Indeed. The very fact of capitalism allowed certain workers to receive such high wages, but the very fact of capitalism punished this wage because it was above market rate for the service rendered. It had nothing to do with 'exploitation.' In fact I think you or any Marxist would have a difficult time explaining exploitation as a notion.

Ok Equivalnce, lets think about this for a moment. Inferior products usually cost less money than higher quality products. Indeed, you get what you pay for. When a company sells a lower quality problem they can command, or ask such a lower price than the higher quality product. So to be able to sell something they lower the price. To lower the price the company has to lower costs. Since the American cars quality was lower, or perceived to be lower, the markets did not think that American cars were worth their asking price. Now if the car companies lower their prices then demand increases. Now look at the situation of the American car companies, their costs include electric bill, automotive supplies and labor costs. The average wage labor totality for the American Unionized worker came out to about $75 an hour. The foreign car company's cost was about $40-45 an hour. That is a massive difference in cost for the different companies. The reason of the difference is the unions demanding the higher wage. These wages became what are known as sticky prices or sticky wage. Thus this high labor cost tied the hands of the American car companies to lower the price of their cars because they still had to cover costs. The breakdown of cost of a Car is mostly supplies and labor, design is a much smaller percentage of cost.


Saya, there were way too many assumptions and a lack of coherent thought for me to even see what the point of your post was.

You're so far off the mark, it's hilarious.

And Alan isn't a Marxist.

Yea that didn't even make sense.

Starting off your argument with a complete oxymoron isn't a good technique...

Let's.

This is true.

However, I want to preemptively point out that the inverse, that products that usually cost less are inferior, isn't necessarily true.

I think you've misunderstood my argument. When I say "cheaper-by-design", I mean that the Asian cars cost less material supplies to build than American cars (remember, you said that the car's cost is mostly supplies and labor). I am saying that I believe Asian cars were designed to be cheaper to build than American cars, and therefore the difference in wages wouldn't matter.

Also, Asian cars could have theoretically been sold at a lower profit margins than American cars, which would increased demand (lower prices = greater demand, by your own words), and make up for the difference. If I sell 10, $21,000 cars at $1,000 profit, I will make the exact same than the person who sells 2 cars at $25,000 for $5,000 profit.

The car companies mostly purchase their supplies from the same suppliers, the biggest difference to the cost of a car to the company producing it is the labor costs.

The high price of American unionized labor paralyzed the American car companies from responding to market forces.

So then, high wages are something bad for capitalism, right? So Joker was right.

The problem with American cars lately, is that they produce shit.
You copy a Volvo shittily, make it bigger and stick a Cadillac badge on it, doesn't make it luxury, it makes it expensive shit.

U.S. Car Manufacturers need to get with the times or get rolled over. Ford only survived because Ford Europe have been producing best sellers like the Focus ST and the Focus RS.

How does the meager $75 an hour an auto worker makes compare with the paycheck of a CEO or a marketer or the president of a corporation? Marketing research, advertising and so on take a bigger chunk out of profits than paying workers.

It IS exploitational to tell the people who are producing the goods that are making the profit for the company that they aren't entitled to the money they create. There are plenty of places that money could be cut back in order to keep the cost of the product low- including the ammount of money that the owner takes home. But, then again, that would defeat the purpose of capitalism.

Not necessarily. If the company then invest that amount of money into the company again, they can increase production, or R&D or any of the myriad of options that on the whole increase the capital they acquire until the next fiscal year, thus progressing capitalism. ...of course, then the CEO can grab some of THAT money to increase his income over the years, at a slower rate though but he probably gains more that way anyway.

Nope. High wages are good insofar as they aren't over market prices. If the business can sustain the high wage then all the better for them. A auto worker making $45/hour is still a good wage for a job that requires no education. Capitalism promotes high wages since it values good labor and is willing to pay for better quality workers.

I don't know how much you make a year, but $75 an hour is a very very good wage for a job that requires no education. Comparing the CEO with the unskilled worker is a silly comparison, one will probably at least have a masters degree from a prestigious university.

It is not exploitation because the workers don't make any profit. They merely provide a service which is paid with a wage. The owners provide the capital, the factory and take all the risk on. There are employee-owned companies as well so that doesn't necessarily defeat the purpose of capitalism.

