So you want better paying jobs?

[The sheeple sea]

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I would certainly agree that the technical jobs will be better paying. I left my factory job a while ago to pursue a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience, exactly for the reasons you stated. But, and I say this knowing you likely lean politically conservative, how do we as a nation handle what may be, let's say 100 million technical jobs (and I do feel I'm b

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I do understand that there will be a higher demand for more technical jobs. For this reason I left my position at my factory and am pursuing a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience. These jobs will pay well, and I hopped on that train like anyone should reading the writing on the wall.

I ask this particularly because you seem like an intelligent person, I can assume politically conservative (Forgive me if I am mistaken). If we end up with, let's say 100 million technical jobs here in America with a high rate of pay (upper middle class kind of pay). What do we do with over 100 million Americans who couldn't find work? Or who didn't understand to start training for a new career? I understand this is not a mutually exclusive problem for America, many third world countries I believe will be hit much harder than us, as our workers have started to shift already to more technical jobs.

But in a free capitalist society, how do we in good conscience handle this dilemma? I'm not asking for a well laid out solution, but perhaps to think about the problem. What should we do? How do we handle a population that no one needs to employ when many of us will be enjoying a greatly prosperous time?

 

[Boss]

Supply and demand is nothing but an excuse to pay workers dirt wages.

I always can tell when I am talking to a Marxist/Maoist... they always want to talk about the plight of the poor old "workers" who have to work for dirt wages.

You see... all of your propaganda is from 19th century Socialists who lived in dictatorial societies with kings and rulers. "The people" were divided by class... "workers" were one of the classes. In those systems, the "workers" couldn't be anything else in life... it was their designated class. They had no free enterprise or free market... they had no freedom.

The thing is... we came along and developed free enterprise and free market capitalism, ushered in the Industrial Revolution and adopted a Constitution which (eventually) gave everyone the freedom and liberty to be whatever they wanted to be... they don't have to be "workers" anymore.

So I would say, if you are a "worker" and you don't like your "dirt wage" ...quit that job and stop being a "worker" ...be a BOSS instead!

 

[OnePercenter]

Hey... I didn't baseline labor cost... I'm just a capitalist operating under free market principles of supply and demand. Labor is just one of my many costs. I have all kinds of expenses and costs involved with my business other than labor. If my profit margin falls below ~10%, then I am losing ground to my competition who is growing faster. I have to maintain at least a growth rate of 10% in order to stay in business. So anytime you are looking at an annual rate of profit for any company, bear this in mind... the first 10% is essential for growth. It's not money hoarded away in a mattress by Monty Burns of the Simpsons.

What the fuck textbook are you reading? 'Baseline labor cost?' You've got to be kidding.

Let me help you.

Your goal as an employer is to earn (one way or the other) at least three times what you can make working for some dickhead.

You pay your employees to stay and demand exactness in their jobs.

You screw your competition any chance you get.

There is no free market, never has been.

There is no supply and demand, it's been gone for years.

Libertarianism makes you stupid.

 

[The sheeple sea]

Hey... I didn't baseline labor cost... I'm just a capitalist operating under free market principles of supply and demand. Labor is just one of my many costs. I have all kinds of expenses and costs involved with my business other than labor. If my profit margin falls below ~10%, then I am losing ground to my competition who is growing faster. I have to maintain at least a growth rate of 10% in order to stay in business. So anytime you are looking at an annual rate of profit for any company, bear this in mind... the first 10% is essential for growth. It's not money hoarded away in a mattress by Monty Burns of the Simpsons.

What the fuck textbook are you reading? 'Baseline labor cost?' You've got to be kidding.

Let me help you.

Your goal as an employer is to earn (one way or the other) at least three times what you can make working for some dickhead.

You pay your employees to stay and demand exactness in their jobs.

You screw your competition any chance you get.

There is no free market, never has been.

There is no supply and demand, it's been gone for years.

Libertarianism makes you stupid.

If you are going to dissent you don't need to throw insults around, you just make yourself seem inarticulate. Most of those arguments you're making are supported by no particular reasoning whatsoever, if you have a point, take a deep breath, and type it in a way that's logical to follow. Your assumption that everyone who has employees is evil is crude and your argument went from numbers and reasoning to insults and claiming everyone trying to run a business is Mr. Burns. Think, relax, type.

