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Eh?
100 top
http://www.aflcio.o...0-Highest-Paid-CEOs
some millions [popbottle, Sep 29 2014]
Excessive marginal tax rates
http://johnhcochran...xes-and-cliffs.html
[scad mientist, Sep 29 2014]
standard welfare + jobs
http://www.wolframa...%2C100%2C1000%5D%29
wolfram illustration : Observe that there is a dip in the middle, reducing the incentive to switch from welfare to work. [mofosyne, Sep 29 2014, last modified Sep 30 2014]
With flat income + jobs
http://www.wolframa...%2C100%2C1000%5D%29
wolfram illustration : Curve is now a gradual ramp, thus people are not disincentivised from getting a job [mofosyne, Sep 29 2014, last modified Sep 30 2014]
"Judgment Day", first published in Weird Fantasy #18 (April 1953)
http://en.wikipedia...#.22Judgment_Day.22
[mofosyne, Oct 01 2014]
"Judgment Day" comic - CSBG ARCHIVE
http://goodcomics.c...ok-moments-day-188/
[mofosyne, Oct 01 2014]
Welfare Cliff
http://www.zerohedg...welfare%20cliff.jpg
Ah... so it's worse than I thought (I initially thought it was a welfare dip) [mofosyne, Oct 03 2014]
Welfare’s Failure and the Solution - Presentation
http://www.aei.org/...ion_10063532278.pdf
Original source for the Welfare Cliff image [mofosyne, Oct 03 2014]
Voter control of where their money goes
Pie_20Chart_20Voting
Usually it pisses people off but this time it seemed pretty well received [doctorremulac3, Oct 03 2014]
The idea's been done
Haiku_20week
Posted alas long ago - What a bummer man. [doctorremulac3, Oct 03 2014]
[link]
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Is this really libertarian? |
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Doth makes me think that this scheme might only work if
the taxes is of any significant amount. |
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Also, I wonder how much does each worker actually get
under the scheme. A those paid over a million may be
paid excessively, but they are still sort of a small group. |
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But then again, maybe they are pay so astronomically
large that I can't even imagine it properly, and this
scheme (with proper tax rate) would actually work. |
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(Also, how would the 90% be split up? This sounds like it
could get complex rather fast. And complexity allows for
loopholes) |
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Why to the workers in that company? Why not to the
poorest people in society, or to schemes aimed at
helping people more broadly? Why should co-workers
benefit more than the rest of the population? |
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OK, I can see that it's an incentive for the workers to
work harder, to increase profits that can be fed
through the top-earners and thence back to them.
And it's an incentive for them not to resent or
question the high pay of the executives. So maybe
not a completely bad idea. |
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Also, "a million" is no longer a huge salary. |
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//Is this really libertarian?// |
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No, not at all, but it's an attempt to try to mitigate
what might become a worse solution, government
getting yet another vein of money to tap into for
their nefarious doings. |
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I'd rather have a mini-socialist idea like this that cuts
out the middle man and gets more money into the
spending public's hands so they can buy products and
stimulate the economy. Government gets it and uses
it to ship in voters for their party and drive
down wages for the working poor as well as bailing
out billionaire speculators when their ponzie schemes
fall apart. |
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As far as how it was divvied up, I'd split it up evenly
for everybody. In a 900 employee company every
person would get 1% of the CEO's 90% tax portion. So
if the CEO paid 10 million in taxes, each employee
would get ten grand. A pretty nice little Christmas
bonus no? That money goes into the community and
on the streets as opposed to the coffers of Goldman
Sacs or overseas investments. |
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Is my Che Guevara hat on straight? Sounding pretty
commie here, but I'm actually being anti big
government with this idea. |
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//Why not to the poorest people in society, or to
schemes aimed at helping people more broadly?// |
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Well, presumably that's what we do now, but the
gubment gets into the picture and takes a healthy
chunk for itself before it gets out to the poor. Like
Robin Hood charging a 40% surcharge. |
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I like the idea of a company paying for it's own, then
we can fix the rest of the world later. For instance I
don't
like the tool the commies use in arguments now that
Walmart's employees very often get taxpayer funded
subsidies because Walmart doesn't pay them enough
to live. I hate that argument because it's true. |
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Like I've said before, if they were chimpanzees that
Walmart used to stock their shelves and we were
supposed to subsidize them for some reason, we'd be
outraged. Why any different for people? |
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Point is, I like the idea of undercutting the wasteful
corrupt government and helping out the people and
the economy more directly. |
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//the gubment gets into the picture and takes a
healthy chunk for itself before it gets out to the
poor.// |
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That is probably true, but where does the
governments chunk go? If to politicians, then they
