANTIstimulus shocks, just as strong as the earlier stimulus benefits, it's likely that the jobs and businesses will be negatively impacted, so that constantly, regularly, every year, along with the new federal deficit for that year, there is also the ANTIstimulus, usually just as strong as the stimulus that year from the current deficit.

So maybe that's what's wrong with the economy. It's not that there's something wrong with wages per se, but there's something more general going wrong, hitting everyone except the top 1%, and dragging down everyone's living standard, or making everyone's income stagnate.

It makes no sense to say there is something wrong with the wage level that's causing whatever is wrong. No theory about that makes any sense, and there's no empirical evidence connecting low wages causally to whatever it is that's wrong.

But we know that an ANTIstimulus has to hurt the economy and do damage to most people. And these ANTIstimuluses are happening regularly, and have gotten steadily worse since they began 80 or 90 years ago. Which is the period during which we have seen this increasing stagnation of the economy, where it seems only the top 1 - 10 % benefit significantly, while most of the population has to struggle to survive.

This makes much more sense to explain what's wrong than the popular impulse to scapegoat employers.

Your translation is false, employers, being human, are no better or worse than anyone else.

We, being human, tend to look after our own interests first and foremost.

Employers, being human, look after their own interests, keeping costs down, maximizing profits....which puts their interests in conflict with workers, who also want what is best for themselves.

If there was a fair balance in power between the two, both parties could do well as a partnership working together to build wealth for both.

Sadly, for the given reasons, this is not the case.

 

[SimpleDon]

The graph, as with the article, deals with the fact that 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. 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. 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."

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 than forty hours a week. All to guarantee profits that are reaching obscene levels.

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.

Increased wages don't produce higher costs for goods, they reduce profits. 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 the market mechanism that determines prices switched off in that case.

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. Take an amount of money, financial capital, and put it in a safe on the doorstep of any factory in the world and comeback in six months. Are you going to have better productivity in the factory? I don't think so. I think that the money is still sitting there not doing anything. 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]

It takes workers to decide what steps to take to improve productivity and it takes workers to do the work to increase productivity. Workers can improve productivity without any capital investment, training one another, for example.

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 the share of GDP that goes to wages reduces that demand and reduces the economic activity and the growth in the economy, because the rich tend to save more of the money that they receive, removing it from the economy. The non-rich are much more likely to spend than to save 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.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Who, besides you, is saying "give us money or we wreck your business?"

That's what a strike is!

Name three companies that were put out of business by a labor strike?

They pay the extortion, although in the long run they often go under anyway.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Who, besides you, is saying "give us money or we wreck your business?"

That's what a strike is!

No, it's not. Going on strike is a last resort when negotiations break down. The aim is to improve pay and conditions, not 'wreck the business,' which would be a stupid thing to do.

First, it doesn't matter if it's a last resort.

Second, the negotiations are conducted under the gun of a threat of a strike.

Wrecking the business is good for the unions, it makes other companies more willing to pay up.

 

[DBT]

No, it's not. Going on strike is a last resort when negotiations break down. The aim is to improve pay and conditions, not 'wreck the business,' which would be a stupid thing to do.

First, it doesn't matter if it's a last resort.

Second, the negotiations are conducted under the gun of a threat of a strike.

Wrecking the business is good for the unions, it makes other companies more willing to pay up.

You haven't given a list of companies that were specifically destroyed by strikes. How many have been destroyed, what percentage have been destroyed? Stats and examples please.

 

[Keith&Co.]

No, it's not. Going on strike is a last resort when negotiations break down. The aim is to improve pay and conditions, not 'wreck the business,' which would be a stupid thing to do.

First, it doesn't matter if it's a last resort.

Second, the negotiations are conducted under the gun of a threat of a strike.

Wrecking the business is good for the unions, it makes other companies more willing to pay up.

You haven't given a list of companies that were specifically destroyed by strikes. How many have been destroyed, what percentage have been destroyed? Stats and examples please.

Isn't the point of a strike that the owners will have to choose between capitulation and oblivion? So, if a company is actually destroyed by a strike, thst's the owners not giving in. Their fault.

