Great article. Regarding the wealth accumulation, there is an interesting parallel with black holes: a single blob of wealth absorbs other wealth at the exponential rate: dw/dt=k*w, where k is the population growth dp/dt. The same blob of wealth has a Hawking radiation that evaporates this wealth, but at a constant rate: dw/dt=-e, where e is expenses to support ones lifestyle. Big blobs of wealth have about the same rate of evaporation, but absorb surrounding wealth much faster. Add to that the constraint: the total wealth is fixed and generally grows with the population size. In practice, all the small wealth bubbles (workers) evaporate quickly and the radiation gets absorbed by the big black holes. Eventually they become too big for this planet and collide: US vs China. This boom cycle of the wealth bubbles universe is always followed by the bust cycle: a war. The big bubbles explode and firm many small bubbles, that evaporate and so on. Nothing new here. In the black holes world, the force distributing the matter is gravity. In our world of wealth bubbles, this force is called greed. It is the driving force of the boom and bust cycle. Greed is one the few fundamental imperfections of the human mind and it takes eons fir the human mind to change. The previous driving force was cruelty, and it still is in some places. The next driving force will be
The Real Class War
521–530 of 634 posts
Re: The Real Class War
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
One big problem is GHW, Clinton, GW and Obama said we’d be able to sell into their market and we’d come up on top. That the middle class would see more and better jobs as a consequence (we’d graduate from arduous manual labor into more value add). That’s been nonsense. Perot was prescient and he was right. But we laughed him off the stage. Instead, big biz, some bankers some dealmakers, politicians and other value ad…
Don’t forget how Reagan told us that tax cuts would “trickle down” and busting unions would make us all more prosperous.
Unions were busted by outsourcing environmentally damaging manufacturing to China.
Re: The Real Class War
#523I found it informative to research the author and his background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein For some reason my mental image of the messenger behind the article was that of a well studied and neutral academic throwing out firehouse citations. his points are thought provoking, but it reduces everything to purely economic competition by a delusional population with only the author to cut through the i…
His article shows why we need a wealth tax instead of an income tax... There is a huge difference between a hard working manager making $100k and an equally hard working owner with $10m in assets. I suggest dropping the income tax entirely, and tax wealth under $50k at 0%, $50k - $1m at 1%, $1m - 10m at 2%, $10m - $100m at 3%, $100m - $1b at 4%, and everything higher at 5%. This keeps even billionaires motivated to w…
I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actually be profitable for the government.
Re: The Real Class War
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is incomplete without knowing how the $15 and the $10 breaks down - if you paid, say $3 for the materials (C) and $10 for the labour (V), you'd sell at a $2 profit, Marx would say that assuming equivalent exchange of values on the market, neglecting the role of advertising and such, and assuming the chair is freely reproducible (i.e unencumbered by patents and trademarks, and not a one-of-a-kind item lik…
> the $2 is the monetary value of the surplus labour (S), also known as "unpaid" labour What about risks and decision making, investing in the future products and potential failures? How much is "paid risk" and "unpaid labor", how to objectively evaluate that? I would argue that $2 is paid risk, not unpaid labor, how to prove that that's not the case? Also, if I paid you a salary, and than the product failed in the m…
The proof follows from the labour theory of value (the proof of which is, I believe, more controversial, especially as Marx does the "proof"), which states that the magnitude of value of a commodity is objectively determined by labour-time, not by "risk", and I think that's shown in cases where many busniesses, no matter how risky (and it seems here you're only talking about the capitalist's risk, not that of the waged labourer), realize different rates of profit which don't align with what we consider to be the risk of production. More risky businesses, in general, simply don't generate more profit than non-risky ones. If it were the reward for decision making, the rate of profit would diminish the more you sell something the same way and in the same place, since there are fewer decisions to be made for each subsequent commodity. Investing in future products and protecting against potential failures are uses of the $2 profit, not explanations as to its origin.
Let's say that it is risk. The capitalist labours the monetary equivalent of $1, i.e he spends $1 on his labour power, producing a total of $2 worth of labour. When the product is sold he is still given $2, but not all of that is profit, only $1 is, since the $1 paid is now a cost, he only gets $1 "for free", not $2. Therefore it's clearly in the interest of every capitalist to minimize the amount of work he does himself and instead "exploit" a waged worker for it.
Marxists have never argued that the worker has a "right" to the surplus value, only that it would be, in the most non-moral sense possible, in the interests of labourers who have this surplus appropriated due to the structure of production to ensure it is no longer appropriated in this way - i.e. a socialist or communist society.
Re: The Real Class War
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” It's often attributed to Steinbeck but in my understanding, it's not entirely clear if that's true or not.
Ah right! Should've made the connection. Since I have you for a moment, let me just say I admire the work you do for Rust.
Thank you!
Re: The Real Class War
#526Re: The Real Class War
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gay people are distributed throughout the various ranks of American society. No one really gives a care at a broad level about the rights of a poor gay person. What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. And these people turned the wheels of society toward making it accepted.
