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Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

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Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#41

Post by ef4 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36
ef4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this not happening any more? It is happening. The average manufacturing wage in China is up 700% in fourteen years. It isn't happening in the US and Europe, but that's because the average worker here still makes absurdly more money than the average worker in the developing world. The gap is closing quickly. As it does, we'll be able to see more evenly spread growth again. But purely from a humanitarian stand…

From a purely humanitarian standpoint, it's hard to argue that it's a good thing for CEOs who make $9.6 million a year to be getting bigger raises than workers who make $37000. http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0527/CEO-pay-hits-10-... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/ceo-pay-worker-pay_... http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/1212/CEO-vs.-worker-p... http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-231-times-gr…

Agreed, but that's actually a separate problem. There are so few CEOs relative to average workers that their aggregate pay isn't enough to explain why workers in the west aren't experiencing wage growth.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#42

Post by [deleted] »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36
ef4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this not happening any more? It is happening. The average manufacturing wage in China is up 700% in fourteen years. It isn't happening in the US and Europe, but that's because the average worker here still makes absurdly more money than the average worker in the developing world. The gap is closing quickly. As it does, we'll be able to see more evenly spread growth again. But purely from a humanitarian stand…

From a purely humanitarian standpoint, it's hard to argue that it's a good thing for CEOs who make $9.6 million a year to be getting bigger raises than workers who make $37000. http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2014/0527/CEO-pay-hits-10-... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/ceo-pay-worker-pay_... http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/1212/CEO-vs.-worker-p... http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-231-times-gr…

[deleted]

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#43

Post by AnthonyMouse »

RangerScience wrote: post #25
Animats wrote: post #17

This is an important article, but I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here. The developed world has incredible productive capacity. With 1% of the workforce in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the US produces as much stuff as China. There are no significant shortages of any manufactured good anywhere in the developed world. Quality is pretty good across the board, too. This is unique in history. That'…

We do have a model that has successfully demonstrating certain principles which may be capable of addressing this problem: Burning Man. Bear with me for a second. I'd say (and then pointing out my lack of formal or amateurish study of economics) that the issue you're pointing at is that capitalism doesn't function well in a post-scarcity environment, which we're entering. This is because our means of determining valu…

> the issue you're pointing at is that capitalism doesn't function well in a post-scarcity environment, which we're entering.

A literally post-scarcity environment is not a problem because it makes the price of everything zero. Food is free, shelter is free, medical care is free, you don't need a job. Do whatever you want all day, it's not a problem.

The problem is that what we're entering is not a post-scarcity environment, it's an environment where things many people don't already have, like energy or land, become more scarce and thus more valuable than the things they do have, like the ability to perform unskilled labor.

In theory capitalism works fine in that situation. If people can't afford rent or home ownership then the price of housing should come down, because the supply of housing and the number of people who need it haven't really changed, so if people have less money then landlords and home sellers can no longer charge as much.

The problem is that we interfere with that process -- the housing crash was a market correction. Instead of letting that correction happen all at once, we bailed out the banks. So now the banks that didn't file for bankruptcy and liquidate their assets are sitting on thousands and thousands of foreclosed homes and intentionally keeping them off the market in order to backstop housing prices and prevent even more foreclosures. But the result is a significant artificial inflation of housing costs that comes directly out of the pockets of people in poverty.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#45

Post by vinhboy »

adventured wrote: post #35
RangerScience wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who doesn't?

Hong Kong and Singapore are the two freest economies. They have very minimal welfare states, with relatively light regulation and taxation. Their wealth creation and economic growth have been astounding over the last ten years. Meanwhile, most of Europe has seen zero GDP growth in real terms since 2004/05. France has seen an average of sub 1% nominal GDP growth for a decade; negative in real terms. Japan, which is a…

"Freest Economies"? You mean the biggest leach in modern history. They send all of their children to be educated abroad. The rely on the security provided by our military. And they provide safe harbor for all the rich tax evaders who made their money off the innovation created by countries that actually invest in research. Then there's also all the poor as dirt neighboring countries who does all the work for them and live in the pollution byproducts.

We shouldn't measure how well the kingdom is doing by the gloss of the marbles at the king's court.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#46

Post by curiouscats »

RangerScience wrote: post #8
dnautics wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that what Iceland did and the idea of clearing out bad capital and malinvestment are actually capitalist ideas, versus, say bailouts and central bank manipulation, which are not.

Yeah. I'm, to a decent degree, a fan of calling what we have today "corporatism" rather than "capitalism".

Yes. Many of the problems today have nothing to with capitalism but with government policies that are largely aimed at making those with the gold happy.