Unless there's a company where the owner offfered to meet demands and workers were still so angry they striked the business to death, anyway?

 

[ZiprHead]

Name three companies that were put out of business by a labor strike?

They pay the extortion, although in the long run they often go under anyway.

So, pulled from your ass it is then.

 

[SimpleDon]

Nations can and must be able to choose which other nations that they trade with and the conditions of that trade. This is the way that it has always been. This is what I believe that is referred to as "fair trade" in the OP, that is, what has been trade policy forever.

Lumpenproletariat is missing a couple of steps in his OP. He asks us to accept that "free trade" is the most desirable trade policy offering as the only evidence to support this assertion being that it lowers the prices of some consumer goods. That to stop our free trade policies would roll back this tremendous benefit to the US economy.

So in order to fill in this gap, below I present the consumer price index for the post-World War II years to August 1 of this year, 2020. I need Lumpenproletariat or another free trade enthusiast to point to the period on this graph where we can see the impact on the economy that the lower prices that justify our free trade policies are. I can't see it.

​

Anyone?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Name three companies that were put out of business by a labor strike?

They pay the extortion, although in the long run they often go under anyway.

So, pulled from your ass it is then.

Look at businesses that aren't tied to a fixed location, and aren't government or government-backed. Such industries are pretty much gone.

 

[DBT]

So, pulled from your ass it is then.

Look at businesses that aren't tied to a fixed location, and aren't government or government-backed. Such industries are pretty much gone.

Specifically which business was destroyed through strike action? One example.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Punishing all employers and artificially propping up wages does not solve anything.

When will you shift out of crybaby employer-bashing mode and into problem-solving mode?

As it stands, most of the worlds wealth is flowing into the hands of a small percentage of the world's population.

Two corrections to this would be:

Impose a tax on Wall St., i.e., tax on stock transactions.

Increase property taxes on the largest holdings. Or make property taxes progressive, so that most residential homes would not be taxed more, but those in the very high brackets would be taxed at higher rates.

Just whining about the wealth gap does no good unless you offer a real solution to it. The solution is not to prop up the wage levels of uncompetitive workers to have them be paid more than they are worth.

Paying anyone more than their real value doesn't solve anything or make it better. We're better off to let the free market set all the prices and wages, without artificially paying someone higher than their worth out of pity for them. Pitying the less competitive and pandering to them makes nothing better. All it does is increase the prices all consumers have to pay, including the poor.

Increasing the income tax rate on the highest brackets would be OK. But income tax is hugely expensive to enforce, as opposed to property tax.

Why do you say it's 'whining' whenever problems are being identified and described? Is it because you don't happen to agree, and this is your way of dismissing whatever you disagree with?

It's "whining" if you don't say what should be done about the problems you're whin---- identifying and describing, as here.

Maybe also it's "whining" if you propose solutions which would only make things worse. I.e., crybaby solutions, like demanding that wages must be forced higher (not for improved worker performance but out of pity for the workers because they're victims we're supposed to feel sorry for), which would only drive up costs and decrease the production = higher prices to consumers = lower living standard, thus making everyone worse off, including most workers.

I think it's "whining" if that's all you can do. Especially when you're told this and you're asked what's the real solution, and yet you continue to just repeat the same complaints without offering any serious solution. Especially if all you do is repeat Marxist class-warfare slogans and nothing more.

Bluff and bluster that doesn't represent the reality of an imbalance of power . . .

How is it "Bluff and bluster" to offer a solution? Why wouldn't certain higher taxes on the rich fix the problem you're posing? Virtually all the super rich are invested in wealthy real estate which could be taxed with a proportional tax, so that the wealthiest properties would be taxed at much higher rates than that of small homeowners. So why wouldn't that get much of that excess wealth away from the rich and into the public needs where it belongs? (plus also allow some reduced taxes at the lower-income brackets)? And the Wall Street tax also would be paid mostly by the rich. So I'm even conceding that Bolshevik Bernie is right on this one point.