 

[OnePercenter]

I always can tell when I am talking to a Marxist/Maoist... they always want to talk about the plight of the poor old "workers" who have to work for dirt wages.

You see... all of your propaganda is from 19th century Socialists who lived in dictatorial societies with kings and rulers. "The people" were divided by class... "workers" were one of the classes. In those systems, the "workers" couldn't be anything else in life... it was their designated class. They had no free enterprise or free market... they had no freedom.

The thing is... we came along and developed free enterprise and free market capitalism, ushered in the Industrial Revolution and adopted a Constitution which (eventually) gave everyone the freedom and liberty to be whatever they wanted to be... they don't have to be "workers" anymore.

So I would say, if you are a "worker" and you don't like your "dirt wage" ...quit that job and stop being a "worker" ...be a BOSS instead!

No. I'm a rich capitalist, and you're a stupid Libertarian

We own your ass, and your continued stupidity at the voting booth make it possible. If you want the middle class in this country to stop taking it in the ass, vote Democrat.

 

[OnePercenter]

If you are going to dissent you don't need to throw insults around, you just make yourself seem inarticulate. Most of those arguments you're making are supported by no particular reasoning whatsoever, if you have a point, take a deep breath, and type it in a way that's logical to follow. Your assumption that everyone who has employees is evil is crude and your argument went from numbers and reasoning to insults and claiming everyone trying to run a business is Mr. Burns. Think, relax, type.

Bloviating.

Ninety-five percent of employers in the world will fuck-over their employees to make a bigger buck.

 

[Boss]

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I would certainly agree that the technical jobs will be better paying. I left my factory job a while ago to pursue a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience, exactly for the reasons you stated. But, and I say this knowing you likely lean politically conservative, how do we as a nation handle what may be, let's say 100 million technical jobs (and I do feel I'm b

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I do understand that there will be a higher demand for more technical jobs. For this reason I left my position at my factory and am pursuing a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience. These jobs will pay well, and I hopped on that train like anyone should reading the writing on the wall.

I ask this particularly because you seem like an intelligent person, I can assume politically conservative (Forgive me if I am mistaken). If we end up with, let's say 100 million technical jobs here in America with a high rate of pay (upper middle class kind of pay). What do we do with over 100 million Americans who couldn't find work? Or who didn't understand to start training for a new career? I understand this is not a mutually exclusive problem for America, many third world countries I believe will be hit much harder than us, as our workers have started to shift already to more technical jobs.

But in a free capitalist society, how do we in good conscience handle this dilemma? I'm not asking for a well laid out solution, but perhaps to think about the problem. What should we do? How do we handle a population that no one needs to employ when many of us will be enjoying a greatly prosperous time?

Well, we have to remember that everything doesn't change instantly... this tech boom doesn't happen overnight.. it takes many decades and things change, evolve, adapt through time. All companies won't adopt new technology... they'll still hire people instead of buying robots. There will still be many jobs that robots simply cannot do. Then, the companies who were on the cutting edge, who went to robots early... eventually they will recoup their investment and expand production.. at least, that's what I would do. Why not? So you say a company starts with 100 replaces them with 10 plus robots... okay... jump ahead to when they pay for the robots... by 10x more robots and hire 100 people again. Now you're back to having 100 people employed again, but the robots give you the production of 1000.

Finally... there is the old adage... When the Lord hands you lemons, make lemonade. There will be capitalists who find new business through expanded technology. People who were building buggies for horses began building coaches for autos. Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity. We will find new ways to make life better and invent totally new products to achieve that.

Look... I can't promise you that everything is going to be okay and we'll survive what lies ahead.. .I have no crystal ball. I only know that the ideologies espoused by the liberal left, the Socialist Marxists who are preaching 19th century debunked clap-trap... will fail. We can't regulate and tax ourselves to prosperity. We can't invent enough government jobs for everyone. This system they want does not work, has never worked, never will work... usually ends up with millions of dead bodies in mass graves.

Our ONLY hope for the future is to unleash free market capitalism.

 

[Boss]

I always can tell when I am talking to a Marxist/Maoist... they always want to talk about the plight of the poor old "workers" who have to work for dirt wages.

You see... all of your propaganda is from 19th century Socialists who lived in dictatorial societies with kings and rulers. "The people" were divided by class... "workers" were one of the classes. In those systems, the "workers" couldn't be anything else in life... it was their designated class. They had no free enterprise or free market... they had no freedom.