Exactly, and then GM decides to shut down Saturn. Terrible idea, some of the longest running cars I've seen are Saturns. And they get great gas mileage, and are mechanically strong. My Dad owns one.

America's hayday for cars was the late 60's early 70's, when muscle ruled all.

Complete bullshit. Look at the real world instead of just using rhetoric like an Austrian school capitalist.
Average wages keep decreasing while profits keep increasing, and more and more companies that didn't outsource their jobs still work under a structure in which all workers are rotated in less than a decade because it's cheaper and more efficient to hire and underpay unskilled workers who would settle for much less than they're worth, will adjust to their jobs in an analogous level to skilled workers in a couple of years, and will work under the fear of being fired rather than on the ambition of getting a raise based on seniority.
That right there is a huge profit for the company. It's one of the best methods to reduce costs. Why would they give a shit about the workers then?

Where are you getting this information from?

The only reason I ask, is because you have changed your argument three times now (twice in the same paragraph). First you said the majority of a car's cost came from the quality of a car. Then you said that the majority came from supply costs and autoworkers. Now you're saying it's just autoworkers.

It may be a great wage, but it's nowhere near the ammount that the trust-fund babies and inheritors of the factory make for doing almost nothing in comprison to the labor put into the product by the workers.

To get into a "prestigious university" you have to have money in the first place. Why should they get payed more because they started life out on the better end of an uneven playing field? It's not as though these auto workers have always been payed $75 an hour- the unions had to fight to get there. That's CLASS WARFARE.

The end result of forming a union is to collectivise the factory. The workers should be able to make decisions regarding production, rather than answering to the demands of a boss who is only there to make a profit off of their labor.

Ok, so I guess I just shouldn't complain when my boss is racking in the bucks from MY labor, but he pays the guy who yells at me to work harder a higher salary and 10% of all of the profits I make for doing nothing but making me work harder for less wages, and then the boss sits on his profits... worrying that he can't feed his kids or pay the electric bill?

As for the argument of worker-owned buisinesses, the point of capitalism is to make as much money as possible regardless of who you step on to get to the top. Wal-mart started out as something kind of great. It was a local buisiness that was lucky enough to branch out, and until a point it advertised everything as being made in America. Then all of a sudden, Ronald Reagan comes along right when Walton's kids inherit the chain, and there's tons of cheap labor overseas. It's not the fault of the labor in America being more expensive becuase of labor unions and at least a feigned attempt at caring about American citizens' human rights- it's a fault in capitalism, especially globalized, corporate capitalism. You said that you think the problems in capitalism are caused by government intervention? You haven't been paying attention.

If worker-owned buisinesses are collectivised, that's great. Everyone has a democratic say in what happens in production, and the distibution of wages is also discussed and voted on by the workers. But if the point of the whole operation is to create as much money as possible for one or two owners, at the expense of the workers who have little to no control over their situation, it is, by nature, exploitational.

Nope, I haven't said that at all. Read my print, I have consistently said labor costs are the majority cost factor.

Your post doesn't prove to be true because the entire history of of the past 150 years supports my view. Worker wages are the highest they have ever been, a median American worker in the 50s had to work a substantial amount of time longer to purchase a burger than the median American worker does now. The history of economics simply doesn't support your views.

Um...

Now, the first sentence may just be poor understanding on my part. However, you've changed your story at least twice. Which brings me back to my original point:

Where are you getting this information from?

Alright, there is alot of nonsense and mostly rhetoric here, but I'll try my best to get around it.

So you make the contention that you have to have money to get into the Prestigious universities. That simply isn't the case, we live in a meritocracy, not an aristocracy. Obama did not come from a rich background and he graduated from a very good school I'd say. Furthermore if you have the grades most ivy leagues will give you a free ride. The problem of not affording prestigious universities is simply not applicable anymore. Between the massive student loans and FAFSA grants available, not to mention the free rides that schools give to talented students really makes your point trivial if not outright obsolete.

Next, this notion of class warfare rest on Marxist notions of 'class consciousness' which is very problematic and suffers from some deep epistemic issues.

