Zone1 Should A Handful Of Billionaires Own More Wealth Than The Bottom 50% Of All Americans?

[expat_panama]

Capital in the sense of what profits or money it can produce. Without that, the machines of capitalist production...

OK, where we're going to is the fact that we've got wildly different understandings of what capital is. My first idea was to present a simple definition of capital & I'm finding out that it's not a term that can be defined but more like a concept for discussion.

My approach is to see labor and capital in economics, like what u see w/ an internet search key words "economic capital labor". Your understanding of capital and what u call "capitalism" seems to be linked to an ideology. That's your thing not mine. So our bottom line is that our only hope of understanding something together is to set ideology aside and stick to what we can see in the world around us.

Like, can u give an example of where anything called communism has left people better off than where free markets exist?

 

[martybegan]

That's an interesting thought, the fact that in reality the governments DO have the right to say who can be wealthy or not. They've pretty much all decided that those that produce the goods and services that are in demand should be wealthy.

So does this sit well w/ u?

We have decided that, because in our government we vote to determine who decides things.

 

[Woodznutz]

Does anyone understand that machines are capital?

Unskilled labor is also capital.

Calling you out on your disingenuous, stupid bullshit and strawman arguments, with a well-reasoned, evidence-based rebuttal, accompanied by a disdainful mention of your apparent senility, does nothing to falsify or invalidate anything that I've said. Only in your decrepit, deluded mind does insulting a cynical, misanthropic 80-year-old, religious sociopath that contends humanity should be culled, undermine all of the arguments that I've presented in response to your pro-capitalist tripe. Address the points that I've made or shut up. I always grant you the courtesy of addressing the points that you make regardless of how ridiculous they might be, so you grant me the same courtesy or go eat a burrito. Maybe farting will help you release some of that gas in your bloated capitalist skull.

You are a deeply troubled man. Goodbye.

 

[expat_panama]

We have decided that, because in our government we vote to determine who decides things.

That is exactly correct.

All nations on the earth have to deal w/ the reality of the people that are governed, and rulers have to act accordingly. Some are more responsive than others. All espouse free markets with varied characteristics, most are free and open. The degree of freedom seems to correspond to the degree of wealth of the population.

 

[expat_panama]

Unskilled labor is also capital.

Most economists try to distinguish between the concepts of labor and capital. It's not easy, the approach even leads to the idea of "human capital" which is the training and education of labor.

 

[Blues Man]

At the urging of Republican Senators Hawley and Rubio, a new think tank is working out ways for the GOP to changetheir messaging.

They want to shift their rhetoric from support for corporations and the morbidly rich to pretending they care about working people. This new organization will, they say, “think differently about labor vs. capital than Republicans have in recent generations.”


It’s a cynical effort to capture Trump’s working class base. He’d promised he’d bring our jobs home from China, empower labor unions, raise taxes on the rich so high that “my friends won’t ever talk to me again,” and give every American full health insurance that cost less than Obamacare. Those promises helped win him the White House.

All were lies, but the GOP base bought it and gave him tens of millions of votes; now Hawley, Rubio, et al think they can bottle that populist rhetorical magic and repeat Trump’s shtick for 2024.

Which raises the existential question both economists and politicians have debated for centuries:


America has had two different but clear answers to that question during the past century.

From the end of the Republican Great Depression with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s until 1981 (including the presidencies of Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, who maintained the top 91% and 74% income tax rates), the answer was unambiguous: “The economy is here to serve average Americans.”

Income and wealth during that time rose at about the same rate for working class Americans as they did for the rich, something we’d never before seen in this country.

This was not an accident or a mistake. It was the very intentional outcome of policies put into place by FDR and then maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations for almost 50 years during that pre-Reagan era.

And then came the Reagan Revolution, when Republicans decided that the middle class wasn’t as important as giant corporations and the very wealthy after all, and that the rest of us are here to serve the rich.

Should a Handful of Billionaires Own More Wealth than the Bottom 50% of All Americans?

At the urging of Republican Senators Hawley and Rubio, a new think tank is working out ways for the GOP to change their messaging. They want to shift their rhetoric from support for corporations and the morbidly rich to pretending they care about...

m.dailykos.com

Im sure this will hurt the feminine sensibilities of certain moderators, so I expect it to be moved with not much intelligent input.

Define "wealth".

 

[Blues Man]

That is exactly correct.