pay tax on it which will go, presumably, to the lesser
politicians. If they squander it on things like law
enforcement or the armed services, then presumably
the money still ends up going to fairly ordinary
people. |
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This is unfair. Instead, make sociopathic ladder-climbing
illegal. |
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This is unfair. Instead, make sociopathic ladder-climbing
illegal. |
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//if they were chimpanzees that Walmart used to
stock their shelves and we were supposed to
subsidize them for some reason, we'd be outraged.// |
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That's true - chimpanzees are a lot more expensive to
support than people. |
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//This is unfair. Instead, make sociopathic ladder-
climbing illegal.// |
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Then where do we get our politicians? |
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I volunteer to be the highly paid executive. |
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I prefer the Marxist version, where all of my income is equally divided amongst myself. |
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So now, when I'm shopping for jobs I should pay
attention to executive salary. If it's high enough I
know I can accept a smaller salary because I'll be
getting a share of his cash. |
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Only if his accountant is incompetent enough to let him be eligible for tax. |
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if we are going through this kind of bureaucratic effort, then
we might as well streamline the whole process, and pay
everyone in society just enough to meet their basic needs
(and get rid of the current complex welfare system). |
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Probably cheaper as well. |
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In the UK, employers are responsible for the deduction at source of income tax and national insurance contributions from employee salaries (and then the sums deducted are paid to the taxman), so the part of the idea which deals with the employer administering personal tax payment is at least part baked. The part about remitting tax dollars right into the paws of a group of individuals for them to spend as they please sounds remarkably like the $600 cheques paid under the US Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the differences here are (a) the selection of recipients and (b) the route that the cash takes to the pocket. |
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//if we are going through this kind of bureaucratic effort, then we might as well streamline the whole process, and pay everyone in society just enough to meet their basic needs (and get rid of the current complex welfare system). |
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Probably cheaper as well.// |
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I've read a little bit about proposals for a universal living wage, not without it's upside as far as cutting out waste and bureaucracy which is certainly a problem with the welfare state. Is the idea that everybody gets the same check every month regardless of income or is it only for people under a certain income? My comment is, if it's only for people under a certain income we already have that. If it's for everybody regardless of income it would quickly get pointed out that rich people were getting welfare checks which would probably become an issue when it came time to balance the budget. |
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Here's my opponent's campaign add if I were a politician trying to sell this idea: |
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"Doctorremulac3 thinks his billionaire buddies don't have enough money, so he's proposing welfare checks be sent to them every month! That's taking money out of the mouths of the poor and giving it to the rich! Say no to Doctorremulac3 and his "welfare for the rich" program and vote yes for Doctorremulac4 this November! (paid for by Corrupticon International LLC and the Welfare Scammers Union Local 32)" |
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The sad thing is [Dr.R3] that's how people think.
That's why we have all these complications in the
tax code where certain deductions are phased
out. That results in a higher marginal rate for
certain income ranges and complicates things
unnecessarily. I think it would be better to simply
lower the starting point for the higher tax
bracket, and/or slightly increase the marginal rate
in the higher tax brackets, but leave all of the
deductions there for everyone. The problem is of
course that people would "forget" when the tax
bracket got adjusted, so then the next year
someone would start saying that it's ridiculous
that someone earning $1M a year is getting a child
tax credit, so then they'd phase it out again... |
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Another annoying example: With the 0% long term
capital gains tax for those in the 15% bracket,
when you cross into the 25% bracket, you'll actually
be paying a 40% marginal rate if you have long term
capitol gains. For every dollar over the threshold
you earn, that dollar is taxed at 25%, plus one
additional dollar of your capitol gains is taxed at
15% instead of 0%. |
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Now they could do something like just tax
everyone 0% on the first $x,000 of capital gains,
but if they did, it would be a "tax cut for the rich" |
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I think the idea is to avoid punishing people financially for
getting a job. If people calculate that they lose welfare
money by getting a particular job, then they wont take it.