The actual purpose of a union isn't to 'collective' the factory, that is called stealing. Unions merely exist to put labor in a position of power when negotiating wages and contracts.

The notion that because you, the worker, made the product makes your inherently deserve more money is nonsense. You provide a service, that is to make the product. There is no metaphysical connection between you and the product. Its not like the steel created by steelworkers is somehow inherently connected to the workers. Its just a product that they create, a product that the workers did not provide for the capital or efforts necessary to even give the worker a job.

'You said that you think the problems in capitalism are caused by government intervention? You haven't been paying attention.'

I'd actually say you haven't been paying attention. It is government intervention within the free-market that created the conditions for an inflated market that led to unnatural, insofar as the freemarket wouldn't have done it, levels of risk. Because the government subsidized many risks in the market, the corporations took on levels of risk they normally would not have taken on.

The point of capitalism from the supply side is for everyone to make as much money as possible. A company wants to hire the very much worker money can buy as long as it is within cost constraints.

Nope, I can introduce some logic into your problem of reading my post.

Supplies make up a portion of costs -- True
Labor makes up a portion of costs -- True

S ^ L together is a true statement. I haven't been inconsistent.

I have to look up some facts about the car costs. I remember reading the breakdown of a average GM car cost when the companies were receiving bailout funds. I'll look it up and get back to you on that.

Actually, you have been.

Your argument originally was,

Cost = Quality
Q = Labour * Supplies

Then it was,

S + L = C whereas S + L > Design whereas S ≈ L

Now it is,

C = S + L whereas L > S

Either way, this is arguing pure sophistry. You said that supplies and labor made up the majority of the cost of the car, and then you said that only labor made up the majority cost of the car.

Compare: "[sic] is mostly supplies and labor", with "[sic] the biggest difference to the cost of a car to the company producing it is the labor costs".

I await your reply on where you received your information.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You really think that Ivy League schools will give you a free ride just because you have good grades?!

First of all, there are fewer and fewer entry level jobs- you can have a job that requires a degree and still make minimum wage. This means that more and more people who can't afford to live like you're supposed to be able to in a first world democracy are trying to go to school (or stay in school longer), and there's no way all of those people are going to get a scholarship. Grades-based scholarships are almmost obsolete- you have to have a perfect 4.0 along with having done a shit-ton of community service, which no one who has to take a job to help support his or her family while still completing highschool can be expected to acheive.

There are a lot of reasons why many working class and working poor kids still can't get into college, even though a general degree is becoming more and more neccesary for survival.

Trade Unionism is class warfare. Negotiating wages and so are are just steps in the ultimate goal of expropriation to the collective of workers, or what you call "stealing". Collectivism is the desired result of trade unionism.

I'm not arguing a metaphysical connection, and the last half of your post is bullshit that doesn't even address the arguments I brought up, much less have basis in reality, but here it goes.

Innitially, yes, the owner provided the capital for the means of production and for the steel, in the case of your example. But once the labor of the workers, who were not in a position to start a company in the first place, brings in enough money to make the investment profitable, what claim does the owner have? The workers know their factory better than anyone. They would be just as qualified to make descisions for the factory, if not more, than the boss who has already made back his or her contribution, which was nothing more than supplying the means of production, and as little possible a wage for the workers as he or she can manage.

From the Open Door Policy to NAFTA, please, I would love to hear how unregulated globalism has ever been anything but an anal-r ape fest.

Everyone CAN'T make as much money as possible unless you're a socialist- for everyone to make as much money as possible, everyone would have to make about the same.

Once again, sorry about the belated reply, I've been busy.

This actually surprised the hell out of me, I didn't think you had it in you Jill. Apology accepted.

But to continue this, need I remind you, it's not my logic, it's the logic of your argument, which was clearly broken. Previously in this thread you seemed to be claiming something like it at every turn, that is until:

I agree! However, until this statement this seemed to be the crux of your argument. Now that you have agreed that our behavior is more complex than the systems we cleave to, we can move on.