But just employer-bashing serves no benefit. That's all you offer -- just continual whining against the employers, as if all employers are greedy pigs. Cracking down on employers would punish many small operators who are struggling to survive. It's not true that all employers are in the top 1% wealthy -- they are not! Why can't you let them have a chance to survive, struggling to keep their business going, hiring workers but looking for bargains -- like consumers shop for bargains -- trying to find someone who'll do it cheaper so they can afford to stay in business? Why does your solution have to be nothing but mindless punishment of the employer-class per se even though many of them are not the super-rich at all?

Those lower-income employers are part of the solution, but your pseudo-solutions beat them down and exclude them.

. . . the reality of an imbalance of power between management and individual workers, . . .

So what if there's an imbalance of power? The poor job-seeker is free to turn down that job offer if it makes him no better off. So that employer is not doing any harm to the desperate job-seeker by offering a low-wage job. Why do you keep obsessing on the "imbalance" but cannot identify anything wrong with transactions between them? Throughout history there have been millions/billions/trillions of transactions between the very poor and the super rich, and you have no evidence that these transactions were in any way tainted just because of the "imbalance" between them. As long as either side is free to say "no" to the deal, how can it be wrong for them to deal?

It's wrong only if one side is forced against their will, by threat of harm from the other.

. . . imbalance of power between management and individual workers especially the lowest paid.

No, actually it's not the "lowest paid" that you complain about, depending on which workers you're talking about. Is it the auto workers, or the steel workers you want to protect by forcing up their wages? This is what the unions and politicians are demanding -- Trump and Biden and Bolshevik Bernie, and all the Left-wing agitators for "fair trade" and protectionism -- these are NOT the "lowest paid," but are middle- and even upper-middle class workers in behalf of whom your progressive demagogue heros are whining.

SHIFTING THE BALANCE OF POWERIN THE WORKPLACE TO BOOST PRODUCTIVITY AND PAY

''Shifting the balance of power in the workplace to boost productivity and pay1Too often, people’s experience of work is disempowering, lacking dignity and autonomy. One-third of all employees are fearful at work in some way, most feel that they lack a say over the decisions influencing their working life (Gallie et al 2012a and 2012b) and a majority feel disengaged at work (CIPD 2013a). Growing insecurity at work is matched by increasing financial precariousness in the form of the well-publicised squeeze on household incomes, the rise of zero-hours contracts and the growth in jobs paid less than the Living Wage.''

Interrelated challenges: poor productivity and wage stagnation

The average UK worker’s output has fallen to 16 per cent below the G7 average, and remains 2 per cent below its 2007 peak, while the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment fell to 10.4 per cent in Q2 2013, the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This suggests that we are not properly harnessing the talents and skills of our workers, or properly investing in the future productive capacity of our economy. Meanwhile, as productivity stagnates, power and pay have become increasingly and unjustifiably concentrated at the top over the last 30 years, as the institutions that acted as countervailing powers1 in the workplace have weakened, a process accelerated by wider trends of globalisation, demographic and technological change. One consequence has been that the share of wages as a percentage of national income has progressively fallen from around 58 per cent in the early 1980 to 54 per cent in 2011,while profit’s share has increased from 24 per cent to 28 per cent over the same period (Lansley and Reed 2013)''

This has very little to do with the "lowest paid" workers. The truth is that if the above demagogues got everything they're demanding, the truly lowest-paid workers would get no benefit at all, but would just have to pay higher prices, because they are not in the category of workers named above. The lowest-paid do not have the protections the above labor progressives are clamoring for.

If you got all your demands met, it means some high-profile workers would be made better off, getting some additional protection as a result of labor laws, while the vast majority of the population, including the poorest, would get no benefit at all, but would suffer a net loss as their cost of living would rise, as a result of the price increases necessary in order to pay for all the above increased labor cost.

You don't make the poorest people better off by driving up the labor cost for certain select labor classes, like factory workers, thus driving up the prices which ALL consumers must pay.