It's not because they are lazy, but that it is insane to
want
to accept a lower standard of living just to get a job
(compared to mooching off welfare). |
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This can be modelled abstractly like this: |
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plot( welfare_reward + job_reward ) = income |
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This is what current model is like: |
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plot( [100,10,0,0] + [0,10,100,1000] ) |
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This is what a flat income + job is like: |
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plot( [100,100,100,100] + [0,10,100,1000] ) |
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Use wolframalpha.com to view graph, or view link
annotations. |
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(note: excluding any consideration of increasing taxes
etc...) |
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Notice the removal of the dip, in the middle. Current
solution proposed in many countries is to cut down in
welfare,
which would lead to: |
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as the income curve. Now if you superimpose that over
'basic
living cost', you will get a not so insignificant portion of
the
population below the poverty line. In addition a large
percentage
of workers above the poverty line or just above. This will
cause a
'perverse incentive' to accept abuse and substandard pay
(thus
further limiting their economic potential towards the
economy at
large). |
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Obviously exact number is uncited, and is purely for
illustrative purposes. But that's the current understanding
I got about this issue. |
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And of course above I complained about the
stupid things in the tax code that have affected
me, but they really aren't to bad, and I have the
means to avoid them somewhat by shifting income
between years and whatnot. The issues at the
low end of the income scale are much worse as
[mofosyne] mentioned (see Excessive marginal tax
rates link). |
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How about if we start verbally abusing any
politician that votes for a benefit that causes
anything more than a 50% marginal rate, and
heavily criticize them if they can't get it below say
25%. |
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You had me at "How about if we start verbally abusing any politician..." |
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Not really a Marxist idea. Its thinking more in terms of realpolitik, an institution, in the sense of something instituted, to relieve class conflict rather than the actual revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class and the taking of control of the means of production by the workers. That is something not likely to happen either, but it would also have the latent effect of putting a good deal of social services workers out of employment given their conceivable role as 'middleman', requiring an attitude adjustment for employment in the private sector. That's not to say all social services workers are leftists, but that's not an uncommon disposition for those who work on behalf of the lowliest tier. So I would think very generally that [doctorremulac3] is correct in his right libertarian self-defense. Why this would offend more conservative sensibilities is that it is somewhat contrary to the market, the worker being paid largely based on the scarcity of the services he or she, they, can provide. Thus highly valued commodity-forms, managers, executives etc. would feel this tax as a punishment levied against the fetishism conditioned to their social role, and rewards distributed to the less aspirational. After all companies use rewards to induce productivity, and this policy would undermine industrial psychological control. Although, profit sharing is actually industrial psychology, but the detachment of response and reinforcing stimulus might skew the results.I would imagine that would be another libertarian goal as well. There is much to analyze about this very rich posting, but I'll briefly conclude that knee-jerking and reactionarianism more defines conservatism than actual political science, and some progressive and mutually ideologically beneficial policies are lost to it. An example that springs to mind is the federally defunct Canadian Progressive Conservatives that gave itself a knee-jerk reactionary shit-kicking until all the progressive was bled out and the self-reflexive kneejerking stopped leaving the current Conservative party. |
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I know this is my idea, but it's pretty cool that this
smart crowd is suspicious of any idea that seeks to
re-distribute wealth from the bad guys to the good
guys via the morally anointed guys who seem to
always end up with a healthy chunk of the re-
distributings. |
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Problem with any wealth distribution plan is it's
almost always bad guys doing the re-distributing, and
a lot of the wealth gets re-distributed their way. |
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But to try to sell this idea that I'm admittedly
lukewarm on myself, I'll just say that at least this
more directly tracks that money from evil and
horrible rich person to good and virtuous worker and
bypasses the positively divinely and saintly money re-
distributors altogether. |
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The story has been filtered through time to be about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, ironically the battle cry of big gubment. |
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But you're absolutely right, Robin Hood was an anti big taxation Libertarian activist. |
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Yea, I'm not a big fan of distribution of funds via complex
bureaucratic rulebooks. |
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With tackling issues like poverty, we should either
commit fully, or not at all. Not this current half-assed
feelgood
approach. (The illusion of doing something is much worse
than not doing anything at all, for you would tolerate
pain that should be addressed in the long term.) |
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Hence instead of trying to work out who is in deserving of
our 'pity payment', we should simply mandate that
everyone has a certain base income needed to survive.
Biggest benefit in terms of bureaucracy is that corruption
is harder to occur, since any deviation in payment can be
detected faster. Simpler calculations also allows for the
use of automated computer systems to perform the
distribution
of funds with minimal engineering (relatively compared to
complex welfare rule system, which still leaves many
people disadvantaged, especially if they try to get a job) |
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Most importantly of all, the incentive curve is now a
gradual ramp. Much like how many good internet MMO
works (Seriously, you can learn a lot about society from
it. e.g. how people behave in a pandemic). Just look at
the curve in the link annotation in this page, for a visual
illustration. |
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Not averse to the idea just for the way it would undercut
the bureaucratic waste, just not sure how amenable big
government types will be to having their current cash
pipeline re-directed away from them. |
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I try to be careful not to look askance at an idea just
because the commies might do it. I think the best way to
fight totalitarian communism is to have a free market
economy that actually delivers on the goodies that
communism promises to everybody but can't deliver.