>What actually brought about the change was that due entirely to the fact that people in power had relatives that were gay, or were gay themselves. The people in power had gay relatives or were gay themselves a century ago and yet nothing changed without activism.
A century ago those people were in the closet so nobody knew and those that did didn't say anything.
People had to come out in order for their acceptance to be possible. It's really easy to justify not caring when the group you don't care about seems other. When they're people you know it's much harder to justify not caring.
Re: The Real Class War
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
His article shows why we need a wealth tax instead of an income tax... There is a huge difference between a hard working manager making $100k and an equally hard working owner with $10m in assets. I suggest dropping the income tax entirely, and tax wealth under $50k at 0%, $50k - $1m at 1%, $1m - 10m at 2%, $10m - $100m at 3%, $100m - $1b at 4%, and everything higher at 5%. This keeps even billionaires motivated to w…
I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actuall…
The (US) government today has a tax on investment returns. Tallying up the buys and sells seems like to be a much more complicated than keeping track of the total wealth.
The way you accomplish this is by asking everyone: "What's your total wealth?" and then doing random audits.
Re: The Real Class War
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't there something patronizing, even patrician, about saying "the propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class"? Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? There seems to me a great assumption in saying that they are "manipulated". Who isn't? This is the idea of false consciousness ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness ), and it has always seemed questionable to me. Who…
It's a very tricky problem. My awareness of false consciousness is more from feminism. So what if a woman aspires to being nothing more than a good housewife? But what if she's been brought up in a culture where she has been told from early childhood that being a good housewife is all she every should aspire to? I don't think you can tell that person that their desires are wrong but you can point out what other optio…
I think the way you portray Brexit is rather telling.
There's actually a ton of very informed analysis that could be boiled down to "leaving the EU will result in increased NHS funding". Some of it is academic and wonkish, some of it is intuitive and working-class. But it's there. If you aren't aware of it that says more about how much you tried to expose yourself to such arguments, I think.
A simple version goes like this:
1. The Eurozone is an economic backwater and Brussels a monolithic quasi-socialist archetype of Big Government.
2. So, growth in the EU is terrible and will remain terrible for a long time. The UK's economy is actually beating the other big mature economies in growth, even Germany, despite Brexit related uncertainty, so there are good reasons to believe the UK has it more right than the rest of Europe does, economically speaking.
3. But in the EU the Euro is sancrosanct, it cannot be questioned and EU institutions will do "whatever it takes", to use Monti's phrasing, in order to avoid it breaking up.
4. Inside the EU the UK is a sitting duck politically. It's unpopular with other member states because it's not populated by true-blue starry-eyed EU ideological believers and tends to argue for smaller government. But its political elite feels like it literally can't leave, which means its membership fees can be set arbitrarily high and money can be and should be extracted from its economy at will.
5. We can already see this happening with the entirely political and arbitrary "exit bill", a so-called bill that's written in no treaty or legal text anywhere. The EU demand it purely because they can and they know the psychologically weak and ideologically addled governmental classes will roll over and do whatever Brussels wants. We can also see it in the rapidly rising membership fees, which are tied to GDP and not any kind of actually delivered services.
6. Thus to Remain is to signal vast weakness to the Brussels conglomerate, who will then extract as much wealth from the country as possible. In case of Eurozone recession or bank collapse the UK will certainly be called on to fund a bailout, despite all the treaties saying this won't happen. Anyone who believes that hasn't studied the EU's history: it is a dead cert thing.
7. As a consequence, remaining in the EU will drain funding from all local government services, and especially the NHS, which will be hit by a double whammy of reduced UK government budgets due to the EU taking tax revenues and becoming a free hospital for all of Europe as a Eurozone financial crisis knocks out health insurers and freedom of movement ensures the NHS can't separate Brits from everyone else.
What I outlined above is a scenario you seem to believe isn't supported by any "informed analysis", but it's not complex, or absurd, and you can read about the individual components in many informed analyses. Just search for it.
Moreover, all the above is considered obvious by the working classes. Look at the Conservative election adverts that spell it out specifically - switch to an Australian style immigration system and there will be more money for the NHS because fewer low-earning immigrants will be using it.
Obvious, innit?
Re: The Real Class War
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
His article shows why we need a wealth tax instead of an income tax... There is a huge difference between a hard working manager making $100k and an equally hard working owner with $10m in assets. I suggest dropping the income tax entirely, and tax wealth under $50k at 0%, $50k - $1m at 1%, $1m - 10m at 2%, $10m - $100m at 3%, $100m - $1b at 4%, and everything higher at 5%. This keeps even billionaires motivated to w…
I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actuall…
> How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country?
Ask and audit, the same way it does income. Of course, it's harder to get filed confirmation data for wealth and even easier to have an alternative valuation for wealth held in non-cash assets than for realized income, so it will be much easier to evade, but that's probably part of why it (which complicates our overall system of taxation) rather than taxing the currently tax-favored income of the rich, primarily capital gains, at the same rate as other income (which would simplify the tax system) is favored by people whose concern is to be seen as doing something about tax fairness.