surplus labor value

of course it does without dividends nobody would risk making an investment and business would collapse.

 

1) and without the boss labor would be unemployed
2) to change relative pay would require liberal violence toward the freedom of both boss and labor to voluntarily agree on wages that they determined to be fair and beneficial for both in non violent relationship.

 

The post you're responding to could have been worded better.
The employer has taken nothing from the employee. The employer wishes to produce widgets for sale and the employee has agreed to produce them for a wage of $3 each. The employer then has assumed responsibility for purchasing and providing the employee with the raw materials needed to produce the widgets, a work place and work environment in accordance with local, State, and Federal rules and regulations. In addition, the employee is entitled to payment of $3 for each widget produced regardless of the price the employer is able to sell them for, if at all.
Government(s), expropriate money from both the employee and the employer in the form of income, payroll, unemployment taxes, and now mandatory spending on healthcare. In addition, government(s) expropriate money from the consumers in the form of sales taxes and regulations which add to the cost of production and are ultimately passed on to the consumers.

Paying out dividends shows the company is rewarding the investors who put up the money to get the business started, and if more investors are needed to expand the fact that it has been paying dividends may make it easier to acquire new investors.

Sadly, it is a fact, not all people manage their money wisely. Of course wages appear stagnant, and debt continues to grow larger. We have not experienced any true offsetting periods of deflation since the Federal Reserve act in 1913. The minute deflation begins to occur government steps in and increases spending to offset it which only adds to our enormous debt.

And the solution is more government, and more power exercised by a centralized government? I'm sorry, but the inherent right to fail, even fail miserably, has to be returned to the people before any progress can be achieved.

You might look at the U.S.A. today as a large body of water with each local society as being a wooden ship containing their individual populations. Some of the ships are leaking badly and government is requiring the more sea worthy ships to remove planks, making them less sea worthy to reduce the leaking of those taking on water and in danger of sinking. A storm arrives and now all ships are taking on water. Collectively, we can all drown together. There is strength in numbers, and today we are engaged in something akin to a tug of war, but instead of a single rope we have many ropes joined in the center with groups pulling directly against some, which may be helping others they disagree with and harming some they agree with. Politicians take advantage of this, which has only resulted in greater division of the governed, gradually eroding the freedom and liberty of each and every individual, and a $19,785,585,189,878.12 debt currently to top it off.

 

wrong of course if the worker feels his money is being expropriated he is free to quit to stop the practice or to work for someone who does not expropriate his money. Failing that he his free to start his own business, not expropriate money from his workers and thus drive the expropriators into bankruptcy. Now you can see the beauty in capitalism.

 

FULL CIRCLE

All market-economies in the world are "capitalist" - because they use capital as a primary source of investment and exchange in a market-economy.

In a market-economy, we exchange Wages for Work. The work is performed to produce services/products for Consumption. How are they paid? By the Income that workers receive to provide products and services.

The world has seen amply enough - in the history of both Communism and Socialism, particularly in Europe - that wages stipulated by governments who own the means of production cannot satisfy the human condition. There is no going back to that mistake.

The mechanism of Supply & Demand that characterizes a market-economy accepts the prices that a competitive market-economy stipulates - which, in turn, determines the Income that allows Consumption. It is in the "regulation" of a market-economy to be "fair" that a nation strives at being equitable and honest.

How is "fairness" measured: By assuring that, in a Social Democracy, incomes are not identical but are distributed progressively, and that taxation puts a cap on Maximum Income Obtainable.

How is "fairness" measured? By what a nation decides as Income Taxation. Where the US went wrong historically was first with JFK and LBJ (JFK initiated the tax-revision and LBJ signed it into reality) who reduced upper-income taxation from 90% to 70% - but then, it was Reckless Ronnie who did the most damage when he reduced upper-income taxation to 30%. Which further tax write-off boondoggles later allowed taxed income at levels of between 15 and 20% for upper-income total taxation.