Problem is, commies promise everything and don't give a
damn about delivering it once they get in power so you
need to sell capitalism with a sales line better than "Sink
or swim buddy, every man for himself." Well funded
social programs, safety nets and real upward mobility are
important to keeping a free market free in my opinion. |
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I bet the same thought process is with the Chinese (and
other commies) : |
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> "I think the best way to fight totalitarian capitalism is to
have a free social economy that actually delivers
on the goodies that capitalism promises to everybody but
can't deliver. Problem is, capitalistic people promise
everything and don't give a damn about delivering it once
they get in power so you need to sell socialism with a
sales line better than "taken money from rich, give to
poor." Well funded social programs, safety nets and real
upward mobility are important to keeping a free
social economy free in my opinion."— commie
doctorremulac3 |
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lol. Well in the end of the day, you can call this socialist
or capitalistic. But I like to think that this is more of a
progress towards a post scarcity society outlined by the
"Unrealistic Idealism"(TM) of Star Trek (Yup, heard that
already). |
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And hey, science fiction is always a good place to learn
more about the future, as they have covered
controversial opinions like race relation before it was
popular/accepted. ( E.g. "Judgment Day", first published
in Weird Fantasy #18 (April 1953) . Link to wiki page on
annotation. ) |
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Not a quote. More of a rewording of doctorremulac3
opinion to demonstrate the current convergence of
society and ideology in a global scale. |
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Much like the convergence of everything in your pocket
into a smartphone. |
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And yes I agree with you that currently 'social utility'
valued too low. You only need to look at how social
workers, and teachers are payed. Don't forget long term
investment in future proofed infrastructures. These damages
are not
easily seen in a financial year, but will rear it's ugly head
a decade later many times over. |
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Teachers need to be replace by computers too. No
reason an intelligent kid can't have his PHD by 13 or
14 with a properly tuned educationbot. |
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A bunch of kids sitting in a room watching somebody
talk? Same way they did it two thousand years ago,
slow and inefficient. Unacceptable. |
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Plus you get special guest teachers like synthetic
Einstein, Edison, Socrates, Plato. Want to learn
physics from Edward Teller? Done. Want to debate
with Kierkegaard or Nietzsche? Go for it. Try that at
Party-Till-
You-Puke U. |
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Well, supposedly they're the best and the brightest,
maybe they could get jobs. |
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The teachers teaching creative writing could actually
go out and write a best selling novel for instance.
The teachers of classes like "Marxist Existentialism In
the Post Modern Racist Trans-gender America" could
learn the practical application of the synergistic link
between mop and bucket and become
janitors I suppose. |
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No wait, robots should be doing that too. Yea, sitting
around on welfare would probably be the backup
plan for many. They're practically there anyway with
the 3 months a year they take off while those of us
who chose to leave school go to work. |
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I tease but it's all in fun. I have a friend who's a
college professor but he teaches computer science so
I'm allowed to rag on the other professors who teach
the
more "socially relevant" courses that he
thinks are a bunch of PC knuckleheads. |
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There are only so many goods that people need to survive. There are only so many hours in a day to mess around with luxury goods. There are only so many workers required to make them. |
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At some point, if people no longer had to work in order for society to function but somehow had their needs met, wouldn't that be some sort of Star Trek ideal? |
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What is the difference between that and welfare? |
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//I tease but its all in fun.// |
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So says the classic passive-aggressive. |
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// There are only so many goods that people need
to survive. There are only so many hours in a day
to mess around with luxury goods // |
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But there is no limit to the quantity/expense of
the luxury goods that a person can mess around
with and/or waste in those limited hours. There
is also no shortage of people who are willing to
consume extravagantly while other humans on this
planet are suffering from lack of food and simple
medical care. |
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Rather than address ludicrous wage disparity, this is a redistribution scheme that, one, maintains the entitlement that (many/most?) high-earners feel about their salaries and, two, provides them with an undeserved sense of charity and/or persecution. |
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Whenever Bill Gates convinces some billionaire to donate half their fortune to charity, it's great, yeah sure, nice -- but why the fuck does this person have so much money in the first place? Why are the billionaires the ones who decide which causes are funded? They won the game of capitalism, good for them, but that does not mean they have anything worthwhile to contribute to humanity, aside from the wealth that they hoarded in the first place. |
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Oh, but they worked hard and are self-made, etc (sarcasm). Ha ha. Most were born to privilege or were very lucky. And even if not, did they work so hard that they deserve 1000x times the amount of money that most people will never earn in their entire lifetime? |
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Does it not occur to these people that collecting so much money is kind of fucked up considering the abject poverty that most of humanity lives in? If my salary was even remotely close to a million dollars (and it never will be), I'd be looking over my shoulder every day. |
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US median household income is around $50,000.