Insult /= Ad Hominem it is a fallacy of irrelevance, I was not arguing that you were wrong because you were irrational, I'd already made a very strong case for you being wrong without it. You were attempting to make Ad-Hominem attacks on my position as to why you were wrong about capitalism by trying to draw me into a political discussion where I would be forced to defend my own political beliefs, which I'm sure you presumed would be unable to do and thus be proved a hypocrite/politically ignorant and therefore wrong, when in fact, the fact that I like representational democracy is of little relevance to the discussion at hand.

I was very clearly employing hyperbola to poke fun at this assertion:

hence the "Yadda Yadda"

But lets get back to your main argument: that all goodness a capitalist has, comes in spite of his capitalism, like a good slaveowner, dictator, or feudal lord. Thus, it is implied, if one supports capitalism on the grounds that capitalism works if the employer and employee engage in fair practices, one should be a fan of benevolent dictatorships etc. ie: Why support a bad system on the grounds that good people make use of it, why support feudalism because of King Arthur?

(For the purposes of this discussion I'm going to ignore the fact that I disagree with the prevailing assertion here, that capitalism is inherently exploitative.)

This is actually a straw man argument. Once again, it is a fallacy of irrelevance. I would argue that slavery is indefensible because it is the ownership of another human being, and thus, unethical on the grounds that it violates anothers inalienable right to liberty. I would argue against benevolent dictatorship and a feudal system for the simple fact that these systems both lack sufficient protection against abuse (interestingly enough, this is also why I argue against Anarchism) even with a benevolent leader, this system will inevitably descend into malevolence as we cannot guarantee that leader and/or those who come after him will continue this behavior.

Now this point might hold water if we were arguing about anarcho-capitalism, a completely unfettered free market, but we're not. No one in this thread has argued for that, nor did the original poster present that as his idea of capitalism. We're not using capitalism in the totally unregulated sense, and thus, Jillian's argument: capitalism is only saved by socialism, thus a mixed economy is a bad idea is totally irrelevant.

This is part of why I have called Alan "irrational" and a big part of why I have given him so much shit over the years: He is a fundamentalist not in the religious sense, but he approaches economic politics with an irrational religious-esque zeal. He equates morality with the system he argues for, and thus, sees no problem with removing all government-imposed restrictions from society, because once people think like he does, they will all be moral, and everything will be fine.

Saya has echoed this sentiment in a big old post a little later in the thread, arguing:

Folks, This kind of thought is a huge part of what is what is wrong with the world. This extremism, this zealotry, be it religious, political, or social, be it dedicated to human equality, animal compassion, or social morality, thinking like this robs otherwise normal people of their rationality. It turns normal, rational minds in upon themselves and you get reactions like this:

And that, unchecked, will usually lead to bloodshed.

I am hardly a fundamentalist; especially when as an anarchist I have been arguing for simple socialism, regardless of which socialism it is, in this argument.
What you say about capitalism and complete market capitalism and mixed economy might look like you have a point. Here' I mean to this part:
"We're not using capitalism in the totally unregulated sense, and thus, Jillian's argument: capitalism is only saved by socialism, thus a mixed economy is a bad idea is totally irrelevant."

But I still fail to see why you point out to a society that stops exploitation by limiting capitalism (i.e. mixed economy) as a reason to keep capitalism. What redeeming factor does capitalism have that makes you not want more socialism and less capitalism? Why not bring back things like radical trade unionism which was responsible for the adoption of the eight-hour workday and basic safety standards on the workplace, and whose destruction marked increasingly lower wages from 1919 to 1939, culminating in the depression?

I was not aware you were arguing only for socialism, regardless, if equating a simple theory on distribution of wealth with amorality isn't an example of fundamentalist thought, I don't know what is. It's kinda like when PETA members tell me that they believe meat is murder but it's okay if I eat meat: It's just neutered fundamentalism.

As I said previously, there are a number of benefits that properly controlled capitalism has for society. Healthy competition encourages exceptionalism and innovation by offering a reward for those who contribute more to society. If everyone recieves the same compensation for their work, regardless of it's quality or impact, there is far less incentive to strive for greatness and more to be content with mediocrity. Capitalism also provides a more organic way of deciding which contributions are more important. Does this always work in theory? No, of course not, as Gothicus already pointed out. That's why finding a healthy balance between capitalist and socialist economic theory is important: too much socialism and freedom and innovation are stifled, too much capitalism and the strong gain enough power to stifle the weak regardless of their work/potential.

