The real class warfare and who's losing

[Jhhnn]

It is very reasonable that the labor share reduces with globalization and overseas imports. I don't think that it is, in itself, a problem, and I'm sure that any band aid in the form of taxation of the rich and handing money to the poor will only make the problem worse in the long run. Adapt or die. Sounds cruel, but when this process spans on generations it what leads a nation to prosperity.

Finally, we get down the crux of it, and more hypothetical justifications.

Profit above all else! Straight from Victorian England, circa 1825. No wonder Marx found so many adherents.

 

[SamurAchzar]

The only people that globalization has led prosperity to is those at the top...those very people who are shipping jobs out from all other classes, most notably the lower and lower middle. They should be paid more for a job well done....oh wait...

Really? What about Apple and Google employees, two companies that could have never be this successful with the US market only? What about GM employees, a company that sells and manufactures all over the world? Intel employees?

Jobs will be shipped for as long as there is no economical benefit in keeping them around. You can fight this process, but just like any conflict with a natural economical trend, you will ultimately fail.

 

[SamurAchzar]

Finally, we get down the crux of it, and more hypothetical justifications.

Profit above all else! Straight from Victorian England, circa 1825. No wonder Marx found so many adherents.

So back in 1910 you and I would be arguing about the need to save and protect the horse and carriage operators? This is simply ridiculous. There are economic trends that are unavoidable, it's as simple as that.

 

[sandorski]

The only bullshit is the cathartic response from all the people who believe that personal decisions in ones own life doesn't matter versus how much wealth someone else is attaining/losing due to their own distinct set of alternate decisions.

Ya, keep diggin.

 

[Jhhnn]

Really? What about Apple and Google employees, two companies that could have never be this successful with the US market only? What about GM employees, a company that sells and manufactures all over the world? Intel employees?

Jobs will be shipped for as long as there is no economical benefit in keeping them around. You can fight this process, but just like any conflict with a natural economical trend, you will ultimately fail.

In a democracy, politics trump profits, when the people set their minds to it. Which is, of course, the reason that the far Right is working so very hard to discredit the OWS movement.

In the past, they've been able to lull people into complacency with govt deficits & bigger lines of credit, be inefficient enough to leave some crumbs behind. That's now become apparent, and highly unlikely to continue. Trickledown economics is being revealed for the sham it's been all along.

 

[Jhhnn]

So back in 1910 you and I would be arguing about the need to save and protect the horse and carriage operators? This is simply ridiculous. There are economic trends that are unavoidable, it's as simple as that.

Attempts at diversion reveal the bankruptcy in your arguments.

I haven't argued for the preservation of any particular industry, but rather for the preservation of middle & working class incomes.

 

[Engineer]

Really? What about Apple and Google employees, two companies that could have never be this successful with the US market only? What about GM employees, a company that sells and manufactures all over the world? Intel employees?

Jobs will be shipped for as long as there is no economical benefit in keeping them around. You can fight this process, but just like any conflict with a natural economical trend, you will ultimately fail.

LOL...you pick GM, who at one point employed 500,000+ Americans and now employes under 100,000. Good example of what globalization has done. Interesting that WalMart is now our largest employer with 1,000,000+ Americans selling stuff (instead of making stuff) with many of below or near the poverty wage level and sucking off of the government tit (as WalMart likes to encourage them to do).

And for your blurb of "no economical benefit"...you've got it wrong...it's "not as big an economical benefit as using cheap, slave wage labor with no benefits" in other countries. Profit makes must make more profit, even if it ultimately destroys the very consumer base that built them up and kept them going for year.

 

[SamurAchzar]

LOL...you pick GM, who at one point employed 500,000+ Americans and now employes under 100,000. Good example of what globalization has done.

Would GM survive as a company manufacturing for the US market alone, without the benefit of manufacturing abroad?

 

[Engineer]

Would GM survive as a company manufacturing for the US market alone, without the benefit of manufacturing abroad?

If "fair trade policies" were in place, they would had a much better chance of making them here and selling abroad. "FREE TRADE" is nothing more than a one way street to allow our jobs to other countries, many of whom despise American's and refuse to buy our products (China is a very good example).

