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Pinterest Mom posted:That article seems to be arguing against claims nobody is making, especially I'll take Bill Gates from last week saying that people who criticize billionaires are communists and the solution to inequality is a tax credit over Bill Gates from five years ago saying inequality is a problem and maybe we should think about thinking about it. https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1087767731041112064
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Jan 29, 2019 19:11
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vyelkin posted:I'll take Bill Gates from last week saying that people who criticize billionaires are communists and the solution to inequality is a tax credit over Bill Gates from five years ago saying inequality is a problem and maybe we should think about thinking about it. I mean, he's not wrong, the existing system could be tweaked to reduce inequality. For instance, "tweak" marginal tax rates to the 60-80% range, or "tweak" capital gains to be 100% taxable.
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Jan 29, 2019 19:20
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Jan posted:I mean, he's not wrong, the existing system could be tweaked to reduce inequality. For instance, "tweak" marginal tax rates to the 60-80% range, or "tweak" capital gains to be 100% taxable. Tweak their heads from their bodies.
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Jan 29, 2019 19:20
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We learned (and learned again, and again) that we have to serious restrict free markets and limit capitalism's influence on almost everything as much as possible in order to enjoy the benefits from the material wealth it helps create. And yet we forget about or shrug off tremendous economic devastation as bumps in the road because we happen to be on the uptick of a trend. We know of the cyclical nature of our current economic order, we know how to stave off its worse effects, but we keep loving it up. Weird.
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Jan 29, 2019 19:33
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vyelkin posted:I'll take Bill Gates from last week saying that people who criticize billionaires are communists and the solution to inequality is a tax credit over Bill Gates from five years ago saying inequality is a problem and maybe we should think about thinking about it. "We need higher estate and incomes taxes and also expand the EITC but fundamentally I don't want to rethink the system too much" isn't the answer I want, but it's also a far cry from "Bill Gates wants you to believe that quality of life has improved so that you don't raise issues of inequality".
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Jan 29, 2019 20:01
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Nicola Di Iorio has resigned.
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Jan 29, 2019 20:11
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Pinterest Mom posted:"We need higher estate and incomes taxes and also expand the EITC but fundamentally I don't want to rethink the system too much" isn't the answer I want, but it's also a far cry from "Bill Gates wants you to believe that quality of life has improved so that you don't raise issues of inequality". Market based but hardcore social democratic policies is super good also quality of life has absolutely broadly improved in more than just china, lots of south-east asia (while still full of crippling poverty) has a lot of uplifting progress. vietnam is doing good etc. eastern europe was horrific when the weird communist experiments started buckling in the 1980s but is now broadly ok also lots of african countries are doing better, west africa has seen pretty great improvements broadly speaking
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Jan 29, 2019 20:12
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Pinterest Mom posted:That article seems to be arguing against claims nobody is making, especially Capitalists don’t care about excessive inequality because it hurts people, they care because it is destabilizing and threatens revenue growth. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 20:30
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Even if all the economic gains made in last few decades were entirely caused by neo-liberal capitalism, and no other system would have made things better, that still doesn't mean that neo-liberal capitalism is the answer for now and forever. It was just an answer for back then, under different circumstances that no longer apply. Analogy time! "This raw chicken is highly unpalatable, and if I eat it, I get the shits real bad" "Just stick it in the oven for 30 minutes!" "Holy poo poo it's great now!" "Keep it in the oven forever! Crank the heat up! It made the chicken better, so more oven time can only make it betterer!" "It's becoming an inedible hunk of carbon, and eating it is giving me bowel cancer" "Shut up communist!"
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Jan 29, 2019 20:35
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cowofwar posted:Um Bill sounds like a piece of poo poo. That’s classic bootstraps poo poo right there. He apparently thinks that inequality is inherently good but the problem is excessive inequality. Is there any situation where a financial incentive is ok, or everyone should be paid exactly the same no matter the context? I am able to sign up for overtime at work. If my co worker chooses to work a few extra shifts and I would rather just be home with my family, I'm not mad that his pay cheque was more than mine.
