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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The Real Class War

#501

Post by roenxi »

rimliu wrote: post #498
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the growth? The Federal Reserve pumping easy money into the economy doesn’t count. The author completely missed the point as to why capital is misallocated. True growth is when productivity increases, prices fall, and capital investment increases. It’s easy to sell 10 dollar bills for 8 dollars a piece. In what world is that considered growth?

When prices fall it is called deflation. The investment then decreases as well, because who in the sane mind would invest into something that is getting less valuable as time passes?

Someone who wants more stuff or anticipates change in the future. Best time to buy an asset is in the latter stages of a long price decline.

Speaking from a mining industry perspective, best time to invest might be after about 3-5 years of price deflation. If you invest in capital when prices rise sharply then you can lose a lot of money; as mining companies generally seem to do discover when there is a bull market :/. I've seen mining companies do a pretty good job of bankrupting themselves by not investing when prices have been dropping for a while then over-'investing' when the price rises.

So, in the real economy, sane people would invest when prices drop. On a sane timeframe. None of this millisecond knee jerk day trading business.

Basically, the argument is that investment depends on anticipated change over some time horizon. If someone has a long time horizon, best time to set up is in a deflationary period. It isn't a general rule but you'd certainly see some canny people getting their hands dirty if they anticipated a shortage of some good or service.

Re: The Real Class War

#502

Post by aguyfromnb »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #463
mensetmanusman wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic growth increases the gap. The only fix is working with other countries on inheritance tax and anti-tax evasion schemes.

Where is the growth? The Federal Reserve pumping easy money into the economy doesn’t count. The author completely missed the point as to why capital is misallocated. True growth is when productivity increases, prices fall, and capital investment increases. It’s easy to sell 10 dollar bills for 8 dollars a piece. In what world is that considered growth?

>It’s easy to sell 10 dollar bills for 8 dollars a piece. In what world is that considered growth?

Silicon Valley.

Re: The Real Class War

#503

Post by aguyfromnb »

BuckRogers wrote: post #491
tathougies wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily think of your wage minus your yearly expenditures as your profit, which, if you're doing things right, should be positive.

It's never positive as your life is worth far more than those wages in all cases. That's why no one can be considered overpaid, or we would limit payment to CEOs. Thus wages can only be considered at best, a trade. That's why I asserted that profits are nothing more than unpaid wages. Since it's objectively a trade of your life for wages, paying others less than the value you produced is simply not valuing human life…

>paying others less than the value you produced is simply not valuing human life. The worst sort of theft.

And yet, both the planet and individual people are far wealthier today than when they were producing and receiving "full value" for their labour.

Re: The Real Class War

#504

Post by coretx »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

If you want a policy proposal to be burned to the ground; organize grassroots support for it. The following PR disaster angry mob will set it on fire for you without you getting your hands dirty.

Re: The Real Class War

#505

Post by C1sc0cat »

snowwrestler wrote: post #265
tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class? How have you spent your career working in public policy circles and come away with so little understanding of what grassroots activism is, and the impact it has…

M&P are workers also and any one who works in tech is by definition are in "the professional managerial class"

I think you are confusing stunts with long term sustained lobbying.

For example I got several k people a substantial improvement to their pensions, passed a motion at a union conference got it put on bargaining agenda and successfully changed the companies mind.

Re: The Real Class War

#506

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

raxxorrax wrote: post #499
noelsusman wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hillary won working class voters in the 2016 primary by a comfortable margin. +28 with non-college-educated voters and +13 with voters under $50,000 in income.

Against Trump, but I doubt that is a reliable metric to determine real support.

Trump was not a participant in the 2016 democratic primary, where HRC won by the indicated margins.

Re: The Real Class War

#507

Post by thu2111 »

Iv wrote: post #497
tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

I used to diss protests that accomplish nothing but then I realized what their real use was: to connect people into doing actual stuff. To open a place for discussion on a specific issue, sometimes in the media, but at least in the street, for few hours, with like-minded people. If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realisti…

Are there many examples of that happening?

The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group.

Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians their power. A few protests are more spontaneous especially the sort when democracies get overthrown or established. But in the west protests don't ever seem to create new organised movements.

Re: The Real Class War

#508

Post by aguyfromnb »

larnmar wrote: post #15
_bxg1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's radical energy there, but here's the clincher: it will never turn into anything productive because the Republican propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class into continuing to think that public services are their enemy . They will rant and holler about communism until the billionaires have milked them of their very last dollar, and then blame that on communism too. The very policies t…

If the working class turns to radicalism what makes you think it will be the kind of radicalism you agree with? It’s more likely to be the kind of radicalism you find terrifying.

>If the working class turns to radicalism what makes you think it will be the kind of radicalism you agree with?

This is something I like to mention whenever I see HackerNews talking about revolution.

The odds that the "rednecks" from fly-over country (the people with guns) will partner with the California intellectual cognoscenti, who enabled a massive concentration of wealth and built the state surveillance machine, is practically nil.

In all likelihood, the tech-elite will be seen as the enemy: "what were you doing when this machinery was being built?"

Re: The Real Class War

#509

Post by dredmorbius »

mturmon wrote: post #349
jimbokun wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this demonstrably, empirically true, or is it something you are just telling yourself because you desperately want it to be true?

I listened to an hour-long podcast in which Chris Hayes interviewed Alicia Garza, who co-founded Black Lives Matter (BLM). They talked specifically about this question and since you're interested, perhaps it would be one place to go to hear informed organizers/activists discussing it. It aired on June 4. Besides BLM, one other recent place in which this question of "are demonstrations enough" comes up is, of course,…

Other notable protests in the past 20-30 years, in the US and elsewhere:

- Anti Iraq War movement (2003-4), mostly US.

- Anti WTO movement (1999-2010) global (US, Canada, Japan, Europe). Eventually blended into / surpassed by the Occupy movement.

- ACT UP: Gay rights / HIV/AIDS awareness. (1987 - 2000)

Those are the major causes of which I'm aware.

Of the set, ACT UP was arguably the most successful, and probably deserves much of the credit for mainstreaming gay / nonbinary gender culture.

The WTO protests are more mixed, but put a damper on the Washington Concensus / Neoconservative Agenda movement. Global trade meetings are no longer casually-hosted affairs, and now tend to be in remote / secluded locations.

The Iraq War protests were arguably the least effective, though massive in many cities. They simply disappeared off news coverage though. Clearly they didn't stop the war or lessen the catastrophic impacts of it, though they did help cement a strong political divide over it in the US.

Whether or not more recent movements, particularly on the right, could be considered mass / popular uprisings is a fair question. I'd be inclined to say "no", but a case might be made for the Tea Party and alt-right movements.

Re: The Real Class War

#510

Post by aguyfromnb »

paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #103

The resentment of big capital is not entirely without a reason. Most money right now is "passively" deployed into pre-existing securities. This means it's used to extract existing value by market cornering / scarcity generation / rent seeking / monopolies / oliglopolies. On the other side there is new value / securities creation. This is what people like Elon Musk are doing. He took circa $50mln of his own money, add…

>This is what people like Elon Musk are doing.

Elon Musk signed the most lucrative CEO pay package in history (tied to company market cap, not anything of actual value), SWATed a whistleblower, is being sued by shareholders for self-dealing in Solar City, gleefully built a factory in one state with a horrible human rights record (China) while trying to sell the company to another (Saudi Arabia), and his factories in this country don't look great, either:

https://www.wivb.com/news/former-tesla-workers-describe-host...

He's your example of "good capitalism"? This is what makes Silicon Valley seem so out-of-touch.

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