FACEBOOK DEBATES
FINDING A NEW LANGUAGE TO DISCUSS ECONOMICS
So I posted a link to an article on facebook that I posted here on Thursday. You never can tell who's going to come out to play on facebook, and the link got a nice mix of liberals and conservatives who all apparently disagreed with me completely. Indeed, they didn't even appear to understand what I was talking about with my opening remark right before the link.
Here, check it all out:
RonaldNote how none of my comments got any "likes," but the comments asserting the conventional wisdom on the value of labor relative to capital did get a few, with the most "liked" comment getting seven clicks, one of which was my older brother. It is very important to observe that this well "liked" comment is really just a standard right-wing talking point conflating the interests of big business with small business ownership. Well, okay. Compounding matters, my old school chum, James, who is definitely a liberal, didn't seem to get the point of the linked essay.
I've been saying for a few years now in regards to incessant right-wing whining about the evils of "redistribution" that the real redistribution takes place when an employee is first hired. That is, employers essentially dictate what your wage will be, no negotiation, take it or leave it, without any regard to the actual amount of wealth you create on the job. And it's a rigged game: go to a similar company across the street and it's the same thing, fixed wages that wildly undervalue the work you do.
Who says capitalists should get to call all the shots just because they put up the financing? I mean, without labor, all their capital is just paper and a bunch of useless crap.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/24/beyond-loser-liberalism/
Like · · Unfollow Post · Share · Yesterday at 1:19am.
Stephen So, what you're saying is that you are unfamiliar with the demand curve.
Yesterday at 2:08am · Like.
Ronald I think the "labor market" is to a great extent nothing more than a construct designed to bolster the position that labor is worthless relative to capital.
Yesterday at 2:11am · Like.
Stephen If it were worthless, slavery would be back in fashion. It has value, therefore it is remunerated.
Yesterday at 2:12am · Like.
Ronald Stephen, there are more people in slavery today than at any other point in human history:
https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx?pid=301
Yesterday at 2:43am · Like · .
Stephen Sure, but not in the capitalist West. Only out there in nasty-brutish-and-short-land. It is still widespread wherever the bane of mohammedanism holds sufficient sway to retard the progress of Mankind, along with beating women who drive and hanging homosexuals from construction cranes.
Yesterday at 2:59am · Like · 1.
Eric Get a degree and call the shots yourself or go across the street and work for the other guy
Yesterday at 4:52am · Like · 1.
Robin So I took the job at the wage they dictated. I did a great job and I got more wages. I saved as much as I could for as long as I could and kept doing a great job. I kept getting more wages... 20 years later I took the money I saved for so long and I opened my own business. Now I'm the "dictator". I employ 130 people, I fight with federal and state government every day and am constantly at risk of losing my business (my 20 years of saving) due to pretty much anything (happy to elaborate if you want but it would be long). If I lose my business, 130 people lose their jobs. I have no degree. I went to work for someone that took care of me. I am an employer that takes care of their employees. If you are unhappy with your situation, change it (or negotiate based on what you have to offer, not what you think you are worth). Go across the street. Don't expect the government to change it for you; if that's what you want then you are living in the wrong country. Sorry for the rant but I'm just an everyday person who gets peeved when somebody else says I should be doing something different when I'm doing all I can to just stay in business and provide a good, stable job.
Yesterday at 8:27am · Like · 7.
Bradley Ron, I don't think your comment matches the article, and I'm pretty sure the comments on this thread are a reaction to your post. From the fact that I'm pro-choice and a supporter of single-payer health insurance, I accept the label of liberal as a result, but I find myself agreeing with Eric, Robin, and Stephen's first post in this case. I had limited support from my mother in college, but I mostly paid for it by working 30-35 hours per week. My grades suffered (partly) as a result of that, but I got our with fairly low debt. I took a job in a bead store (yes, a bead store) at $6 per hour and worked my way to manager in two years by making valuable contributions and doing what others couldn't or wouldn't do. I managed to save $3,000 working for $8 per hour after three years and started my own business. I didn't have Robin's success, but I was my own boss and ended my business on my own terms, free of debt, with plenty of savings. Be the ball. On the other hand, Stephen's assertion about slavery is wrong. If labor had no value, buying and feeding slaves wouldn't make sense.
Yesterday at 9:51am · Like · 1.
James agrees with Bradley above. Comments like that from Robin seem to be more in reaction to Ron's statement, not to the article which makes a completely different point (a very good one) about the hypocrisy of corporate welfare.