As long as all you can do is scapegoat employers, punishing all of them by forcing them to pay higher than the market value of the labor, you are imposing higher costs onto ALL of society and making the whole economy worse off, causing a total net injury, increasing the total suffering in the world, while bringing benefit to only a small minority of crybabies who were able to get more attention than everyone else.

You need to stop your obsession on just finding scapegoats (employers) and instead seek real solutions to improve the production, to improve the performance of producers/workers.

 

[DrZoidberg]

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

I reject that. I'm not a utilitarian. Everybody is greedy, selfish and lazy. We're not going to change that. To me socialism is about preventing too much power being concentrated in too few hands. It's about letting people on all levels of society have hope that they can make something of themselves. But fairness isn't going to happen. It's no point even having it as a goal. Everybody thinks life is unfair to their disadvantage.

It's NOT about people getting money for nothing. Or just taking from the rich and giving to the poor, simply because the rich have more.

It's simply an acknowlegement that poor and desperate people are dangerous to themselves and to society. It's better to try our best to lift them up and help them get educated. I also think it's cheaper in the long run.

The purpose of the economy is primarily to work at all. It's not hard to fuck it up. Very little is needed to make the wheels of the economy to grind to a halt. Latin American is an excellent example of how little is needed to fuck it up.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Only the Chosen understand it. For all others -- the Unwashed -- the Truth is hidden.

And they'd never understand it in a million years, no matter how much you try to explain it to them.

You have yet to show any acknowledgement that workers and consumers are the same people.

All workers are consumers. But some consumers are not workers. What's the point? Is this "workers and consumers are the same people" another mindless slogan, to be added to the collection of "fair trade" mindless slogans?

That you can't, won't or don't see the point is the point.

That you think it's a mindless slogan is just showing you refuse to use your mind to dope it out.

It's a means for you to justify your anti-worker bigotry.

I also keep asking what is the point of Trump's "jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs!" slogan.

Also his "Make America Great Again" slogan. And there are many other slogans preached by fanatics, on all sides, Blues and Reds and others.

If you question a Trumpster about the point of his MAGA slogan, he could respond:

That you can't, won't or don't see the point is the point.

That you think it's a mindless slogan is just showing you refuse to use your mind to dope it out.

It's a means for you to justify your anti-American bigotry.
​

This kind of response could also be used by Neo-Nazis, Communists, Anarchists, Flat-Earthers, Climate-Change Deniers, Right-Wing Talk Show hosts, Hare Krishna devotees, or anyone who uses slogans or chants or symbols to promote their cause, and who can't explain what they believe but is just obsessed with their slogans or symbols.

Can anyone explain the point of the "workers and consumers are the same people" slogan?

Again, ALL workers are consumers, but not all consumers are workers.

It's possible for the same person to be in both categories. But that doesn't change the fact that workers produce the stuff that consumers buy. As workers they produce the stuff and sell it, as consumers they buy it and eat it, use it, enjoy it, etc. and go back for more. Maybe they work to earn money to buy the stuff, or maybe they don't.

So again, what's the point? Can someone help Zipr out, if his level is limited to that of just chanting slogans without understanding them, like a parrot repeats the words but doesn't know what they mean.

 

[DBT]

The issue is still the power imbalance between individual workers and their employer, an imbalance that does not allow the average worker a market based share of the wealth that their work generates.

Wealth that flows upwards, into the hands of a small percentage of the population. A situation that is bad for society as a whole and the economy, which is supposed to benefit all its members, not just the economic elite.

 

[DBT]

When will you shift out of crybaby employer-bashing mode and into problem-solving mode?

As it stands, most of the worlds wealth is flowing into the hands of a small percentage of the world's population.

Two corrections to this would be:

Impose a tax on Wall St., i.e., tax on stock transactions.

Increase property taxes on the largest holdings. Or make property taxes progressive, so that most residential homes would not be taxed more, but those in the very high brackets would be taxed at higher rates.

Just whining about the wealth gap does no good unless you offer a real solution to it. The solution is not to prop up the wage levels of uncompetitive workers to have them be paid more than they are worth.

