^ which is why you only redistribute the wealth of the top of the top - how does that lead to poverty?

am i missing something here?

I pretty much believe in capitalism with a wage cap, I guess. Those superfluous funds are then redistributed to provide essentials for those in the country who are struggling, or to provide a helping hand in education and health care. Makes sense to me.

In America, we debate about who we trust more: government or business. Both are fucks, ultimately.

YES. YES YOU ARE. A LOT ACTUALLY. will be long to explain.


those millionares you like to complain about don't get a "wage"

"providing essentials" creates all kinds of market distortions. like the subsidies the agriculture department pays to farmers to dump shit into nutritionally defective school lunches

improving education and healthcare and having universal access to them sure is a good objective. but "soaking the rich" won't get you anywhere near there i'm sorry you're being lied to.

^ Right. Remember last December when the Trump administration explicitly lowered the standards of cafeteria food?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/u...unch-usda.html

That's what capitalism, and running the country like a corporation gets you. Everything is profit, profit, profit.

----

Wage/Salary... you know I meant "income cap" Let's not split hairs over semantics, we're friends here.

It's like when you max out the high score on a pinball machine. Just because the numbers flip over, doesn't mean the player is discouraged from aiming for the highest score possible. Give those extra points to someone who isn't as good at playing. I'm from the participation trophy generation and PROUD OF IT DAMMIT!

You're implying that the government is going to take that money and run away with it though... right? Like do things with it outside the good of the people. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, I get it.

It's almost like neither the government or businesses actually care about us. Almost like the means of production should belong to the people.

You seem to be saying that the general should just accept that the wage gap has gotten bigger and will continue to get bigger. However, it hasn't always been like that. CEOs weren't giving themselves a salary that massively outstrips what the average person on the street was getting. Reagan and Thatcher gave the massive corporations carte blanche to do what they wanted and to hell with the consequences. From that we got the recession of 2008 and nothing has changed.

There has to be a level of government control and that starts at the top.

any millionaire and up that is taxed at 50-70% for a year's income can make up that difference in a YEAR just off interest and stock dividend payments alone.


Please remmeber also that income tax is the LEAST OF IT. Corporate taxes, sales tax, gasoline tax, luxury taxes on goods, properrty taxes, etc etc... The government taxes most regular people an average of 30-40% of their income.



The government asks businesses to withhold taxes. the government gets TOO MUCH MONEY IN TAXES, so they have to refund back a ton to people who were OVER TAXED.


Amazon earns billions and does not pay a cent in federal tax. nice scam.

EUGEEEEEEENE....

im trying to reply during short work breaks (pomodoro breaks).

one of the problems i have doing this is that you bring up so many things at once that i can't answer any of them because so many things going on.

briefly i will say: if it were true that business and government are evil, i'd say government is the biggest one.

for example: if i choose to buy ALL instead of TIDE, procter and gamble doesn't send a bunch of cops to my house to kick down my door and interrogate me and ask me why i have not bought tide recently. at most they will send me a coupon to entice me.

but if i choose to buy ALCOHOL ON A SUNDAY, or weed in a state where it's not allowed, i can get arrested, tried, fined, jailed, and then raped in jail.

no contest. government is more evil ha ha ha ha. they write the laws, have the cops and the prisons. i know in theory it's supposed to be a government "of the people" but we're far from such ideals.

SO:

proposition (joe):



let's try to focus the discussion on a single item so we can dissect it and figure out some common ground or agree to disagree. yes? i think the scattershot approach only breeds misunderstanding and confusion. then we all think we're yelling.

if you agree, let's start why not from the notion that the rich get "a higher wage" and "are evil". how about it? the greedy that must be punished for the common good.

sounds good? can we focus on that? for a bit anyway...?

not sure if you agreed or not but i have another 5' break so quickly to ask

is profit evil?
or is the accumulation of profit evil?

again just trying to narrow down the core issue of why we must punish the rich

were they doing something wrong from the start? or was it too much of a good thing that is the wrong?

i know you mentioned some of this with the pinball machine, i just wanna make sure that it is clear so that we don't end up talking about 2 different things.

ok! gotta piss too and do other things lmao. later.

Making sure the rich pay their (more than affordable) share isn't punishing the rich.

ok let's please backtrack a little here like i asked eugene so we can be on the same page

is profit evil?

profit is not evil.


Ignoring ethical and moral issues to gain a little more profit? EVIL.


Destroying competitors reputations and ruining countless lives for profit? EVIL.


Manufacturing items that are inherently dangerous, broken, or fradulent just to get some profit? EVIL.

The whole argument lies in that, the more money you make, the more of the nation's resources you are using up, whether that be public roads, regulatory agencies, oversight agencies, the postal system, the civil court systems, and the commerce law systems, in order to make your $$$$.


Therefore, you should owe a bigger share of your money as taxes than someone who makes $35,000 a year and does not "tax" the national/communal resources as much.

ok so where does profit come from?



i agree with you that immoral means are immoral. it's sort of a tautology.

but let's not conflate things right now.

you're saying profit is not evil. ok.

in marxist theory profit is evil btw. it is considered the result of exploitation.

so where does profit come from?

just making sure where we stand. it's hard to have a bunch of conversations at once.

What he said. No one here is saying profit is evil and certainly not one here is saying anything similar to what Marx said.

so where does profit come from?

I guess in the absolute simplest sense it comes from the difference from buying, making something (labour) and then selling it on at an increased price.