Interesting that the free market keeps the wages of some jobs considerably higher than the minimum required by law, yet labor law (what's left of it anyway) keeps the wages and conditions of other jobs considerably higher than what a "free" market would allow. All of us are fortunate to at least live in an era when the Fair Labor Standards Act still exists. Stories like that of Robin and Bradley wouldn't be nearly as common without it.
Yesterday at 12:34pm · Like.
Ronald Go back and re-read the section on unions and how the government rigs the system in favor of capital. That's what I was commenting on, and I think my conclusions are in keeping with that.
Yesterday at 3:36pm · Like.
Ronald Further, the labor market is global. Consequently, the 27 million people in slavery today DEFINITELY push wages down everywhere. Indeed, a lot of that human trafficking is here in the US.
Yesterday at 3:38pm · Like.
Ronald Also, nobody has commented on the fact that capital without labor is nothing, and therefore labor is wildly undervalued. Going to college, working hard, none of this changes that fact.
Yesterday at 3:39pm · Like.
Ronald Finally, the whole point here isn't to change the overall system of compensation; rather, it is to say that the entire way of thinking about wages, benefits, and quality of work is utterly flawed, which means the government HAS to intervene with higher taxes on the capital class, health care, and other social welfare programs.
Yesterday at 3:54pm · Like.
Ronald A couple more thoughts. @James: Needless to say I got something completely different out of the article. It's title, "Beyond Loser Liberalism," is about rejecting the notion that liberalism concerns helping out the losers in our economic system. Rather, the article asserts, liberalism concerns redressing "the actions (government) takes to determine the initial distribution" of wealth in our society. That is, government, owned and operated by the rich, artificially creates a playing field that is unfair, unequal, and unreasonable from the get-go, a playing field that massively favors the rich. Indeed, I don't even know where you got the notion that corporate welfare - direct governmental payments and tax breaks for corporations - has anything to do with this essay--I mean, sure, it's a part of the puzzle here, but not the main topic.
4 hours ago · Like.
Ronald @Robin and Brad: I'm very sympathetic to your plight as small business owners, so I have to point out that you guys don't have lobbyists, don't own politicians through massive donations to PACs and whatnot, and don't generally have much say in how the overall economic playing field functions. This means I'm not really talking about you. Okay, I am talking about you in the abstract, in terms of labor/capital relationships, but the point is that you're not causing all the inequality; you're just trying to swim in shark infested waters playing by the rules as they exist. But wouldn't it be nice if government paid for your employee's health care instead of you? Wouldn't it be nice if your employees had free day care for their children while they're at work? If they could go to college for free? If they had mortgage or housing assistance? All kinds of stuff that you, as employer just wouldn't have to worry about, or spend money on. Wouldn't it be nice if YOU had access to all that stuff, too?
Like I said upthread, the point is not to start over from scratch, to create a new calculus about the value of labor relative to capital, but rather to allow the government to repair the savage inequalities of capitalism with all that "redistribution" Fox News hates.
BTW, a recent study indicates that we can go as high as a 75% tax rate on the super rich before it starts to interfere with how well the economy functions. So we really can do this. We've always been able to do this:
http://mnpublius.com/post/13213489179/the-optimal-tax-rate-for-the-super-rich-76-percent
3 hours ago · Like
I've learned something here: the existing intellectual structures, the language of how we discuss economics, if you will, essentially assume the perspective of the capitalist so intensely that it is virtually impossible to discuss or criticize the underlying assumptions of capitalism without being utterly misunderstood.
I mean, the statement "capital without labor is nothing" is, at face value, completely non-controversial--you gotta have workers or the work won't be done and no money will be made. My intention in making such a statement was to justify taxing the rich and using it for social welfare programs, asserting that such programs aren't so much "redistribution" as a way to address the fact that labor is wildly undervalued. And, of course, to make a better, more livable society that serves to uplift its entire population instead of the privileged few. But nobody understood this. Indeed, if I understand correctly, these people think I'm a crazy Marxist or something.
So this discussion was a non-starter.
I'm thinking that there has to be a way to jump into such discussions without invoking knee-jerk pro-capitalist responses. But I wonder if that's even possible right now, that capitalist indoctrination is so strong and pervasive that people might not be able to even consider criticizing it as an economic system. On the other hand, Occupy Wall Street, in only a couple of months, managed to introduce the term "wealth inequality" to a public discourse that eight weeks earlier would have treated such a concept as absolute absurdity.
Maybe it's just a matter of getting people used to different ideas. That is, even if what I and other critics of capitalism have to say is immediately dismissed, there might be some long term value in simply exposing people to different ways of thinking. I should be patient.
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