Of these, I think only the enviromental issue has the best chance. But demanding decent jobs, and ending poverty and inequality? I don’t feel these will ever be fixed, and I feel it is shortsighted to taunt police for this agenda. Actually, I feel is is dumb as selfish. Nobody on earth is owed a job, much less a decent one. If everyone had one, and poverty disappeared, somehow I think there would be economical consequences for that as well. I don’t know what consequences that would be, but I feel that 0% poverty and 100% decent jobs may not make sense in the macro picture of things. As fluffy of a world as that sounds, something can’t be right with that picture. Feel free to explain how it would be a utopia if you can. But I’m no economist, I just play one on the internet like everyone else. Although I’m all about fixing inequality, but sadly IMHO, humans will always be angry and/or hateful to each other for any reason for the rest of our time. I feel that is built into our biology and would take 50,000-100,000 years at the minimum to change our hate for each other on the whole. Much less 1 year or 10 years.
I also feel that “ordinary” people are in part to blame. Not all, but a good amount. With reckless spending and savings habits. Unreal mortgages with little to no income to support it. Come on… how could anyone think living like that is sustainable, much less blaming financial institutions for it? It takes two. And… Capitalism is dead? Okay, what’s the better alternative that you can agree to that another side won’t take offense to and riot against? We will never agree.
Side discussion: Anybody know anyone participating in these demostrations/riots? What is their line of reasoning? Is it just “poor me, I won’t recognize my bad mistakes, but will hurl objects at police because the financial bad man sold me an ARM (or what ever european equivilent)”? Or do they actually believe they can demand decent jobs (I guess from thin air, it takes available work to get work), and elimnate poverty completely?
Well, let me put it this way: has any idiot collection, anywhere and anywhen, ever accomplshed anything by demanding the impossible and then doing nothing but show up to a potest to accomplish it?
You’re quoting one of the official propaganda arms of the Chinese state for your news source. They have an agenda of characterizing the protest as part of the global struggle for Communism.
Instead of relying on propaganda, you might try a less biased sources. What you will find is that the protesters represent a broad coalition of interests. A very small minority might be asking for full employment, but there are quite a diversity of views–some of which I’m pretty sure you’d agree with (e.g. some are objecting to debt spending to finance bailouts and other “conservative” positions).
So hard working people have no right to complain when selfish stupid assholes (such as AIG and their executive-bonus-on-your-taxes crew) are allowed to trash the world’s economy?
Hard working people have no right to be able to be mad when they can’t find a job to put food on the table?
What are they supposed to do? Fuck off and starve to death? The only way that argument could make sense is it included some sort of major social safety net.
Say you were in the poverty section, how would you feel about this setup?
Well, you are entitled to your feelings. But when has showing up on a message board and pretending to be superior and whining ever solved anything? Maybe you should go do a counter protest live and get some sunshine and fresh air. (P.S. I suspect that more than a few of the protesters are going to get laid.)
Congrats on being the first to twist my stance. I never said people don’t have the right to mad about their situation. What I am saying is that it is stupid and selfish to demand a decent job, and to demand and END to poverty. Two very extreme wishes that will not get fulfilled. So yes, I don’t see a point in demanding those things and it’s dumb. Mad about your situation? Fine, no problem. That’s ok. When people start demanding the impossible is when I go :dubious: in a big way.
How would I feel if I were in poverty, and suddenly my demands have been met and now have a decent job given to me, and am now out poverty? I’d feel fucking great at first, but maybe guilty later, knowing that it was given to me on a silver plate, which it seems those in the article are demanding. You aren’t owed a job. That doesn’t mean I’m unsympathetic to those who don’t have one. It doesn’t mean I think they should, in your words, “Fuck off and starve to death”.
Your grass has just been cut. You have 20 people outside your house demanding that job of cutting your grass, now. But, there is no grass to cut, you give them the job anyway? You see what I’m talking about here? Are you saying people should get paid to do nothing? Wait until next week and then hire them for the job when there is grass to be cut. With unemployment so high today, we can’t just give 8-10% a job that isn’t there to begin with. There is no money to pay them, hence, layoffs. I don’t like it, but it is the reality. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. But I will get pissy when people DEMAND they have a job NOW from governments and financial leaders.
I say people aren’t owed a job and that and end of poverty is never going to happen and I’m superior? Hmm… I’m such an asshole.
I don’t see how I twisted your stance. Maybe my perspective is skewed. I live in Michigan on the border of an Indiana county with 15% unemployment rate. Lots of hardworking people who formerly had decent jobs lost them due to the incompetence that caused this mess.
So what do you think? They have no right to demand the situation is fixed? They did what was asked of them, obeyed the law, payed their taxes, and worked hard. Now they don’t have a job to feed their families, or themselves.
You really believe they don’t have a right to demand the situation be fixed so they can get jobs again again?
Was it blue color worker or the government and the banker incompetence that ran the economy into the ground?
You can try and go objetivist all you want, but you’re basically saying a hardworking person shouldn’t be able to expect to find a job.
