It doesn't undermine my argument. I said they compete on quality. Unions can be just as tyrannical as a monopoly. If German companies didn't produce better cars than cheaper countries there would be no reason to buy them and very few people would.
Added to my above comment:
"For clarification sake I'm saying that the mass of people at the bottom of an organization can have demands that conflict with the survival of the business. It's good that there are smart people who fought their way up the bureaucracy through a meritocracy. They generally won't make a decision that will obviously drive a company straight into the dirt while this is distinct risk in unions with entitlement issues."
1: The company goes out of business (due to inefficiency and an inability to compete) in which case it was a shitty business and shouldn't exist in the first place.
2: The company hires someone who can do the work for $5 per hour, in which case the worker who needs $10 to live is simply not living within their means.
I equate this to someone earning minimum wage complaining that they can't support their numerous kids. NO SHIT. you are not entitled to a wage capable of supporting other people.
This is what seems logical, but most of the time the second thing will happen, because there are many people who think every job is better than no job.
There are lesser jobs than people, so the companies have the bigger lever.
If the employee possesses desirable skills that are in fact worth $10 they can seek that employment elsewhere. If they cannot offer anything over the $5 employee it's a waste to pay them more.
Before there was minimum wage established in the US there was this job of pump attendant. Pump attendant was someone who would pump your gas into your car. These were jobs that paid next to nothing. These jobs disappeared almost immediately after the minimal wage law was enacted.
Now, think about it. A 16-year old would come to the gas station after school and pump gas for (let's say) 2usd/hour. But he would also learn other skills. At that time there were also body shops/car mechanics at the gas station. Because they could use cheap 2usd/hr labor of this kid. And the kid could learn car mechanics. After finishing school the kid could be actually pretty good mechanic. Go there on the job market nad having this real-life experience demand 7usd/hr job of a car mechanic. That was also a time that unemployment rate among the young was the lowest out of all the age groups. Soon after the minimal wage law was enacted the unemployment rate among the young started to be the highest among all ages group. Not only that, but also there is no one to help you at the gas pump today in the US. There are no car mechanics at the gas stations too. These people are permanently unemployed. Because 16 year old after school isn't worth the current minimal wage. He's worth half of it. He could be worth the minimal wage enacted by the Government after 6 months experience while he would be paid market rate as gas pump attendant. But that's illegal now. It's illegal to hire him, pay him and let him grow to better position. He is permanently unemployed now. Maybe for years. Again, the unemployment rate among the young is the highest among all group ages. Before the minimal wage law it was the lowest. But socialism isn't about letting people who want to work, work. About letting them grow and prosper in their future. It is about permanent ruin. 60% of people below the age of 30 in Spain are unemployed. The country is doomed because of socialism. And doesn't even get it.
Amusingly that job still exists in my neighborhood of Boston for reasons that I cannot explain. I suspect there may be a law about it but I'm not certain.
In New Jersey it is illegal for you to fill up the gas on your own. It has to be done by the pump attendant. That's the law. Not sure about Boston ;-) It might be that it makes business sense for the owner to have pump attendant at the rate or above of the minimal wage. Which is nice.
One problem with the bootstrap argument is it ignores the pyramid. So there's 5 pump attendants and one of them has the brains, motivation, luck, family connections, whatever to get promoted to be the next $7 car mechanic. Well that's just awesome for that one kid... and what is your proposal for the other four, let them eat cake? Wait for the local version of "arab spring", let the cops shoot them, hire the next batch, repeat? Soylent Green?
"It's illegal to hire him, pay him and let him grow to better position."
That's ridiculous. Managers take chances on noobs all the time, especially at the lower levels.
"Again, the unemployment rate among the young is the highest among all group ages"
Hello Arab Spring, coming soon to a failed state near you. Historically a graph with a y-axis of "desperate angry unemployed young men" tends to peak around revolutions and upheavals. The future is on a path that is aimed much more toward France in the 1790s than USA in the 1950s. There are probably startup implications to this trend toward inequality for awhile, then revolution.
> So there's 5 pump attendants and one of them has the brains, motivation, luck, family connections, whatever to get promoted to be the next $7 car mechanic.