As for trade unions, I must confess I am largely ignorant on them, but I find the basic theory to be agreeable to me.

Crap, I typed that reply on my iphone and just noticed that some of it might be easily misunderstood. Sorry, my bad.

This:

Should read as this:

Here's a quote by Karl Marx that destroys capitalism but still allows for individual incentive, because socialism does not need perfect equality:
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property”

Or you could quote Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and say: "Property is theft."

Or despanan could say: "That's fucking stupid."

And here we reach the real problem. Capitalism without private property is simply collectivism. But no part of this conversation has tried to justify private property. We haven't gone there yet and it's really what defines capitalism as it is.
So now that we're reaching the core of the problem, what's the justification for the existence of private property?
If you work a piece of land and you cultivate oranges, you sell those oranges, and the earnings really are rightfully yours. That's the fruit of your labor, literally. But now that you've sold your oranges and you're not working that land anymore, why would you still claim it as yours?

Are you just going to continue asking questions and jumping topics everytime I shut down an old argument, hoping that somewhere down the line I'll slip up?

Tell you what; I'll answer that question, and more I'll try my hardest to refrain from good old fashioned insults, and promise to keep my mockery to a minimum; when you admit that your capitalism/slavery/dictatorship argument was logically inconsistent.

Deal?

The point of that analogy is that we're justifying a system because of the benevolence of the people within the system and not because of anything in the system itself. If my argument didn't show this, then yeah, it's inconsistent, but you must have understood that much.
Consider it jumping topics if you might, and then I have lost everything else, but this right here is why I see capitalism as unjustifiable, so I wanna talk about it.

Well, I guess that's the best I'm gonna get.

My answer is yes (At least in most cases). You made the initial investment to buy that land. You took the financial risk upon yourself that working that land would be profitable. You dedicated years of your life to making that land what it is today. It wouldn't be fair for someone you don't know to come along and take you and your families livelihood without your consent simply because you were now too old to work, or had moved on to greener pastures. Where were they when you were breaking your back fertilizing the soil? Where were they when you were growing the trees? Where were they when your kids had to eat nothing but ramen for a month because the field had caught fire earlier that summer and you'd lost half your crop.

Business owners do way more than simply take out a loan and then sit back and rake in money off the sweat of their workers. Often they dedicate years, even lifetimes to building something. That deserves compensation.

I sincerely doubt Alan is discussing stripping small farmers of their homes.

Last I checked, he was primarily an Anarcho-Syndicalist, so if anything he would say that your small farmer or land owner should band together with the other, neighboring farmers and over throw whomever actually OWNS that land, such as the government or a large, wealthy and owner.

You mean like in the capitalist system today where farmers are told to get big or get out, lose their land to the banks when they can't afford mortages and have to sell their goods for less because of the monopoly of buyers?

I took it that why should you, after you are finished with the land, hold on to it? Whats the good of lets say owning a house and never setting foot into it? Or moving out and never returning? After the harvest is over and its all said and done, why do you own the land?

residual income

Jillian chose the small farm example, not me, presumably to back up his assertion that we should "abolish all private property" so unless he's working some angle I have yet to discern, I think he is arguing for abolishing all private property. Privately owned farms count as private property regardless of size.

I appreciate your candor guys, but this is an argument as to why the capitalist system is indefensible, not agriculture reform. Please don't complicate the discussion.

I am in fact arguing for an end to private property, as it is entirely arbitrary.
From what you said, here's the philosophical problem with it: it is still arbitrary. The outcome of the hard labor the person has made s expressed in the output of his work, not on the undeniable rights to a parcel of land he worked on once.
In the practical world, let's see how private property works out.
A manager pays a worker five dollars an hour. The worker's job is to produce forty dollars' worth of materials each hour. Isn't the worker paying the owner thirty five dollars for working for him? Here's where private property comes in. The argument says "well the owner owns the machines." But he keeps earning seven times as much from EACH worker's labor, and the financial risk for him is nowhere near as valuable as the total labor his employees give. Why is the owner permanently and geometrically rewarded for his initial input and yet the worker's constant input is not rewarded accordingly?
Or how about the fact that a landlord can raise the rent of his apartments for improvements the people living in them make? That person makes an effort to improve their living conditions. The value of the apartment is raised by it, and rent is raised accordingly; all just because the landlord claims an arbitrary right over that apartment beyond the reward of the initial risk.