 

[SamurAchzar]

If "fair trade policies" were in place, they would had a much better chance of making them here and selling abroad.
"FREE TRADE" is nothing more than a one way street to allow our jobs to other countries, many of whom despise American's and refuse to buy our products (China is a very good example).

Reality says otherwise. See mass lines in Apple stores and the fact that the leading car brand in China is Buick (here's one example).

China is already a larger automotive market than US. The thought of GM better left to die quietly in the US is asinine; furthermore, when you talk about 400,000 workers lost in GM plants, don't forget to account for the hundreds of thousands employed in foreign plants operating in USA, such as Honda, BMW and Mercedes.

 

[SamurAchzar]

Attempts at diversion reveal the bankruptcy in your arguments.

I haven't argued for the preservation of any particular industry, but rather for the preservation of middle & working class incomes.

And how do you propose we do this? By taxing the rich and handing the money to the working class?

 

[Engineer]

Reality says otherwise. See mass lines in Apple stores and the fact that the leading car brand in China is Buick (here's one example).

China is already a larger automotive market than US. The thought of GM better left to die quietly in the US is asinine; furthermore, when you talk about 400,000 workers lost in GM plants, don't forget to account for the hundreds of thousands employed in foreign plants operating in USA, such as Honda, BMW and Mercedes.

I'll give credit to those foreign companies to a part of it but your China post about GM proves my point. If fair trade were in place, maybe some of those cars could be made here. I don't give a shit if GM (or any other company) survives they ship all of their jobs out and then import their products. This is about American workers.....let the rest of the world do it on fair trade terms…otherwise, you can sit and wonder why our poverty, unemployment and those not paying federal taxes are seeing skyrocketing rates.

 

[Engineer]

And how do you propose we do this? By taxing the rich and handing the money to the working class?

If those at the top won't trickle it down, that will happen as those without will vote it to themselves (or protest, riot and eventually start killing)

 

[SamurAchzar]

I'll give credit to those foreign companies to a part of it but your China post about GM proves my point. If fair trade were in place, maybe some of those cars could be made here. I don't give a shit if GM (or any other company) survives they ship all of their jobs out and then import their products. This is about American workers.....let the rest of the world do it on fair trade terms…otherwise, you can sit and wonder why our poverty, unemployment and those not paying federal taxes are seeing skyrocketing rates.

Last I checked, the goal of a company - every company - is to manufacture and profit the most. Providing jobs to Americans is a nice and desired benefit that companies take pride in but it can never, ever be the primary reason for their existence.

 

[SamurAchzar]

If those at the top won't trickle it down, that will happen as those without will vote it to themselves (or protest, riot and eventually start killing)

Just what I said before about the majority taking what they feel entitled to at a gunpoint. The rich must pay a ransom - they already do - on that we all agree; the only question left is "how much".

 

[dmcowen674]

Isn't it just so plainly obvious that the rich have used their wealth to buy influence over our politicians and have now used our politicans and the system of governanace our politicans have sway over to make themselves even wealthier and resultingly more powerful and influential still? Is there any way any sane person can deny this fact? Obviously not.

That's something that the middle class and the poor cannot do. Concentrated wealth in the hands of a select few has infinitely more leverage than widely dispersed resources held by a multitude of citizens with infinitely different views and opinions.

The vastly outnumbered rich have been using this disparate advantage to successfully wrest control of the government away from the majority. They have also used this advantage to flood the media with their narrowly focused propaganda and disinformation in conjunction with the firm hold they now have over our politicians. They have managed to convince the middle class to wage war against itself by using divisive issues and fear tactics.

They are manipulating the Party they fully control by having their politicians consistently focus on legislating single issue concerns like second amendment rights, illegal immigration, abortion, religion, anti-unionism etc. and thus have made these issues the highest priority among their middle class and poor party members to keep them fighting against their own best interests.

The very rich know that a weak government is a gov't that they can easily control and have been pushing hard and fast to weaken the go'vt as much as they possibly can. A weak gov't gives them complete control over the majority.

This is the war the very rich have been waging against the middle class and the poor ever since the middle class came into being.