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Jan 29, 2019 20:48
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DrBox posted:Is there any situation where a financial incentive is ok, or everyone should be paid exactly the same no matter the context? I am able to sign up for overtime at work. If my co worker chooses to work a few extra shifts and I would rather just be home with my family, I'm not mad that his pay cheque was more than mine. How is getting paid for your labour a factor in inequality? The only way it could be is if we agree that inequality is somehow a function of lazy people being jealous of hard-working people having more money in spite of the fact that productivity continues to rise year over year in spite of real wages remaining the same since the 70s.
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Jan 29, 2019 20:51
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DrBox posted:Is there any situation where a financial incentive is ok, or everyone should be paid exactly the same no matter the context? I am able to sign up for overtime at work. If my co worker chooses to work a few extra shifts and I would rather just be home with my family, I'm not mad that his pay cheque was more than mine. Most communists would agree with this. All labour is labour and should be paid/compensated accordingly. Paul Cockshott's "Towards a New Socialism" lays out basically a society where everyone earns 1 labour token per hour worked regardless of the job title, there's a flat tax to pay for services. http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.pdf The key is that your labour is actually the only way to get money. Not through rent-seeking or finance. You work 7 hours, here's your 7 labour tokens. I believe the tokens even expire after a certain time to prevent accumulation. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 20:56
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Dreylad posted:How is getting paid for your labour a factor in inequality? The only way it could be is if we agree that inequality is somehow a function of lazy people being jealous of hard-working people having more money in spite of the fact that productivity continues to rise year over year in spite of real wages remaining the same since the 70s. Getting paid for my labour is my income. If the conversation is about income inequality, how is that not relevant? I guess I don't understand the definition of inequality we are using in this context.
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Jan 29, 2019 20:59
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DrBox posted:Getting paid for my labour is my income. If the conversation is about income inequality, how is that not relevant? I guess I don't understand the definition of inequality we are using in this context. There's lots of easy examples: not getting paid overtime. People working the same or similar jobs and being paid differently. zero hour contracts where you're not even guaranteed steady working hours. A lot of the clarity surrounding how much people get paid and making sure people get paid for the work they do and being guaranteed hours to work are the result of workers demanding these things, they did not come into existence on their own. They were responses to gross societal inequality in the past, and as it becomes increasingly difficult for workers to demand these things yet again we see an increase in inequality. So you're right, it is relevant, but in a broader historical context. Dreylad fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 21:11
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https://twitter.com/AndrewScheer/status/1090316193884442624 https://twitter.com/JonWiseman/status/1090323470620262402 Well this is promising. Timely too. I guess the CPC is getting nervous about the Bernier boys.
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Jan 29, 2019 21:18
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Dreylad posted:There's lots of easy examples: not getting paid overtime. People working the same or similar jobs and being paid differently. zero hour contracts where you're not even guaranteed steady working hours. Not getting paid at all because you can't find a job, your skill set was automated out of existence and you can't afford the classes necessary to learn a new skill set. Really, the problem isn't the income inequality itself, it's the lack of mobility within those different income levels. All the austerity measures that have been put into place over the years to make up for profligate spending whenever the unregulated economy slows down a little bit end up chipping away the tools that people have to survive poverty, let alone lift themselves out of it. And that's only for western countries that have had a security net to begin with. All those developing economies that never had such things but were still asked to embrace capitalism when it was parachuted into them end have it even worse.
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Jan 29, 2019 21:24
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Baronjutter posted:The key is that your labour is actually the only way to get money. Not through rent-seeking or finance. You work 7 hours, here's your 7 labour tokens. I believe the tokens even expire after a certain time to prevent accumulation.