They all move on. Not necessarily to become car mechanics. The other one could be helping at the cash register at times, yet another one help to put merchandise on the shelves. Yet another one hand-wash cars. The fallacy of socialism is pointed out by you exactly: you think that 80% of people (4 out of 5) are idiots who can't do better in life and need the Government protection. Then Government comes along introduces a law that makes 80% of them unemployed, hence the proof that more Government in needed!
> "It's illegal to hire him, pay him and let him grow to better position."
> That's ridiculous. Managers take chances on noobs all the time, especially at the lower levels.
It gets better than that. There are free internships. You can get them for free - 0usd per hour, you can get them for 7usd/hr. But to give them employment at market price? Illegal! Genius!
>"Again, the unemployment rate among the young is the highest among all group ages"
>Hello Arab Spring, coming soon to a failed state near you.
Like Spain. Or Greece. Or some other place where socialists Governed for the past 50 years. Like... failed arabian states. Learn your history. They all have been socialist. That's why failing. From Saddam to Mubarak.
>Historically a graph with a y-axis of "desperate angry unemployed young men" tends to peak around revolutions and upheavals. The future is on a path that is aimed much more toward France in the 1790s than USA in the 1950s. There are probably startup implications to this trend toward inequality for awhile, then revolution.
Well, yeah. Guess what. If you forbid people to work, and kill businesses (places where they go to work), all you will end up with is violence.
"can't do better in life and need the Government protection."
I mostly agree with your points, but this one fails. I say there's a pyramid. You say thats a politically incorrect concept to think about from a psuedo-right perspective, therefore it surely doesn't exist and all topic change-y. Bzzt try again. Is there or is there not a pyramid of skills, and if a working definition of the level of civilization is looking at how the downtrodden are treated, what are you proposing?
There is another issue that as a civilization we've decided civilization means citizens will have police, fire, libraries, schools, national defense, unemployment, welfare of some forms, foreign aid, all that stuff (More civilized nations or more civilized people believe health care belongs on this list, and I agree). Anyway it takes $X to provide those services privately or via taxes, or the govt at an overhead cost of Y*$X will provide those services by taking extra money from everyone else and redistributing from each according their ability and to each according to their need. The "welfare queen" in this situation is the service station, getting labor hours at a below civilization market cost. Essentially the welfare queen service station is stealing money from me as a taxpayer rather than paying their employees a legitimate fair wage. This is the well known "walmart effect" where poverty increases when walmart moves in, because the employees are below poverty line so the net effect is negative on .gov and the residents of that .gov who know have to pay higher taxes so Sam Walton's heirs can become richer, all while being told this is fairness, capitalism style. Why should I as a 3rd party be impoverished to make a rich welfare queen business owner richer, because a welfare queen business owner doesn't feel like paying his employees what has been determined to be a fair minimum wage? I legitimately and legally and ethically earn enough income to pay enough taxes to pay my share of national defense; why should I have to chip in more than my share because some welfare queen business owner isn't competent enough to match my level of business skill and pay his fair share of taxes via paying his workers a fair wage?
Your more fundamental failure is not recognizing that when .gov and .com merge, as they've done globally, a marketing game of divide and conquer makes losers out of people fighting on either side. The goal is the destruction of the middle classes globally. They're winning. Some countries are trying a PR campaign where .com and .gov merge and pretend .gov is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon, and some countries have a PR campaign where .com ang .gov merge and pretend .com is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon. However, if you're the guy in the prison wagon at the start of a real world "skyrim" game do you really care about which PR campaign is superior and who's pretending to drive that prison wagon?
> I mostly agree with your points, but this one fails. I say there's a pyramid. You say thats a politically incorrect concept to think about from a psuedo-right perspective, therefore it surely doesn't exist and all topic change-y. Bzzt try again. Is there or is there not a pyramid of skills, and if a working definition of the level of civilization is looking at how the downtrodden are treated, what are you proposing?
