I'm not voting in this year's election

Discussion in 'Politics' started by wegs, Jun 10, 2020.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Unions are very beneficial under democratic representative governance of capitalism (they help check and balance collective capital, via collective labor) and breaking labor unions while allowing capital collectives is a sure sign of authoritarian misrule.
    Marxism is a socio-economic theory that works fine - everybody who discusses economics takes basic principles and insights from it for granted as useful and enlightening.
    Evaluating political and economic systems by the common criteria of Marxist analysis - such as "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" - is now just using common sense.
    Imagine an analysis that claimed a socioeconomic system that did not reward and employ most people's abilities or provide for most people's basic needs was a successful and good one - a joke, right? Before Karl Marx and Adam Smith such analyses were common. They were used to defend theocracies and monarchies and horrorshows like the American plantation slave economies.
    Such as right now, when a fascist movement is trying to take over the governance of the United States of America. History shows us that if you don't actively stop a fascist movement you and your children will be living under it - and it will not be benevolent.
    If a system is racist and abusive of many citizens, built on lies and bribes, it should be destabilized - and it will be, eventually, by fair means or foul. That's what a representative and democratic system is designed to do by fair means, without revolution and violent lawlessness - it's one of the great advantages of representative and democratic government.
    But it requires adult citizens's continual watchfulness and participation and attentive care.
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Not really. Unions, that have the ability to strike or require membership to get a job, are just another form of blackmail. They line their coffers much like Jessie Jackson lines his bank account without ever really improving any underlying conditions.

    Instability doesn't benefit anyone. If it's a bad system then replace the system. I don't see any "bad system" in the U.S. however. Everything always has room for improvement. Instability isn't improvement. You always need to have something else to use as a comparison when you are trying to "improve" a system.

    Find a better system, then start the improvements. No need for instability. Having the financial system collapse helps no one, for example.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No, they aren't.
    Where do you find that ignorant crap?
    Sure it does. Even in its destructively severe forms it frees slaves, for example - or is freedom not a benefit where you come from?
    Good idea.
    Now, about the means and methods - - - - -
    Done and done.
    Finding a better system is easy in the immediate cases - the incoming attempt at a fascist coup in the US, the continual rolling disaster of American health care - for example: the better systems would be the political one we had before Reagan shit the bed, and the health care systems of any of the 33 other First World systems that surround the US with far superior performance at much lower cost.

    Now, about the means and the methods - - - - -
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    Your eloquent retort aside, that is the case. The day of the striking union is over.

    I come from a time far removed from the days of slavery. How about you?

    I agree that we need a better healthcare system. Inducing instability doesn't help however.

    Your Reagan diatribe notwithstanding, the 50's weren't the magic that you think they were. The taxes taken in as a percentage of GDP were little different that today's rates.

    The tax code was an irrational mess that resulted in less than optimal decisions based on tax loopholes. No one paid that rate so that is just a red herring on your part.

    Boon years based on a world whose industries got bombed out during WWII whereas ours didn't is also a fallacious comparison. Economic growth wasn't high in every year of the 50's. Reagan raised payroll taxes (as I recall) and lowered (much needed) income and corporate taxes. Kennedy lowered taxes as well (that's why they weren't 91% in the 1980's).

    Much of what Reagan did was because of the stagflation that he had to deal with. The wealth "inequality" that we have now is no different that what existing at the end of the 1800's.

    When the economy is vibrant, you get wealth inequality. The average person or even the poorer segment are still better off.

    I think you need a new whipping boy. Maybe if McGovern had been elected? You seem to imply that the average voter is much more to the left. How did the McGovern election fail so miserably?

