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A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#121

Post by thomastjeffery »

0xfaded wrote: post #74
mjfl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> meanwhile those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues. Those struggling from from inequality are struggling from relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation, while the latter is the only thing that rationally matters. I don't give a damn that Bill Gates is a ridiculous amount richer than me, in fact I admire him and want to be rich too som…

Society has to decide what "right" people have to a certain minimum quality of life and access to services. It turns out the level can actually be quite high, one only need look to the highly successful Nordic states. The argument in america seems to be that if you work hard, you can have a decent life and a house in the suburbs. There are already problems here, what of the people born with disabilities? But assuming…

> shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.

No, you did not take it from them. They willingly gave it to you. You are free to give it to them, but you choose not to.

> I don't believe that wealthy people should get to choose were their money goes. That's a decision for society as a whole

Please do not equate any body of government to "society as a whole."

Even in a true democracy where everyone votes, the majority will never have an adequate enough perspective to ensure funds are correctly distributed.

I don't know your friend. How can I know what he needs? How do you expect the real specific cases to be solved without direct assistance from someone (an individual, a charity) who knows how to help?

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#122

Post by ehnto »

Eridrus wrote: post #117
ehnto wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself between the two ecosystems quite often and I have to admit I find it hard to know how to represent both sides fairly in discussions. It is definitely not a bipartisan issue. There is no us vs them, it is simply one big group of people where those on the bottom of the system are struggling to affect the smaller changes needed to make life more sustainable for them. They aren't big changes either, small i…

> small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals I'm curious to hear what small changes you think will have a huge difference.

Well most recently where I live, they changed the "non-business hours" penalty rates for workers. Basically if you make most of your money by working a night or weekend job, you can have your pay cut by half of what it currently is.

A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it.

But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.

Who do you think made that policy change? Who do you think would have fought against it if they both knew about it and had the means to advocate against it?

Those who couldn't fight for themselves were trodden on in that particular small policy change.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#123

Post by Eridrus »

ehnto wrote: post #122
Eridrus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> small incremental policy changes make huge differences to individuals I'm curious to hear what small changes you think will have a huge difference.

Well most recently where I live, they changed the "non-business hours" penalty rates for workers. Basically if you make most of your money by working a night or weekend job, you can have your pay cut by half of what it currently is. A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it. But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.…

I guess I don't see this as a "huge" difference in the grand scheme of things (one locality, largely only impacts non-tip minimum wage workers outside of business hours), though the impacted individuals will certainly disagree.

I guess it seems like there are small changes that have large impacts on specific people, but that's true of all change at the margins.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#124

Post by dustinblake »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #79
salesguy222 wrote: post #7

Any political/economic system will have individual actors that destroy the lives and wellbeings of others. if your system can prevent these people from wielding such power, i'd like to hear how!

Part 1: Caps on Exec pay - 25x avg salary for first x # of employees, as you add more employees over your baseline that multiplier goes up for example every 1000 employees = 1x so hire 10k and now you're able to earn 35x median wage -- i.e. more employees = more money for execs, as wages increase that also = more money for execs. That handles the corporate side of the corruption. Part 2: Enact the Anti-corruption act…

There's a major problem with term limits. Let's say we fix the House of Representatives so that instead of constantly having to run for (re)election with two year terms, we change them to 4 year terms but limit them to 2. Ignoring the major changes that the committee chair/assignment system would require, no longer having a wide range of seniority, the entire body would suffer because the most experienced any legislator could be would be those elected to their second term, i.e. years 5-8 of their House career.

Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.

We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else. Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#125

Post by jitix »

This article seems to be based on a small sample size. As an anecdotal evidence, most millenials that I've met (I'm 29) are very pro-capitalism but are liberals. In 2017 you should not mix the two - you can have a capitalist economy that provides universal healthcare and education, and eventually even UBI.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#126

Post by ehnto »

Eridrus wrote: post #123
ehnto wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well most recently where I live, they changed the "non-business hours" penalty rates for workers. Basically if you make most of your money by working a night or weekend job, you can have your pay cut by half of what it currently is. A win for corporates, and even a win for small businesses who were struggling to afford it. But ultimately taking the money from the lower end workers and passing it up the chain instead.…

I guess I don't see this as a "huge" difference in the grand scheme of things (one locality, largely only impacts non-tip minimum wage workers outside of business hours), though the impacted individuals will certainly disagree. I guess it seems like there are small changes that have large impacts on specific people, but that's true of all change at the margins.

That was my argument though, small changes in policy help particular groups in huge ways, but those same groups have difficulty making changes or avoiding negative ones because of their position in the system.

To put it into perspective though, that particular law affects hospitality workers the most. More than 60% of women and minorities are employed by that industry here, and so the change directly affects already marginalized individuals.

Their pay is essentially bikeshed by people way above their pay grade and stature in society, who unsurprisingly decided it wasn't that important.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#127

Post by zurn »

jitix wrote: post #125

This article seems to be based on a small sample size. As an anecdotal evidence, most millenials that I've met (I'm 29) are very pro-capitalism but are liberals. In 2017 you should not mix the two - you can have a capitalist economy that provides universal healthcare and education, and eventually even UBI.

The article is paraphrasing a poll that was done by Harvard Institute of Politics, that had 771 18-29 year old responders. I think that is a reasonable sample size for this kind of poll.

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#128

Post by perseusprime11 »

twblalock wrote: post #33
perseusprime11 wrote: post #18

Did we not learn that Capitalism failed a long time ago? Why else will we have an Insurance system that is deeply incentivized to not cover your conditions? Why else will we have an Education system that is deeply incentivized to profit off your education and put you in debt for your life?

You may not like capitalism, but it is an indisputable fact that capitalist societies have higher standards of living, including for the poor, than societies that use any other economic system. By that standard, it's more successful than any other system, and hardly a failure, despite what other problems is has. By the way, the problems you describe about insurance (I assume you mean health insurance) and the high co…

How does Universal Health care and Free education play into the principles of capitalism?

Re: A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

#129

Post by xapata »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #63
dnautics wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alright. I'll bite. I have made almost no money in the past year, and my bank account is nearly zero. I had a relatively middle class upbringing (but for reasons I'd rather not go into) my family is currently bankrupt. Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various processes, the biggest of which is inflation. Th…

This is a sentiment I hear often; "I'm a hard worker, I used to have a job that paid my bills and left a bit over for vacations but now I'm out of work and broke and everyone wants a piece of me and I have nothing left to give." And it is a puzzling thing. Where did those jobs go? How is personal income so stagnant? And one of the things I note that is different now than was different before, was that by accumulating…

> hoard for no reason

If so, we simply need to increase the rate of inflation and the cash will start flowing.

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