There is nothing wrong with voting against one’s own self interest. But still, I think it’s rather arrogant to think that you know what another person’s self interest is better then they do. Democracy, as they say, is the worst system out there-- except for all the others. And with democracy, you get all those “ignorant” people voting. Which, btw, has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with democracy.
Perhaps this thread is an appropriate point to link to a recent Paul Krugman column. It suggests that European measures to “improve” on capitalism are not as destructive as many American hyperlibertarians and hypercapitalists believe.
[QUOTE=Paul Krugman]
[American] political discourse is dominated by reverse Robin-Hoodism — the belief that economic success depends on being nice to the rich, who won’t create jobs if they are heavily taxed, and nasty to ordinary workers, who won’t accept jobs unless they have no alternative. And according to this ideology, Europe — with its high taxes and generous welfare states — does everything wrong. So Europe’s economic system must be collapsing, and a lot of reporting simply states the postulated collapse as a fact.
The reality, however, is very different. Yes, Southern Europe is experiencing an economic crisis thanks to that money muddle [caused by the Continent’s premature adoption of a single currency]. But Northern European nations, France included, have done far better than most Americans realize. In particular, here’s a startling, little-known fact: French adults in their prime working years (25 to 54) are substantially more likely to have jobs than their U.S. counterparts…
The truth is that European-style welfare states have proved more resilient, more successful at job creation, than is allowed for in America’s prevailing economic philosophy.
[/QUOTE]
You left off this part:
I suspect a different reason. There was a huge drop off in “prime age employment” in the US in 2007/2008. You might remember we had a bit of an economic problem in that time frame. Now, in France it’s very difficult to lay people off. But, you can refrain from hiring new people. Older people keep their jobs, but since new ones aren’t created fast enough (in part because the old folks are “tenured”), younger people lose out.
If Europe is so great at creating jobs, why is their unemployment rate nearly double that of the US?
Regards,
Shodan
To be fair, Krugman did not make the claim that the entire Eurozone is great at creating jobs. In fact, he specifically was talking about Northern Europe. But in the case of France (his prime example), I think it’s more accurate to say that they are great at legislating against the loss of existing jobs than that they are great at creating new ones.
We could probably solve these problems without shooting anybody, but what fun is that?!
:shrugs:
He claimed that European-style welfare states were better at job creation than the US, and he gave France as an example. This is an outright lie. France is not better at job creation, and he cherry-picked a statistic to give a misleading impression.
Darn that Fox News for its dishonesty! Oh wait…
Regards,
Shodan
I think the problem is well-stated in the quote in the OP. As long as business, particularly big business, is largely seen as the enemy of society rather than at least neutral if not a good thing, then anything they do will pretty much be seen as lip service. The first thing they need to do is repair and build up that image by changing what society sees as the big issues.
For instance, off-shoring of jobs, various tax loop holes, large political donations, are all things that large corporations and the extremely are doing that make it difficult for anyone to believe they are motivated by anything but pure self interest. This obviously isn’t a full list, but we can start there. Obviously, all of these things would have to be voluntary.
So, with off-shoring of jobs for businesses, maybe they could put some sort of voluntary cap on what they’re going to do there. As an example, tie a percentage of their work force to the business they do in those countries to show a level of good faith. So, perhaps a company would volunteer not to exceed double the percentage of employees in a country as the percentage of it’s gross sales there. So, if a company only gets 5% of it’s profit from China, it can’t have more than 10% of it’s jobs there. Bringing jobs back to the US, or at least other first world countries in Europe, Japan, etc. will show perhaps that maybe they have some interest in helping the communities where they make their profits. And shouldn’t have much of an initial effect; in fact, between good will, and creating jobs, it might be pretty close to neutral or even a net positivie if enough companies do it.
Have a voluntary cap on the amount of political spending. After all, if one billion spends $10Million on a Republican candidate and another spends $10Million on a Democratic candidate, they’re more or less just canceling eachother out anyway. So amongst hundreds of them, there’s probably a whole lot of money going in and a huge chunk of it is canceling eachother out, so why not just not spend it, save themselves a bit of money, and not make the common folk feel so disenfranchised.
