Ooooh I see I've been elevated to socialist of the month. Don't worry pretenders you'll get the crown back - though being female helps I'm sure! :lol: A story about 'them' and 'they'. Once upon a time a long time ago, there was an industrial revolution and some very lucky men created factories and enterprises. These men thought this was a wonderful gift from above and that they had a responsibility to be successful so that everyone could share some of their good fortune. So they worked and built and built and worked, and lots of people were able to live better lives because of these men. These men even had a special term for what they did. It was 'noblesse oblige' and it meant that the privilege you gained by the grace of god entails social obligations. Then their children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children inherited the factories and the enterprises. But they had forgotten that it was their families previous good fortunes and not especially only the hard work involved. The original men realised this and helped their workers and rewarded their worker's loyalty with their own loyalty because 'noblesse oblige'. But their children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children thought that they deserved it all and only lazy and bad people weren't as lucky as they were, and these children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children were greedy and stopped being considerate and loyal toward the people that helped them have rich lives and so they said let them not have a sustainable wage and let them eat cake. (well actually they said 'let them eat shit, but for the sake of this story they told the people it was cake). And in some countries those people on the scrap heap took pitchforks and led those children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children to the nearest lamp posts and strung them up and shared everything they owned with everybody until it was all used up. In other countries the people made governments take some of the money from those children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children and take care of the families that had made their parents and grand parents and great grandparents and all their ancestors very wealthy. And some did. And some moved their money to off-shore tax havens and lived in a way that made a lot of people very angry and one day in the future those people will notice that there are lamp posts everywhere and that once upon a time they had a chance to share their good fortune, but they won't be able to do anything about those thoughts because a few minutes, hours or days later blood will no longer be flowing to their brains. And unfortunately the people will be so angry that they'll hang everyone they see from the lamp posts that line all the streets. (perhaps hang figuratively of course) And then there'll be another revolution and some lucky men and women will create new ways to make money that take care of everyone because they'll remember about noblesse oblige. And maybe their children, and their children's children, and their children's children's children will remember noblesse oblige and maybe the lamp posts will help them remember. But probably not because of greed. The End.
I got to that and did a double-take because the "story" was too well written to have been written by TheEnd
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I have 2 parts of my response. Part 1. A mate of mine recently lost his job. A very clever guy. He was on $120K per year, a new XR6 Turbo every 3 years and a credit card that seemed to have no limit. His job was moved off shore..................surprise, surprise I thought to my self. Part 2. We own a business. Started in 2008 from home. We were in our mid 40's, paid the home off, a little bit of cash savings, 1 child left in high school and no debt's. I worked full time earning $50K a year. My partner did not earn a wage/salary for 2 years with the business, in the 3rd year the business was able to give her $300 per week, the 4th year it was $600 per week. Today she is still on $600 per week but with dividends her income for this financial is $110K. Having said that, we have 1 employee that has joined us in the 4th year on $26 HR, contractor/tradies with us from day one and have been on $100k plus every year and still are. I work for free for the business approx 12hrs per week and it is the last year I will do this. My point is..........................."From the beginning to even now the hours are relent less, most would of quit in the first year" but we continue to grow an average of 20% every year and still debt free! So we can manage on to days wages, why cant other business!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Answer...........................Corporate Greed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! its not wages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is greed? Where do you draw the line between greed and non-greed? EDIT: oh and btw, don't most people get paid more than minimum wage anyway?
This is as Socialist as Socialist gets. Not a word about people who "print" money out of the thin air and indebted the whole World, not a word about their Government/bankers buddies. It's all the greedy entrepreneurs who forgot about their "noblesse oblige". Let's lynch them and steal their stuff and elect us to be the new bosses while we're at it. If it ever comes to that I guess we'll be on the opposite firing lines.
Socialism is also a set of ideas - very bad ones. Most people don't even realise how bad those ideas are. Nothing is wrong with Philanthropy as long as it's voluntary as any Anarcho-Capitalist would tell you.
This might make it clearer: 1. Socialism 2. Philanthropy The OP was raising this issue: Or as that well known socialist Dick Smith said:
The fact that much of that money is reinvested in order to create new businesses and jobs doesn't count? Isn't that what we really want? To provide people with as many opportunities to provide for themselves as possible? Charity is great, and necessary, but I think more people want to support themselves rather than live off of others and so wouldn't it be logical, knowing this fact, that more money go into investment than charity? EDIT: Didn't our good friend Jesus have something about to say about giving a man a fish, or teaching him to fish? Or something like that, I'm not that great on my bible stuff.
I refer you to Say's Law (try Steve Kates or William H. Hutt for decent explanations). It is never a problem of demand, it's a problem of supply. The most scarce factor of production has always been, and still is, labour. Unemployment is a problem associated with the structure of supply not being suitable for what people actually want at the prices suppliers are offering. As you should well know, prices are simply the mechanism that clears markets and what matters is the amount of supply rather than the total money stock chasing those goods and services. For example, in a deflationary environment due to productivity improvements, the same nominal wage goes further while a falling nominal wage can still have a constant or increasing real wage.
That'll teach me to try and use bible verses. Must have had a momentary lapse of reason. All recovered now though. Thanks.
It is worth noting that a person earning a million dollars pays $459,992 in tax. That's a substantial contribution to all of the welfare nets and public institutions. Some people are never satisfied and think that every dollar is the property of the group and not of the individual who earned it and that the individual should feel privileged to be allowed to keep any of it. With respect to the opening article, people should only ask whether or not the money was obtained via an abuse of government privileges. If it was honestly earned then I would say that envy and jealously aren't good colours for any person to wear. The only inequality that matters is unequal treatment by the law.
It is probably also worth noting that anyone earning a million dollars a year and paying half of it in tax doesn't have a very good accountant. I think you would find that with tax minimisation strategies they would be paying significantly less than that. I am not weighing in on whether it is right or wrong, I just thought it was worth pointing out.
Well, that's certainly a very important kind of inequality, but it's hardly the only one worthy of scrutiny. For a start, the law is written by people and is therefore just as fallible as people are in terms of fairness. Then of course there is the author of the original article, who, being a multi-billionaire is probably quite well qualified to talk on what can help or harm a society that values business, innovation and the ability to acquire wealth. As he said, rising inequality of wealth and incomes is not conducive to being able to do business. Capitalism is a system. Like any system, it functions better with curators to guide it and maintain it. Without people looking out for it, it just ends up like a vegetable garden overgrown with weeds. Since JulieW mentioned noblesse oblige, this is how someone once explained it to me: And that was someone who's very wealthy and also gives very generously to worthy causes, including charities and business mentoring.