So how ludicrous it is that the Repub spin machine now accuses the middle class and the poor of waging class warfare on the very rich. Is that the best argument they can muster against asking the very rich to chip in an amount they would rather casually flush down the toilet than contribute toward the overall prosperity of the nation?

Well written.

I said the very same thing 10 years ago and was laughed at.
Now the chorus is getting louder, not just here but word wide.

It is class warfare and the oppressed always win.

 

[rchiu]

LOL...you pick GM, who at one point employed 500,000+ Americans and now employes under 100,000. Good example of what globalization has done. Interesting that WalMart is now our largest employer with 1,000,000+ Americans selling stuff (instead of making stuff) with many of below or near the poverty wage level and sucking off of the government tit (as WalMart likes to encourage them to do).

And for your blurb of "no economical benefit"...you've got it wrong...it's "not as big an economical benefit as using cheap, slave wage labor with no benefits" in other countries. Profit makes must make more profit, even if it ultimately destroys the very consumer base that built them up and kept them going for year.

Sorry man, globalization didn't caused GM to suck, GM did that to itself. The bloated Union negotiated wage and benefit wasn't sustainable, global competition or not. American were losing on quality to the Japanese way before serious free trade agreement was established.

You can't lump all the problem in the US manufacturing and blame it on free trade. You can't artificially add barriers and tax to mask issues existing in the US. If you want to add tax and barriers, to protect labors, that's fine. But American consumers will have to pay more, American product will continue to suffer from the inherent problem and not be competitive in the International market. American companies will continue to only do well in the American market which is growing slowly. Global American companies from high value product companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson to lower value companies like Coke, Nike will all suffer from your protectionist policies.

It's great to have policies to protect American workers, manufacturers, but we need to understand 1) at what cost 2) are we addressing the core of the problem that cause American manufacturers to be not competitive.

 

[Engineer]

Sorry man, globalization didn't caused GM to suck, GM did that to itself. The bloated Union negotiated wage and benefit wasn't sustainable, global competition or not. American were losing on quality to the Japanese way before serious free trade agreement was established.

You can't lump all the problem in the US manufacturing and blame it on free trade. You can't artificially add barriers and tax to mask issues existing in the US. If you want to add tax and barriers, to protect labors, that's fine. But American consumers will have to pay more, American product will continue to suffer from the inherent problem and not be competitive in the International market. American companies will continue to only do well in the American market which is growing slowly. Global American companies from high value product companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson to lower value companies like Coke, Nike will all suffer from your protectionist policies.

It's great to have policies to protect American workers, manufacturers, but we need to understand 1) at what cost 2) are we addressing the core of the problem that cause American manufacturers to be not competitive.

The alternative is to sit and whine about all of those lower displaced workers sucking on the government tit. Your choice.

Oh, and for the record, I agree that GM and their employes did a lot of damage to themselves....no doubt about that.

 

[Jhhnn]

Just what I said before about the majority taking what they feel entitled to at a gunpoint. The rich must pay a ransom - they already do - on that we all agree; the only question left is "how much".

Nice spin, professional quality. It's remarkable how quickly the defenders of the wealthy resort to to the "take it at gunpoint" slur, particularly when it's been the other side of it most often put under the gun, and with the hostage taking by the right wing frequent and glaring.

Most recently, they've held extended unemployment benefits hostage to extended tax cuts for the wealthiest, supposedly to "create jobs", then delivered nothing of the kind. As an adjunct, they've suddenly adopted "fiscal responsibility" as cutting spending, held the full faith and credit of the govt hostage to that, creating enormous uncertainty for business. Raising taxes, particularly for those hoarding their incomes rather than spending them, or investing them in anything other than treasuries, was obviously out of the question.

Where to cut? NPR, planned parenthood, every federal agency that might keep corporate America at least a tiny bit honest. SEC, EPA, the consumer protection agency, any sort of banking regulators. Food stamps.

Prior to Reagan, we all had a deal we could live with, where everybody had to compromise, and naked conflicts of interest and financial scheming was at least somewhat suppressed. It was called the New Deal. The interests of the wealthy were obviously tended to, just not as slavishly as they have been since. They were rich, after all, and it wasn't like they were having trouble making ends meet paying the high taxes of the post WW2 era. Far from it. And they paid decent wages & benefits, not because they wanted to, but because unions, regulations, and trade barriers necessitated it.