See that history here:
View attachment 46412

What is deeply unfair in America is the finagling of Upper-income Taxation that assures the flood of Net of Taxes that churns up into Wealth - of which most is obtained by a relative minor percentage of the population. See that sad fact portrayed here comparing the percentage of taxes paid by the bottom 90% of the population with the upper 0.01%:


THAT is the sad fact of America today, because the Income generated by poor taxation that becomes Wealth is passed down in families dynastically - thus perpetuating the Weath.

MY POINT?

We have done a full-circle historically, and are back to the 18th century where our patriots fought and died to rid themselves of a monarchic dynasty that maintained its hold on what was at the time a mostly Agrarian Economy.

With the advent of the Industrial Age, we have come historically full circle in time. We, as a nation, are back to an age where revenue was concentrated amongst a select (relatively few) families.

 

Are there still some longing for the good old days when the top marginal tax rate was 91%?
Any one found data showing how many filers actually paid taxes at the 91% rate and how much revenue it provided?
When Reagan lowered the top marginal tax rate in the 80's, many deductions were also eliminated reducing the acquisition of losses which could be applied to reduce taxable income resulting instead in investing in ways which promoted economic growth.

What is universally fair or unfair relative to life? Should it, like many other things today, be determined based upon a bell curve? A median fairness?

 

Sorry to disagree with you, but the facts of the matter are that the part of the American GDP attibuted to Manufacturing is around 12% (from the World Bank here):


The major part allocated to Services is around 78%:


So, let's worry about getting our people trained to succeed (make a living) in the Services industry, which requires more brains than brawn at an historical juncture when Advanced Economies are exiting the Industrial Age and entering the Information Age ...
________________

 

I'm not sure about the self-managed part, which seems tricky to me. It requires at least a management talent that not all have. But, once upon a distant time, I was visiting a manufacturing plant in Yugoslavia that was a worker-cooperative. And it was a successful worker-cooperative (making wooden furniture of all sorts). All were incentivized to make the year-end "bonus" (cash-value since stock-options did not exist) and worked hard at their goals.

I am convinced that any company, large or small, is wholly dependent upon its entire workforce - from top to bottom. I cannot understand therefore why only Top Management walks away with the bonuses or stock-options that have made many of them immensely rich. This seems wholly unfair to me.

Not all should get the same reward values for achievement, but any company I have worked in (and they are many) have shown that its success rises of falls upon everybody's shoulders communally. Rewards should do so as well.

There is no reason whatsoever that the guy sweeping the factory-floor cannot participate in the same rewards-for-achievement that are accorded the "sacrosanct" 'upper-management" of the company.

Yes, as well, according to this rule: "Not all equally, but all equitably". Have we lost our sense of "fairness" in America in our hectic striving for Muney, Muney, Muney?

I think so - it has almost become a religion ...
_________________

 

it happens because everyone involved peacefully agrees with it. If they didn't they would leave and start a more agreeable cooperative enterprise that would beat the old enterprise. Its like arguing with nature. Do you understand.
The alternative is a libNazi with a gun dictating how everything is managed.

 

you like to lie to yourself!! The pure beauty of capitalism is that it encourages continuous experimentation. If success was communal then millions would be forming companies based on the principle and proving it. Now do you understand?

 

What I was referring to is the physical labour being performed today relative to the production.

The fact is that the human population is growing more rapidly than the need of their labour, both physical and mental, and how do you train people to succeed in an environment which the only demand is for more consumption of what is and can be produced?

 

BRAVE NEW WORLD

That happens because the "subject of governance" (not just government) is very large. It runs from economic to defense to healthcare to judicial ... well, the point is made.

It is literally impossible to follow closely all spheres of activity that should affect a country. Imagine what that means for a PotUS supposedly in charge. (A PotUS is the Commander-in-chief of what? The Army, and for all the rest the PotUs negotiates, and negotiates and negotiates.)

Which is why it is best to have someone "intelligent" rather than "not intelligent" - which is also nice-but-not-sufficient.