Private ownership of the means of production is an idolatry to an arbitrary sense of merit that has no justification grounded in reality, and creates injustice.

I disagree. I currently work raising funds for Carnegie Hall's education and public outreach programs in New York. Between my commission and my hourly wage I earn about ten dollars an hour. I am expected to produce at least fifty dollars an hour in donations for Carnegie Hall (I usually do much more than that since I'm one of their best salesmen)

Now, my boss undoubtedly makes more than me. If I lacked perspective I might think that he's simply sitting in his office making money off my sweat and taking credit for my accomplishments. However, when you look at it from his perspective, He has to work there every day, day in, day out. He has to take the heat when our team doesn't produce, he has to work with the powers that be to ensure that we are given the leads that we need to produce, he has to handle all the shit that each of my co-works hand him, he has to deal with the office drama, and he has to handle the hiring and firing of employees. Now both me, and my boss are artists. He was an actor, and still performs sketch comedy. I am a playwright and poet, and I also still act. If I need to blow off a few shifts for an audition, or to perform in a show, everything doesn't go down the tubes, they just lose a few hundred dollars, if he blows off a shift they lose thousands because JP starts fucking around thinking he runs the office, myrtle spends her time trying to make sure she always gets the same chair, the people in development at the hall decide that they know better than we do and start wasting money on mailings that our patrons don't respond to, etc.

Unlike me, my boss has chosen to put his acting career on indefinite hold, in favor of being the force which organizes the fundraising arm of Carnegie Hall, I on the other hand, only help out as much as I can, and keep working on getting my plays finished and produced.

Would I like to be paid more? sure, but that would also mean less money that people donate to the cause of music education actually going to music education, and I'm fine with the meager amount that I make, so long as the job provides me with the freedom that I need. My boss has much more invested in that job than I ever will, and thus deserves a greater amount of compensation.

Thinking that a boss's salary is based upon arbitrary hierarchy is childish at best. It's like when you were a little kid and you figured: Man my parents have it great, all they do is tell me what to do! Except Joker is advocating that you and your brothers and sisters lock your parents out of the house because they're exploiting you as a room-cleaning work force.

All your argument is based around the idea that the world has it as good as you do, and your boss is the epitome of management.
Your justification is valid for talking only about you two, but if you believe that your boss gets paid rightly more because he works accordingly more, do you believe people that make a hundred times more than you work a hundred times more than you?
Do you realize that jobs that are much more important than yours and mine get paid a fucking joke because in this system businesses can get away with it? There hasn't been a point in history in which a just payment (hell, even a minimum payment) is the norm in capitalism.
So your argument is just based around your middle-class personal standard of living and unrealistic rationalizations that have proved not to be the case throughout history? I'd hardly call me the childish one here.

So the reason your boss deserves more money than you is because your coworkers are a bunch of mouth breathers who don't know how to do their fucking jobs?

I have it good? I work for ten dollars an hour for a non-profit, and can get less than 30 hours a week, in the most expensive city in the world. I can barely even make rent. Let alone pay for my lavish lifestyle (a bottle of cheap gin and one open mike night a week).

Yeah, I'm mister trust-fund moneybags.

So clearly, because some people are paid too much or too little for their actual contribution to society, my apartment should belong to "the people" right? 'cause that crackhead across the street is totally NOT allowed to sleep on my couch.

wait, what about minimum wage?...that's sort of the norm in most "capitalist" societies...unless you've gone all "yoda" again and started spouting word salad, or you're trying to argue against anarcho-capitalism which, as I've pointed out, is a straw-man.

Once again...I make barely $1,400 a month working for a non-profit, in a city where my rent is $1050 a month. I'm on food stamps. Which one of us thought about transferring to an ivy-league school and paying out $80-$100,000 just so they could bang a chick?

yeah I thought so.