Let me put it this way. For the simplicity sake let's present workforce as the pyramid. So you have 1% who enjoy 50%+ or more of the wealth. You have 80% who are doing just fine. And you have 20% who are rock bottom poor and screwed over big time. The problem I have with socialism is that it obsesses about the poorest 20% so much, that is screws it over for the rest, the 80%. And at the end of the day everyone is poor because none of these socialist policies really work well. They just make everyone poorer. Margaret Thatcher is a great example of that on works. When she was the Prime Minister the income of the poorest 20% has been growing the fastest since the end of the WW2. The problem is that the other 80% was getting richer even faster. So poor felt like they are not getting their fair share. Without understanding that if you start introducing policies wealth transfer from 80% to the poor 20%, the poor won't get richer! They'll be still poor. You are so obsessed with this one pump attendant who made it big that by introducing the laws to take some wealth from the rich attendant, you don't see that the same law makes the other 4 attendants poorer too. The problem with socialists is that they want to feel so much, they forget to think.
>There is another issue that as a civilization we've decided civilization means citizens will have police, fire, libraries, schools, national defense, unemployment, welfare of some forms, foreign aid, all that stuff (More civilized nations or more civilized people believe health care belongs on this list, and I agree).
Equaling civilization with socialism doesn't work in my book. What about equaling the amount of freedom and responsibility with being civilized. So, if you - like one of my coworkers - eat, eat, eat and eat all day. She is fat, I tell you. And then - no excercise. Zero. Nada. Nothing. And then cigarettes. And then you go there and tell me it is civilized that I'm taxed higher to pay for her doctor, so I don't have money for my kid's school supplies? Nice. Very civilized. And where is her responsibility here? And where is my freedom to spend money on what I want, not what you want, my coworker wants, or the Government wants? What happened with this in our civilization?
>Anyway it takes $X to provide those services privately or via taxes, or the govt at an overhead cost of Y*$X will provide those services by taking extra money from everyone else and redistributing from each according their ability and to each according to their need.
And we know it doesn't work. 20 years after communism failed there are still people who believe that you can run economy on a premise of Marxist "redistributing from each according their ability and to each according to their need. " Again, go back to your history books. Don't listen to me. Even hard core communists like Slavoj Zizek will tell you that economically that didn't and can't work.
>The "welfare queen" in this situation is the service station, getting labor hours at a below civilization market cost.
And what is "civilization market cost" ? 1usd/hr? 2usd/hr? 50usd/hr? 1000usd/hr ? Can you define this nonsense?
> Essentially the welfare queen service station is stealing money from me as a taxpayer rather than paying their employees a legitimate fair wage.
If there wasn't welfare state, nobody would be taking money from you.
>This is the well known "walmart effect" where poverty increases when walmart moves in, because the employees are below poverty line so the net effect is negative on .gov and the residents of that .gov who know have to pay higher taxes so Sam Walton's heirs can become richer, all while being told this is fairness, capitalism style.
Why these people work at WalMart? Because they couldn't find a better job! So WalMart is doing the a favor because without WalMart they would have ended up at even more shitty job. And shitty jobs are good. I had one - was sorting out garbage. Once you do that type of job, you'll learn how to move up, without any stupid Government program. And if you stay at that level. It's 20% of the poorest. Why would you rather screw it for the 80%, to have it better for 20%. And then the 20% would be still poor too. That's what communism taught us. Everybody became poor. They made everyone equal. In their poverty.
>Why should I as a 3rd party be impoverished to make a rich welfare queen business owner richer, because a welfare queen business owner doesn't feel like paying his employees what has been determined to be a fair minimum wage?
Nobody told you to vote for leftist welfare programs. If you voted for them, yeah, you need to pay for them. I know sucks, to have people voting for that nonsense that cost me money too bro, so we're in it together.
>I legitimately and legally and ethically earn enough income to pay enough taxes to pay my share of national defense; why should I have to chip in more than my share because some welfare queen business owner isn't competent enough to match my level of business skill and pay his fair share of taxes via paying his workers a fair wage?
What is fair wage? 5usd/hr? 10usd/hr? 50usd/hr? Is it fair when a guy cleaning WalMar makes as much as software developer? You think?
>Your more fundamental failure is not recognizing that when .gov and .com merge, as they've done globally, a marketing game of divide and conquer makes losers out of people fighting on either side. The goal is the destruction of the middle classes globally. They're winning. Some countries are trying a PR campaign where .com and .gov merge and pretend .gov is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon, and some countries have a PR campaign where .com ang .gov merge and pretend .com is in the drivers seat of the prison wagon. However, if you're the guy in the prison wagon at the start of a real world "skyrim" game do you really care about which PR campaign is superior and who's pretending to drive that prison wagon?
