I have, it’s why I’m an Libertarian Socialist (closest to an Anarcho-Syndicalist than anything). Use industrial unions to seize the means of production, abolish wages and wage slavery by the rich capitalists, provide resources for the common good and all that.
I like this video on wealth hoarding for this, but I wouldn’t recommend it to Ditka (or most people here except you) because it’s rather squarely targeted towards nascent leftists and far-leftists, especially younger ones. Not a video meant to convince most people.
Construction workers and boat builders might not agree.
I skimmed your article, and he seems to be simply announcing that some things are indisputable, instead of showing how they are. For instance, he claims that white families own their homes while black families don’t is “indisputably” because of slavery. It’s not indisputable - I dispute it.
Certainly if the author just wants to assert things and expect me to agree automatically, he can do so. I won’t, but so it goes.
I’m totally with you on this. I dont know why we have no candidates ever harping on taxing the rich or going after high CEO salaries. Well I do know. The CEO’s pay them both parties off and laugh as we squabble over SSM and walls while they get ever richer.
Really? I thought that big differences between the rate of white and black home ownership was pretty common knowledge. [Here is a Zillow article about it](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/IBG Certificate Requirement Checklist) I found with a simple search. I don’t know I would directly attribute it to slavery itself, but definitely to racism and systemic racial bias. Things like redlining, which includes banking and insurance discrimination, explicit HOA segregation policies, and other practices that are absolutely racist. Home ownership is one of the most important methods of long term and multi-generational wealth accumulation available to the middle class. Denying minorities access to it is not only damaging to the individuals directly affected, but also to their children and grandchildren.
Comparing in hours meaning nothing. Everything following from your opposite premise is nonsense, sorry.
And again, even if you did compare hours worked domestically, people farther up the income scale tend to work more, not fewer, hours than people further down.
Nor are the work hours of particular people ‘for’ other people than themselves. Everyone gets paid for the hours they work. People whose labor is worth more get paid more per hour. But plenty of people are rich with nobody working for them personally. Some people are near the poverty line and do have people working for them personally (marginal small businesses). So that whole concept is also off base.
The ‘pyramid’ of labor concept based on assuming some people’s labor is ‘for’ other people but other peoples isn’t, has no validity.
Again the simple big picture is:
-people in rich countries whose labor is worth less and/or don’t work as much consume more than they produce.
-that difference comes from higher income people (who also tend to work more hours but that’s incidental) who produce more than they consume, that difference being in taxes and redistributive public spending, plus price increasing mandates (like the minimum wage) which transfer some of their production to be consumed by lower income people.
-poor people in poor countries are not eligible for those same large transfers so if they produce very little they can only consume very little, far less than people called ‘poor’ in rich countries. But their poverty is not caused nor necessitated by the fact that people in other countries are so much richer.
That is correct. Unless my current income quadruples (at least!) my flying days are over because I simply can’t afford it anymore.
Yes. The turning point was November 2007 when I was laid off from my job at Blue Cross Blue Shield. Just in time for the Great Recession.
The rest is spoilered because I know not everyone is interested in my story, but some are.
[spoiler]The good news is that I am no longer unemployed, underemployed, destitute, or having to sue an employer for the wages owed me. I have climbed out of dire poverty back into the lower middle class. Along the way, 8 of my family members have died, including my spouse, because having just financial problems wasn’t enough, I guess :rolleyes: It’s been a rough decade.
Age is a huge factor - ageism does exist. Past about 45 a lot of people just plain don’t want to hire you, and now that I’m in my 50’s that’s even more true. My state started a training program for people like me, folks with LOTS of employment experience and more productive years ahead of them, who were having trouble even getting our foot in the door. That’s how I got my current job. There’s been some success there with getting the over-40-and-laid-off crowd re-hired and productive again. In fact, of the group I was in all but one wound up getting hired before we finished the course.
So, bravo to Indiana because someone actually took a look at WHY people weren’t getting work and figured out how to approach that problem. They have programs tailored to various types of unemployed people. It’s not perfect, but it sure as hell beats simply penalizing people for not getting employed fast enough.
Anyhow - while my present job isn’t perfect I’m hoping to start some side work making things again, bringing in additional income and maybe seguing into a small business that could bring additional income during “retirement” or even become my primary income after I’m eligible for Medicare and getting health coverage is no longer dependent on who I work for. That’s on top of the longer I’m with my present employer the more money I will make up to a salary cap that’s fairly decent for a single person. So while my current job is adequate I still have plans for better.[/spoiler]
The problem with confiscating the “money” that Jeff Bezos and the Walton family have is that it is all tied to the value of the stock of their respective companies. It’s not sitting in a bank account. If Congress passes a law saying that they are going to impose a wealth tax and take 95% of their assets, it would cause a massive drop in the price of Amazon’s and Wal-Mart’ stocks. You would never get that $123 billion dollars from Jeff Bezos; we end up with half of that if we are lucky. Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if the value dropped as much as 90%.
Even granting this premise entirely, there are homeless people who could live in those McMansions. More simply put, this is just an utterly absurd allocation of resources. You might as well say that a 50-foot gold statue of my dick is fine - “You say it’s a stupid waste of resources, but the metalworkers sure might disagree with that assessment!” :rolleyes:
Uh nope , what I said was that the hours consumed by America’s poor are far more than they could possibly produce.
Therefore In order to maintain even a lifestyle that is considered poor in america someone has to be working for less than they are
In order to maintain their lifestyle.
Missed the edit window but nevermind if you’re say, a landlord. You are producing exactly nothing, you use a little bit of what people are paying you to maintain your property and your income is well, basically limited to how many more properties you buy with the money people are giving you to use what you own.
You are also wrong. People that own property for rent, utilize their capital to produce a needed good—housing. The value of that housing is determined by the rent that a willing renter is able to pay to the landlord, multiplied by a multiple that other buyers would be willing to pay for that stream of rental income. This is a value created in society. In fact the majority of value created in society comes from the capital investment made by people with such capital.
Oh, I’m well aware. But I also see movement in the right direction. It’s also not the first thing he’s done, especially for the homeless in Seattle. I don’t want to pretend he’s a saint, but saying he’s doing nothing but blue origin is wrong.