The thing is... we came along and developed free enterprise and free market capitalism, ushered in the Industrial Revolution and adopted a Constitution which (eventually) gave everyone the freedom and liberty to be whatever they wanted to be... they don't have to be "workers" anymore.

So I would say, if you are a "worker" and you don't like your "dirt wage" ...quit that job and stop being a "worker" ...be a BOSS instead!

No. I'm a rich capitalist, and you're a stupid Libertarian

We own your ass, and your continued stupidity at the voting booth make it possible. If you want the middle class in this country to stop taking it in the ass, vote Democrat.

No, you are a fraud. A stupid little message board twit who thinks he is clever.

I am not a Libertarian. I think libertarian ideologues are stupid. We don't live in a libertarian society... wish we did, but we don't. Everyone doesn't think and act like a libertarian... wish they did, but they don't. So we have to govern our society by the will of the people and not libertarian ideology. That's my opinion and I have some libertarian views on things. I'm not a Libertarian.

I am a free market capitalist and constitutional conservative who is a registered Independent. I am not a corporatist and I am not a Republican.

 

[Boss]

If you want the middle class in this country to stop taking it in the ass, vote Democrat.

The so-called Middle Class have been taking it in the ass for the past 8 years under Obama... by every standard you can measure. We're quickly approaching 100 years that Democrats have been failing to deliver on their promises. You've not ended the war on poverty. You've not made things better for minorities. You've not made the schools better. You've not resolved the health care crisis. We've spent over $20 trillion on the War on Poverty with little or no results. And ALL you can ever seem to do is BLAME Republicans and whine for more tax dollars. You trot out a new program that fails miserably, then you want a program to monitor that program to make sure it doesn't fail, and that program fails too... oh well, find a Republican to blame and let's do another program!

 

[The sheeple sea]

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I would certainly agree that the technical jobs will be better paying. I left my factory job a while ago to pursue a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience, exactly for the reasons you stated. But, and I say this knowing you likely lean politically conservative, how do we as a nation handle what may be, let's say 100 million technical jobs (and I do feel I'm b

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

You have an excellent grasp of how to create higher paying jobs in America, in a free market capitalist society. Everything you stated is a perfectly reasonable argument, and I know that I open myself up for quite a bit of criticism, but I respectfully ask that you hear me out.

The model you suggest works in a world where production jobs are needed. I've worked in production, making American made products and I understand just how hard a time companies have it here competing with foreign production for exactly the reasons you stated.

But the problem, the real source of today's jobs crisis and the falling value of the American worker is technological in nature, let me explain.

There is a battery plant near my home that competes quite well with foreign battery plants, their workers enjoy good wages and benefits, above average for their field in fact. This battery plant produces batteries that are used all of the world, the demand is quite high. Their production rate puts to shame competing factories around the world. The problem with this plant in a jobs sense however, is there are only 6 employees.

Shifts of 2 engineers at a time run the entire plant from their offices with ipads. This plant is fully automated. Where most of their competitors around the world employ hundreds, they have a much, much lower labor cost. The initial investment in this plant was staggering over 4 times the cost of building a normal factory, but as prices fall other companies are struggling to start mimicking this business model.

In my plant, which is a bit more rundown, and uses technology from the 70s and 80s, automation has been introduced in certain processes that was able to reduce the labor force by about a hundred or so.

I can already hear your argument, so allow me to make it for you. While these technologies may take jobs in one sense, they create them in another, mechanics, engineers, software technicians, and you would be right. But of those hundred jobs lost only about 8 were created.

Despite these advances my plant still continues to struggle, we do still employ a sizeable work force, and our pay isn't terrible. We make foam and plastic products. A simple product, but still.

Recently, there has been cause for worry as a few of our smaller customers began using 3-D printing technology to make the same products we make more effienctly, and without the need for transport costs. Well, that's fine, 3-D printers aren't that great yet and on a mass scale they can't handle production like we can.

They are catching up though. We employ throughout the country at various plants some 15,000 employees. Now, this as I said is a simple product to make, from an engineering standpoint, and I can already here the rallying cry that, well, get a job for the 3-D printer company then.

Those 3-D printer companies, as an advanced technology already understands that this old worker production is ineffective are far too expensive. I mean, the third world workers making a dollar a day and a bowl of rice can even compete, no, those companies are investing in automated production. And they already have the 6 workers they want.