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Jan 29, 2019 21:25
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TheCenturion posted:But is all labour truly equal? Are some forms of labour inherently more valuable to society than others? I believe that if you take 8 hours out of your day to goto work and work hard while you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, you deserve a living wage and to not have to worry about a second job to support or anything like that.
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Jan 29, 2019 21:43
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Syfe posted:I believe that if you take 8 hours out of your day to goto work and work hard while you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, you deserve a living wage and to not have to worry about a second job to support or anything like that. I don't think anyone is arguing about that, I think the issue is more the every job gets exactly one labour token per hour thing instead of some mild variation depending on how much training or stress the job requires.
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Jan 29, 2019 21:53
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TheCenturion posted:But is all labour truly equal? Are some forms of labour inherently more valuable to society than others? Yep, it is. If you believe all people are equal then everyone should be compensated for their time equally. But it ripples throughout the entire economy as every good and service is also priced based on the labour that went into it more or less, which is that whole "labour theory of value" marxists are always on about. "But a doctor is much more rare and well trained than a janitor!" only because education is limited. Education would pay just like any other job, again it's just labour. Instead of education being a thing you invest an enormous amount of money into with the hopes it will "pay off" for you in the future, it's something your society invests into you. This does make me wonder about "well what if a lovely job is in such low supply but really needs to get done, could society incentivize it somehow, supplementing the standard rate with bonus tokens out of the tax fund?". The cool thing about Paul Cockshott is that he's pretty accessible on top of his books and publications being free and him having a bunch of ASMR level dry as hell youtubes, he actually replies to emails. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 21:59
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All work is equal, whether it doctor or janitor. The reason that a doctor is more expensive is that they put in many, many years of work before you met them. That work counts for something too. When you factor it in, they probably are about equivalent in terms of person-hours. Otherwise, they would be out of equilibrium, and when that happens, the markets takes advantage of it until it is equal. (If being a doctor or a janitor was strictly better, then we would all be doctors or janitors.) eta this is only true in aggregate and there are obvious counterpoints
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Jan 29, 2019 22:04
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TheCenturion posted:But is all labour truly equal? Are some forms of labour inherently more valuable to society than others? jk rowling wrote harry potter novels for zero labour tokens. Then she released them and some people were willing to give her $10 for the wonderful experience of reading one so she wrote more. Then a lot of people started giving her $10 and now she's got a billion dollars after paying her taxes and enriching the lives of millions of people and didn't pillage the planet to do it because some labour is more valuable than others and that's ok. she didn't know how many people were going to buy them when she set out but nobody was coerced or tricked, all parties considered it an agreeable transaction, what's the problem with billionaires?
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Jan 29, 2019 22:05
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Rowling, in a potential communist society, would have been paid for the hours she put into writing the books, and then the books would have become public domain and freely available to everyone. People wanting hard copies could order them and have them printed, at a cost equal to the labour value of the book, or if Rowling is actually popular in this world (I'd fantasize people freed from exploitation would somehow have better taste) the local book store would probably have copies in stock as well. Her main reward, beyond being compensated for her time writing as some sort of professional author, would be the boost to her reputation and the nice happy feelings of good work that's been appreciated by society.
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Jan 29, 2019 22:33
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Rowling, in a potential communist society, would probably get executed over being antisemitic
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Jan 29, 2019 22:39
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https://twitter.com/CANADALAND/status/1089899881655910405
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Jan 29, 2019 22:39
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I don't really see an organized resistance to Trudeau as a bad thing, because I never forgave him over lying about election reform. The problem is simply that, when he's deposed, the people in the best position to seize that power vacuum are these fascists. Instead of backing Trudeau, organize something that is better than him and the opposition. This is a wave we can ride, and the right already is.