No, my boss deserves more money because he has devoted years of his finite time on this planet to raising money for education instead of following his acting career.

speaking of which, what the hell is this "Just" payment you argue which has NEVAR occured before in the history of capitalism? Are you arguing that if I bring in $2000 dollars a week in donations, I should get paid $2000 dollars a week?

That'd be pretty sweet, though I think some donors would be pretty pissed if they found out that that "Education" fund was actually a "Get Desp Drunk an Laid" fund.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ten dollars an hour is NOT minimum wage over there, is it?
So you complain about earning 140% that of most low income class people living in the same most expensive city in the world?
A further argument below.



Obviously you can only argue your point with hyperbole, because that's how socialism works.



"What about minimum wage?"
Indeed, what about it?
A real minimum wage is not the norm in almost any part of the free-market world. And yet you bitch about how you don't have it good.
Not only is the pursuit of a minimum wage won by radical trade unionism consciously opposed to capitalism, and at the expense of thousands of workers' lives; but aside from that, you're being so fucking eurocentric right now.
The increasingly welfarist European states have decent wage standards and America has at least a minimum wage; therefore fuck the third world, main producer of prime materials, and the underclassed millions in America who must be doing something bad if their businesses still pay less than minimum wage - the "sort of norm in 'capitalist' societies"


Neither. Transferring from my university program with my GPA allowed me to pay the same thing in another college as mine for a year: 1,200.
But it's nice to know ad hominems are back on the table.

Thought what? You were wrong.



So I ask you again; if your argument is as stupidly simplistic as "he earns more because he works more," then someone who earns a hundred times what you earn works a hundred times what you work? Does it go viceversa?
Man! Those Braceros sure are fucking lazy, then!

Vaguely relevant to the thread.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5325/1258631563960.jpg

Argue against a mixed economy. That's what Despanan's arguing for, so it only makes sense for you to argue against a mixed economy rather than to keep diverting with "Yes but in this DIFFERENT application of capitalism..."

Who's complaining? My life is awesome, but that doesn't mean your critique of me as an "out of touch" middle class guy is valid. I'm FAR below the poverty line.

Oh and my base wage is 7.55, which IS minimum wage. I just happen to be able to average around Ten an hour because I'm really good at my job.


YES. THIS HAS CLEARLY BEEN MY ONLY MEANS OF ATTACK THIS ENTIRE TIME. MY STATUS AS A CUNNING LINGUIST IS THE ONLY REASON YOU HAVE FOUND YOURSELF SO THOROUGHLY LICKED.

Hyperbole aside, there are many different theories on socialist thought and it's application which DON'T involve Harlem's syphalitic drug addicts crashing with me on my couch. Just because some versions involve the abolishment of private property doesn't mean that this is a good idea, nor does this being "How socialism works" do anything for your case that capitalism is entirely without merit.

What JCC said. Arguing against third world economies is a straw-man. I'm not endorsing Argentina's uber-capitalistic economy. Why do you find it so hard to stay on topic? For that matter, why do you keep avoiding my direct questions? It's not helping dude.


Once again, pointing out hipocracy is only ad hominime if the argument is saying/implying you're WRONG because of it. You know, like this:

Now, I could continue this "poorer than thou" dickwaving contest, but as I've pointed out, it really doesn't apply to this argument: that capitalism is entirely without merit (which Jillian, so far, has done a massively inadequate Job of arguing for) Lets just agree that we're both super poor dudes with mad working class street cred and go back to using our university educated minds to spend multiple hours a day arguing theoretical economics on the internets.

That was never my argument, so stop pretending it was. My argument was that your claim that salaries in a "capitalist" economy were "arbitrary" or "based on hierarchy" there are many factors which go into a persons salary, which I have shown. I am not arguing that all salaries are deserved all the time, nor am I implying that inequalities are not present. Besides, aren't you supposed to be arguing for the abolition of property? What the fuck does how much a person makes per hour even have to do with that?

leave the hyperbole to those who are good at it. Everyone here knows you don't have a sense of humor, so quit pretending otherwise.

Oh shit...Guys, I'm sorry I said Jillian wasn't funny; I just read this sentence outloud with the punctuation:


Seriously, read it to yourselves outloud... I just spit tea out my nose...