All nations on the earth have to deal w/ the reality of the people that are governed, and rulers have to act accordingly. Some are more responsive than others. All espouse free markets with varied characteristics, most are free and open. The degree of freedom seems to correspond to the degree of wealth of the population.

But we don't decide who runs for office so we really don't decide who runs things.

The next best thing to simply appointing politicians is controlling who gets on the ballots in the first place. It gives the sheep the illusion of control when they have none.

 

[Woodznutz]

But we don't decide who runs for office so we really don't decide who runs things.

The next best thing to simply appointing politicians is controlling who gets on the ballots in the first place. It gives the sheep the illusion of control when they have none.

People that should run for office have no interest in doing so.

 

[Red Front]

Unskilled labor is also capital.

You are a deeply troubled man. Goodbye.

The 80-year-old Evangelical millionaire landlord who believes that the solution to homelessness and the world's problems in general, is killing people (depopulation), has the gall to say I'm "troubled". The irony.

Malthusianism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Apocalypticism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Unskilled labor isn't just capital, but a commodity, comprising part of the means of production. People are reduced to machinery for a capitalist and treated like slaves. Even Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, identifies the employer - employee relationship as one between a master and a subject.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

People are reduced to machinery for a capitalist and treated like slaves.

That's outrageous!!!

Only communism is allowed to treat workers like slaves.

 

[Flash]

Bill Gates earned being a billionaire by creating products that people all over the world use.

Zuckerberg earned being a billionaire by creating a product that everyone was anxious to use.

Bezos earned being a billionaire by creating a service everyone wanted to use.

Musk earned being a billionaire by being in the leading edge tech industry.

If you want to be a billionaire go produce something useful or in demand.

Until then stop being an envious little asshole always bitching about what other people have.

 

[Red Front]

OK, where we're going to is the fact that we've got wildly different understandings of what capital is. My first idea was to present a simple definition of capital & I'm finding out that it's not a term that can be defined but more like a concept for discussion.

My approach is to see labor and capital in economics, like what u see w/ an internet search key words "economic capital labor". Your understanding of capital and what u call "capitalism" seems to be linked to an ideology. That's your thing not mine. So our bottom line is that our only hope of understanding something together is to set ideology aside and stick to what we can see in the world around us.

Like, can u give an example of where anything called communism has left people better off than where free markets exist?

OK, where we're going to is the fact that we've got wildly different understandings of what capital is. My first idea was to present a simple definition of capital & I'm finding out that it's not a term that can be defined but more like a concept for discussion. My approach is to see labor and capital in economics, like what u see w/ an internet search key words "economic capital labor". Your understanding of capital and what u call "capitalism" seems to be linked to an ideology.That's your thing not mine.

It's linked to the English dictionary definition of capital:

1
a(1)
: a stock (see STOCK entry 1 sense 1a) of accumulated goods especially at a specified time and in contrast to income received during a specified period
also : the value of these accumulated goods
(2)
: accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods
(3)
: accumulated possessions calculated to bring in income
set capital and land and labor to work—G. B. Shaw

Source: Definition of CAPITAL

My understanding of the machinery capitalists own that comprises the means of production, was an accurate one based upon the clear definition of words and the reality of what capitalism is and pursues, which is money, Profits. That's the bottom line of capitalist production.

If the machinery is "freed" from human labor in its functioning and operation, then it eventually undermines its ability to generate a profit for its owner. The advanced computerized automation of production, undermines capitalism in the long-term, leading to lower-wages, mass unemployment, poverty, social unrest and economic collapse. The necessity to adopt a non-profit mode of production, using the same advanced automation technology that collapses capitlaism, becomes the obvious, necessary solution. Capitalists in their effort to make production as efficient and cheap as possible, nullify themselves. As communists we don't have to do much, we just sit and watch, as the capitalists annihilate themselves through advanced automation.

​

So our bottom line is that our only hope of understanding something together is to set ideology aside and stick to what we can see in the world around us. Like, can u give an example of where anything called communism has left people better off than where free markets exist?


First of all, there are no "free markets", that's a pink unicorn. It doesn't exist. Capitalist-oriented markets are practically entirely dependent upon the state that regulates and protects them. The state even goes as far as to bail them out every few years, when the economic "boom" busts and bubbles burst. That's a common, regular event, that is known as the business boom and bust cycle. Every few years capitalism is "bailed out" by public funds (government money). In capitalism, the profits are privatized and the losses are made public through its dependence upon the government to provide bail-out money, subsidies, and even government contracts. All of this is included in the effort to bail out the "too big to fail" corporations.