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Jan 29, 2019 22:46
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Baronjutter posted:Rowling, in a potential communist society, would have been paid for the hours she put into writing the books, and then the books would have become public domain and freely available to everyone. People wanting hard copies could order them and have them printed, at a cost equal to the labour value of the book, or if Rowling is actually popular in this world (I'd fantasize people freed from exploitation would somehow have better taste) the local book store would probably have copies in stock as well. I think a big downside is that this necessitates that the government (or at least some central authority) needs to be in charge of deciding who is permitted to do creative work. It seems plainly obvious that it wouldn't be very effective to give everyone who wants to write a novel (or realizes that they can say that they want to write a novel and then not do it) money just for the effort of writing, and putting a central authority in charge of what creative works are permitted to be created seems like it would be prone to censorship, or at the very least not selecting for talent particularly well. Markets aren't a perfect solution to everything but they do seem to be effective when it comes to consumer goods and in particular creative goods and entertainment. I think there's some things you could call socialism that still incorporate markets, but the "you're compensated strictly by labour hours" isn't one of them.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:02
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enki42 posted:I think a big downside is that this necessitates that the government (or at least some central authority) needs to be in charge of deciding who is permitted to do creative work. It seems plainly obvious that it wouldn't be very effective to give everyone who wants to write a novel (or realizes that they can say that they want to write a novel and then not do it) money just for the effort of writing, and putting a central authority in charge of what creative works are permitted to be created seems like it would be prone to censorship, or at the very least not selecting for talent particularly well. I always imagined things like "who gets to be a professional author and who just does it as a side hobby" would be down to some entirely democratic "market" system not unlike kickstarter or something. You and your friends have a great pitch for a new video game plus a reputation for making good poo poo? Congrats, your pitch got enough votes and your game is a go. Once it's done it's of course public domain. Markets would still drive supply of products and improvements to products. Towards A New Socialism doesn't cover everything, but it's an interesting read how a potential modern marxist system could function and would probably answer most of your "well but how would X work?" questions.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:06
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Cool, I'll check that out. I've been looking for stuff that gets into practical applications of Marxism.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:13
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xtal posted:All work is equal, whether it doctor or janitor. The reason that a doctor is more expensive is that they put in many, many years of work before you met them. That work counts for something too. When you factor it in, they probably are about equivalent in terms of person-hours. Otherwise, they would be out of equilibrium, and when that happens, the markets takes advantage of it until it is equal. (If being a doctor or a janitor was strictly better, then we would all be doctors or janitors.) there's literally 0 incentive to advance, form good skills or anything in this stupid loving way of looking at things why would i manage hundreds of people in high intensity construction work vs being a wrench turner when it's all the same value add- the value of labour is extremely disproportionate between the lucky/capable and unfortunate/lazy/idiotic people the key is to have some baseline standard of living you can guarantee to people who do poorly by either poor circumstances or lovely choices - I would 100% quit my job right now for something else with the same hours if I didn't have better compensation or the premise of better compensation. even the lovely communist autocracies gave earlier pensions & much better pay to people in lovely back breaking industries or who performed very specialized skills (nuclear physicians/engineers add more value than a restaurant dishwasher)
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Jan 29, 2019 23:14
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Postess with the Mostest posted:jk rowling wrote harry potter novels for zero labour tokens. Then she released them and some people were willing to give her $10 for the wonderful experience of reading one so she wrote more. Then a lot of people started giving her $10 and now she's got a billion dollars after paying her taxes and enriching the lives of millions of people and didn't pillage the planet to do it because some labour is more valuable than others and that's ok. she didn't know how many people were going to buy them when she set out but nobody was coerced or tricked, all parties considered it an agreeable transaction, what's the problem with billionaires? Good news this is essentially the Austrian school argument for broad economic freedom, where maximizing individual ability to engage in voluntary transactions improves general welfare and discourages repressive govt. Whatever resulting distribution of wealth is justified on this basis. Bad news when you espouse well-known pseudo-scientific economic theories it makes it easier for others to recognize you have bad opinions. In this particular case it's even simpler, as by your unthinking standard a state of affairs where one guy ends up controlling 99.9% of wealth is totally fine as long he came about "fairly". For everyone else it's clear such an extreme economic and political power imbalance would be to the detriment of the vast majority of people, no matter how it came about.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:20
