This sounds like conspiracy theory. But I used to be part of the conspiracy. I can testify that this is exactly what I believed. So, no, really, that is the plan for the more radical ones. (There are others who just want to keep the [del]two-way[/del] three-way bribe-for-votes going: tax cuts for Kip, increased spending for Travis and Meemaw, and lots of nice secure bonds for Shmuley to invest in.)
:dubious: Wrong! False conflation! Productive labor is different from “digging holes and filling them in.” Even robber barons, even slavers, recognize that labor is an expense. Wikipedia may get losers to produce for them without pay, but that’s not normal (& even those losers get the reward of access to an improved Wikipedia).
What a bunch of self-satisfied, self-justifying (& ultimately fraudulent) drivel. It’s because of economic imperialism. The wealth of the first world was built on military might and conquest. In this it is like the wealth of the fabled caliph who made more money than he had words to count, the wealth of robber Rome, the wealth of Genghis Khan. Why do you think the USA is so afraid to let anyone have a greater army? It’s (partly) because deep down we have no faith in our ability to be rich without force and intimidation.
No, that’s just going to cost us more money. If we’re dumber than sin, that doesn’t mean we should suffer a penalty from which we are even too dumb to learn. What does that help?
No.
The rich own stock & bonds, which means they collect a rent, or tax, on other men’s productivity. The rich own land, which means they collect rent on its use. The private sector enriches the rich. Property and privilege enrich the rich. It is the government, which we all own, which allows the rent to flow back the other way.
Let me see if I have this right: I work for a living, and folks who don’t work sit back and collect money off my productivity? The rich who don’t work collect money by supplying me with something of value, and the poor who don’t work collect money by supplying me with nothing?
Lenin’s “Imperialism” has been discredited for nearly a century.
Rich countries are rich largely because they have relatively high levels of freedom, enforce the rule of law, and educate most of their citizenry. The idea that they’re rich for any other reason is preposterous and flies in the face of the plain facts.
Ah! So it’s not just labor that has value, it’s ‘productive’ labor. On that we agree. Now ask yourself, “What makes labor more productive?” Economists will give you several answers; Access to infrastructure (roads, communications, clean water, etc). Education. Specialization. Investment of capital to magnify human labor. An hour’s labor with a pickaxe is not as productive as the same hour of labor driving a steam shovel. But for that productivity gain for the worker to be realized, someone has to accumulate the capital to buy the steam shovel, and someone else had to accumulate the capital required to make the factory that built the steam shovel, and so on.
It’s this accumulation of capital in key productive areas that causes improvements in productivity, and it’s improvements in productivity that ultimately raises the price of labor and brings gains in wealth to the working class.
When you tax the rich heavily and give the money to the poor, you damage the process of capital formation that leads to jobs and productivity growth.
Another thing that magnifies the value of labor is specialization. If you go to work for a corporation, you gain the benefit of being able to work on what you do best, without having to worry about doing the accounting, shipping, marketing, sales, and other functions that the corporation takes on. Everyone in the corporation does what they do best, and the corporate organization puts it all together to maximize efficiency. In return, the workers get paid more than they could ever earn on their own, and the corporation takes its own cut as profit. It’s not a predatory relationship - it’s an organization that people voluntarily join for mutual benefit.
You’re confusing ‘expense’ with value. I have no idea what your point is here.
I see. So, how come the South Korea is now a 1st world nation? Did they go from being the poor downtrodden to ‘economic imperialists’ as soon as they had enough money? ‘Economic imperialism’ is an idiotic term in the first place, and even if you applied it to the United States because it held a unique position of dominance in the latter half of the 20th century, how do you then explain all those 3rd world countries that have seen dramatic increases in their standards of living and the wages of the working class when they moved to market economies and allowed the accumulation of capital and investment?
This is just bizarre ranting. The U.S. is like Genghis Khan? It’s afraid to let anyone have a greater army? This is related to economics in some way?
You’ve got it exactly backwards. In a modern economy, the rent-seekers go to the government to protect them. The regulatory state has been captured by corporate interests which use it to squeeze out competition and socialize their losses. The stock market is propped up by loose monetary policy. Stimulus money goes to the fatcats at GE and GM and to big labor unions, while the wreckage gets spread across the poor working class and small businesses. There are revolving doors between government and big financial, lobbying, and insurance firms. The CEO of Fannie Mae, a quasi-government organization, made over 100 million dollars by trading on the credit of the United States government and shifting risk to taxpayers.
You think the government is there to protect you from the ravages of unfettered capitalism. In fact, the government is there to grease the wheels of the status quo and make the biggest players happy, while simultaneously expanding its own power by promising bread and circuses to the masses.
In whose eyes? Go ask the people being exploited in the Third World, living under IMF/American imposed economic systems that exploit them for the monetary and ideological benefit of America whether or not America is imperialistic. Or all the other nations that we’d threatened or coerced or bribed into doing things our way. The main differences between American imperialism and past versions of it is that Americans are in such denial about what they are doing, and seem genuinely deluded into thinking the rest of the world agrees with them.
You mean Eric Cantor? Yeah, he’s pretty far gone. I wonder if this is a sort of “good cop, bad cop” thing with him and Boehner, or if he’s really that hardline.
You* are* oversimplifying. In fact, many white collar workers feel that they have to give 150% to keep their high-paying jobs, with others yapping at their heels, & that they live a dog-eat-dog existence. There’s a whole genre of fiction about it. Unionized workers, by contrast, are pretty mellow, because they are secure.