Obama was a smart PotUS, and his two administrations were not up to expectations - but I (for one) do not blame him. I blame the Replicants that "we, the sheeple" voted into control of Congress. For two reasons:
*The previous government (Dubya) was largely responsible for the Great Recession that it handed to Obama on a silver platter, and a sigh of relief. Also,
*The Replicants then refused to negotiate in good faith to repair the damages. They obstructed a quick economic recovery by refusing any Stimulus Spending once in control of the HofR from 2011 on. (But that's another issue to debate on another day.)

Also we, the sheeple, never understood the breath or complexity of a major economic cataclysm like the Great Recession. All we wanted was a Quick Fix and to get on with life. Which means we've learned nothing about this Brave New World of ours - of which the Geo-economic Center is no longer uniquely the US.

Do we understand that two distinct market-economies are already almost as large the US? The first is China, whose GDP is 60% of ours and approaching fast; and the second is the EU, which is 90% of the US? Uncle Sam is no longer the only BigMan-on-the-Block.

Have we understood that simple fact ... ?
_____________________

 

I oppose your points on almost an exact opposite stance. My economic stances are based upon education and history. You mention several statements that are popular within rhetoric which are based mainly upon persuading the ignorant. I find it is much more of a moral debate as opposed to a reverence for supposed intelligence or academia debate. Given the size and scope of large national economies, central control surpasses the capacity of human intelligence. My statement of blaming one party or another is based upon both parties making the same mistakes economically with only timing being the difference between who is held responsible. The only bias I would have party wise is that Republicans are much less insane than Democrats when it comes to economic policy.

 

You may of course be right. But given that the more important aspects of the quality-of-life are of an economic nature (to my mind), I tend to concentrate on what is actually determined by the statistics. You see, that's what I know; and in general we economist think like that.

Of course, that gives us neither any certainty nor any correctness. But, that is what debate is all about, isn't it?

(Yes, boring, I know. Age old dictum: If you took all the economists in world and laid them out in a straight line, they'd still not reach a conclusion ... ;^)

 

I agree. Most of my professors (20 years ago mind you) disagreed. My emphasis was industrial economics for my masters, but most of my professors were retired from the private sector. There seemed to be a distinct division upon managed economies and free markets between those that had cut their teeth in academia with peer reviewed publications and those that had experienced having their results measured from a profit motive viewpoint. Currently, the managed economy crowd has far more influence in policy direction, but I would argue that persuading elected and un-elected officials to accept an economic policy that vies to give them more power is an easy sell. This is why I tend to lean toward a moral argument. It is near impossible to prove a hypothetical had a different coarse of action been taken. Even though we can prove that the free market creates value efficiently, the natural tendency for free market participants to succeed regardless of the restraints of a managed economy gives credence to the central planners that they somehow produced the positive effects. While neither stance has an effective opposition to free markets, the moral position is more easily defended.

 

Shortly after the Masters in Ec, I came off to Europe, and my perceptions of political philosophy changed greatly. I become more of a Social Democrat, because that was/is the prevailing political movement here in Europe - coerced by the Russian Bear after WW2 to look more Russian whilst also keeping up Uncle Sam's friendship with NATO.

So Europe was all about "middle ground" while it found its way between both major antagonists. That's all changed. (Not even Merkel understands what is up Putin's sleeves.)

When I see someone like Bernie promoting Social Democracy, I am prompted to imagine that McCarthy would have rode him out of DC on a donkey not but 60 years ago. In America I must salute his political seeding, even if I think it falls on barren ground.

Social Democracy is first learned in the home, not at school and not from politicians. It has be in the mentality of the parents, who think that a Market-economy exists to serve them and not the other way around.

That is especially important in France where (thankfully) key precepts are held by parents. I remember once showing a class of French students a report about how some Americans actually give vacation-time back to the company. They get bored and want to come into work!

That ignited a great deal of laughter in the class.