Paying anyone more than their real value doesn't solve anything or make it better. We're better off to let the free market set all the prices and wages, without artificially paying someone higher than their worth out of pity for them. Pitying the less competitive and pandering to them makes nothing better. All it does is increase the prices all consumers have to pay, including the poor.

Increasing the income tax rate on the highest brackets would be OK. But income tax is hugely expensive to enforce, as opposed to property tax.

Why do you say it's 'whining' whenever problems are being identified and described? Is it because you don't happen to agree, and this is your way of dismissing whatever you disagree with?

It's "whining" if you don't say what should be done about the problems you're whin---- identifying and describing, as here.

Maybe also it's "whining" if you propose solutions which would only make things worse. I.e., crybaby solutions, like demanding that wages must be forced higher (not for improved worker performance but out of pity for the workers because they're victims we're supposed to feel sorry for), which would only drive up costs and decrease the production = higher prices to consumers = lower living standard, thus making everyone worse off, including most workers.

I think it's "whining" if that's all you can do. Especially when you're told this and you're asked what's the real solution, and yet you continue to just repeat the same complaints without offering any serious solution. Especially if all you do is repeat Marxist class-warfare slogans and nothing more.

Bluff and bluster that doesn't represent the reality of an imbalance of power . . .

How is it "Bluff and bluster" to offer a solution? Why wouldn't certain higher taxes on the rich fix the problem you're posing? Virtually all the super rich are invested in wealthy real estate which could be taxed with a proportional tax, so that the wealthiest properties would be taxed at much higher rates than that of small homeowners. So why wouldn't that get much of that excess wealth away from the rich and into the public needs where it belongs? (plus also allow some reduced taxes at the lower-income brackets)? And the Wall Street tax also would be paid mostly by the rich. So I'm even conceding that Bolshevik Bernie is right on this one point.

But just employer-bashing serves no benefit. That's all you offer -- just continual whining against the employers, as if all employers are greedy pigs. Cracking down on employers would punish many small operators who are struggling to survive. It's not true that all employers are in the top 1% wealthy -- they are not! Why can't you let them have a chance to survive, struggling to keep their business going, hiring workers but looking for bargains -- like consumers shop for bargains -- trying to find someone who'll do it cheaper so they can afford to stay in business? Why does your solution have to be nothing but mindless punishment of the employer-class per se even though many of them are not the super-rich at all?

Those lower-income employers are part of the solution, but your pseudo-solutions beat them down and exclude them.

. . . the reality of an imbalance of power between management and individual workers, . . .

So what if there's an imbalance of power? The poor job-seeker is free to turn down that job offer if it makes him no better off. So that employer is not doing any harm to the desperate job-seeker by offering a low-wage job. Why do you keep obsessing on the "imbalance" but cannot identify anything wrong with transactions between them? Throughout history there have been millions/billions/trillions of transactions between the very poor and the super rich, and you have no evidence that these transactions were in any way tainted just because of the "imbalance" between them. As long as either side is free to say "no" to the deal, how can it be wrong for them to deal?

It's wrong only if one side is forced against their will, by threat of harm from the other.

. . . imbalance of power between management and individual workers especially the lowest paid.

No, actually it's not the "lowest paid" that you complain about, depending on which workers you're talking about. Is it the auto workers, or the steel workers you want to protect by forcing up their wages? This is what the unions and politicians are demanding -- Trump and Biden and Bolshevik Bernie, and all the Left-wing agitators for "fair trade" and protectionism -- these are NOT the "lowest paid," but are middle- and even upper-middle class workers in behalf of whom your progressive demagogue heros are whining.

SHIFTING THE BALANCE OF POWERIN THE WORKPLACE TO BOOST PRODUCTIVITY AND PAY

''Shifting the balance of power in the workplace to boost productivity and pay1Too often, people’s experience of work is disempowering, lacking dignity and autonomy. One-third of all employees are fearful at work in some way, most feel that they lack a say over the decisions influencing their working life (Gallie et al 2012a and 2012b) and a majority feel disengaged at work (CIPD 2013a). Growing insecurity at work is matched by increasing financial precariousness in the form of the well-publicised squeeze on household incomes, the rise of zero-hours contracts and the growth in jobs paid less than the Living Wage.''