I went to a restaurant with my wife the other night, our waiter was a tablet system that was wired to the table. Interesting, but no waiters to be found, just a couple cooks andan overworked server.

Japan has robot cooks now, robots handling their food, Americans may be more squeamish about this, and right now its an oddity. But when it starts to make better business sense what do you think companies that own restaraunts will do?

The factories that produce these robots, you guessed it, automated. Google used to offer a prize only ten years ago to any group that could build a self driving car though the desert. They all got lost, it was pretty funny. Last year, they navigated a busy city in full traffic. It may take a while for laws of the road to allow such a thing, but companies would lobby hard, could you imagine? Replace cross country truck drivers with self driving trucks. They don't get tired, they don't get paid, they don't complain or quit or need health insurance.

Again, you could put laws in place to protect American jobs, I see truckers picketing now "no robots on our roads". But when it makes business sense, what are we going to do?

Do you deny you have seen more automatic services than their has been? And as companies start to want these things, market forces at work, they become more affordable. More available to all manner of business, and these machines get smarter year after year, just look at how far self driving cars have come in a decade.

How do you create good paying jobs ten years from now? Fifteen? Should we be preparing now? How? Your model of jobs worked in the 70s and 80s. But we are not living in the 70's and 80's. I would like to hear your solution to this dilemma. You seem like a level headed person, and I hope you don't just dismiss this off hand. I look forward to your response

Thank you for that well-thought out post, you made some outstanding points. I don't know that I have an answer for this dilemma, however it's not something unique to free market capitalism. You have to remember that free market capitalism ushered in the Industrial Revolution. We've been dealing with advancement in technology ever since.

One of the "propagandist" arguments is this graphic they show where the productivity of the average worker has risen dramatically high while his wages have remained dramatically low. But what they fail to comprehend is the advancement of technology which increases production. We're able to be more productive due to advanced technology and a commitment from capitalists to invest in said technology for the future.

A friend of mine was an old school photographer who knew all about darkrooms and film processing... he had a job with a newspaper as their photographer for many years. Well.. computers came along and digital photography, and the newspaper began to hire reporters who were trained in photojournalism and pretty soon, he found that his talents were obsolete. So he retrained himself in graphic design and photoshop and again, got a decent job with a commercial art house... well, again... technology changed and now anyone with an iPhone can do what he was doing. They make a template or an app... *poof* another career bites the dust.

Buggy whip makers had to find new jobs when the automobiles came along. Ice houses had to close down when refrigerators came along. These are all things that happen in a free market capitalist system. What happens is, people adapt with the times. Life goes on.

I would say that we are definitely moving in to an era where technical skills will be very important. You are going to need to know how to fix robots... how to program automated machines... how to troubleshoot problems with networks, etc. Those skills are going to require trained people who know what they are doing because if the automated plant goes down, it's big bucks. So we may see fewer actual jobs in the future but they will require a higher level of skill which will be in demand. This means higher wages.

I do understand that there will be a higher demand for more technical jobs. For this reason I left my position at my factory and am pursuing a bachelors in chemical engineering and possibly a masters in nanoscience. These jobs will pay well, and I hopped on that train like anyone should reading the writing on the wall.

I ask this particularly because you seem like an intelligent person, I can assume politically conservative (Forgive me if I am mistaken). If we end up with, let's say 100 million technical jobs here in America with a high rate of pay (upper middle class kind of pay). What do we do with over 100 million Americans who couldn't find work? Or who didn't understand to start training for a new career? I understand this is not a mutually exclusive problem for America, many third world countries I believe will be hit much harder than us, as our workers have started to shift already to more technical jobs.

But in a free capitalist society, how do we in good conscience handle this dilemma? I'm not asking for a well laid out solution, but perhaps to think about the problem. What should we do? How do we handle a population that no one needs to employ when many of us will be enjoying a greatly prosperous time?

Well, we have to remember that everything doesn't change instantly... this tech boom doesn't happen overnight.. it takes many decades and things change, evolve, adapt through time. All companies won't adopt new technology... they'll still hire people instead of buying robots. There will still be many jobs that robots simply cannot do. Then, the companies who were on the cutting edge, who went to robots early... eventually they will recoup their investment and expand production.. at least, that's what I would do. Why not? So you say a company starts with 100 replaces them with 10 plus robots... okay... jump ahead to when they pay for the robots... by 10x more robots and hire 100 people again. Now you're back to having 100 people employed again, but the robots give you the production of 1000.

