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

[expat_panama]

You need to improve your reading comprehension. I didn't say that...

Ah, say no more.

You want to squabble and that's fine; like, most folks on this thread prefer to squabble than consult. My problem however is that I'm just not very good at it and I'd probably get it all wrong and you'd wish u were squabbling w/ someone else.

So have a good one, dusting it up w/ someone else. Please do let me know when u want to consult tho...

 

[expat_panama]

In its simplest form labor is capital.
Sans money or machinery labor itself is the "means of production".

A woodcutter has only his ax and his labor to produce firewood. If he cuts it for himself, he is just a working man. But it he sells it for a profit he is a capitalist.

That's probably fine w/ many but my thinking was more along the lines of that for folks making a living in the economics biz. They like to separate labor from capital for economic analysis.

 

[Woodznutz]

That's probably fine w/ many but my thinking was more along the lines of that for folks making a living in the economics biz. They like to separate labor from capital for economic analysis.

True. Almost any subject can depart from the practical and be turned into an intellectual argument.

 

[initforme]

Why not give the billionaires all the control since they know how to run things? Just let them call all the shots and tell the rest what is good for them.

 

[Red Front]

Ah, say no more.

You want to squabble and that's fine; like, most folks on this thread prefer to squabble than consult. My problem however is that I'm just not very good at it and I'd probably get it all wrong and you'd wish u were squabbling w/ someone else.

So have a good one, dusting it up w/ someone else. Please do let me know when u want to consult tho...

When I want to "consult"? I will discuss the issue or debate with you but you need to clearly define your terms that way we can do that. We can disagree on the meaning of words, but words, and terms, have to be unambiguously defined, that way we can engage in a meaningful discussion or debate. This is just common sense, which you unfortunately seem to lack. How can we coherently communicate otherwise? Define what you mean by "capital".

 

[Red Front]

Why not give the billionaires all the control since they know how to run things? Just let them call all the shots and tell the rest what is good for them.

You have to be joking.

 

[initforme]

No....many here worship, grovel, sell their souls to billionaires.

 

[Woodznutz]

Why not give the billionaires all the control since they know how to run things? Just let them call all the shots and tell the rest what is good for them.

I'm guessing they would make some pretty unpopular changes.

 

[Woodznutz]

No....many here worship, grovel, sell their souls to billionaires.

You can work for a billionaire without selling your soul. Although if you can make the billionaire believe you have sold your soul to him you might advance more quickly.

 

[badbob85037]

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.

How many jobs do those billionaires bring to the table? They can support half the illegals biden brought into the country. Leaving only 2 million for you and I to support. Thank God for billionaires.

 

[badbob85037]

I know.

Let's give more power to a handful of politicians, they'll know what to do

Spend, spend, and steal.

 

[Red Front]

You can work for a billionaire without selling your soul. Although if you can make the billionaire believe you have sold your soul to him you might advance more quickly.

Before they eat you.​

 

[initforme]

I'm guessing they would make some pretty unpopular changes.

Yep. They'd take even more so their workers have nothing. We all agree.

 

[Blues Man]

Interesting. There's this site that lists state's requirements and they say that while all allow write-in's, many have ABSOLUTELY NO requirements.

Ballot access for presidential candidates

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

In order to get on the ballot, a candidate for president of the United States must meet a variety of complex, state-specific filing requirements and deadlines. These regulations, known as ballot access laws, determine whether a candidate or party will appear on an election ballot. These laws are set at the state level. A presidential candidate must prepare to meet ballot access requirements well in advance of primaries, caucuses, and the general election.

 

[Woodznutz]

Yep. They'd take even more so their workers have nothing. We all agree.

Businesses and industries are having a hard time hiring people. They are offering better pay and benefits than ever. Even minimum wage pay is a thing of the past. So, I don't agree.

 

[Red Front]

Businesses and industries are having a hard time hiring people. They are offering better pay and benefits than ever. Even minimum wage pay is a thing of the past. So, I don't agree.

Not really, because although they might pay more, as far as in the area of employee benefits and work conditions, companies are failing to meet the needs of their workers.
They're trying to recover their losses from the pandemic and imposing a very austere work regime and cutting expenses wherever they can. That negatively affects work conditions and the workers who have to work under those austerities. More, aren't you a champion of freedom and liberty? Why are you for totalitarianism in the workplace, and not for it in politics? Freedom and liberty in politics, but not in the place where 94% of America spends most of its waking hours, i.e. the workplace. Do you like being a capitalist feudal lord? The United States has an absolute dictatorship in the workplace, but then you ironically defend "freedom and liberty" in politics? The workers, the people who are producing everything are the ones who should be running the operation, democratically.

​

Workers don't need capitalists, especially today with all of the advanced technology we have available, allowing us to more easily produce everything we consume.
Worker-run cooperatives could produce everything, meeting all of the needs of consumers.

The problem here in the US is that the SBA (Small Business Administration) and the banks don't support funding and launching labor cooperatives (business enterprises that are owned collectively by the people who work them). Smart capitalists, many of the members of our ruling class, are horrified by the prospect of competing with hundreds or thousands of worker-owned cooperatives due to the higher competitive durability, sustainability, productive capacity, and robustness, of worker-owned and run enterprises. Workers create a business together, not to become filthy rich, but to create job security, secure their livelihoods, and offer a needed or desired product or service to their communities (that's the "bottom line" of the worker-cooperative).

A private capitalist-owned business enterprise must turn a considerable profit for its owner/s or shareholders, otherwise it can't survive. The bottom line and means of survival for a privately owned business is profits. However, if a worker-cooperative is paying all of its bills and has enough money to purchase materials from suppliers, it's in business. Paying labor isn't part of the "overhead" or cost of doing business, in the same way as it is for a privately owned company, because the workers own the business and their salaries are their profits. Should a labor cooperative make a profit above salaries? Sure, profits i.e. a surplus, is good for a business, be it a privately owned business or a labor-cooperative, but a cooperative isn't as dependent on a surplus as the privately owned enterprise is.

The cooperative's profits are the private enterprises' overhead i.e. cost of doing business. Worker salaries are a great expense for private owners that cut into their profits.

Worker cooperatives tend to reinvest more into their business, buying better machines and facilities, hiring new workers (worker-owners), selling their products or services at a lower price without compromising quality. Offering better warranties for their products and services. The wealthy ruling class, doesn't want workers to free themselves of their control, by forming worker-owned cooperatives that will compete against them.

Workers in America are asleep, they don't understand that they are the ones who really hold all of the power, not their wealthy capitalist employers i.e. exploiters, who rule overthem with their money. The working-class doesn't need the capitalists, they can take the reins of power at any moment, but unfortunately the giant, that is American labor, is comatose. Asleep. Completely brainwashed.

 

[expat_panama]

Ballot access for presidential candidates

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

In order to get on the ballot, a candidate for president of the United States must meet a variety of complex, state-specific filing requirements and deadlines. These regulations, known as ballot access laws, determine whether a candidate or party will appear on an election ballot. These laws are set at the state level. A presidential candidate must prepare to meet ballot access requirements well in advance of primaries, caucuses, and the general election.

Right, getting on the ballot is a hassle, one where many succeed every election, and becoming a write in is easy.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Not really, because although they might pay more, as far as in the area of employee benefits and work conditions, companies are failing to meet the needs of their workers.

Not like the workers in all your favorite worker's paradises, eh comrade?

 

[Red Front]

Not like the workers in all your favorite worker's paradises, eh comrade?

Goggledygook, learn English.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Goggledygook, learn English.

Your favorite worker's paradise has much better benefits, right?