Obviously, things have gone too far to go back to that completely, nor should they, but certain aspects of it can be re-instated to the benefit of society in general, if not to the wealthy in particular.

We need to face the facts of what policies led us to this point, and those have been the policies that favored corporate interests and the interests of wealth above all else. And we need to face the fact that we've dealt with free trade in self destructive ways, that we haven't demanded sufficient compensation from our capitalists to cover the job loss we've experienced as a result. We should have been raising corporate and tippytop tax rates all along, not cutting them, in more of a split the difference arrangement than settling for cheap schlock from Guangdong. And we should have been using those revenues to create a healthcare system that benefits all Americans, and a social safety net that truly addresses the effects of that and of automation, as well.

Prior to Reagan, we had a few socialist mechanisms that meant we didn't need more. In abandoning them, and letting it go on for 30 years, the need for such is actually greater than if we'd have rejected Reaganomics for the lie that it's been all along.

Gunpoint? Really? Who's carrying the guns at the OWS protests, anyway?

 

[Craig234]

The fact his shareholders will approve him as much.

You need to be less of an ideologue.

That's a total lack of common sense.

It's like defending the city official making 700K from corruption on the basis of 'that's what the voters said so it's ok'. Shareholders do not have practical oversight of management.

 

[Craig234]

You have the votes, the guns and the rioters, while they have their money and lobbyists. It's their only way to defend against you taking their assets.

That is not and has never been a problem. It's the other direction that's a problem.

They are 1% of the population but account for like 22% of the tax base, IIRC. Honestly, how much more do you expect them to contribute in order to feed and support the rest of the population?
You seem very strongly opinionated about this so I guess you have a number in mind. When will it stop - when they are 30% of the tax base? 40%? Maybe 80%?

Try looking at the balance in the 1940-1980 period. Works much better.

 

[Craig234]

So back in 1910 you and I would be arguing about the need to save and protect the horse and carriage operators? This is simply ridiculous. There are economic trends that are unavoidable, it's as simple as that.

Yes, there are. You are defending something entirely different.

 

[DominionSeraph]

That saying has more to do with the decision making process of both groups rather then their actual state of being. A person could easily go from "poor" to "rich" (in retrospect to their current poor state) due to them moving away from making horrible decisions in life and them seeking out wiser decisions making process.

The graph is income, not wealth. The jobs available to the bottom 95% has nothing to do with individual decision-making of the job-seekers. In fact, by right-wing economic philosophy, that's what the wealthy are responsible for! "If only they are taxed less, they would create billions and billions of jobs!" Well they have the wealth, so where are the jobs? Where are the increasing salaries indicative of competition for labor?

The fact is free market capitalism trends towards massive wealth disparity that is not conducive to overall economic strength. (20,000 people with $50,000 creates a more useful pocket of demand than one person with $1 billion. The demand and resulting economic output of solid gold toilets that comes with the latter really doesn't translate into anything besides that one thing -- serving the billionaire. An entire economy that, outside of the bare subsistence of the slaves, does nothing but serve the ultra-wealthy, isn't particularly robust and will never be set up for max overall wealth-creation efficiency)

 

[biostud]

If the population is poor, then who is going to start a demand for goods and thereby creating new jobs?

 

[SamurAchzar]

You need to be less of an ideologue.

That's a total lack of common sense.

It's like defending the city official making 700K from corruption on the basis of 'that's what the voters said so it's ok'. Shareholders do not have practical oversight of management.

First, voters can disassociate themselves with the company in one click or phone call. Not so with their place of living.

Second, no one would dare pay a city official 700k in the open. There's accountability by the city council, the mayor and the city officials. They know that they would be punished by the public if they do.

Third, CEOs are bought, not elected. It only makes sense that in an open market, companies will pay as much as they need to get the CEO they want.

Note that I never defended the CEO pay outright, I just said the government has no business determining that and it's between the shareholders and their appointed board of director. I support making the public more aware of their rights in companies and I support a more proactive approach by shareholders towards companies they have a stake with or investment bodies through which they hold equity.