Without the capitalist-run crony state, there's no capitalism, the capitalists would get eaten alive by the working class. The populace would take everything away from them in short order. That's why cronyism is endemic to capitalism. Capitalists are forced to bribe politicians with their army of lobbyists. and super PACs, in order to survive. Capitalism is a flawed system, and that becomes more apparent as technology further automates production, reducing the need for wage labor. Even Albert Einstein, perhaps the smartest human being that ever lived, who was a socialist by the way, understood this and wrote about it:

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few
hands, partly because of competition among the
capitalists, and partly because technological
development and the increasing division of labor
encourage the formation of larger units of production at
the expense of smaller ones. The result of these
developments is an oligarchy of private capital the
enormous power of which cannot be effectively
checked even by a democratically organized political
society. This is true since the members of legislative
bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed
or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for
all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the
legislature. The consequence is that the representatives
of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the
interests of the underprivileged sections of the
population. Moreover, under existing conditions,
private capitalists inevitably control, directly or
indirectly, the main sources of information (press,
radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and
indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the
individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and
to make intelligent use of his political rights.

Source: http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/Einstein on Why Socialism.pdf














​

As far as giving you examples of successful communist economies. There have never been any communist economies at a national scale. The USSR was the UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS. Do you see the word "communist" there anywhere? I've presented multiple posts on this thread of the great accomplishments of socialist-run countries, that despite all of the challenges, survive and even thrive. In one of my last posts to a comment about socialism I pointed out as to why practically all modern liberal European countries are essentially socialist. They nationalize most if not all of the major centers of economic power i.e. heavy and vital industries, and have extensive welfare social nets for their citizens, with a highly regulated market that protects workers.

That's what all of the pubtards here in the US consider socialism, and they're right. Why don't these countries admit they're applying Marxist, socialist principles to their economies? Because of the stigma attached to identifying as a Marxist or socialist. You get clobbered by the USA, the big bully, capitalist gorilla. A capitalist-run empire that bombs, sanctions..etc, socialists and everybody else they don't like.

 

[Woodznutz]

Capitalism is the economic system for free, mature, educated people. To make it work for you grow up and get an education.

 

[Red Front]

Capitalism is the economic system for free, mature, educated people. To make it work for you grow up and get an education.

Capitalism is a dying and obsolete system of production that will soon be replaced with a modern, high-tech non-profit mode of production. Ironically if anyone needs to grow up and educate himself, it's you, the 80-year-old sociopath who believes the solution to homelessness in America is depopulation i.e. "culling the herd" (you can start with yourself by finding the nearest cliff). The sooner people like you kick the bucket the better this country and the whole world will be. Respond to the points I made in my last post or shut up.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Communism doesn't work never has and never will

 

[Red Front]

Communism doesn't work never has and never will

Socialism always works and communism is the final objective, namely a stateless society, without socioeconomic classes or the need for money. That is inevitable with advanced automation technology. Without socialism bailing out capitalism on a regular basis, capitalism would've become extinct a long time ago.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Socialism always works and communism is the final objective, namely a stateless society, without socioeconomic classes or the need for money. That is inevitable with advanced automation technology.

Sure thing thats why none of the communist states ever succeeded right?

 

[expat_panama]

But we don't decide who runs for office so we really don't decide who runs things...

Many states do in fact have open primaries, that plus the fact that we can write in any name that's not on the ballot --fwiw, I have SEEN personally a write-in win an election. More often than not tho the favorites are on the ballot.

 

[expat_panama]

...It's linked to the English dictionary definition of capital:

​

1
a(1)
: a stock (see STOCK entry 1 sense 1a) of accumulated goods ...

huh, all I got was:

capital​

noun​

1. A chapter or section of a book.​

--and---

​

capital 1 of 3 adjective cap· i· tal ˈka-pə-tᵊl ˈkap-tᵊl 1 of a letter : of or conforming to the series A, B, C, etc. rather than a, b, c, etc​

--so we got to remember that there are LOTS of definitions. What's important is that you and I agree on a definition if we want to talk about it. If not, you can define it as say, "badbadbadbad" and prove it's well, bad.

 

[jc456]

I still can’t figure out why demofks think it’s bad to have money?