Finally... there is the old adage... When the Lord hands you lemons, make lemonade. There will be capitalists who find new business through expanded technology. People who were building buggies for horses began building coaches for autos. Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity. We will find new ways to make life better and invent totally new products to achieve that.

Look... I can't promise you that everything is going to be okay and we'll survive what lies ahead.. .I have no crystal ball. I only know that the ideologies espoused by the liberal left, the Socialist Marxists who are preaching 19th century debunked clap-trap... will fail. We can't regulate and tax ourselves to prosperity. We can't invent enough government jobs for everyone. This system they want does not work, has never worked, never will work... usually ends up with millions of dead bodies in mass graves.

Our ONLY hope for the future is to unleash free market capitalism.

I will say this one quick thing, and I hope you can forgive my ideological madness. If one day through the advance of technology we come to a time when production of goods is incredibly easy and cheap and millions of workers are not needed, there may come a time when we as a people provide basic amenities to anyone, regardless. A base standard of living if you will. I know this sounds inherently Marxist. People should still be rewarded for their ingenuity, jobs will still exist, but there should be no reason that housing, food, water and basics should not be provided. This sounds like the redistribution of wealth, and in a sense it may be, but wealth will be so plentiful, so available, when you can print products off a machine, energy advances to be cheaper, cleaner, THROUGH the engine of free enterprise, we may come to a place where the relative cost for providing basic human needs is so little, there's no reason not to do it. Those with ambition, who want more than the status quo will continue to innovate and mankind can focus on things other than just eking a living. Many of those economic principles you listed that failed, you are exactly right for the most part. Socialism doesn't work without a whole lot of money flying around, but what if through innovation, it becomes more costly not to do it. 30-50 years. That's all.

 

[Boss]

I will say this one quick thing, and I hope you can forgive my ideological madness. If one day through the advance of technology we come to a time when production of goods is incredibly easy and cheap and millions of workers are not needed, there may come a time when we as a people provide basic amenities to anyone, regardless. A base standard of living if you will. I know this sounds inherently Marxist. People should still be rewarded for their ingenuity, jobs will still exist, but there should be no reason that housing, food, water and basics should not be provided. This sounds like the redistribution of wealth, and in a sense it may be, but wealth will be so plentiful, so available, when you can print products off a machine, energy advances to be cheaper, cleaner, THROUGH the engine of free enterprise, we may come to a place where the relative cost for providing basic human needs is so little, there's no reason not to do it. Those with ambition, who want more than the status quo will continue to innovate and mankind can focus on things other than just eking a living. Many of those economic principles you listed that failed, you are exactly right for the most part. Socialism doesn't work without a whole lot of money flying around, but what if through innovation, it becomes more costly not to do it. 30-50 years. That's all.

Here is the problem with your idea... Whenever we provide basic essentials for all as you envision... there is no more motivation to work. Why bother, if everything is going to be provided for you? Sure, some will want to have more... but... think about that for a minute... the same people who are screaming about inequality now would still be screaming the same thing. Why can't we all have a yacht? Why can't we all take a vacation to the Bahamas? We need to provide that too, for everyone to be equal... right?

I think one of our biggest problems with social entitlement programs (not talking about SS or SSI)... is the fact that there is no motivational factor. No one is motivated to do better. We will never be able to resolve the wealth disparity problem because that's natural in a free market system... but in order to mitigate it or diminish it, we have to lift people up by motivating them to succeed. You don't motivate anyone by giving them a check every month.

 

[Correll]

Sure you can.

A internal market can operate from different rules from the outside market.

Of course, but it just won't be a free market.

And as you say, China is not about Free Trade. They are not doing it with us, and we should not be doing it for them.

Oh, I totally agree but the guys that rule your country want to trade with China because their slave labor is so cheap. And the argument they're using is free trade.

1. If the internal US market has unrestricted competition between the vast numbers of privately owned businesses in the US, that can be a Free Market. Shutting out the Mercantile Chinese will make it more Free, not less.

2. The Real support for Free Trade that makes is such a consensus policy is NOT those with real self interest, though they are part of it, but those who Ideologues who are so committed to Free Trade that they have not yet noticed that it is not working as it is supposed to.

 

[Correll]

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

The problem with your argument is that we don't have free market capitalism in our economy; thus, your fallacy of false Cause.