My Point: Regardless of theory, societal precepts are fundamental because they are imparted in childhood. You have to take the plant out of the pot and put it in other radically different soil if you want to change the colour of the flowers.

Hopefully, that is what education accomplishes. Hopefully, but not always ...

 

If that's true, then so is a car given the number of people killed in them.

Capitalism is like a car you drive. If kills people, blame the driver ...

 

My children are taught that the market is not there to serve anyone, but freely entered exchanges are mutually beneficial with the free market being merely the vehicle that allows trust and protection. To your vacation anecdote, this has to be a minute rarity. I have worked in many positions of manufacturing and have never experienced the forfeiting of vacation time. I have often seen agreements where this benefit could be sold back to the company for a fair compensation.

The popularity of politicians such as Bernie Sanders alarms me as it pertains to the value of education that public services are supplying at an obviously out of balance cost.

- - - Updated - - -

This is a very good analogy.

 

A SYSTEM OF SOCIETAL VALUES

Each country has its system-of-values, even the US. It's just an observation, but I am still astonished by the manner in which "value" is most frequently represented (stateside) in "dollars". Yes, dollars are most certainly a "value" as the post above indicates. A monetary one for sure, but still a value.

In France, money-value is also employed, but not quite so frequently. It is simply not a prevalent custom. People buy Ferraris to show they are in-the-money, but would not brag about how much it cost. That would be "gauche".

The point is debatable, but the attribute I find most in use here to distinguish people in Europe is "intelligent". And, nobody brags about whether they have a college degree or not or what level. Intelligence is not measured degree-wise, but the manner in which people debate - particularly on TV. Debating is great good fun on European TV. (It's also not very expensive programming.)

The point I am trying to make is that Europeans continually ask "What in heaven's name do Americans see in that awful Mr. Trump". (Yes, Mr. Trump!) And were I to explain that one reason he is admired stateside is as a multi-millionaire. The response is typically, "But, he is so very common".

"Common" meaning this: Showing a lack of taste and refinement supposedly typical of the lower classes; vulgar.

Societal Values are one of the major "systems of judgment" as regards the world we see around us. Many blacks will tell you that more than a century and a half after the "emancipation", s/he does not yet feel "free". My father, an immigrant from Europe, said it took at least until the end of WW2 that he felt "American", even if he had, by then, American citizenship. And yet, he was still disparaged for his nationality, which is why he stayed within his immigrant-group. His son, born and bred in America, with a strange last name (not Lafayette!) and no accent in English was "American".

MY POINT

Any denigration as an "immigrant", however, has never ever been the case of his son here in Europe. Not once.

Why not? Because societal values and distinctions are derived within nations, and within groups within nations. And what distinguishes such groups? The answer to which is demonstrated by this info-graphic:


America has been populated by a great many peoples. But the influx of Asians, that dates from when Chinese workers were employed to build the railroad tracks in the West, has been fairly recent. Most likely as a result of America's wars in the southeast Asia.

And yet, this class has also done better than most salary-wise. Why?

The reason: It is post-secondary education that will have the most profound impact upon the social-strata in which we work and live . Which is why we must make a very profound effort to assure that all who want an education will get one, and the poor will not be deprived of one because they cannot afford it ...

PS: Which is why one of the most important platform planks of Hillary is the one she borrowed from Bernie - no child will be deprived or forbidden an education for a lack of financial means.

 

Drudge report stated it costs $75 to manufacture a Glock handgun,
It sells anywhere from $399 to Law Enforcement to $550 to Regular Civilians, care to elucidate on the price difference ?
Glock like the more expensive Snap on tools have a lifetime guarantee.

 

When I was but a Nipper, I had my first business, I made rubber stamps for People's names to stamp on checks, cards etc...

I Learned how to treat customers, if a stamp broke, I replaced it free of charge, free ink etc, visited the Shops and free deliveries, I was 10 years old and my Father helped me make the stamps and fill orders, I learned the value of a Customer, and they helped me learn plenty because I treated them well.
They did not have to buy from me, they wanted to help me.