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Syfe posted:I believe that if you take 8 hours out of your day to goto work and work hard while you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, you deserve a living wage and to not have to worry about a second job to support or anything like that. No one would show up to repair your roof in this scenario. Or do landscaping. Or work in a mine. Or work on towers. There are tons of jobs that are inherently grueling, or dangerous. They have to be paid better or you won't have workers.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:21
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patonthebach posted:No one would show up to repair your roof in this scenario. Or do landscaping. Or work in a mine. Or work on towers. So I'm not really sure what the dialectic is here, but the shape of this point is usually a pretty weird one because a lot of what you've picked out here are especially poorly paying jobs in capitalistic societies. I feel like if you want to push the line that physically arduous or dangerous work ought to be better compensated than some baseline (of whatever eight hours per day at default is), then whatever you consider our current social arrangements to be, you're probably committed to saying that they are failing quite severely.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:31
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Postess with the Mostest posted:jk rowling wrote harry potter novels for zero labour tokens. Then she released them and some people were willing to give her $10 for the wonderful experience of reading one so she wrote more. Then a lot of people started giving her $10 and now she's got a billion dollars after paying her taxes and enriching the lives of millions of people and didn't pillage the planet to do it because some labour is more valuable than others and that's ok. she didn't know how many people were going to buy them when she set out but nobody was coerced or tricked, all parties considered it an agreeable transaction, what's the problem with billionaires? The books didn't bind, print and transport themselves. The copyrights on her work didn't automatically enforce themselves. The various homes she lives in don't have an automatic force-field that keeps out unwanted intruders. Given all of this it is quite mysterious how Rowling accumulated her fortune. Some have speculated on the existence of something they call a "society", a hypothetical network of social relationships that organizes the production and distribution of resources and that was the necessary precondition for Rowling's success.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:36
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If you get rid of the 1/3rd of jobs the other 2/3rds of society deems useless, that 2/3rds of society will die from a pandemic caused by a dirty phone booth.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:38
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Hand Knit posted:So I'm not really sure what the dialectic is here, but the shape of this point is usually a pretty weird one because a lot of what you've picked out here are especially poorly paying jobs in capitalistic societies. I feel like if you want to push the line that physically arduous or dangerous work ought to be better compensated than some baseline (of whatever eight hours per day at default is), then whatever you consider our current social arrangements to be, you're probably committed to saying that they are failing quite severely. They are and they aren't. Miners or truck drivers generally pay well above their training requirements. Roofing is a weird one because the amount of ex-cons and otherwise unstable people that work in the industry because they don't have many other options, so they will take a bad job at bad pay because they have to. My minor point is that in an ideal society, some jobs should still make more. Especially the ones that have a decent chance of you becoming disabled or otherwise seriously injured while doing the job. But yeah, in 2019, most of jobs in Canada are severely, unfairly underpaid.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:50
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And on the other hand there's tech. And finance. And real-estate, I guess.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:51
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Why is the canpol thread communist chat all of a sudden? Aren’t there dozens of threads in D&D for this.
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Jan 29, 2019 23:52
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priznat posted:Why is the canpol thread communist chat all of a sudden? Aren’t there dozens of threads in D&D for this. Because it's a reflection of society? Were you here complaining that the previous discussion should be in the reactionary thread?
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Jan 29, 2019 23:54
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xtal posted:I don't really see an organized resistance to Trudeau as a bad thing, because I never forgave him over lying about election reform. The problem is simply that, when he's deposed, the people in the best position to seize that power vacuum are these fascists. Instead of backing Trudeau, organize something that is better than him and the opposition. This is a wave we can ride, and the right already is. These people do not want to bring Trudeau down thru electoral means. They literally want him executed.
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