This what you describe, this merge, is a very fascinating topic indeed. But its proper name is fascism (or corporationism as Duce called it), not capitalism. So, I'm afraid you might be barking at a wrong tree here. Let me give you example here: it were few Republicans, Tea Party sympathizers who voted against big banks bail-outs. All Democrats and rest of the Republicans voted for the fascist state where banks and the Government are in bed together. But not people who are by the left called the 'extreme right'. Tea Party and others, who believe in capitalism, have been and will always be against bank bailouts, or special treatment to big corps. They believe in free market economy and honest competition. If banks have to go bankrupt, let them. That's what capitalist would do. And we all know how left voted on this.
You keep repeating that socialism doesn't work. In the period 1928 - 1934 the socialist USSR went from an agrarian country, devastated by wars to world's second industrial power. Sent the first satellite into space, first man, first space station. To this date the socialist build russian space industry is the best in the world. USSR has made a huge amount of contributions in science as well. Other socialist countries - e.g. Bulgaria - have enjoined rapid increase in industrial output, standard of living and literacy rates when going from capitalism to socialism.
It doesn't work in terms of making live of a regular person better. Your argument is akin to saying North Korea is a better place to live than Germany because North Korea can put satellites on the orbits and develop nuclear weapons. Surely it must be more advanced! In some ways, I'm sure it is, but my question to you is this: at what cost? 30 milion dead to indutrialize USSR. That was the cost. In communism individual is nothing. They will sacrifice millions on the alter of having this industrialization done.
Bulgaria example: all satellite countries in the soviet block, and I underline again all of them, were developing more slowly and had much, much worse living conditions than their Western counter-parts at all time from 1945 forwards. Just compare Eastern to Western Germany. So, don't rewrite history, communism was one that made people sick of the poverty and revolt in Eastern Europe.
On the other hand, I agree with you, that post 1989 Eastern Europe is developing slower than we would have hoped for. However, in mu humble opinion, and that's just opinion, this is because of following still socialism. Free housing, free healthcare, free this and that. People in Eastern Europe live in socialist not capitalist states. Moreover, more often than not, the "capitalization" process done by "liberals" in Eastern Europe was just simply stealing the whole industries by ex-communistic elites together with guys who are currently in power. These are very corrupt states. I like to compare my own country - Poland - to Mexico. You know Mexico has had "capitalism" for a long time. But it is not a real capitalism. People there believe in free stuff, they vote for free stuff, and they don't like or trust free market economy. This causes corruption which in turn makes them permanently poor. I think Eastern Europe is a bit like Latin America. They don't have true capitalism but some kind of a corrupt states that just failed. Adding EU socialism on top of that kind of pushes things in the right direction in my opinion - from post-communistic mentality towards more modern, western, socialists - but it is still socialism.
"And what is "civilization market cost" ? 1usd/hr? 2usd/hr? 50usd/hr? 1000usd/hr ? Can you define this nonsense?"
I would start as a first guess at minimum wage, or maybe the .gov definition of living in poverty. I'm not entirely sure what the problem with the equivalent of an amusement part "you must be this tall" sign is. We certainly permit it with real estate prices, where extensive zoning and regulation mean you must have a certain minimal level of productivity to live somewhere... why not the similar concept of a certain minimal level of productivity to work somewhere?
The walmart effect is they move in and 99% as a group end up net poorer while the 1% gets richer.
Maybe another way to put it, is someone with "enough" income provides for all their needs. Being allowed to pay someone less than their needs doesn't mean they magically just don't get their needs, thats why we call them needs. We just end up with a bloated .gov infrastructure to very inefficiently transfer tax money from more successful individuals to the poorer individuals. Its not like you're planning to starve them to death, are you? Either implement a bloated inefficient bureaucracy to steal from the slightly more successful or face outright revolution.
Take a macro view. Imagine walmart opens and collapses local labor rates for some employees below "the minimum". The next effect is walmart makes more money and .gov bureaucracy makes more money because now I pay more taxes so their kids can still attend public school, I pay more taxes for their emergency room medical care they're still going to receive, just more expensively than the care I get, etc. So the only winners in this scenario are the cheapskate welfare queen business owner who's not paying his fair share, and .gov bureaucracy middlemen who supervise stealing more of my money so the poor folks still get the same services. I'd rather walmart not open and the parasites get less money and everyone is basically richer because of it.
