Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
You wrote:
You know, I've never before seen someone on slashdot who I actively wanted to kill before.
You disgust me, you filthy diseased parasite, trying to spread your civilization-destroying socialism.
You need to read my posts about the rightwing movement, and how the current leaders of it are essentially encouraging the more hateful and intolerant aspects of humans. They have essentially and implicitly given approval for intolerance and a low-grade species of fascism in return for re-election.
You are in part a reflection of this dynamic.
yep, you guys are intellectually bankrupt
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
If all you can do is call me Hitler, I guess that means you are intellectually bankrupt.
What's the matter? Rush Limbaugh didn't give you a script for my arguments?
Re:Europeans get YEARS of unemployment benefits
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
GDP is the rich investor/corporation's favorite statistic.
Leisure time off with money to spend is the working person's statistic. Funny, though...the American mass media never seems too concerned with that particular statistic. I wonder why....
Also, the availability and affordablity of healthcare is another important statistic. THe Euros beat the hell out of us on that one.
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
I wrote: "Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker."
You wrote: You are sorely mistaken on this point. Labor costs only hurt the business that workers work for; they don't benefit the worker in any way.
No, they do not. THey hurt the Business OWNERS, not the workers. If the labor costs are higher, the workers can afford more consumption, which means MORE revenue for the business itself. But the owner has higher costs, and so he can afford only 2 tricked-out SUV's, instead 3. Boo-hoo. Cry me a river...
I wrote: Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe...
You wrote: Measuring the "standard of living" is a totally impossible thing to do. Different people have different priorities and mean different things when they say "standard of living".
How about lots of leisure time off, and money to spend when doing it? You might want to see who travels more: the europeans or the Americans. If you travel to MOST travel destinations outside of Europe or America, you will find more Europeans than Americans. How about rate of computer ownership? THey are right up there with us: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/med_per_com_ca p
But those European nations do have higher minimum wages than in the US; they also have higher unemployment, lower job growth and lower overall economic growth. Go figure.
Yeah, it must be terrible to take a long sabbatical from working your ass off. And with the rich people paying for it. Oh, the horror....
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Oh, I have looked into it. It is very hard to immigrate to Scandanavia (only refugees from 3rd world countries, marriage emigrees, and fellow EU citizens are allowed to become citizens, in most cases). Why? Because unlike America, the people -- the workers there -- are basically in charge, unlike America, where the elite are in charge.
THe workers there know that too much immigration lowers wages. And they want high wages. High wages are a GOOD THING.
THey know that. We do not.
Race To the Top vs Race to the Bottom
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Corporations and Investors want a Race to the Bottom, which increases profits by decreasing wages and benefits. The end result will be a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.
Workers want a Race to the Top by increasing wages and benefits. THe end result here will be a large amount of wealth dispersed into the hands of many.
As we can see here on Slashdot, the real problem we have is that the wealthy and the corporations have funded a network of think tanks and foundations that have spent the last 30 years spewing propaganda to make everyone think that a Race to the Bottom is good and that a Race to the Top is Bad. And most Americans (and most Slashdotters!) are buying into the corporate propaganda!
It just goes to show you the power of propaganda over a long period of time--if you spend billions of dollars saying that black is white and white is black, that after 30 years, you will have a bunch of people walking around telling you black is white and that high labor costs and protective trade laws are bad....
THe details of the this RightWing/Corporate propaganda machine are starting to be made public. You can get more info about these "Tentacles of Rage" in the lastest edition of Harpers Magazine here.
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 0
again, you make the assumption that investor/corporate interests are identical to the interests of American workers and Americans in general.
When you walk into a car lot to buy a car, do you also assume that your own interests are identical with the interests of the car salesman? If so, I would guess that you have made a lot of car salesmen very happy.
Yes, INVESTORS and CORPORATIONS depend on foreign labor to increase their profits. But over 90% of Americans depend on their own LABOR to make a living, not on investments....
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, the power of corporate/investor propaganda has been incredible. If you could time travel back to 1970 and tried talking about how bad all these "high labor costs" are, you would have been put in an insane asylum (we had the tax base to care for our mentally ill back in those days; the corporate propaganda has robbed us of our progressive tax system).
But nowadays, after 30 years of concerted corporate propaganda, we have all these bots walking around moaning about high labor costs and tariffs and protectionist trade policies. What is so sad is that they are workers themselves. Read more about the details of these "tentacles of rage", the corporate propaganda machine, in this month's Harpers magazine.
