Current Events > The economy.

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Anyone want to have a discussion about the economy and how it works, and why it's necessary to have poor people for our current form of capitalism to survive?

No.

Every move in capitalism is about passing problems onto lesser rich.

ClayGuida posted...

Anyone want to have a discussion about the economy and how it works, and why it's necessary to have poor people for our current form of capitalism to survive?

The argument is that by having competition to be the best and most initivative, you get rewarded for success.

This causes a society that is constantly advancing and improving and "the poor" are a victim of their own bad actions and lazy choices/work ethic

Meanwhile the "the Rich" are deseved for their hard work and good choices.

As such rich and poor are required for the sake of the best society

The problen is that's not how it works at all in reality. Most wealth is inherited, rich people have safeguards and control laws to keep themselves rich and the poor downtrodden, society stagnates.

capitalism is designed to give everything to the top few while giving as little as possible to bottom many the only differences between it and communism is under capitalism a bottom has the chance to reach the top under very specific circumstances and lucky breaks but that difference is enough to make it the gold standard for society and to never look or even think of any alternatives

Capitalism in theory works for everyone within its system. However, thats if everyone also looks out for their fellow peer in that system. The problem is taking advantage of those who provide service (labor) towards the business and its transactions between employer and employee. They arent balanced enough to provide a living wage and some of the finer things in life capitalism could bring to everyone.

There is a cost to everything and everyone is squeezing as much as they could. What we have here is nearly nothing left to squeeze with wage stagnation, inflation, and some exploitation of workers for over a century at least...

Capitalism works if people are actually altruistic

Since they aren't the poor and vulnerable get screwed and taken advantage of to make the rich richer

If people were good and honest trickle down would actually happen. Instead the only thing that trickles down is piss.

Nah, I'd rather talk about titties.

Guns_of_Verdun posted...

The argument is that by having competition to be the best and most initivative, you get rewarded for success.

This causes a society that is constantly advancing and improving and "the poor" are a victim of their own bad actions and lazy choices/work ethic

Meanwhile the "the Rich" are deseved for their hard work and good choices.

As such rich and poor are required for the sake of the best society

The problen is that's not how it works at all in reality. Most wealth is inherited, rich people have safeguards and control laws to keep themselves rich and the poor downtrodden, society stagnates.

That's not actually how it works at all in general. Yes the rich are applauded for 'working hard' and they likely shouldn't, as you mentioned, since most wealth is simply inherited, but you need poor people to keep prices down. You need an army of people making 7.25 an hour, to ensure that goods are affordable for everyone, except the poor working for minimum wage.

"Why should they make more than 7.25 an hour? It's not a job for adults, it's a job for kids" people love to say, ignoring the fact that those same jobs are open during school hours. So kids should be skipping school to work at Starbucks from 6 AM to 4PM so you can get a $8 coffee in the morning?

There's also the tipping concept too, where employers put the onus on the customer to pay their employees. Normally this is done by simply purchasing goods from the employer, but now it's simply the customer adding on an additional payment to subsidize the business, something they're likely already doing through taxes and so forth.

If you give an employee a $1 raise and they work full time, that business is now losing over $2k a year in profits. Throw in 5+ employees, that's $10k+ and so on. To simply not lose that money, they just raise the prices, of their retail goods, food, clothing, and so on.

It's essentially a vicious cycle. It's why the system is broken. Now we have an issue where people are allegedly getting paid too much money, causing a shortage of goods (I call bullshit, it's flat out price gouging and corporate greed, sparked by the concept that they simply can right now, because they have the built in excuse of higher wages = higher prices) that in turn raises the prices of things, and leading to inflation. More people spending more money in theory means fewer goods, but if you've ever been to a grocery store, you know outside of a dire circumstance, covid, hurricanes or other disasters, or other panic spending, they're always stocked with goods. When it comes to basic essentials, if people are only just now buying those goods and they otherwise couldn't before, we should be taking a long look at why we are where we are in society.

Then there's things like the stock market, where record profits are good for a quarter, but if you aren't beating those record profits, your value drops, and if value drops, your company is at risk, so you're forced to constantly cut as many corners as you can, increase profits by any means necessary, and fuck over anyone in your wake for the shareholders, because you have a fiduciary responsibility to do what's best for them, and yet not your work force.

A few years back, two major airlines were in the news, one for giving across the board raises to their entire work force, which caused their stocks to plummet, and another for like a dozen viral videos releasing within a week or two of each other, where the airline was just absolutely putrid to dozens of customers, treating them like shit, in various and separate circumstances. Their stock rose, (unsure why), but both of these happened in the same week or month, and the juxtaposition of companies was in full view, one was rewarded for having the absolute worst customer service in a customer service related industry and another punished for giving employees a raise for doing their job.

Now both airlines probably are shit tier, but the fact this happened really opened my eyes to how fucked up the entire market system is. The only people who are legally required to be appeased are shareholders. Employees have no guarantee like that. There's no law that forces companies to have their employees best interests in mind. Why is that? Why is this country so anti labor force and so pro corporation and wall street?

If greed is your only motivation, then nothing good can come from it.

There's far more when it comes to the economy, this topic died so I just moved on, was surprised it got responses days later, but I'll absolutely chime back in with more, and not just stuff that's rattling around in my head.

Capitalism is far from perfect but it is relatively good compared to other systems that have been tried at getting labor and resources directed towards where they are wanted and needed and part of that is there being differences in pay between jobs.

Dreepapult posted...

Capitalism works if people are actually altruistic

Since they aren't the poor and vulnerable get screwed and taken advantage of to make the rich richer

If people were good and honest trickle down would actually happen. Instead the only thing that trickles down is piss.

The problem is, natural selection under capitalism specifically elevates people who are selfish and conniving, who then in turn help shape the system to be even more favorable to people who are selfish and conniving, so much that it gets normalized to the point the public generally respects, if not worships, the people that got to the top by being shitty. Then you have more people trying to emulate the most successful people and they push the envelope even further on their way to the top and you get the downward spiral we have now because people are too complacent to add new safeguards or adjust incentive structures. It's like a multiplayer game full of exploits but no one wants them patched.

https://youtu.be/CPULA28oeqE

Labor is currently heavily undervalued in the market. But thanks to the inelasticity of housing, food, and transportation, people are forced to work for these poverty wages just to survive.

ZMythos posted...

Labor is currently heavily undervalued in the market. But thanks to the inelasticity of housing, food, and transportation, people are forced to work for these poverty wages just to survive.

I am a Virgo had a great segment about this. Corporations squeeze everything out of an employee, then in turn raise the prices of all their goods, essentially forcing their employees to work more, to afford the goods they're selling.

https://youtu.be/lpagmvYZKRc?t=76

There's 'insane' theories coming out that inflation was due to people mass quitting their jobs. If you raised the prices of all goods and people didn't have a job, they'd be forced to go back to work, instead of quitting, striking, or whatever else. The remote work angle is a big one. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people quit over companies forcing people back into the office, for no actual reason, other than to justify their management and business operations costs. If you rent a building and nobody goes to it, you're wasting money. Middle management people who do nothing, are being exposed since they can't just annoy and bother people all day, since that's their only job, not actually contributing anything productive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-PtEJEaqY

i wanted to post the one titled "south park: water bread and margaritas" but im pretty sure that would get modded