Your example of the coworker with the ridiculous lifestyle is spurious. You already pay her Dr bill. Its just we waste a lot of money on for profit middlemen. The other reason lifestyle is spurious is she's already being punished pretty severely, first of all she's sick which is no fun, and secondly she'd going to die young and capital punishment, however delayed, is already pretty harsh. We exist in an economic system where in addition to those two fun results she can also become impoverished which screws up her family horribly raising .gov costs even more for the rest of us, but one thing is certain that getting rid of middlemen and turning health care into a regulated utility can't possibly cost any more than it already does. Thats the point I simply don't understand about opposition to some form of socialized medicine... you're not avoiding paying $100 for her doctor bill, you're just paying $500 when she goes to the ER for treatment, and with a civilized system you'd be paying $50 because of lack of profit motive and lack of middlemen. So you're not talking about a net loss of $100 because she gets care, but a net savings of $450 because she gets better cheaper care instead of the existing "free ER" system, and you get better care because she's not clogging up the ER when you actually need the ER... Win win all around, except for the parasites and middlemen who like being parasites under the current system.
> The company says, it has to pay you $5 per hour or they couldn't employ you and it isn't even lying. You say, you can't work for a wage below $10 per hour and your reasons for this are valid, too.
The price of labor just like any other price in the free market economy is determined by supply & demand. So they need you for $5/hour. You know you are worth (i.e. can easily get) the same job for $10/hour. The capitalistic/free market way of this to work out is that you go working for 10usd/hour this way rewarding competent guys who can built cars with profit to pay you your rate and at the same time penalizing incompetent company that can't build cars with profit. At the end this means the incompetent company should go bankrupt and resources it was holding hostage - workers, machinery, real estate, steel that they used, etc, etc. can be bought on cheap via bankruptcy process by competent companies that will put all of that to better use.
That's actually what should happen in 2008 with the banks. The incompetent banks that were lending all this risky money to guys without checking if they can ever repay, should go bankrupt - Citi, GoldMan, you name it. Then via baknruptcy process they would free up a lot of workforce, a lot of bank branches, office space, etc. to be bought by competent banks on the cheap (it's bankruptcy after all) and put it all to better use. 3/4th bank from Ohio - its CEO - knew about the housing bubble in advance. He was cautious. If we allowed the market forces to work he - a competent banker - would be the one who would buy on cheap / take over assets of incompetent morons like Paulson ex-CEO from Goldman. That's how free market economy works. This transition period - when people loose their jobs, etc due to incompetent morons CEOs - is horrible. But the things get reassigned and after some time people find work at competent banks that make sense. Instead, we got Paulson and other incompetent loosers convince the Government that they - incompetent CEOs - should be bailed out by tax-money. They told a few fairies about the end of the world that will happen for sure if they go bankrupt. The same was repeated by politicians and TV talking heads. And here we go - competent banker is taxed to pay to incompetent bankers do they can do the same mistakes all over again. Just one thing - please don't call this motrosity capitalism. It isn't.
when rich pay taxes to support poor - socialism.
when poor pay taxes to support rich - feudalism.
The monster that is emerging its head worldwide is neo-feudalism, not socialism or capitalism. That's why political parties, or political ideologies lost sense and touch with reality some time ago. They try to explain the world that they have no tools to explain - feudal world.
feudalism was destroyed by capitalistic revolution (French revolution) which in turn was questioned (not destroyed) by socialist revolution called Bolshevik revolution. The cycle begins from the start again, next in turn in morphed feudalism. And this system is to be addressed by the values of the French Revolution AND Capitalistic Ideology. Socialist world of politics that we live in has no good answers to the threat of neo-feudalism. The answer to neo-feudalism is in capitalism.
Just saying. Would love to see a Revolution with people reovolting against their feudal masters (the 1%).
Added to my above comment:
"For clarification sake I'm saying that the mass of people at the bottom of an organization can have demands that conflict with the survival of the business. It's good that there are smart people who fought their way up the bureaucracy through a meritocracy. They generally won't make a decision that will obviously drive a company straight into the dirt while this is distinct risk in unions with entitlement issues."