Worldwide median household income is around
$850. |
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If you think you ought to be looking over your
shoulder if you make $1 million (20 times the
median). Then we here in the US (and many other
countries of similar wealth) ought to really be
looking over our shoulders since we're earning 60
times the worldwide median. |
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And by the way, I was including myself in those
who would live extravagantly while others are
starving. While I voluntarily give a portion of my
income to help those in need, and I try not to
waste too much money (by my standards), by the
standards of many people in the world, I live a very
extravagant life. I am unwilling however to give
away all but $850 of my yearly income. I'm even
unwilling to give away all but $50,000. |
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In one sense, I really don't deserve the
extravagant salary I receive. On the other hand I
studied hard in school while my friend were
goofing off. I took a risk paying for college, and I
worked hard to develop skill that are rare. On the
other other hand I'm really lucky that I was born
with natural abilities and a love of doing a type of
work that pays well. My sister who works much
harder than me earns much less than me. She had
to work really hard to even graduate from high
school, so in our market, it's not surprising that
her strenuous efforts are not valued as much as my
less dedicated efforts, but is it really "fair"? |
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It may be true that most billionaires got there
based on more than just personal hard work and
risk taking, but that's true of me and also true of
the person in the US earning $50k compared to
someone earning $850. NO ONE is qualified to
make the arbitrary decision about what degree of
wealth is too extreme, what lifestyle is too
extravagant, and how much reward there should
be for extra effort. Attempting to reduce income
inequality through redistribution is a game that is
inherently unfair. The correct way to improve the
situation is to work towards leveling the playing
field in terms of opportunity, but that's much
more difficult than passing a law requiring rich
people to give money to poor people. |
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//I tease but its all in fun.// |
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//So says the classic passive-aggressive.// |
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Grab a juice box and take a nap Ray, the grown ups
are talking here. |
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I wonder what the people with the billions think
about the situation. I'm sure some of them ironically
think it's unfair as well. I know philanthropy is big
among the super rich and some of the billionaires
mentioned here have said most of their fortunes will
be left to charity instead of their kids. If that's the
case it's certainly a plus for the disadvantaged no? |
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I mean if it's a moral dilemma I'm not sure what more
a rich person can do than to give it all away when
they die. |
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They can choose not to hoard money in the first
place. 3 or 4 of the richest Americans run a
company that employs legions of working poor in
the US and China. There are cooperatives and sane
corporations where executive pay, while still high,
is at least comparable to front line pay. The choices
and examples are there for all to see. |
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I view it as hoarding. A disorder. One that happens
to affect others. |
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I see what you're saying, but then you get into
questions of whether people in a village in China
were better off before the factory to make Sponge
Bob Squarepants toys was set up. I'm thinking there's
a reason people come in from the fields of an
agrarian society and move into the factories, even
shitty ones, of an
industrial society. Sitting there painting nipples on
Barbie
dolls all day is still a better way to make a living than
working in a rice paddy. |
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Or maybe not. Maybe poor people are better off
clawing a living out of the dirt than making money
for rich people. But if so, how come they make the
change? |
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Nothing wrong with choosing to leave the farm to
earn more. My comment were more about hoarding
and redistribution. As in why not pay people enough
in the first place so that charity is not so needed? |
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Well, that's sort of what this idea is. Say if you make
a certain amount of money from a company it needs
to be distributed to some extent among the workers. |
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Sort of a compartmentalized communism. Good idea?
What the hell do I know? Just an idea. |
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//we here in the US (and many other countries of
similar wealth) ought to really be looking over our
shoulders since we're earning 60 times the worldwide
median.// |
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Good point. Maybe there should be a threshold for
this over-the-shoulder-looking business. I suggest
that wealthy people of any country start looking over
their shoulders if their salary is more than 60 times
their national average. |
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In other words, if it's OK for the average American to
earn 60x more than the average human, then it's OK
for a wealthy American to earn 60x more than the
average American. This would put the shoulder
threshold, for Americans, at 60x $50,000, or about
$3M. |
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In the UK, average wage is about £25k, putting our
shoulder threshold at £1.5M. Of course, if I were
earning that I could probably pay someone in India to
look over their shoulder on my behalf. |
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10 points to MB for the most interesting aspect of this
discussion so far: a class regard metric, allowing the rich to
cast a strangely parabolic gaze over the ranks of the lower-
and middle-middle class to the working poor and beyond, as
if Cleese were somehow unable to see Barker and instead
only have patronising eyes for Corbett. This leaves the
Guardian-reading middle class happily able to disregard the
consumers of the gutter press and instead bleed their hearts
over the plight of Scotch doorsleepers and various other
pallid and near emaciated unfortunates. |
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Hang on a mo. I just realized that the average
American earns more than the average Englishman.
Something is seriously out of whack here. |
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So what are rich people looking over their shoulder
for? "The Revolution"? tm (all television rights
reserved) |
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I think the revolution, like the second coming of the
savior be he Thrall, Krufu or the Floating Spaghetti
Monster is a tool to keep the poor in their place. |
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Don't make the best of what you have by lifting
yourself up through education and self betterment,
put your trust in me and my revolutionary
organization or church and wait patiently for the
goodies to rain down from heaven. When is that
revolution/second coming due? Any time now, just be
patient and let me handle everything. Besides, you
wouldn't want to anger the Politburo or God would
you? |
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I like the idea of giving money to the poor if we could
just cut the scumbag government types out of the
equation. I feel absolutely no guilt about cutting
those folks off financially. |
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The moneyless society is possible, in fact it's the most likely possibility for the majority of the world's people. I've been pro-austerity in a number of ways, environmentalism, minimalism, antiworkerism. A proausterity that differs from that of the ruling class of state austerity who enjoy another type of anti-austerity. That's like the difference between antipoverty activists that actually like the poor, and those who want to solve moneylessness as a social problem. The difference is that there is an inherent moneylessness in some ways of being, that are ultimately rendered irrational by capitalism which emphasizes capital accumulation as the highest actualization. |
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Money for goods might well become too much work
to bother with but man will still want to secure land
somehow. Not sure what the means of buying land
will be in a labor free society. Probably the same as
it's always been. The most aggressive asshole gets the
most land. |
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As good a guess as any. My crystal balls are a little
cloudy on the subject of what we'll fight about, I'm
just pretty sure we'll find something though. |
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> certain amount of money from a company it needs to be
distributed to some extent among the workers. Sort of a
compartmentalized communism. Good idea? What the
hell do I know? Just an idea. — doctorremulac3, Oct 01
2014 |
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For Your Information: What you are calling for is called
Fordism, named after Henry Ford. (He pretty much
boosted the entire economy by paying everyone a higher
than standard wage. His company didn't sink but grew,
mostly because he introduced the assembly line
technique) |
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordism |
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> Fordism is "the eponymous manufacturing system
designed to spew out standardized, low-cost goods and
afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them". |
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Basically, he was warning against exactly this kind of
issue. And he is not a commie btw. |
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Thanks, I did not know that about Ford. |
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There are other companies that do this nowadays. I go out
of my way to patronize them. |
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That's great. It's all about proportion of companies
with the power to actually affect the economy though.
