611–620 of 721 posts
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Why would Amazon pay one more penny than they have to? To win a nice guys award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside? There is precisely one solution to this problem, and it is us electing leaders who change the rules in favor of the working masses, and enforce those rules mercilessly against exploitative employers.
Or stop putting band-aids in a fundamentally broken system, and change it altogether.
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> The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated over and over by interest groups is that they are inaccurate, and often end up advocating for even higher inequality. What specifically is an "inaccurate catchphrase" in what I've said?
Stagnant wages are the cause of multiple effects, many of them that are extremely localized. The US has had this effect, but the world has had it go extremely upwards in the last 5 decades. And along lower wages, have come increased value. The internet, for example, is super cheap and might not count as much into the budget of a person todaY: but tv and entertainment was a much higher cost between cable, newspapers,…
>housing and healthcare, are the defacto most intervened and regulated markets of all. It is the state, in its magnificent regulatory capture, that its pushing poverty unto people.
I won't defend much of anything about the state of housing or healthcare in the US. The government is certainly a huge part of the problem, I have no issue accepting that.
Here's the thing: I don't think that all government programs are good. Some are designed to push poverty unto people like you said. But the solution isn't to get rid of all regulation or the idea that government can be used as a tool for the masses.
We need to have a government that is much more aligned with the interests of the people than the interests of large corporations and capital. To me the way to do that is to expand the limits of democracy to include how the economy is run, how natural resources are used, and what the relationship between capital and workers should be.
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Sounds like your answer is nationalism. We could just as easily be talking about laws and candidates who want to improve our trade agreements such that workers in China, Mexico, etc. get better working conditions. I don't particularly like the conditions at Amazon either, but I see it as the obvious result of globalism. When 70% of the world lives on less than $10 per day, what we call decent conditions is really a f…
> Eventually we'll average out. Right now it's doing the opposite. Middle and lower classes are getting poorer in rich parts of the world. Billionaires are getting so much richer. Gini coefficients are going up.
This is true, but at the same time, I forget the exact number, but something like 100k people achieve food security across the globe every day. 200 years ago 90% of the world lacked food security, now only 10% does.
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I used to think it was some sort of nationalism, but I think it's mostly because making sure all Americans are treated well is a much more tractable problem than worrying about the welfare of literally everyone in the world. It is conceivably possible for every American to have adequate food, housing, and medical care, to work in safe and humane conditions, and so forth. Even that seems crazy and utopian to some, but…
> It is conceivably possible for every American to have adequate food, housing, and medical care, to work in safe and humane conditions, and so forth. It is conceivably possible for every human - given the current available resources.
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This is a ridiculous comparison. How would you be enriching yourself by paying people to pick up trash? Did you get a contract from the government or the owner to pick up the trash? If you did, then yes you should probably take some of that money you made and hire some people to do the work or do it yourself.
> How would you be enriching yourself by paying people to pick up trash? You get to have nicer forests to walk in?
> /u/ythn is the worst CEO ever, he gluts himself off of the labors of the socioeconomicly desperate!"
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Or stop putting band-aids in a fundamentally broken system, and change it altogether.
To... what?
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According to Bezos, there are two types of decisions- 1) type 1 - where Bezos does not time workers' toilet breaks, and 2) type 2 - where he lets middle managers to create their own rules. It's always Day 1 :)
I'm not sure I understand this comment. Day 1? What are you referencing?
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> Labor and capital are on the same side, they are both producers of wealth. Neither labor nor capital independently produce wealth, generally, it's produced by the application of labor to capital; the suppliers of labor and capital are on opposing sides of the fight to capture the wealth the two are used together to create. “Capitalism” was named for the side it specifically favors in that fight, by people who found…
> the suppliers of labor and capital are on opposing sides of the fight to capture the wealth the two are used together to create. Opposing sides or collaborators? Like the sun and the soil working together.. Think of those that provide no labor and no capital yet capture great value. Those are the truly destructive.