Probably an entirely different take on it, but I see a preference for socialism as a product of a strong economy. People feel good enough and secure in their earnings to start entertaining ideas that they think in the abstract will be better, which is not to say that the model that achieved that prosperity is Not working.
Basically the same way that limousine liberals become limousine liberals. Capitalism worked so well for them that they start feeling generous with Everybody’s money.
Look at Venezuela for example. They didn’t get fat enough to feel good about it until they had a strong foothold in the petro market Then they went full socialist and started seizing production infrastructure.
Sure, it has value, if it works. More money in pocket of the middle class? Demand side consumer stimulus? Improved confidence in household finances and economic security, so more consumer spending? More seed capital for entrepreneurs?
Oh, there’s value. Whether it would work or not is the question. But state intervention on behalf of the middle class can have plenty of value, and we have a history of doing it.
First of all you’re assuming the highest and best use for that money is paying labor more than they’re worth. Which is not a given at all.
It doesn’t matter. The companies will defeat it and not pay. What statists fail to realize is consumers and companies don’t hold still and maintain their behaviours when they’re taxed/regulated. It won’t work anywhere near as well as advertised. Just like every other government program. Less liberty, unintended consequences, sub par results and corruption.
“We hold these Truths to be self -evident, that all Men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights , that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness ….”
Yes, that’s precisely the point. When the market isn’t yielding tolerable results in the public interest - as in, intolerable externalities and market failures - something outside of the market has to correct it. In the case of labor, the market isn’t functioning well - short term obsessed leaders spend company money goosing stock prices (which is not an act of investment, and doesn’t yield economic growth) and doing nothing to pay higher wages. Market failures are based on value judgments - and always have been. We don’t buy into the libertarian lunacy that GodMarket is the only arbiter of the best use of money. Economics is a social science, not a religion - basic supply amd demand, useful as it is, doesn’t determine everything. We want a certain kind of society, and most of time, market forces get us in that direction. But sometimes they don’t - and when they don’t and result in something like rising middle class insecurity or stagnation, then we have a market failure.
More money not flowing to workers is a kind of market failure. The market can’t correct this issue through private negotiating power for a number of reasons - labor is not very mobile, labor markets aren’t competitive because industries are less and less competitive (due to consolidation), and there isn’t much in the way of collective bargaining. Thus, big corporations have all the leverage, and markets don’t generate good results when leverage to bargain isn’t spread out competitively.
How to fix? Adjust the leverage, create more competition. I don’t know if Warren’s bill is the answer (it probably isn’t), but it’s a great start to the conversation. She actually had an idea and tried to sell it - which is a Hell of lot better than mumbling “market’ll fix it” with the dullard’s aversion to even thinking through a problem.
Liberty isn’t an End, its a Means. Diminution of it isn’t categorically bad.
No, it’s the shareholder primacy theory you love to love that drives this the most. After all, if your sole mission is to maximize returns for your shareholders, you’re obligated to pursue avenues of corruption - rent seeking, special interests, etc. Otherwise, you’re not maximizing shareholder opportunity.
Your precious theory leads in a straight line to pay-for-play, rigging the game in your favor, and corruption. And it’s the seed corn for what you call the corrupt Elite - that class of people you hate, oh, and love. The so-called Elite is the inevitable product of this theory - got rich, but knew they had to protect their wealth against the normal strum and drang of markets and upstart competition, so they start rigging the game in their favor - all justified by the shareholder primacy theory.
Tolerable to whom? A vocal minority of envious leftists and the politicians pandering to them.
Why would any business, public or otherwise pay $1 more in wages than the going rate? Have you ever run anything? Do you go to the gas station, see $3/gallon and decide: “nah I’ll pay $4/gallon today.”
The entire point of unions is coercion and preventing competition in labor markets. Why would you want that?
The market isn’t holy, it’s just the fairest thing humans have come up with. You have tomatoes and I want your tomatoes. We come to an agreement on $2/lb. I pay. No force. Everybody gets as much as they can. Way better than me killing you for your tomatoes or pointing a gun at you and saying $1.50/lb.
What’s broken? This is the best time to be alive as a human. We are awash in calories, medicines, housing, consumer goods more than ever before. All this anxiety is keeping up with the Jones nonsense.
Labor isn’t worth what leftists think it should be? Welcome to globalism and automation. Government fiat isn’t going to stop those trends. If anything like this passes and the companies don’t leave, they’ll fold because they’ll have to compete with businesses worldwide that are still acting like… businesses.
I’m done here. As predicted 50+ posts ago this divide can’t be bridged. You’re okay with trading even more rights (permanently) for some fleeting sense of economic egalitarianism, and I’m not. I don’t believe government should be an engine for social engineering. Zero minds changed. Thanks for engaging but this is well beyond circular.
It’s strange to me, obviously not to everyone, that we can build monuments to a man who said he regretted he only had one life to give to his nation yet shudder at the thought of raising minimum wage because it’s government theft.
I understand it tbh. The govt has shown themselves time and time again to be inept, corrupt, and unreliable. It makes perfect sense to keep a group of pols out of a space when they’re so fundamentally bad at everything.
Personally, I don’t really like Lizzie’s idea, as I think it’d be way too easy to work around. I also don’t like the govt fucking with the market unless absolutely necessary.
But to me, delaying fixing something only pushes the can down the road and jacks up the inevitable price. How much of our HC worse would he non existent if we saw this shit coming 3 decades ago and had actual public buyin. Something has to be done. Hell if I know what the best method is
Throwing around the s-word is the same as calling Trump a nazi. It’s an emotional reaction completely decoupled from reality. As Trump is many things but not, you know, an actual nazi the same principle applies to Warren and Sanders. Their ideas are a far cry from actual socialism.*
*I know what I’m talking about because in the 3rd grade we had an entire class dedicated to “theory and practice of working self-management socialism”
I don’t know if her plan is the answer but, history has shown us that if the people who are not at the top get frustrated and angry enough, things go bad. People can cling to their precious ideologies like they are some religious belief and they are fundamentalists but human nature and the external forces that influence our behavior don’t care. These people are just as out of touch with reality as the socialists they deride.
I get that there are those who look up to Ayn Rand and think she was some goddess with an intellect that rivaled the greatest minds ever but, she was a nasty and miserable human being whose ideology was depraved and repugnant. She literally put property rights above human rights. How someone who was so disgusting was able to beguile so many, who should have known better, is a sad indictment on humanity.
Imo it’s just the logical extension of nearly all ‘free market’ mindsets. People have become so attached to their conceptual views, that anything that could step on it a little is evil and foreign.
In their defense, they’re right. If the goal is purity of a concept, the only way to maintain that is to reject anything that touches it in a negative way. I just think it’s a silly goal. Purity in something like an economic system is an adorable fairy tale at best. At worst it’s just willful ignorance
But it isn’t pure, that’s just an illusion they believe. This nation was built on sacrifice, that is a fact. And it was the sacrifice of people from all socioeconomic backgrounds (some much more than others). So to turn around and be all “me, me, me, me,” and believe that all that we have was the result of those heroic few “producers” who risked everything is hypocritical at best, delusional at worst. Henry Ford did not build this nation. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not something Rand or other free market demagogues could have come up with. The idea of those truths being self-evident because they were bestowed by some creator could not have come from a supposed atheist.
If we’re being brutally honest, Washington has been rolling since Lincoln.
A modifier on CEO pay to cap at X times the lowest paid worker. It might be average worker, but I’d have to double check that.
Inflated in the sense that we have no hope of implemeting a Japanese ratio without reeeeeally pissing off our corporate overlords. We’d have to have a higher ratio right out of the gate for sure