I would agree to it. That would lessen the power that wealth has to control the rest of us, and that is what is important,
Ahh...circular logic!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1, Interesting
you wrote: The computer you typed that post with - were all of the circuit boards domestically made? Own a cell phone? Pull the battery cover off and see where it was made. Oo-h! My coffee cup! Made in Mexico!! Do you have an American made coffee cup? I've got about a dozen that aren't. Watch? Japanese. There could be more great examples, but that's what I see in front of me right now.
THe reason that I have foreign goods is that the foreign goods are cheaper and better. They are cheaper and better because of low labor costs.
If I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less. The reason I pay more and get less is that labor costs more.
Now, if I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less, which means I have less money to use for rent, mortgage, food, transportation, etc. That means I am less able to survive.
I am in essence being FORCED to buy foreign goods, and my own government is doing it by not using tariffs.
Also, I am killing my own livelihood by buying foreign products.
THis is all brought on by my own government, which I pay to support. THey have sold us out by forcing us TO MAKE COMSUMPTION CHOICES AGAINST OUR OWN BEST INTERESTS. If they would enact trade barriers and tariffs, then I would not be forced to make these destructive choices.
When you posed your question, you used circular logic.
And, BTW, I read Rand years ago. Pure crap...
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 0
That is where tariffs and trade barriers come into play. See, the thing is that once you have a good infrastructure and a big middle class, then THAT is when you need to enact tariffs and erect trade barriers.
NO, that is the OPPOSITE of hypocrisy
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 0
Hypocrisy/hypocritical means LOW ("hypo") levels of self-criticism. See here: If I commit Bad Act A, and then do not admit it or do not criticize myself for it, then, that is hypocritical.
If I commit Bad Act A, and then admit it, that is NOT hypocritical.
The owners of Slashdot outsource. Then they published this article encouraging criticism. That is the OPPOSITE of hypocrisy.
(Geez....and I wonder why corporate propaganda has had such huge success in America...)
We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing!
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker. You don't hear business owners complaining when their profits get too high, do you?
Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe, and they have HIGH labor costs--they have minimum wages levels of like $12/hour. High lahor costs are a GOOD THING...IF, and ONLY if you are a WORKER. Now, if you are an investor or business owner, that is a Bad Thing.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR. Well, you AIN'T an investor. YOu are a WORKER. Deal with it. Accept it, and then help organize your country to HELP THE WORKER, like they do in Scandanavia.
The reason the 3rd world IS the 3rd world is that they have LOW LABOR COSTS. That is the DEFINTION of being 3rd world.
The reason many of the countries in NW Europe have the highest quality of life is because they have the HIGHEST COST OF LABOR. And it aint no accident. The two concepts are DIRECTLY RELATED.
Tariffs make things BETTER, not worse
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 5, Insightful
We Americans have a right to protect our jobs. And we have the means to do so. This economic treason by the elites all started decades ago when they shipped out our advanced manufacturing jobs to Japan. Advanced manufacturing jobs are not assembly jobs, but more like fabrication jobs. See this article for more info.
Now they are doing the same thing to office work (like software, financial etc) that they did to advanced manufacturing. But we office workers are more able to stop them this time, mainly because we have some access to the media via the internet and boards like Slashdot.
Tariffs do make things worse, but only for the upper income group. For the average working person, tariffs are good.
Let me ask you something: if free trade is so good for lowering prices, then why is an average car costing more of the average salary now than it did 25 years ago? For more details on this check out Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth blog.
You are a TRAITOR and should be punished as such
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
You, in my judgement, are aiding and abetting economic treason, and you are therefore a traitor.
I call for economic treason to be punished according to rule of law, like any other form of treason.
America is not allowed to control its immigration?
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So you are saying that because America is majority white, then white Americans are not allowed to say that America should stop or slow down immigration? Are their any other policies that should be tied to skin color?
Europeans get YEARS of unemployment benefits
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
Most European countries give laid off citizens YEARS of unemployment benefits if they need it. How can they afford to do that? THey tax the rich and upper income earners more than we do (50% at least), and then they do not spend all that tax money on military and war, but instead spend it on unemployment/welfare benefits and healthcare for everyone. What a concept!
Ever heard of the "General Welfare" Clause?