Interrelated challenges: poor productivity and wage stagnation

The average UK worker’s output has fallen to 16 per cent below the G7 average, and remains 2 per cent below its 2007 peak, while the proportion of total expenditure accounted for by spending on investment fell to 10.4 per cent in Q2 2013, the lowest level recorded since the 1950s. This suggests that we are not properly harnessing the talents and skills of our workers, or properly investing in the future productive capacity of our economy. Meanwhile, as productivity stagnates, power and pay have become increasingly and unjustifiably concentrated at the top over the last 30 years, as the institutions that acted as countervailing powers1 in the workplace have weakened, a process accelerated by wider trends of globalisation, demographic and technological change. One consequence has been that the share of wages as a percentage of national income has progressively fallen from around 58 per cent in the early 1980 to 54 per cent in 2011,while profit’s share has increased from 24 per cent to 28 per cent over the same period (Lansley and Reed 2013)''

This has very little to do with the "lowest paid" workers. The truth is that if the above demagogues got everything they're demanding, the truly lowest-paid workers would get no benefit at all, but would just have to pay higher prices, because they are not in the category of workers named above. The lowest-paid do not have the protections the above labor progressives are clamoring for.

If you got all your demands met, it means some high-profile workers would be made better off, getting some additional protection as a result of labor laws, while the vast majority of the population, including the poorest, would get no benefit at all, but would suffer a net loss as their cost of living would rise, as a result of the price increases necessary in order to pay for all the above increased labor cost.

You don't make the poorest people better off by driving up the labor cost for certain select labor classes, like factory workers, thus driving up the prices which ALL consumers must pay.

As long as all you can do is scapegoat employers, punishing all of them by forcing them to pay higher than the market value of the labor, you are imposing higher costs onto ALL of society and making the whole economy worse off, causing a total net injury, increasing the total suffering in the world, while bringing benefit to only a small minority of crybabies who were able to get more attention than everyone else.

You need to stop your obsession on just finding scapegoats (employers) and instead seek real solutions to improve the production, to improve the performance of producers/workers.

Nothing I have said is about 'scapegoats' - that is your rationale. The issue was always about power imbalance, that those in power have the ability and means to make the rules suit their own interests. No blame. That's just how it is. That is the way the world works.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The issue is still the power imbalance between individual workers and their employer, an imbalance that does not allow the average worker a market based share of the wealth that their work generates.

I still don't know what you mean. Whatever they get is what they're worth. That's how a market works and how we calculate worth. If you remove the term "market based share" then you might have a point. But your comment now makes no sense.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, pulled from your ass it is then.

Look at businesses that aren't tied to a fixed location, and aren't government or government-backed. Such industries are pretty much gone.

Specifically which business was destroyed through strike action? One example.

Goalposts!

They're not destroyed by the strike, they're put in a precarious financial position and sometimes die with the next economic downturn.

 

[Jarhyn]

Specifically which business was destroyed through strike action? One example.

Goalposts!

They're not destroyed by the strike, they're put in a precarious financial position and sometimes die with the next economic downturn.

So I happened to notice while you quibbled about where the goalposts are set, you still haven't punted a ball over any set of them, his or yours.

Bad form.

 

[DBT]

The issue is still the power imbalance between individual workers and their employer, an imbalance that does not allow the average worker a market based share of the wealth that their work generates.

I still don't know what you mean. Whatever they get is what they're worth. That's how a market works and how we calculate worth. If you remove the term "market based share" then you might have a point. But your comment now makes no sense.

Workers are not getting market value for their labour, their share in the wealth their work helps to generate has been eroding away for decades. Wages are running at well below market value. The stats have been posted.

Employers don't raise wages according to market value, they try to keep costs down.

 

[DBT]

Specifically which business was destroyed through strike action? One example.

Goalposts!

They're not destroyed by the strike, they're put in a precarious financial position and sometimes die with the next economic downturn.

So you can provide evidence for that? Or are you merely speculating in favour of your own position? I suspect the latter.