You, correct if I’m wrong, made the assertion that a certain percentage of poverty was necessary to the functioning of the world. That poverty was an important part of the system, not an an unfortunate break down. Maybe I took world too littarly and included the whole world including third world when you meant only first world? First world would make a lot more sense.
“silver plate”? Wow didn’t know being able to adequately provide for your family’s basic needs was a “silver plate”.
So what do you think the jobless should do? I note a distinct lack of suggestions. Sympathetic is just a word. What do you suggest for action? Acquiring food? Keep in mind even some of the best workers are having trouble finding jobs these days. So “find a job” is a long term project that won’t reliably meet day to day needs.
This is disingenuous as you’re confusing me with the governments and societies these people are protesting to. So I will give you two answers one as myself, and one as a hypothetical government.
I barely have enough to feed my cat sometimes. However when I have extra funds I do donate to various causes such as local food banks. Which those workers could use to help get them through the rough times, and lessen poverty’s affects.
If I were the government then these people’s inability to find jobs on their own would be my responsibility to try to fix. As the government one of my highest responsibilities is the general welfare of the people under me. I’d be compelled to do everything in my power to get the economy going so they could find jobs, and I’d be compelled to do everything in my power to see that their basic needs are met. Not having one’s basic needs met are what most people consider poverty.
Perhaps I’d institute some New Deal style highway work. I don’t know, but historically government programs to stimulate jobs isn’t without precedent. Maybe the federal highway system needs some landscaping. They could tend that grass, or I could provide training and support for finding a new line work.
This attitude about government is especially prevelent in Europe. The people who’s protest you’re judging in fact. About like judging the Spain for generally preferring to speak Spanish.
Really? There was a lot more jobs before a certain group of financial leaders trashed the economy with their incompetent lust for worthless default swaps backed with fraudulent AAA ratings. Maybe if they hadn’t built that bubble. A certain government’s insistence on the Iraqi clusterfuck instead of tending to that credit mess before it got this bad sure didn’t help things.
Well since you asked. First one strong yes since you seem to think “owed a job” means being able to find a job at all.
Second one no since it’s an opinion.
Third one yes since you claim superiority against many who’s only difference from you is circumstance.
Now let me ask.
Some believe society has a responsibility to look after people who’ve fallen on hard times. Are those people assholes?
And also more factories, more ports, more farms, more software design firms, more movie studios. The more productive a society is, the richer people are as a whole, and the less unemployment exists. Poverty and unemployment aren’t neccessaties, they’re symptoms of a society not reaching its full potential. That’s what people are saying.
So not only are you saying that there is no grass to cut but you should give them the job anyway, you are saying that you should buy a lawnmower factory for them as well.
But you can’t just build factories and farms financed by nothing. Those things need money, and if you are building them solely to provide jobs then you are on the short path to financial ruin. You’ve just indulged in a very expensive rock painting exercise by commissioning projects with absolutely no market demand using public funds. That will drive down the profitability of the farms and factories that actually are still making money, causing still more of them to go belly up. That will lead to more unemployment that you will attempt to cure by publicly funding still more competing industry that has no market. In no time at all your schemes are all selling only to one another, having forced every private industry to the wall. At that stage, if you are lucky, you have a wonderful nation in which all the means of production are owned by the state. And we all know how functional those are. If you aren’t lucky your whole ponzi scheme collapses as your job creation expenses outstrip revenue and then you have instant irrecoverable depression.
In short , saying there should be more lawns is simply saying their should be more jobs, but anchored on another turtle. And it’s turtles all the way.
The key here is productivity. Productivity can’t be equated to labour utilisation as you have just done. A society is only productive if the labour produces something with a demand. Building factories when nobody is demanding the output from those factories won’t increase productivity, it will just waste money and make functional factories uncompetitive. You would be better off having peoople paint rocks. At least that won’t compete with functional industry.
Yeah, but what there saying doesn’t make much sense to me.
Just to clear things up I’m going to use poverty here as a synonym for income inequity, since state welfare ensure that nobody in the US is in real poverty through unemployment, they are just poor relative to working US citizens
Poverty and unemployment are necessary as the ultimate barrier to the moral hazard. If there was no poverty and no unemployment then what would be the incentive in undertaking education/training? If the person who had refused to complete high school had the same income and same employment as the person who had completed high school then what is the incentive to complete school? For that matter what is the incentive to turn up to work regularly, or treat customer with respect? A better job? But there will always be bottom tier jobs that need to be filled, and the bottom tier is broad. Lots of people now spend their entire lives on the bottom tier and they are industrious with HS level education. So with unlimited employment opportunities regardless of behaviour there can be no incentive at all for basic education or work ethic.
This idea that unemployment and income disparity are unnecessary ignores the reality of human nature. Ultimately large numbers of people need the threat of being fired and living on food stamps to keep them industrious. The idea that everyone will work to maximal efficiency and get as well trained as possible even when there is no consequence of not doing so fairyland stuff.
