- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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Well, if the workers owned the means of production…
I always want people to realize the true difference in communism and capitalism is that capitalism replaces “the people” with “the 1%” and then they’re interchangeable in everything else. Unfortunately it’s more like 0.01% if we’re being realistic.
The big difference is whether you believe some people are born to be less than others or not, that’s literally the right vs left.
Capitalism is squarely a right wing economic system as there are people born with inherent advantages, more power, from the standpoint of capital simply better. The only reason capitalism affords some sort of upwards social mobility is because of leftist policies, laws, regulations.
Capitalism, like feudalism offers upward mobility by appeasing the established elite. Seriously, nobody is wealthy under capitalism by earning a wage, they’re wealthy by owning the means of production. You either die working class or your betray the class you were born into to use others.
I quit my job as a caregiver for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to make more money… working in retail.
Wait, you just described working in retail. What were you doing before?
It’s retail all the way down.
I mean, at the lowest level, it’s probably just tail
Might of the middleman leads to the plight of the professionals.
My wife works in a higher-end memory care center as a caregiver, and I can confirm they don’t pay nearly enough.
Finance
Insurance
Real
Estate…the moneyed class made sure that commerce always benefits their own rent-seeking intermediation first…
Capitalism is full of contradictions!? No way!! /s
In all of these examples the administrators make significantly more than the people doing the work, which is why things are so expensive. We’re paying for hospital administrators, university boards, and all of the staff supporting them.
The common denominator is taxes. There is this unit circle visual that shows half of your work value taken from you directly by taxes, and prices are twice what they want to be (indirectly paying others taxes)… so an individual “feels” only 1/4 economic effectiveness, or 3/4 oppressed.
*Half of what is left after the CEO and shareholders take their cut. Taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to the excess labor value that is extracted before you even see a penny.
Yes, corporate overhead is quite real, but it is literally zero effect for the self-employed… so by your logic all would be or become so to be rich by avoiding a CEO altogether.
Are you seriously suggesting that all it should take to become rich is to do freelance work?
The way people actually get rich is by exploiting the labor of others. Freelance work is only practical in very specific niches, and even then you’ll be forced to compete with conglomerates that have far greater resources.
Xia is failing to realize that the original post isn’t about self owned businesses, so their point doesn’t make sense in this context. Based on their other comments, they either don’t understand how discussions, debates, or arguments work, or they’re a troll, or they’re overly saturated on capitalist propoganda.
If those are the only options then it is probably the last one, as I’m often not even sure what to call the unfamiliar positions I see others taking here, but it could be a bit of “can’t debate” too as I find a tendency in myself to address the secondary or tertiary consequences of peoples arguments (assuming they are aware of [and already accept] the obvious primary consequences) which can be quite jarring and read like a string of non-sequitors, or like people arguing past each other.
I agree and do understand that the original post was not about self owned businesses, so I agree that it is a bit off topic here. I was only trying to point out the absurdity of the statement that “taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to [labor value theft]”. As if that were true (or even a less-hyperbolic ratio of 1-to-99), then it would logically follow that freelance work would produce staggeringly higher yields, and we see that is not the case. The intent was an informal proof by contradiction, but that was not made clear.
I think it could also be shown by induction (as the more people/layers/intermediaries you add the more loss/expense is incurred) if you accept a profit motive and a steady state, but large businesses can and do temporarily sell products at a loss to kill competition in the short-term, so that would probably be less convincing.
Taxation doesn’t take into account the fact that wages are stagnant, but corporations have posted record profits. Small businesses are impacted as well, due to the nature of supply chains, most people cannot create something from nothing.
I’d like to address something you said that is unrelated to economics. You said you address secondary or tertiary consequences of arguements. That doesn’t seem like a non-sequitor or people arguing past eachother like some kind of verbal 4-D chess match, typed in this case. It seems to me that you’re saying you assume what the other person might say, then you reply to that assumtion. Can you clarify?
Taxation doesn’t take into account the fact that wages are stagnant, but corporations have posted record profits
Something akin to this?