Not sure where you're gonna go with this but I'll go along.

thanks! reason im asking this is because to allow any sort of valid communication we have to have a common ground and definition of the terms

when i was a kid i was indoctrinated in the notion that profit was evil and theft from the worker. so when i heard “profit” i thought “theft and exploitation”. no theft is good.

so, in my mind, nobody had a right to a profit, let alone accumulation of profits. a profiteer was an exploiter.

so, with all that in mind, your definition is pretty good, profit is when you take more money than you put in, so i have to ask

what in the living fuck gives the busines a right to a profit? i mean— why don't they pay their suppliers more, and keep them happy? why dont they pay their workers more and forego profits? why should the public pay more for their goods than what they put into making them?

or, to frame it from the opposite perspective— why should i, the customer, who in the daytime already work hard for little money, pay the thieving business owner MORE than it cost to make the thing???

i feel robbed! robbed i tell you! we should abolish profit! i should pay a fair price! yes?

But you can. You can shop around a find a deal and buy whatever item you want at a price that seems fair to you.

Anyway, we've diverged from what we were talking about. My point is that it's not unreasonable to expect people on stupid wages to pay their share of taxes. Also it's all well and good saying that government is evil but it's not. The system that you've got going on has led to people with the wrong intentions getting government jobs, but government in itself isn't (I can hear Tesla laughing now).

Sorry Eugene I've highjacked your conversation here.

i know you're trying to jump ahead of things but you're trying to jump ahead to the "stupid wages" part and there is the "stupid" part and no, i refuse to go there yet.

let's not go there yet!

let's really look at the issue of profits.

this is not just a matter of people paying a price that seems fair. that comes after. cuz what am i to do-- choose between 2 scammers but still get scammed? well...

see, i can actually find 2 good moral justifications for taking a profit:

1) the profit is a compensation for the risk the business owners (you, me, and everyone in the stock market for example) take with their money. because we could just stuff our money under the mattress, yes? where it's safe... a business can lose the money. so, the profit is the reward for taking a risk.

2) but wait! isn't that just a gamble you ask? what is this? a fucking casino?

no.

the social moral reason why a business is entitled to take a profit is because IT CREATES VALUE. the profit is, broadly speaking, a measure of the value added to all the components. the whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

when the maker of crystal sauce sends buyers to chihuahua, buys aged peppers, puts them in a bottle with vinegar, pays for health inspections, sends it my way, etc... it creates a value for me that is greater than the sum of its parts.

i pay more than what it costs the business to make hot sauce ... because that is the reward for creating something that i could not do for myself otherwise.

sure i could go to chihuahua buy my own peppers make my own vinegar bottle it oooofff... it would be VERY expensive for me to make all this. and i should have better things to do with my time, like play nintendo or something (lol).

so paying 1.50 for a bottle of sauce that cost maybe $1 to make is not a bad deal for me. THE BUSINESS HAS ADDED VALUE TO THE ECONOMY. THEY ARE PRODUCING A SOCIAL GOOD. the business owner's "greed" for "profit" has benefitted... ME!

and you know, the business owner didn't need to go through all this trouble to make a profit. they could have just stuffed the money under the mattress and jerk off all day.

i would actually pay more even to avoid going to chihuahua and look for peppers... but this (only this) is where competition comes from. because texas pete and louisiana compete with crystal. and all 3 are trying to get my business.

ok this stuff ate my short break and then some. i will be back later with more shit.

Marxism is dumb as fuck, useless, and completely discredited as an ideology that can run governments.



In the ideal world, the world that most businessmen would like you to believe they inhabit, a product or service is exchanged for whatevr the "market" (meaning the consumer) is willing to pay for it.



Profit comes from selling a product/service at a state of rarity. I can try to sell Mangoes on the street in Puerto Rico but no one will buy them as everyone has a dozen mango trees on their property. My only way to get any profit (meaning more money than I spent to sell the mangoes) is top take them (incurring more cost) to a location without mangoes. The rarer a product or service is the m ore profit can be gained from it.


The USA system is screwed because instead of putting profits back into the businesses, so that wages go up, employee satisfaction goes up, and the product/service becomes of a better quality, much of the PROFIT goes to stockholders. Stockholders are people and organizations/banks that have absolutely no input and say into HOW a product or service is sold or rendered, but who claim the most influence on the state of any business.


The entirety of the USA business and finance system is a giant pyramid scheme, propped up by the federal Reserve.

but rob that is way too large and scattershot for me to be able to answer fairly.

from the microeconomics of mango to macroeconomic conspiracy theories is too much of a range for anyone to answer.

BUT let me take one thing you mention: the mango thing

close, close...

it's not a matter of mere rarity. it's a matter of VALUE.

value may relate to rarity.

for example if you are lost in the desert you may value water a lot more because it's rare.

but just because something is rare it doesn't follow that one must value it.

e.g., dragonfruit

dragonfruit is rare as fuck in this here desert. i look at it, five bucks, fuck that, i can buy a red baron pizza and a can of pringles for that.

i don't value the rare dragonfruit. maybe some day. i don't know. who cares.

so you're right that profit and value are related.

but value. it's not just about rarity.

why is crystal sauce valuable to me? it's not rare but it's valuable enough to pay more than it costs to make and deliver to my local store.

eh??? why???

where does value come from?

hint: the marxists were wrong about it