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1
You might want to read about the Constitution's "General Welfare" clause.
Tentacles of Rage & Treason
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The main reason we are in this mess is that our leaders, our elite, operate not in the best interests of the general welfare, as the Constitution requires them to, but in the best interests of the corporations and the investor class. Bush is the most extreme example of this, but Clinton did it, too, as did Reagan. Bush the Elder may have been the worst. Carter practically started it.
The reason our leaders have been able to do all of this is because some ultra-rich people and the multinational corporations spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years or so to convince all of America that liberalized trade and immigration policies would benefit Americans. In a way, they obtained our consent to do this, but they actually "manufactured" our consent.
The massive propaganda machine was built around think tanks and foundations that literally from the ground up built a vocabulary and worldview favoring free trade (and liberal immigration, which just one part of "free trade"), all designed to drive down wages and taxes for corporations and the rich, and increase corporate profits and increase unemployment and underemployment, and in general disempower the average worker.
It worked! Corporate profits are way up, and they pay less in taxes, while the average worker is scrambling.
What do you call politicians and bureaucrats who willingly go along with such a scheme?
I call them traitors, guilty of treason. I think our leaders, including our Presidents, present and past, should be held accountable in a court of law for this treason.
FDR was our GREATEST President
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 1, Insightful
And income taxation is the best thing that ever happened to civilization. We just need more of it.
Why not address my chart of the top tax rate history I posted above? THAT is where the rubber meets the road. And the tale it tells cannot be denied. THat is why you ignore it.
CLEARLY, as shown in that chart, top tax rate have declined DRAMATICALLY in the last 30 years. Therefore, INARGUABLY, America has moved (or rather, been moved) to the right.
That is BOTH joint single filers--about 50% are less than 35K gross income.
About 33% of all returns are less than $20K
And why is it that you somehow think that $75K is a good exemplary income? THat is what I want to know. For some reason or reasons, people seem to think that everyone is making a lot of money....
you wrote:
Canada and socialist European countries are being left in our economic dust.
Hmm, that is strange to hear that, because their quality of life is just getting higher and higher: they have more and more time off, less and less stress and worry because they have medical care even if broke, and the govt will take care of them better if they lose everything.
Americans OTOH are making less and less money, losing our healthcare, and losing our jobs thanks to that wonderful free trade.....
Slashdot Mirror
You wrote:
You know, I've never before seen someone on slashdot who I actively wanted to kill before.
You disgust me, you filthy diseased parasite, trying to spread your civilization-destroying socialism.
You need to read my posts about the rightwing movement, and how the current leaders of it are essentially encouraging the more hateful and intolerant aspects of humans. They have essentially and implicitly given approval for intolerance and a low-grade species of fascism in return for re-election.
You are in part a reflection of this dynamic.
If all you can do is call me Hitler, I guess that means you are intellectually bankrupt.
What's the matter? Rush Limbaugh didn't give you a script for my arguments?
GDP is the rich investor/corporation's favorite statistic.
Leisure time off with money to spend is the working person's statistic. Funny, though...the American mass media never seems too concerned with that particular statistic. I wonder why....
Also, the availability and affordablity of healthcare is another important statistic. THe Euros beat the hell out of us on that one.
I wrote:
a p
"Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker."
You wrote:
You are sorely mistaken on this point. Labor costs only hurt the business that workers work for; they don't benefit the worker in any way.
No, they do not. THey hurt the Business OWNERS, not the workers. If the labor costs are higher, the workers can afford more consumption, which means MORE revenue for the business itself. But the owner has higher costs, and so he can afford only 2 tricked-out SUV's, instead 3. Boo-hoo. Cry me a river...
I wrote:
Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe...
You wrote:
Measuring the "standard of living" is a totally impossible thing to do. Different people have different priorities and mean different things when they say "standard of living".
How about lots of leisure time off, and money to spend when doing it? You might want to see who travels more: the europeans or the Americans. If you travel to MOST travel destinations outside of Europe or America, you will find more Europeans than Americans. How about rate of computer ownership? THey are right up there with us: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/med_per_com_c
But those European nations do have higher minimum wages than in the US; they also have higher unemployment, lower job growth and lower overall economic growth. Go figure.
Yeah, it must be terrible to take a long sabbatical from working your ass off. And with the rich people paying for it. Oh, the horror....