Because at the individual company level, they are
making a sacrifice. Which places them at a
disadvantage compaired to less compassionate
companies who could get better profit margins by
pushing the cost of paying less than survival rate.
Forcing worker to rely upon food stamps and welfare. |
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Hence the notion of privatised profit and socialized
loss. |
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Your help is needed and at least would slow down the
collapse. |
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//(Fordism) Basically, he was warning against exactly
this kind of issue. And he is not a commie btw.// |
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Thank you Mo, I can't tell you how happy I am to see
an intelligent comment addressing of this issue that
doesn't come from the same tired old "Beat up the
rich then give their money to the poor" solution. |
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Yes, Ford brought the car to the average man,
boosted the economy, made a lot of people rich and
basically helped everybody he touched. I believe he
had free medical care for all his workers as well yes? |
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So my question for you: Fordism, how do we bring it
back? |
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I, like Ford am anything but a commie, but I really
hate the idea of one of the richest families in the
world, the Wals of Walmart fame getting my tax
dollars to subsidize their workers while they rake in
the bucks. |
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Now THAT'S communism in my opinion. Difference is
it's communism for the rich. Like when the
government bails out Wall Street. |
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As a capitalist I'm saying that Walmart and Wall
Street need to get their pinko commie hooks off of
my tax dollars. |
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Would it be better to not call yourself "capitalist" or
"socialist" in the first place? |
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The world is too complex to lock yourself in one mode of
thinking. Why don't I hear people call themselves "post-
scarcitist"? (then again, it doesn't really roll off the tongue
well) |
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If you're proposing effectively raising peoples' working wages to something that's livable, then I'd say that conversation is rather baked. |
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One reason Fordism worked was because he had a competitive advantage in the assembly line that sustained his business beyond what many of his competitors put together. He survived by eating their lunch. Autos were a growth market then. Today the scene is more complex. |
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//Would it be better to not call yourself "capitalist"
or "socialist" in the first place?// |
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Tell you one thing, the old left vs right paradigm sure
doesn't fit into the situation here. I'm pro capitalism
so I'm supposed to be a right wing pro Walmart and
Wall Street guy right? Ok, well, I'm not. So my next
choice is supposedly having a massive centralized
wasteful government leveling the playing field with a
sledge hammer? Well, I'm against that too. |
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I'm certainly not a moderate. That implies not being
pissed off, but both left and right wing menus don't
appeal to me at this point. And even though I'm a
Libertarian, I believe in some socialist social
programs. |
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Fordism I guess is as good as anything. Me and maybe
2 other people in the world. Wow, real powerful
lobby. Sheesh. |
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Haha well then here yet another term for you to learn.