 

and this is exactly the attitude that liberals encourage today in our liberal ghettos and that's why our ghettos are thriving so well and disappearing right before our eyes!!

 

You are perhaps not sufficiently poor to understand Bernie's appeal.

About education, the demand for educated personnel is dependent upon the industry, and the activity of any industry is measured by GDP. For the US there are three principal Industry Groupings:
Agriculture - 1.12%
Industry - 19.1%
Services - 79.7%

That's not just some handwriting on the wall. I found it at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

If I were guiding my children in terms of a formal education, it certainly would not be Agriculture.

And about Bernie, his idea for the subvention of post-secondary schooling is not his own. When Bernie wanted to understand Social Democracy, he came to Europe. Like HealthCare, Education is subsidized by the state in Europe.

The cost of a post-secondary education in the US leaves the graduate with a $35K debt to repay. America can invest in developing sophisticated products/services, and Education is a key investment in the means of developing sophisticated products/services that will be allowing people to maintain their jobs.

Moreover, with the Industry sector declining (actually specializing into Key Industries), it seems like Services is destined to be the major job-creating sector. And the higher the education level, the better the salary ...

 

Again, production of goods/services depends upon Demand for goods. Production for many goods, both cheap 'n dirty or sexy like smartphones, is no longer the preserve of American manufacturers. This is a given economic fact.

There's not much we can do about it - except educate our people to assume Service-industry jobs, which generally take a higher level of skills/competencies sophistication in order to make a decent living. (Working the rest of your life dishing out BigMacs is not my definition of a well-remunerated lifetime career.)

There are, no doubt, some industries (like construction) that will not change. This is what might be called "brawn-work", very much unlike "brain-work". That too, in order to be well done, may take some schooling. OJT is not what we think it is. It is not a quick entry to the job-market because it results in highly sporadic work.

And if a kid wants to drive a truck - we need to try to convince him otherwise. Have a look at UBER's new company OTTO. (A start-up, I am delighted to say btw, originated by a charming French female engineer.) Such jobs are being "automated" out of existence, so we must absolutely push our children into post-secondary education to obtain the necessary skills for a decent lifestyle.

I beg to differ on this one. It is true that the human population is growing in America, quite unlike Europe. Which means what?

This, I think (obtained from comparative demographic studies*):
*The American female is highly birth-productive and therefore there is little likelihood that America "needs imported labor" except in diminished amounts that can be regulated. And,
*The European female is not highly-productive and therefore the migrants are actually a boon for Europe.

We have been through the Great Recession, the worst since the last one in the 1930s. We are literally crawling out of it because the Replicants refused the Stimulus Spending necessary to regenerate jobs. See recent history of Job Creation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here:


That's four long years from 2010 to 2014 when No Jobs Were Created - quite unlike the end of the Great Depression brought about by WW2. Why?

Because the HofR, controlled by the Replicants since the 2010-midterm elections, insisted upon it. They told us that the National Debt was supposedly out of control. (Read what Krugman - Nobel Prize winner in Economics - had to say about that malarkey here.)

My Point: I am all for Political Differentiation in belief/thinking. The Right, Left and Center of American politics all have the constitutional right to exist and promote their ideas. This works a bit differently in the US than elsewhere. For instance, in the UK, the center has its own party (called the LibDems). Whereas in the US, elements of the Center are found in both parties and they coalesce in elections only upon occasion.

*See here:

 

And again, that has little to do with what I posted.

It's not likely we're going to offset our trade imbalance with service industry jobs. Dishing out Big-Macs does provide young people some source of income after school as well as additional income for others who may need a little extra income.

Even construction work has changed, and probably will continue to change reducing the physical labour demands that now exist.

And those skill requirements may change quite a bit over a lifetime.

You seem to have drifted off onto some political diatribe here, so I won't waste time attempting to respond knowing nothing I could post would change your political views.