See, I don’t think you did say that. Spending public funds on unwanted industries that directly compete with functional industries in times of recession is not improving the economy. On a small scale it can’t achieve its aims and on a large scale it will destroy the economy.
I agree that improving the economy will reduce unemployment and increase salaries. I don’t agree that building more farms and factories when people don’t want more farm and factory produce will go any way at all to improving the economy. Improving the economy requires a means of increasing demand. It doesn’t require subsidisation of products for which there is demonstrably no demand.
Garbage. We have people who can’t afford a place to live. Is your definition of “real poverty” someone who’s starved to death ?
The chance to get a better job and more money than the minimum, of course.
Straw man. “No poverty” isn’t remotely the same as “unlimited employment opportunities regardless of behaviour”.
“The poor are just there to scare the shit out of the middle class” as George Carlin said. That doesn’t make it right to punish unfortunate people so we can use them as tools.
If you’ll look at my posts, you’ll see that at no point did I say that the government should create new industry. It should *encourage *new industry and provide the neccessary infrastructure (both physical and human), as well as supervise its excesses, but the jobs themselves should be provided by the free market. For the record, I think the G20 protestors are, by and large, idiots.
The idea that there are (non-mentally challenged, non-drug addicted) people in the US who can’t afford somewhere to live is debatable at best. But to avoid that debate I’m happy to exclude them from my analysis. We’ll all agree that society should provide a minimum level of social security.
But this is largely a red herring. Such people do not make up the majority of the impoverished or the unemployed in the US. And I use heer the standard, mainstream definition of poverty: “a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society”.
But we know that doesn’t work. How can it work? There always has to be lowest paid job. Doesn’t matter how wealthy your nation is the lowest paid job will always exist. In fact there have to be large numbers of jobs all finely separated from the lowest paid. And someone has to fill those jobs. In fact large numbers of people will have to spend their entire working live in those jobs. Those are just the facts. Doesn’t matter if those lowest paid jobs are janitors or legal secretaries, they have to exist and they have to be filled and not everyone can get out of them.
So large numbers of people know that they are stuck in these minimum jobs for life. The nature of the employment pyramid is that there will always be more lower tier jobs than upper tier. IOW large numbers of people will never advance
Yet you are proposing that under a system where they can never be fired and never earn less than that wage they will still have the same incentive to work.
Can you explain how that could possibly work in the real world
Yeah, there’s a strawman all right, and you’re building it.
Dude, read the thread. We are not discussing “No poverty”. We are discussing “No poverty” and “No unemployment”. Says so right there in the OP, as well as in the post that you quoted from.
Moreover we aren’t discussing “unlimited employment opportunities regardless of behaviour”. We are discussing “minimal employment opportunities regardless of behaviour”.
Now if you need me to explain again why “No unemployment” is exactly the same as “minimal employment opportunities regardless of behaviour” then… well read the post you just quoted. Because that is the whole point of the post.
So you are endorsing a system where nobody is punished by unemployment, regardless of behaviour? You are saying that even if even if an employee threatens the customers and steals from the stock , they should not be punished with being made unemployed? How does that work?
I can’t see how that changes things one bit.
Once again, it’s turtles all the way down. It’s unreasonable and naïve of people to demand a job from government leaders even when there is no market demand for their services. And it’s unreasonable and naïve of people to demand the government leaders immediately produce factories creating jobs even when there is no market demand for those factories. And it’s unreasonable and naïve of people to demand the government leaders immediately produce an economic setting that leads to the market producing factories creating jobs even when there is no market demand for those factories. There’s no practical difference between those positions at all I can see.
The fact is that the only way unemployment can be alleviated is, as you said, improving the economy in general. There’s no way the government can do that immediately and people making demands that they should do so are being hopelessly naïve and unreasonable. They are making demands for something that cannot be done.
In other words, you want to pretend that the actual victims of the policies you support don’t exist. you also ignore the other unpleasant aspects of poverty; such as being mistreated, and feared, and hated, and exploited - all at least in part the result of the policy of using them as a scarecrow.
Why don’t you go all out and just say the poor should be whipped on a regular basis, to prevent laziness ? You already have made it clear that you regard them as tools, not people.
Don’t be silly; you are describing criminal behavior. Those people are either fined or jailed.
Ok then, what job are those without should they be given? I’m open to examples.
Do, I don’t believe that, and I didn’t say that either. I said people don’t have a right to demand a job that does not exist.
Both. It takes two. Not all, but yes, both are at fault. White collars too (which aren’t all bankers either).
Basically, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying they shouldn’t be DEMANDING a job. They can look and expect all they want. But you can’t knock on a business and say, “because you took my other job, I want that one right there”.
Yes, I made the assertion. But I also said I wasn’t completely sure about that assertion and that if anybody could explain how 100% jobs and no poverty would work, they’re welcome to. Context for that:
I didn’t say that. But it is a “silver plate” if you DEMAND a job that doesn’t exist, solely to sit on your ass and do nothing?
Yes, maybe if they hadn’t, but we can’t really go back in time, now can we? Yes, there were jobs before. Now the money has dried up. Now there’s no jobs.