Oh, I have looked into it. It is very hard to immigrate to Scandanavia (only refugees from 3rd world countries, marriage emigrees, and fellow EU citizens are allowed to become citizens, in most cases). Why? Because unlike America, the people -- the workers there -- are basically in charge, unlike America, where the elite are in charge.
THe workers there know that too much immigration lowers wages. And they want high wages. High wages are a GOOD THING.
THey know that. We do not.
Corporations and Investors want a Race to the Bottom, which increases profits by decreasing wages and benefits. The end result will be a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.
Workers want a Race to the Top by increasing wages and benefits. THe end result here will be a large amount of wealth dispersed into the hands of many.
As we can see here on Slashdot, the real problem we have is that the wealthy and the corporations have funded a network of think tanks and foundations that have spent the last 30 years spewing propaganda to make everyone think that a Race to the Bottom is good and that a Race to the Top is Bad. And most Americans (and most Slashdotters!) are buying into the corporate propaganda!
It just goes to show you the power of propaganda over a long period of time--if you spend billions of dollars saying that black is white and white is black, that after 30 years, you will have a bunch of people walking around telling you black is white and that high labor costs and protective trade laws are bad....
THe details of the this RightWing/Corporate propaganda machine are starting to be made public. You can get more info about these "Tentacles of Rage" in the lastest edition of Harpers Magazine here.
some are more progressive than others.
again, you make the assumption that investor/corporate interests are identical to the interests of American workers and Americans in general.
When you walk into a car lot to buy a car, do you also assume that your own interests are identical with the interests of the car salesman? If so, I would guess that you have made a lot of car salesmen very happy.
Yes, INVESTORS and CORPORATIONS depend on foreign labor to increase their profits. But over 90% of Americans depend on their own LABOR to make a living, not on investments....
Yeah, the power of corporate/investor propaganda has been incredible. If you could time travel back to 1970 and tried talking about how bad all these "high labor costs" are, you would have been put in an insane asylum (we had the tax base to care for our mentally ill back in those days; the corporate propaganda has robbed us of our progressive tax system).
But nowadays, after 30 years of concerted corporate propaganda, we have all these bots walking around moaning about high labor costs and tariffs and protectionist trade policies. What is so sad is that they are workers themselves.
Read more about the details of these "tentacles of rage", the corporate propaganda machine, in this month's Harpers magazine.
I would agree to it. That would lessen the power that wealth has to control the rest of us, and that is what is important,
you wrote:
The computer you typed that post with -
were all of the circuit boards domestically made?
Own a cell phone? Pull the battery cover off and see where it was made.
Oo-h! My coffee cup! Made in Mexico!! Do you have an American made coffee cup? I've got about a dozen that aren't. Watch? Japanese.
There could be more great examples, but that's what I see in front of me right now.
THe reason that I have foreign goods is that the foreign goods are cheaper and better. They are cheaper and better because of low labor costs.
If I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less. The reason I pay more and get less is that labor costs more.
Now, if I deliberately buy AMerican-made goods, then I pay more and get less, which means I have less money to use for rent, mortgage, food, transportation, etc. That means I am less able to survive.
I am in essence being FORCED to buy foreign goods, and my own government is doing it by not using tariffs.
Also, I am killing my own livelihood by buying foreign products.
THis is all brought on by my own government, which I pay to support. THey have sold us out by forcing us TO MAKE COMSUMPTION CHOICES AGAINST OUR OWN BEST INTERESTS.
If they would enact trade barriers and tariffs, then I would not be forced to make these destructive choices.
When you posed your question, you used circular logic.
And, BTW, I read Rand years ago. Pure crap...
That is where tariffs and trade barriers come into play. See, the thing is that once you have a good infrastructure and a big middle class, then THAT is when you need to enact tariffs and erect trade barriers.
Hypocrisy/hypocritical means LOW ("hypo") levels of self-criticism.
See here:
If I commit Bad Act A, and then do not admit it or do not criticize myself for it, then, that is hypocritical.
If I commit Bad Act A, and then admit it, that is NOT hypocritical.
The owners of Slashdot outsource. Then they published this article encouraging criticism. That is the OPPOSITE of hypocrisy.
(Geez....and I wonder why corporate propaganda has had such huge success in America...)
Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker. You don't hear business owners complaining when their profits get too high, do you?
Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe, and they have HIGH labor costs--they have minimum wages levels of like $12/hour. High lahor costs are a GOOD THING...IF, and ONLY if you are a WORKER. Now, if you are an investor or business owner, that is a Bad Thing.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR. Well, you AIN'T an investor. YOu are a WORKER. Deal with it. Accept it, and then help organize your country to HELP THE WORKER, like they do in Scandanavia.
The reason the 3rd world IS the 3rd world is that they have LOW LABOR COSTS. That is the DEFINTION of being 3rd world.
The reason many of the countries in NW Europe have the highest quality of life is because they have the HIGHEST COST OF LABOR. And it aint no accident. The two concepts are DIRECTLY RELATED.
We Americans have a right to protect our jobs. And we have the means to do so.
This economic treason by the elites all started decades ago when they shipped out our advanced manufacturing jobs to Japan. Advanced manufacturing jobs are not assembly jobs, but more like fabrication jobs. See this article for more info.
Now they are doing the same thing to office work (like software, financial etc) that they did to advanced manufacturing. But we office workers are more able to stop them this time, mainly because we have some access to the media via the internet and boards like Slashdot.
Tariffs do make things worse, but only for the upper income group. For the average working person, tariffs are good.
Let me ask you something: if free trade is so good for lowering prices, then why is an average car costing more of the average salary now than it did 25 years ago? For more details on this check out Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth blog.
You, in my judgement, are aiding and abetting economic treason, and you are therefore a traitor.
I call for economic treason to be punished according to rule of law, like any other form of treason.
So you are saying that because America is majority white, then white Americans are not allowed to say that America should stop or slow down immigration? Are their any other policies that should be tied to skin color?
Most European countries give laid off citizens YEARS of unemployment benefits if they need it. How can they afford to do that? THey tax the rich and upper income earners more than we do (50% at least), and then they do not spend all that tax money on military and war, but instead spend it on unemployment/welfare benefits and healthcare for everyone. What a concept!
You might want to read about the Constitution's "General Welfare" clause.
The main reason we are in this mess is that our leaders, our elite, operate not in the best interests of the general welfare, as the Constitution requires them to, but in the best interests of the corporations and the investor class. Bush is the most extreme example of this, but Clinton did it, too, as did Reagan. Bush the Elder may have been the worst. Carter practically started it.
The reason our leaders have been able to do all of this is because some ultra-rich people and the multinational corporations spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years or so to convince all of America that liberalized trade and immigration policies would benefit Americans. In a way, they obtained our consent to do this, but they actually "manufactured" our consent.
For a more detailed explanation of this 30-year propaganda blitz, See this September 2004 article in Harpers magazine about these "Tentacles of Rage."
The massive propaganda machine was built around think tanks and foundations that literally from the ground up built a vocabulary and worldview favoring free trade (and liberal immigration, which just one part of "free trade"), all designed to drive down wages and taxes for corporations and the rich, and increase corporate profits and increase unemployment and underemployment, and in general disempower the average worker.
It worked! Corporate profits are way up, and they pay less in taxes, while the average worker is scrambling.
What do you call politicians and bureaucrats who willingly go along with such a scheme?
I call them traitors, guilty of treason. I think our leaders, including our Presidents, present and past, should be held accountable in a court of law for this treason.
And income taxation is the best thing that ever happened to civilization. We just need more of it.
Why not address my chart of the top tax rate history I posted above? THAT is where the rubber meets the road. And the tale it tells cannot be denied. THat is why you ignore it.
CLEARLY, as shown in that chart, top tax rate have declined DRAMATICALLY in the last 30 years. Therefore, INARGUABLY, America has moved (or rather, been moved) to the right.
Q.E.D.
That is what a NY Times editorial called him, and believe me, Chomsky is not exactly a friend of the NY Times.
That is BOTH joint single filers--about 50% are less than 35K gross income.
About 33% of all returns are less than $20K
And why is it that you somehow think that $75K is a good exemplary income? THat is what I want to know. For some reason or reasons, people seem to think that everyone is making a lot of money....
you wrote:
Canada and socialist European countries are being left in our economic dust.
Hmm, that is strange to hear that, because their quality of life is just getting higher and higher: they have more and more time off, less and less stress and worry because they have medical care even if broke, and the govt will take care of them better if they lose everything.
Americans OTOH are making less and less money, losing our healthcare, and losing our jobs thanks to that wonderful free trade.....