Compared to our external trade, our internal trade is certainly RELATIVELY Free.



THe point is valid despite our internal market not being PURELY Free.

The point is not valid to extent it doesn't recognize the command economics of government. I already know Government provides us with a free trade area known as the several United States.

indecipherable.

 

[Correll]

In a free market system, better paying jobs are achieved by increasing the demand for labor.

wrong wrong wrong better paying jobs are achieved when labor is worth more.

Labor is worth more when the supply doesn't meet the demand. As of now, the supply exceeds the demand. That's the dynamic we need to change.

For example, let's look at nursing. There is a severe shortage of nurses nationwide. On average, a RN makes somewhere around $28 an hr or more, depending on where they live. This high rate of pay is a direct result of the shortage of nurses. If the market were flooded with nurses willing to work for $12 an hour, the average wouldn't be $28 anymore.

To increase the rate of pay for labor, you have to increase the demand for labor.

AND/OR reduce supply.

 

[Correll]

Yet Levi Strauss is still in business and by all accounts is doing very well.

Because of NAFTA they outsourced labor to Mexico so they could remain competitive.

There failure to compete (if any) stems from wage disparity. IE; folks not having as much disposable income.

They outsourced to develop higher profits.

Free market capitalist competition has nothing to do with wages or disparity of wages. Capitalists always seek to maximize profits but again... if they get too greedy in a free market system, another less greedy capitalist steals their business.

I've covered "wage disparity" in the OP. It's a natural result of any free market capitalist system. The wealthiest will (usually) always gain wealth faster.. it's how they became wealthy to begin with. The poor will never gain wealth at the same rate because they aren't motivated by wealth.

In order to lessen wage disparity (you can't eliminate it in a free market system) you have to motivate those at the bottom to gain more wealth. They are hampered by your baseline on labor costs (min wage). It's difficult to convince a capitalist you are worth $10 an hour when the baseline for your job is set at $7.50 hr. by the government.

I disagree that you need to motivate those at the bottom.

You craft policy that leads to job creation and higher wages, people will take them and move up.

 

[Correll]

I think you are wrong. That's exactly what Conservatives want.

True conservatives are rich old white guys, all others who believe their conservatives are actually cheap.

Read this, and then rejoin the conversation.

Conservatism in the United States - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Correll]

We keep hearing about this "widening gap between rich and poor" which has been the nucleus of an ongoing argument for higher wages, living wages, increasing the minimum wage, more taxation on "the wealthy" or whatever. They come armed with graphs and charts... the statistics to show you the middle class is in decline... the wealthy continue to amass great fortunes while the poor struggle to survive. Our hearts bleed as we're lectured on how we need more government regulations, more agencies and programs, more forced wage hikes and mandates, more restrictions and regulations heaped on big business in order to force them to pay up!

The problem is, we're hearing this from morons who don't understand how free market capitalism works. Oh, not all of them are illiterate morons, some have read books by European socialist propagandists and think they have everything all figured out. They don't seem to understand socialism doesn't work in practice like it works on paper. Every significant sized Socialist nation has failed and most of them have failed hideously. The ideas of people like Marx and Mao are responsible for ten's of millions of deaths. It is clearly a failed ideology by every standard.

Let's first dispatch a few myths and misconceptions. Wealthy people tend to gain wealth faster than poor people because they have a propensity for wealth acquisition... it's how they became wealthy for the most part. So it is perfectly natural in a free market capitalist system for the wealthiest to gain wealth faster than everyone else. It's like having a marathon race where there are runners who are seasoned veteran marathoners, runners who are couch potatoes, and some who run for the fun of it.... Now, in an actual race, who would you expect to lead and eventually win? The couch potato? Of course not... the seasoned vets are constantly going to gain more ground than the couch potatoes... that's perfectly natural and expected. The solution to the problem is not to hobble the veterans so they don't run as fast... the better idea would be to motivate the couch potatoes... train them up... make them better able to compete... turn them into veteran runners.

So this is where the idea of increasing their wages comes... but it's not as simple as merely passing some legislation that corporations MUST pay people $X per hour... that does not work in free market capitalism. What happens is, everything is on a sliding scale, so people make more but things cost more... so very shortly, we are back to square one. So come on Boss... get to the point... how do we increase the rate of pay for the average American in the average job without disrupting free market capitalism or causing inflation?