Pay a living wage. And I’m not even necessarily talking about paying all employees $15/hr. In some places, a minimum wage job may still pretty much suck, but at least they can provide for themselves. I know in this area, minimum wage isn’t even enough to provide for oneself.
John, if I can put a bottom floor on how poor people can be and have the caveat that I get to decide how low that floor is and tie it to some kind of growth, then no, I would no longer support the cap on wealth. Can I still shoot anyone who disagrees though? 
I don’t think I know what any given person’s self-interests are better than they do. It’s painfully obvious to me, though, that things could be better than they are, and this thread doesn’t work without that assumption. Are you going to argue that the way things are is completely unrelated to what people vote for?
Besides this, I’m not sure how you imagine this topic can be discussed without assuming that we know better than someone else.
Except for the part where democracy can lead to more or less capitalism, etc. etc. Honestly, your criticisms of my post are a little weird.
This simply is not a sane way for business to run, on a global level. I notice nobody in the USA seems to have a problem if a foreign company opens a big office in the United States, though that is, of course, “offshoring” to them. (As it happens, my fiancee works for a large European corporation that has a number of offices in the USA; if they stopped “offshoring” they’d instantly eliminate thousands of really good jobs in the United States.) The things you are suggesting just don’t make any sense - basing your employee percentage as a percentage of profits is crazy, because logically then if you have a year where you make no profit (a very common occurrence) you’d have to employ nobody at all. How on earth would that work? Why should a corporation “value” one community over another?
Really? You think my criticism of your post is weird and you post:
then say:
That’s what us "normal’ people call contradicting oneself.
At any rate, there are things that government can or cannot do that have nothing to do with the economic system in place. You can’t fix democracy by fiddling with capitalism.
OK. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m stopping anyone from doing anything. 
It’s not a contradiction. One can be convinced that a group of people, as a whole, are making a bad decision, without thinking that one knows better than any particular individual.
Also, your criticism came before I wrote the part about “any given person”. I could have written that I’m secretly a mastodon in disguise and it wouldn’t affect the strangeness or otherwise of your criticism.
Probably true. That’s nothing like what I said, though.
A lot of the ideas here would probably work, but will get zero traction in the current political reality. I’m trying to come up with something that could pass in the reality of the actual legislatures we have.
What about a significant tax incentive rewarding corporations for both the number and stability of their full-time workforce?
ie. UberMegaCorp (UMC) can demonstrate stable or rising: a) fulltime workforce number and b) average salaries, for “X” years, so this makes them (or their C-levels) eligible for some significant tax reductions. I don’t know how to do the math, but it’s probably better to give up some tax revenue to encourage UMC to take care of their workers, rather than have the workers supported directly by taxes.
Again, this needs a lot of thought, but it seems like something that would be easier to get through congress (Politician’s wouldn’t want to oppose it, and their corporate handlers might actually like it).
That would make the barriers to entry more difficult, thus stifling competition.
Rewarding large, stable companies is the same as punishing new, innovative ones.
Companies already get a tax break for having employees; they write off the salaries, benefits and associated expenses. More employees, higher salaries, more writeoffs. Why make it more complicated than that?
I would institute a significant “basic income” (i.e., an unconditional [non-means-tested, non-employment-linked] universal income) and universal single-payer healthcare, both funded by extremely progressive taxation, so that one’s ability to live wasn’t so coupled to one’s ability to find a job. And then I’d happily get rid of the minimum wage, etc., and largely not care what kinds of employment relationships people did or didn’t want to pursue.
I also agree with RickJay that it’s useless to propose reforming capitalism without also considering the ways in which it interfaces with our political system. I don’t know how to fix the outsized influence of money on politics, the problem of regulatory capture, etc. But once that and the dependence on employers are taken care of, I’d see little reason for people to think of Big Business as “the enemy”, as Blaster Master put it.
I’d look for more oil.
If I were one of them? I’d probably push for using their position to make a plutocratic world government, and the poor can eat Vegemite.
And I’d make this very, very public, and just credible enough to bring a leftist backlash down on everybody’s head. 