Post-Fordism |
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Post-Fordism is characterized by the following attributes:
* Small-batch production
* Economies of scope
* Specialized products and jobs
* New information technologies
* Emphasis on types of consumers in contrast to previous
emphasis on social class
* The rise of the service and the white-collar worker
* The feminization of the work force |
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Perhaps a parallel can be seen in the aspect of
"Cyberpunk" vs "Post-Cyberpunk". Or maybe not. |
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I for one would label myself an incredibly-pissed off moderate. But definitely not a libertarian. |
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Well, I like about half of those: |
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* New information technologies
* Emphasis on types of consumers in contrast to
previous emphasis on social class
* The rise of the service and the white-collar worker
* The feminization of the work force |
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How about "Neo-post-modern-Fordist"? |
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Wow, talk about introducing yourself in a way that
would turn people off immediately. "Hi, I'm a Neo-
post-modern-Fordist, do you care? No? Ok, I'll just go
to the other side of the bar and finish my drink." |
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Oh well, back to the tired old left vs right wing slap
fight. |
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It sounds to me like where you want to live is Germany. |
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Fordism is just the hypersignification of exact social formation for a historical sociology, not unlike how referent to Nazi Germany abound sometimes via 'Godwins Law', that explains such phenomena of fascism being contained in Britain likely due to existing historical referents from the Calvin and Hobbes golden age. This ubiquity of political scientific social referents is a credit to any society in the mass regulation of political ideology. However, reference to a fordism as a political ideology that can be satired a la Brave New World, or a particular totalitarianism in 1984. This should indicate a way of experiencing politics that is collectively understood, and is reflected in 'Godwins Law' as a satirical rule that is actually instead a cleverly disguised social comment. Netanyahu recently drew parallels to ISIS and Iran and Nazi Germany. This should be considered a significant signifying event. The major factor he identified was 'superior race' = 'superior faith' analogy which I think there is a natural hesitation in seeing the equivocation, however I had made a similar comment to [bigsleep] just before that the faith tends to indicate that there should be a sovereign and that people should worship that state, when in actuality you can have a society where all the doctrines are subject to eventual overthrow in a parliamentary/ congressional style debating system, and other liberal institutions. As long as you can keep conservatives contained in liberal institutions nazis will likely not come back, but if they somehow get inside socialist or conservative institutions then they can better achieve full communitarianism without people acting too liberally and disrupting the discourse based social order. After all the iron cage of neoliberalism, can be seen as a similar confinement of rationality that is political economic rather than just a political confinement, as in the former sense. As much as I like conservatives in a political iron cage, I disagree that everyone should necessarily have to embody the deconstructed rationality moral code of economic liberalism a la Ayn Rand especially when that form of collectivism gets to Neoliberal level proportions. |
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How is it possible that the Turing Prize continues to go
unclaimed when it's completely obvious that [rcarty] is an
AI. |
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Gah... Am I terribly uninformed... |
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Just reviewed what I understood. I thought there was the
issue of a 'welfare dip', in terms of disincentives to
getting a
job. If you look at the appended image. It's more like a
bloody cliff. |
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Goes to show that even I can be misinformed, and the
world
could actually be worse than I think. (Similar to seeing
the difference between people's perception of what's fair,
and what's actually happening in terms of economic
distribution) |
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That cliff is great for business. If you look at welfare
for
what it is, a product that people make money
distributing just like corn syrup or carburetors, the
people who make their living distributing that
product are going to want that product to be popular.
What better way to make welfare popular than to be
able to say to the consumers "Ok, you can work a lot
and get a bunch of money, or work a better job or
work harder and get less money."? Welfare is a
business, and business is good. |
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The product also has some great salesman. Despite
what the product does to people in the long term,
(go look at a welfare community, but make sure it's
during the day and your doors are locked) it's sold as
some beneficial salve that takes away the evil of man
through liberal applications of largess and kindness.
To question the concept of telling one group of
people that they need to support another group of
people is verboten as is questioning whether it's good
for the people on welfare themselves. |
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My opinion is it's the new and improved slavery.
You've still got a master, you just don't have to work
for them. The state replaces the hated bourgeoisie
family unit, the dad is replaced by the welfare check
and the people are thus subjugated wards of the
state. The ranks of the poor swell, the middle class
shrinks, and the state grows, and grows and grows. |
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I know I've said that when robots do everything we'll
all be on welfare, but we're not there yet. This is still
government taking one group of people's time and
effort and giving it to another group for the benefit
of the government to the detriment of everybody
except that government. Don't forget, when welfare
was given it's big debut in the 1960s it was billed as a
tool to fight the "War On Poverty". How that working
out? |
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Great links by the way Mo. I'm a big fan of actual
numbers like you've shown. |
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Meanwhile, the idea - it sounds quite Japanese to me. I haven't been to Japan but I understand that, whereas there's not much public welfare, there's an understanding that large employers look after their people. This idea sounds like that. However, in Japan, it's implemented not through legislation but through culture. It might be incompatible with a multi-cultural society. |
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Hey, cultural pressure can be as strong as legal
pressure. |
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It seems to me, once you've gotten your first ten
billion to cover your basic survival needs, the rest is
just showing off. So if showing off is your game at
that point, what better way to show off than to put
your face on tv saying "Hi, I'm Doctorremulac3 of
Remucon Omnicorp Worldwide. I want to show you
how my workers live. Here I am ceremoniously taking
60% of my paycheck and giving it out to each worker
divided evenly like I do every holiday season. Here's
me with the big oversize check for $50,000 that's
going towards the Johnson family's new car and a trip
to Hawaii for the whole family. Be sure to send me a
postcard!" |
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I don't know, sounds like a quick way to get anointed
"Most awesome CEO of the year". Of course the
commies would hate you even more but who cares
what they think anyway? Their solution to everything
is war and gulags. |
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//have two governments running in parallel and vote
by giving your tax to the government of your
choosing.// |
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I've always said a tax form ballot that you fill out
every month deciding where your money goes would
be the ultimate form of democracy. |
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Boy does that idea bring out the haters. |
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True, but if you remember what RayfordSteele said:
> One reason Fordism worked was because he had a
competitive advantage
in the assembly line that sustained his business beyond
what many of his
competitors put together. He survived by eating their
lunch. Autos were a
growth market then. Today the scene is more complex. |
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So essentially, what you are advocating is 'charity' by
Upper Management,
which is not a bad thing. But really only works when you
are ahead of the
pack, and have extra cashflow to spare after investing in
the future. |
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It's similar to the argument that 'charity' doesn't replace
'welfare'. In the
sense that if I donate signification amount of money to
solving poverty
individually. I am putting myself at a financial
disadvantage compared to
those who are less empathetic. This applies to both
corporate, and
individual levels. |
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Acts of charity is not an issue for those with enough 'free
money' to share.