In order to increase pay you have to increase the demand for labor. In order to do that, you have to create new jobs. Not just new service sector, minimum wage, government or part-time jobs... but real, good paying, legitimate jobs. The way to do that is to encourage expansion of business... this requires taking several steps... lower taxes on corporations... or eliminate corporate tax altogether. Offer tax incentives for repatriated wealth... we have over $20 trillion in US wealth abroad... not doing us a bit of good. Let's bring it home and put it to work creating new business and new jobs. Finally, our trade deals need to account for the disparity in cost of labor. We can't compete with countries who pay their workers $1 a day and a bowl of rice... unless that's the standard we want to live with ourselves. Our trade policies have to take this into consideration and we have to apply tougher tariffs on import goods so our American companies can again compete domestically.

For example, let's use a computer keyboard... If you go to the store today to buy one, you will likely pay around $20 for a standard keyboard which is probably made in Indonesia. Now... An American company, with American workers and paying American taxes, can't buy the materials and assemble said keyboard for $20, much less sell it for that and make a profit. A similar American-made keyboard would be probably $40 or more. So if you have the choice to buy the same keyboard for $20 or $40... which would you likely purchase? Most people aren't going to care about where it's made, money is the deciding factor. However... IF you applied a tariff on Indonesian keyboards of say, $10 each... then the price of the Indonesian keyboard is $30 and the US company has the opportunity to compete... they cut some corners use some competitive ingenuity and manage to whittle their price down to $35... now you have a choice between a cheaply-made Indonesian keyboard for $30 or one that is built to last by Americans for $35. Some will still pick the cheaper keyboard but some will go with the quality.

Now my example is a little exaggerated, we'd never apply a 50% tariff on something... but the point is making imports more expensive so that American companies can compete again. When we change this dynamic, jobs will begin to generate as a result.. more jobs = more demand for labor = higher wages.

We understand unregulated free market capitalism doesn't work and unions created the middle class. And labor laws.

I didn't see anything in the OP against Collective Bargaining.

 

[Correll]

I heard today the best way to raise wages is to go find a better job.

Did you believe that?

Again... Wages will rise when there is a demand for labor. Right now, there is more supply of labor than demand. The problem can't be fixed until that dynamic is changed... plain and simple.

We can certainly discuss all kinds of ways to get there... We can impose heavy import tariffs on foreign goods... that makes American products more competitive-- which will increase sales-- which will increase production-- which will increase jobs. We can cut corporate US tax making our market more attractive to foreign companies who would love to tap into it... creating more new jobs here. We can offer tax incentives for bringing foreign-held American wealth back to create new business-- thus, new jobs. And we can limit regulations and restrictions on American companies-- allowing them to expand easier-- create more jobs.

Again... Wages will rise when there is a demand for labor again. Whenever I can't find someone who wants to work for me at $7.50/hr... guess what I will do? That's right.. .I'll offer more!

I've been the employee negotiating with his employer when the employer could not find someone to replace me.

That was sweetness that I wish upon more of my fellow citizens.

 

[Boss]

I disagree that you need to motivate those at the bottom.

You craft policy that leads to job creation and higher wages, people will take them and move up.

People don't "do" unless motivated.

Fact of Life, bro.

 

[Correll]

When you work by the brick, the price will drop when someone used to making less under bids you and works around the legal limits of a business operation...

Yes, but is what we are talking about here a problem with free market capitalism? Is it even a problem with our laws and justice system? Is it possible to pass a law to demand people obey the laws? It's supposed to be illegal to hire illegal undocumented laborers in America. We don't enforce the laws because... guess who controls the politicians? Crony corporatists who like having a cheap source of abundant labor.

This is a thing that is effecting free market capitalism AND wages. It's not a part of free market capitalism and those who exploit the resource of illegal labor are not free market capitalists.

I am 110% behind measures to sock it to employers who hire illegal immigrants. I would fine them $500k for every offense and if they can't pay the fine... 10 years in the pokey. But most importantly... I would ENFORCE that law. We have to eliminate illegals in our workforce. Period.

Let's get back to the OP argument... How do we get better paying jobs? Illegal immigration is certainly not helping us create more demand for labor.

Which is all well and good,


But ignores the similar effect of LEGAL Third World immigrants.

They might not be able to be paid under the minimum wages, but they are still increasing an already excessive supply of labor.

And thus decreasing wages.