    In any event the unions haven't had a great track record here, and candidates on the far left haven't done so well. Reagan was a surprise (that he was so moderate, thankfully) and was the right person for those times.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I didn't make that comparison.
    Not my part - I never claimed American rich people paid their official rates of tax.
    My point exactly - I posted that, except for the "much needed" idiocy. It was a lousy idea that began the crippling of the American economy.
    The day of collectively blackmailing capital is not over, of course. So organized capital faces disorganized labor - labor disorganized at gunpoint, by law - with consequences increasingly familiar to any student of Western economic history.
    That's no excuse. He crippled the US economy for a generation now - it's still sliding. We are fulfilling yet another prediction of the remarkably prescient Gore Vidal: we are becoming a sort of elephantine Paraguay.
    Only if you screw up.
    We didn't, for example, for fifty years of the greatest prosperity and economic "vibrancy" the world had ever seen.
    When we decided we had had enough general prosperity, and started back to the old European class system, the economy began losing vibrancy - as predicted by standard economic theory and verified over centuries of experience, severe wealth inequality stifles market based industrial economies. It reduces productivity, impairs efficiency, and blocks the flow of capital as well as information within the the economy - leading to stagnation and plutocracy.
    Check out, for example, the progress of Trump's Mexican wall, or the consequences of Reaganomic agricultural policy, or the distribution of investment profits since Reagan. That's the economic future championed by the Republican Party, brought to you by Reaganomics.
    The gains in prosperity by the ordinary citizens under the New Deal were not magic - the black ones had to flee the Confederacy to get even part benefit, for one thing.
    !? Wow. You just walk right up and admit that?
    Neither are and will be the consequences. How long before we see the private security forces handling the riots, and murdering rioters in the street? How long before the public school and public university is something we used to have - like leisure time, a house affordable on one 40hr job, and health care from doctors?
    It took world war to dig out of that sewer - and that only worked because it was far more destructive than the wealthy expected.
    Meanwhile, you betray your ignorance by putting "inequality" in quotes.
    Wealth inequality is not hypothetical, or abstract. It's physical reality that anyone can observe and the competent can measure. Much has been discovered and understood about its effects, since then - we know more what we're getting into this time.
    They aren't.
    He lost to Nixon in 1972 - how do you think that happened? Try using your common sense.
    Key term: "Southern Strategy". Key lie: Nixon had a plan to end the Vietnam War. Key fact: the average American white man was a Trump voter even then. Key circumstance: economically Nixon was running then to the left of Biden now. That put him quite close to the American center, and he was the incumbent President during a war.
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    Unions are a socialist approach that doesn't work for the reasons that socialism doesn't work. It also isn't appropriate because it's blackmail.

    Capitalism isn't "organized". That would be collusion and that is outlawed as well as blackmail.

    Our modern economy isn't about "workers" and "management". They are all workers. They all go to work. They all work for the corporation which is made up of many shareholders. They are all on the same "team" working for the same outcome.

    Unions trying to artificially raise wages is largely a thing of the past. The average worker is no longer a farm worker or an unskilled manufacturing worker.

    Artificially raising wages is a socialist approach that doesn't work and ultimately just leads to lower wages. It only resulted in higher wages (temporarily) for some workers for the same reason blackmailing works for a while.

    Socialist economies aren't known for their higher wages. They are known for their smaller economies.
     
  10. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    if unions don't work why do pro corporate power advocates want to destroy them so badly? unions aren't black mail. the pro corporate hellscape you support is blackmail. the hey you need to take a 5% pay cut and cant afford to lose your insurance is blackmail. you like most of the right wing hate the idea of the rich not being able to fuck people over.
     
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    Why would anyone like the idea of the rich fucking people over?

    A job environment shouldn't be an adversarial environment. Find a job you like and if that changes, find another one. Just like everyone else.
     
  12. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    9,253
    Idk Seattle, I’m not part of a union but there may still be a need for them in certain industries where employees can be easily taken advantage of by executive leadership within those corporations. I believe there needs to be some reform though - unions aren’t always operating in the best interests of those they are representing.
     
  13. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    13,077
    For a start a LOT could be achieved with
    • a increase in personal health, ie don't eat so much
    • pay better wages (in lieu of profits for shareholders)
    • and that goes double for the dysfunctional - Health if you can afford it if you can't to bad system currently in existence a
    • system which gives insurance (outsurence - nooo we don't cover that condition, we are out for paying for that)
    • leading to outsurence bean counters knowing more about non medical treatment than doctors know about medical treatment

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  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    That's not really a fix to anything. You might as well say the solution to something is "you pay for it instead of me". It's not workable.

    You don't get large corporations without the investments of shareholders. You can get the corporation without the shareholders and therefore there would be no jobs with wages to increase.
     
  15. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    In my world I would have one owner of business and tax profit made as the owners wage.

    No shareholders - except if you work at / in the business

    You work out what part of your wage you take home and what part goes into improve business as a business collective owner GROUP

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  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    OK, the economy would be much smaller and everyone would make much less.

    How do you have a collective owner group if there is just one owner?
     