But it is a much more difficult proposition if you don't
have much to spare
after saving for your emergency fund. |
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Henry Ford was able to do as he did, because he was a
visionary, and a true
innovator. Not only did he realize the interdependence of
resources within
a company context, he also realized that it applies in the
winder social
context as well. (Flow of resources in an assembly line, vs
flow of money in
a society, aka the money cycle) |
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--- Had more thoughts, but cut for brevity sake --- |
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In the end of the day, I think the best approach is not to
restrict the idea
of redistribution to purely a corporate context. Which I
think may lead to a
situation like Japan, where a person is trapped working
for a company (and
the boss is morally restricted to keeping under performing
workers). |
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Instead, a weekly payment every week that exactly
matches the poverty
line, is a better proposition. To sum up, basically I see
poverty as a
systemic issue that requires a systemic response, and that
restricting
redistribution to only a organization will risk increasing
the stratification of
society (based on corporate affiliations rather than class
perhaps). { I can understand the desire to absolutely cut welfare, but I
rather not have my neck slit by the pitchforks of the poor mobs } |
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I'm for a fixed distribution of basic income to everyone,
specifically to
avoid the welfare cliff. And philosophically, because I
feel that working
should be an act of 'wanting' not 'needing', and that
people perform better
when they do things they 'want' rather than 'need'. |
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It's similar to how a child in an abusive household don't
perform as well as a
child in a supportive and encouraging household. Not
rocket science to see
that this can also apply in a country or civilization
context. Since
civilization, is at the end of the day, all about ensuring
that people can live
in harmony with each other. |
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Never heard of that idea, it sounds like a new half baked
idea to me. bigsleep, if it's your new idea, please post it!
Before doctorremulac3 steals your spotlight! :D |
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See link for one of the incarnations of this I've suggested. This one didn't seem to generate a lot of anger, but I've discussed this elsewhere and gotten a serious dose of Godwin's law. |
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The general consensus is that if you allow people to directly decide where their money goes they'll spend it all on lottery tickets, donuts and fortified wine. |
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//situation like Japan, where a person is trapped working for a company |
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Yes, astounding lack of horizontal movement between companies, you resign from one and then have to go right to the bottom in the new company... |
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//(and the boss is morally restricted to keeping under performing workers) |
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Sort of. If they are really brain-dead (male) or the company thinks they might be thinking about having kids (female) they get shunted into a broom closet-like office and then have to do meaningless stuff all day until they are persuaded to "voluntarily" resign. |
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On the other hand highest:lowest salaries ratio in Japan is about 40, unlike yer McD worker compared to Bill Gates... |
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//...not unlike how referent to Nazi Germany abound sometimes via 'Godwins Law', that explains such phenomena of fascism being contained in Britain likely due to existing historical referents from the Calvin and Hobbes golden age.// |
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Rcarty, but can you get the same point across in a haiku format? Now THAT would be impressive. |
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Seriously, not being facetious. That would be awesome. |
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The angry shep vote en masse |
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In other news, Doctorremulac3 announced his official retirement from writing poetry. "We read the writing on the wall. It's just not his thing." said a spokesman. |
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But you could be on to something there, [doctor] - Do we have a halfbakery idea or category here where the idea itself is required to be posted in haiku form? |
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Darn it, somebody beat me to it. (link) |
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I think there should just be a category: Other: Haiku format posts/annos. |
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Thank you. I like the way I wrote "shep" 'cause it was
like, artistic license 'n stuff. Sounds like the way
people in Wales might say it, or maybe old timey
talk. |
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Hey! Where'd my compliment go? |
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Nurse, we've done all we can, I think we need to call
it. This thread's dead.
Note the time, call in the family. |
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Just read about the new left, and thought about writing something about zero stroke as a socially caused mental disorder and put an end to psychiatric neoliberalism for good and the entire diagnostic regime. Reducing individual behavior to a societyless vacuum, does not acknowledge the computations a person has to make to participate in reality, and in effect denies the existence of a significant part of reality. |
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I completely disagree. No, wait... I completely agree.
Except for the parts where I don't. |
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I wouldn't be against looking at the coincidence. I'm really just saying that the schizophrenic lives in neoliberalism and the schizophrenic needs to comprehend neoliberalism to participate in meaningful transactional exchange that actually has meaningful value. |
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