I would generally agree that taxation as we normally use the term may not be adequate to describe this great squeezing effect, unless you stretch the definition of tax to include inflation too, as a hidden pervasive tax that is invisibly collecting value from everyone.
Small businesses are impacted as well, due to the nature of supply chains, most people cannot create something from nothing.
Supply chains have to start somewhere, and I tend to favor and think of bottom-up solutions very near people creating value from nothing to compete with the mega-corps (washing cars, mowing lawns, sewing, carpentry, metal-working, programming, gardening)… there is probably more business opportunities within the reach of the individual than we are trained to believe, and I wonder how much we automatically lose once we assume that we must be an employee.
That doesn’t seem like a non-sequitor or people arguing past eachother like some kind of verbal 4-D chess match, typed in this case.
Absolutely agree, it is way more disruptive than it could possibly be of strategic value, especially in verbal conversation. I would hazard to say it has never been useful outside of my family.
It seems to me that you’re saying you assume what the other person might say, then you reply to that assumption.
I’m sure I do that too, but to some degree one must make assumptions about what others are saying, as that is the nature of natural language communication.
Can you clarify?
An example would probably be best, but I skimmed over this thread’s post and did not see an obvious example, so probably not in a time-effective manner… this aside might barely qualify (maybe when I mentioned this tendency I thought you were reacting to something not on this thread), or maybe my initial post could be an example (as I unconsciously skipped over the obvious answers of “inflation” and “greed” which are positions I knew others would consider and take, and therefor have little value in me harping on).
Cool, now how much of your work value is taken by people who did nothing but invest the generational wealth they got from their great great grandad laying claim to common natural resources? Surely that’s the bigger concern since it goes to rich peoples’ yachts instead of public services.
That depends on if you refer to banking or inflationary spending.
Both are spending appropriated by elected representatives in Congress. I’m referring to the portion of your work value that goes directly into the pockets of unelected capitalists.
Lmao, no. Not without sources.
I would love to see the math behind that. Typically it’s a case where someone is effectively paying 25% of their income to taxes, but because they are too lazy to actually understand how taxes work they are easily convinced it’s well over 50%
I recall my first exposure to this idea was via L. Neal Smith, so I tried to coax a breakdown out of GPT. Keeping in mind it could be hallucinated (and not his actual position or sourced values and math), so minimally just for your entertainment…
Certainly! Here’s a more detailed breakdown of how L. Neil Smith might conceptualize the distribution of value:
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12.5% Retained by the Individual: The portion of value that individuals actually keep for themselves after all deductions.
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20% Income Taxes: The portion of value lost to federal, state, and local income taxes.
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15% Social Security and Medicare Taxes: Contributions to social security and healthcare systems.
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10% Sales Taxes: Taxes added to purchases of goods and services.
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10% Property Taxes: Taxes on real estate and other property.
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15% Regulatory Compliance Costs: Expenses related to meeting government regulations, such as environmental standards, labor laws, and safety requirements.
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10% Corporate and Business Taxes: Taxes on business profits, which can indirectly affect individual income through reduced wages or higher prices.
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7.5% Miscellaneous Fees and Other Taxes: Including tariffs, licensing fees, and other smaller taxes.
This breakdown illustrates how various forms of taxation and regulation can consume a large portion of the value generated by individual effort, aligning with Smith’s perspective on government intervention.
Do you have an example that uses real income? All those percentage are relative to something, and that something is the most important part.
What province are we talking about and what salary are we talking about.
To be honest though, this sounds like some pie in the sky libertarian point of view where they are suggesting multiple things that are repeatedly proved false. Some of which include:
- trickle down economics, the idea that business will pass on additional profits to employees.
- business will regulate themselves and ensure consumer safety.
- business will happily provide the same infrastructure and services that we current fund through taxes for free or cheaper than it’s costs us right now to provide those services.
Which at that point I think you’re argument is correct, if we stopped spending effectively around 40% of our income (thats on the high-end) on funding public services, then over 75% of our income would need to go towards paying to get those same services back.
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