What problem?
Income taxes have been marginal, with personal exemptions, from the beginning. And with multiple brackets, at least since 1913. To propose a true flat tax is both ideological and radical, the opposite of conservative. Do you contend that all income taxes since 1894 were unjust class warfare?
Yeah, I know. I mean, if I had employees who didn’t give 150%, and had the option of replacing 'em with employees who did give 150%, I’d gladly pay more to get more. Wouldn’t you? I’m sure a unionized worker would be mellower, but that’s precisely why I’d pay more for a dog-eat-dog guy; that dude is motivated.
I agree with your initial point about kleptocracies, there is very little that can be done to help them without first changing the culture that makes thieving oligarchs of every group that governs. And that is not changed by the fact that the US seems to have a thieving oligarchy problem of late.
However, the US as a matter of historical fact exploited its neighbors in South America in ways that are shameful, dishonest and well, fucking EVIL, especially in places like Columbia and Guatemala. I don’t believe the Chiquita Banana Company is running things like the United Fruit Company did, but it’s really hard given the facts to buy the notion that the US doesn’t exploit the countries it trades with. We’re not the Soviet Union looting Eastern Europe, but we’re not Miss Goody Two Shoes either.
To follow your metaphor, they’re rats who can consent. I wouldn’t use that metaphor; to me, they’re men who can consent. I’m a man who can consent, and decide every day whether to give 150%. What do you consent to?
People have no choice about working for a living, our social safety net is in tatters, therefore, there is no consent. You’re living in an illusion, I’m afraid.
And such investment deserves a real return. But not necessarily in perpetuity, now and forever, passed down like a peerage.
Increases in productivity has a number of sources, at least one of which is the health and well being of the productive worker. And it is not the accumulation of capital that makes such happy result, but the intelligent use of that capital. And, of course, the benefit to the working class is mostly a happy accident, as the intent of investment is profit, not the betterment of personkind.
You offer these self-satisfying dogma as though the were written in stone by Divine Hand. Say, for instance, you take money from the rich that is mostly idle, save for the epic labor of earning compounded interest. Put that money into infrastructure, education, efforts that raise all the people. It does little appreciable damage to the rich, they have largely what they had, and can be an enormous boon to the country.
But it often has been predatory, as any casual glance at the history of the labor movement in America will outline in stark relief. Can you offer us any assurance that Homo Capitalum has evolved past such sordid characteristics as ruthless greed? Recent history would suggest otherwise.
Well, progress, actually. Education, sanitation, roads, etc.
And this just in, we spend a buttload of money on the military. And money is related to economics much like DNA is related to biology.
My name is elucidator, and I mostly approve of this message. This last part, at any rate, when he channels Emma Goldman.
Oh, I see. It certainly has nothing to do with Canadians running a successful country.
Okay, now explain Japan. Lotta white people there?
South Korea?
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
However, the US as a matter of historical fact exploited its neighbors in South America in ways that are shameful, dishonest and well, fucking EVIL, especially in places like Columbia and Guatemala. I don’t believe the Chiquita Banana Company is running things like the United Fruit Company did, but it’s really hard given the facts to buy the notion that the US doesn’t exploit the countries it trades with.
[/QUOTE]
Colombia, Guatemala et al. were certainly not well treated by the USA. I have no interest in blanket defense of U.S. foreign policy; Vietnam alone was enough sins to fill an encyclopedia.
But you’d have trouble convincing me that the problems faced by countries like Guatemala had much to do with trade. They had almost entirely to do, specifically, with interference in their politics that resulted in a lack of the very things I’ve pointed out rich nations need: Rule of law. Freedom. Universal education. You can’t have rule of law in a country where the government’s made up of thieves. That they happened to be US-backed thieves doesn’t make a whale of a lot of difference.
I realize to some extent this stuff was done for the benefit of rich people with economic interests in various weaker countries, but I think there is some danger is extrapolating from that Lenin’s famously dishonest conclusion that trade with rich nations is bad for the poor. It just isn’t, and it is not only false but breathtakingly stupid to claim First World wealth is stolen from the Third. Wealth in the developed world is almost wholly created in the developed world and is traded amongst the developed world.
The notion of “Exploitation” is dangerous, to be honest, in that it’s motivated developing countries to cut themselves off from trade and investment with the developed world; tariffs in poorer countries are often crazily high. The result is simply more poverty. You can’t refuse-to-trade your way to prosperity.
“From the day they’re born to the day they die, they think they’re happy – but trust me, they ain’t.” I don’t suppose there’s any way to falsify your conclusion? If I think I’m consenting to a trade of my labor for money, I’m necessarily incorrect?
We’re getting off the track here but this is one of the biggest problems I think economic conservatives have with economic liberals. I look at economics as a social science that isn’t as grounded as physics or chemistry in things that can be soundly falsified but it there are broad strokes with enough wide consensus that far less is in doubt than most would believe. To me it is akin to saying God created the earth 6,000 years ago to say that all the economic interactions between first world countries and developing nations can be explained through scare words like economic imperialism. Leftists look at economics as a moral philosophy, and believe everything comes down to identifying actors which are immoral and actors which are moral, when real economics has nothing to do with that, real trade has nothing to do with that.
Unfortunately leftists genuinely believe there is a moral wrong here, and that everything can be neatly explained by us exploiting other peoples. The truth is nothing is as simple as that and, as your correctly have noted, exploitation almost always starts at home, not in the shoe aisles of American department stores.