    Michael 345 likes this.
  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    13,077
    One owner can run a business and no other person required
    Profit made by business taxed
    Money owner takes home taxed
    Example
    Business buys $100 stock
    Sells at $200
    Profit $100
    Tax $20
    Profit now $80
    Owner wage $40
    Profit now $40
    $40 used to buy new stock or equipment for business

    New person wants to invest adds $200 to company. Given position of paymaster and stock control

    Now 1 boss 1 worker. Boss and worker together figure out each wage and stock etc. Boss has last say

    Automatic check on excessive boss wage and worker wage. This would continue as more workers come into business

    However EVERYONE must perform some work for the company NOT just invest. Can't just add money (increase liquidity asset) and take out money (part of profits of company)

    Must work and receive wage (taxed as wage) and not to exceed the % of the money (his liquid asset) he put into the company increased the profit of the company

    Same rule applies to all workers. Many would be value adding, to the stock bought in, to increase its sell price

    What needs to be calculated is
    • % of the liquid asset of company (just having basic stock)
    • % added (to each value added process)
    • Value of each % value added
    • % of profit to be added (profit of the company)
    • each of the above added to arrive at sale price
    Looking at the details you see that the company is treated as a worker

    Up to the boss to keep all workers
    • himself as worker
    • company as a worker
    • liquid asset provider worker
    • value added workers
    • seller worker
    The juggling is not to over pay the % paid to each worker ie the calculated value of what said worker has added

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  18. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    What are you actually trying to accomplish with all this?

    It seems that you are concerned by three things, correct me if I'm wrong. You don't like CEO pay for large corporations, you don't like the concept of interest (?) and you don't like the way stocks are taxed?

    It's unrealistic to have a world where every business is small enough to be owned by one owner. Where everyone has to work at a company to have any ownership. It's also unnecessary.

    Short-term capital gains already are taxed as ordinary income. Dividends are taxed as ordinary income. Long-term capital gains are taxed but at a lower rate. Change that if that is a big concern for you.

    CEO's at small companies don't have the kinds of salaries that you seem to be concerned with. A CEO at a large company with a salary that you are concerned with (why?) don't materially affect the salary of the workers. Those companies are so large that even if the CEO's entire salary went back to the workers if wouldn't make much difference to any worker.

    Can a company get a loan from a bank in your world? The bank now has an interest in that company and yet the bank isn't "working" at that company.

    If someone owns a company but doesn't sell it is that not allowed in your world?

    Any concern you have with stocks seems to be unrelated to the workers. The stock market is a secondary market. It provides liquidity but only affects those owning stocks and not the underlying company and its workers.

    Much like the concept of time, you seem to want to change everything and yet everything would more or less stay the same?
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    One of these days you should do some research and find out what "socialism" means.
    Unions work for the same reason socialism works (in the appropriate circumstances, such as big city sewer systems) but they are not socialist. They are leftwing.
    Living and learning about "investment".
    It's never too late to learn how capitalism works - the concept of "voting stock", for example.
    You have no idea what the word "socialist" means. None.
    And wages have stagnated accordingly.
    Meanwhile, the organized capital was allowed to remain organized - and it has gathered to itself all the gains in productivity in the US. economy since 1980. All of them. Being organized obviously has its advantages.
    Economies in which labor is allowed to form unions are known for their higher wages.
    And they all get huge raises and bonuses every year, including large severance package payoffs if they get fired for screwing up. And they are all getting paid ten or fifteen times as much as they were twenty years ago.
    Because they are rich and they like fucking people over. It pays well, also.
     
  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,857
    I know what socialism is, Sunshine. Sure the ownership of the means of production isn't the issue here but the non-market allocation is.

    Everyone is a worker. Most managers aren't getting "golden parachutes". They just get laid off like everyone else. You are talking about a few at the top and generalizing (or lying) about everyone else.

    Maybe it's time for you to realize that everyone else isn't responsible for your problems. That would be your responsibility.
     
  21. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Fair enough. In my case, my voting intentions have little to do with whether I "like" President Trump or Joe Biden. I've never met either one of them.

    I think that one of them promotes policies that I generally agree with, while the other at least fronts for a party that I disagree with on many/most critical issues. In voting for a President, we aren't voting for a friend or for a pal. We are voting for an agenda.

    Yes.
     
    river likes this.
  22. river

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    17,307
    Wegs ; whats the most important issue in the US Election , to you ?
     
  23. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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