Capitalism is mainly about having markets that have competition. NO organization is suppose to have market power. This isn't really possible, but that is the concept. And we are so hugely away from it we can't call what is going on now capitalism. We have allowed people to convert what is called capitalism into an extreme political view that believes government is bad and huge corporations are good. That isn't capitalism, it isn't even an economic belief, it is a political belief.

A capitalist country has to be focused on maintaining a fair marketplace where companies can compete for business and consumers (including companies buying from each other) have the freedom to buy in a competitive market (not a market dominated by trusts, monopolies and oligopolies that break the function of markets to advantage themselves).

http://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2008/06/10/monopolies-an...

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#47

Post by scottlocklin »

RangerScience wrote: post #26
adsenseclient wrote: post #24

Let's see how many downvotes I get. The capitalism is no longer what it used to be due to the separation of ownership from control. IBM and Ford started as family businesses, passed from father to son. Who owned IBM 100 years ago? Watson did, then his son was a CEO. Who owns it now? Nobody, "shareholders", with an affirmative action hire guiding this mess as a CEO. Toyota was a family business too, largely owned by T…

I'm with you for the first paragraph but then what the fuck, man? Why present a worthwhile argumentative point and then supply cans of ammo for attacking it via your character?

It's interesting that the left has pretty much given up on ideas of economic equality and inclusiveness in favor of pointing and sputtering when people say things which are not politically correct. If I were a suspicious type, I'd wonder if political correctness had corporate sponsorship; it certainly seems to have paid off for the oligarchy...

To his first point, it's not really true. Many of the largest and scariest businesses are still family businesses. Louis Dreyfus Group (yes, Seinfeld girl is a scion of this $120b/yr "family business"), Cargill, Koch, Bechtel, Bloomberg, Mansfield, Kingston, Sungard, Dole, Bausch & Lomb, Deloitte, Hearst, Bosch, PWC, Aramco, Vitol, Continental grain, Scoular, Consolidated Grain & Barge, Safra Group, Armajaro. Most of these companies are deeply embedded in the power structure of their host countries and other countries. What's scary is how huge they are, and how little people are even aware of their existence. When you start looking at them, well, some of them look kind of like they are run by James Bond villains.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#48

Post by easong »

RangerScience wrote: post #26
adsenseclient wrote: post #24

Let's see how many downvotes I get. The capitalism is no longer what it used to be due to the separation of ownership from control. IBM and Ford started as family businesses, passed from father to son. Who owned IBM 100 years ago? Watson did, then his son was a CEO. Who owns it now? Nobody, "shareholders", with an affirmative action hire guiding this mess as a CEO. Toyota was a family business too, largely owned by T…

I'm with you for the first paragraph but then what the fuck, man? Why present a worthwhile argumentative point and then supply cans of ammo for attacking it via your character?

All of his comments are rants against women/minorities (including admitting not hiring a female programmer because her resume had too many mentions of "women") and complaints about google banning his adsense account for fraud.

I'm sympathetic to the "faceless shareholders are poisonous" argument as well, but...yeah. It's hard to differentiate neoreactionaries from trolls.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#49

Post by chii »

psychometry wrote: post #33
mattmcknight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an important article, it is a rant against people with "tacky mansions", a turn of phrase that is more indicative of the author's point of view than the other conventional points about not understanding creative destruction. I think it is this overly nationalist view of economics that needs to die, not "capitalism". There is not less productive work to go around, it's just not being done in the US. We are…

A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. According to you, that's not a problem because even poorer people in Bangladesh are slightly less poor than they would be if American companies had never employed them. What kind of callous person could look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? Or do you not look around at all, holed up in a tacky mansion of your…

> look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great?

i dont think anyone is saying the system is working great. Capitalism the worst system, except for every other system tried. What do you suggest?

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#50

Post by yummyfajitas »

psychometry wrote: post #33
mattmcknight wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an important article, it is a rant against people with "tacky mansions", a turn of phrase that is more indicative of the author's point of view than the other conventional points about not understanding creative destruction. I think it is this overly nationalist view of economics that needs to die, not "capitalism". There is not less productive work to go around, it's just not being done in the US. We are…

A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. According to you, that's not a problem because even poorer people in Bangladesh are slightly less poor than they would be if American companies had never employed them. What kind of callous person could look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? Or do you not look around at all, holed up in a tacky mansion of your…

95% of the biggest nation in the world (or maybe second biggest, no one really knows the exact pop of India and China) lives in far deeper poverty than poor americans. Many of them experience actual suffering - not enough food, no flush toilet, no power.

What, precisely, do you believe poor Americans are suffering from? The only concrete answer I usually hear is envy (I.e. "oh noes the inequality").

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

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