In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.
"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
Mahatma Gandhi
In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.
"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Trish (12-20-2017)
There are people who put in even more than 3,000 hours a year who don't get a 10th of what you get for those 12-hour days. However, consider why you have to put in 12-hour days. Go back a few hundred years. Most people routinely put in 12-hour days 7-days a week back then. Was it always because they needed to work that hard to live or was it often because their labor was often primarily accruing to someone else so that they had to work at least half as much again just to eat? If you look at the value that your labor accrues to someone else and the number of people who are probably living very well off the value of your labor without working at all, you will see that the current system is set up to create a pyramidal system where the many support the few in the lap of luxury. Now today for some people working 12-hour days is the difference between just having the necessities of life and for others it is about about being a part of a certain class, having a certain house and paying for very expensive university educations for their children.
Realistically, if 90% of all after-tax profits were not going to investors who do nothing to earn income, you wouldn't have to work as hard, but the entire system from banking to the stock market is set up this way. Product that millions of hours of labor takes to create is destroyed routinely, rather than selling for less, produce that farmers sweat blood to deliver is burned, rather than lower prices. Who is really benefitting from all of this waste? You? Your family? TBH as the 'market' is increasingly involved in the bottom line of businesses and the value of currency, people have gone from the American dream to the American nightmare. Simultaneously, the population has been taught to believe that they deserve a standard of luxury that their parents didn't enjoy and they are not willing to wait to upgrade. They have to have it before they hit their 40's, so there has never been a greater level of personal debt, not to mention national debt. What is the common denominator?
In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.
"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
Mahatma Gandhi
barb012 (12-20-2017)
Yes, it would, that’s why it always does. We value money because of the lifestyle it provides and the ability of ownership it creates. Eventually it gets out of hand and corporations become bigger than the governement and its people. That’s the time to introduce legislation, not destroy it. The problem now is that so many people in the hierarchy are involved in corruption, it’s beginning to be impossible to stop.
So, what’s the solution? As long as people keep voting for the political corruption it will never stop. Socialism has shown that particular system to be a nonsense. We carry on, ignoring the rest, putting aside the jealousy, stop trying to create impossible economic utopias and as long as we can put food on the table, afford medical care and own what we have, our standard of living is going to far surpass that of any previous generation.
Is it jealousy that others have more, or are we trying to create an economic utopia of equality. No one was ever equal and someone will always have more or less than we personally have. Who’s going to provide this equality? The 1% politically elite millionaires? A workers revolutionary party (who will become the new 1% polically elite millionairres)? Of course it’s not fair, nor is life, is that an amzing discovery? Apart from, ‘we should spread the wealth around’ (not mine you’re not!), what suggestions are there to create this equality and fairness?
Last edited by Refugee; 12-20-2017 at 03:51 AM.
The answer is in ‘free’ markets. If you use capitalism to try to produce equality through welfare, something for which it was never designed, after all the social costs of hiring, you’ll find that your products are unafordable to the majority. Add on high taxation, minimum wages, corporate taxes and you’ve just priced yourself out of any market.
The people choose to buy foreign, because they can afford it and the businesses choose foreign because they couldn’t otherwise produce a competative price.
I remember when monopolies of corporations were prohibited prior to the 80's, however, that changed since politicians were able to gain more political donations from corporations that did monopolized the market. A free market did not stand a chance in this reality.
Don't just make claims. Argue your point. How do your explain the global market where no government controls it? Untill you establish your basic premise the rest of your argument is nonsense. The free market disappeared? Honestly, who, where do you come up with these things?Free markets can't work within large populations because large populations involve social anonymity thus needing far greater government to create order and structure, which results in the interplay between large business interests and elected representatives.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler