The problem of Capitalism

You're quoting Stiglitz from 1977?!?

What planet do you live on? Ever hear about the Change of Ages? You know, like we progressed from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age and now we are following onto the Information Age? (Furthermore, what that means for industries is that all-bets-are-off because the Fundamentals Have Changed Forever!

Methinks not - because we in The US & EU are now for the most part fully-fledged Services Economies!) - and ever since the 1980s when China opened its exports to the world. From then on, the number of manufacturing jobs that have shifted off to China is tremendous. And they are NOT COMING BACK!

Wakey, wakey ... !

PS: So what's the solution? As I've said a million times - we must massively educate and/or re-educate our kids to a higher level of job-competence. A high-school diploma is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. They need Real Post-graduate Educational Credentials that the states cannot alone afford to adequately provide. (Instead of pouring nearly $700B down the DoD pughole!)

 

DIRE CONSEQUENCES FOR UNIONIZATION

So what? Whether voluntary or not is irrelevant - they are simply not counted as "workers without a job" for whatever the reason.

Most often than not because they are working at jobs around the Minimum Wage without any other benefits - and there is no reason whatsoever to make that fact known to anybody. That doesn't make it right - just because the Federal government thinks it can handle out "food cards" (or whatever you call it) to whomever and that should be sufficient support below the Poverty Threshold (which, of course, it is not).

We think wrongly about unemployment benefits. And this piece of work sums-up nicely the problem - from here:

What we have in America is a system that allows Companies and Unions to "bargain". When, in fact, the bargaining should be handled by a third-party that is neutral. Whyzzat? Because Employment Unions will never bargain at lower-salaries and Management never at higher-salaries. So?

So, there is no "standardization" across industries. What happens is that some industries have obtained better pay-scales than others. When in fact the pay-scales should be "moderated" by an external actor in the mediating process. (That is, the government.)

MY POINT?
*We have very largely left the Industrial Age (barely 12% of all workers in the US), so the above is less and less pertinent in America. Nonetheless, the necessity in negotiating wages between Management and Staff for the Services Industries remains omnipresent. How much of Private Services Industries staff, however, are unionized? An answer from the BLS here:

*For all practical purposes, at 6.4% private-sector workers (both Industrial and Services) are unionized, and all the rest have no unionization whatsoever worth mentioning ...

 

Blah, blah, blah.

When an exchange is reduced to your kind of Useless Sarcasm, it is time to end it.

Moving right along ....

 

Typically dense response to a question of moral authority. NO COUNTRY HAS THE RIGHT TO MAKE PEOPLE PERMANENTLY DESTITUTE. Just because they were born that way!

In fact, its obligations are very much the opposite, which evidently escapes those who prefer to live in an Economic-Jungle.

You glide over the fact that 14% of American live below the Poverty Threshold . For your edification in the matter (from here):

Your intentional ignorance of the dire-facts is both wilful and amazing ...

 

You ignored most of my earlier post, re ECB austerity imposed by economic orthodoxy, calling it "rambling".

No attempt to debate even one of the following points I made (as if those riots in Paris aren't indicative of a malaise in the French economy). Ivory tower syndrome?

I know you read my entire post (#1549); because you replied to the addendum in 1550.

So I guess you decided to bail out - again - after the first point, rather than attempt to match it with an economist of Warren Mosler's stature, using the excuse "Useless Sarcasm". Should I apologise for hurting your feelings?

 

Earth, last I checked, still revolves around the sun even though heliocentrism has been around for AGES.

The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare (2008.)
https://economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers08/08-12old.pdf

Small parcels in urban areas are worth millions. It's the same land as millenia as ago, yet you gain more from owning it than ever before in the entirety of human history. It self-evidently hasn't lost any importance with the Change of Ages.

We need locations in which to exist and conduct our business, and as long as that is the case, which it will always be, geoist economic theory will be relevant. Geoism is applicable to all ages.

 

The return to land is relatively secure and effortless once you're in the role of landowner, which is why it's so expensive to become one. You're not the only one who wants a license that can be used to legally steal.

PS: You just replied to portions of 3 of my posts in 11 consecutive responses. I'm okay with users replying to posts piece by piece within one post, which can make communication more accurate, but please try not to split the content of one of my posts into several entirely separate responses.

 

Because they were not worth the effort.

Moving right along - and if you want to be put on "Ignore", do keep it up as I am keen to oblige you ...

 

I was responding to james M with that comment, not you. Apparently, you have him on ignore and thus can't see his posts or my quotes of them.

Shall I ever have a desire to unlearn what I know about economics, I'll be sure to visit one of your "classes".

According to your "logic", heliocentrism is false because it's an old idea. Learn logic first, then reply to me again.

 

Dunno. Last time I looked the earth was still revolving around the sun.

Anyway, enough of this assinity - moving right along.

Bye, bye ...

 

It was your "logic" that went against the earth revolving around the sun, not mine.

I'll be praying for the minds of your students. Hopefully their brains are plastic enough to undo the damage.

 

And because there is - for those of us not born to great wealth - considerable work and risk involved. HUGE work and risk, actually.

 

No, it isn't. A huge percentage of capitalist enterprise owns no land at all.

Your ideas are odd, it must be said.

 

Can we perhaps stick to calling them Progressives? Nothing liberal about the ideas in this thread!

 

Are you pretending there's a difference?

 

It cannot happen. ANY universality must be totalitarian.

We need to shoot for individual evolution. It's the only way. Those who refuse to evolve (like our friends in this thread) will be responsible for ever increasing poverty and dissolution.

 

Look, Mr/Ms Better World (now there's an irony!), you are dead wrong. The Progressive Left has spent the past couple of decades making non-contribution 'comfortable'. And so far they've had enormouse success. There are now huge swathes of people (and families/communities etc) who are very comfortable AVOIDING work.

Run any experiment you like on any mammal you like. Give them all their food for a generation, and then see how much 'work' they want to do. That you can't see this fundamental truth of animal nature, is astonishing.

 

There is no real poverty in the First World. Let's not bring hubris into this, eh?

 

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. Land is one of those means, therefore it being privately owned is a defining characteristic of that economic system.

Logical, not odd.

Land and natural resource cannot be produced, and we cannot exist without them. No more will be made. Claiming them as property gives the owner the power to withhold them, allowing him to extort others:

"Land in itself has no value. Value arises only from human labor. It is not until the ownership of land becomes equivalent to the ownership of laborers that any value attaches to it. And where land has a speculative value it is because of the expectation that the growth of society will in the future make its ownership equivalent to the ownership of laborers

It is true that all valuable things have the quality of enabling their owner to obtain labor or the produce of labor in return for them or for their use. But with things that are themselves the produce of labor such transactions involve an exchange—the giving of an equivalent of labor-produce in return for labor or its produce. Land, however, is not the produce of labor; it existed before man was, and, therefore, when the ownership of land can command labor or the products of labor, the transaction, though in form it may be an exchange, is in reality an appropriation. The power which the ownership of valuable land gives, is that of getting human service without giving human service, a power essentially the same as that power of appropriation which resides in the ownership of slaves. It is not a power of exchange, but a power of blackmail, such as would be asserted were some men compelled to
pay other men for the use of the ocean, the air or the sunlight."
https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPFT.html?chapter_num=26#book-reader

 

Again, incorrect. Capitalism says nothing at all about who owns the enterprise, it ONLY describes the economic nature of the enterprise. If it's predicated on profit, it's capitalism. If it pays wages in exchange for labour, it's capitalism.

And again - again, MANY capitalist enterprises own no land at all.

 

In the context of the present geoist debate (ie, that land, like air, ought not be owned by any individual), I thought it worth while to point out to James that the GFC was caused by subprime loans to purchase houses, not vacant land.

Wrong. Rule of law (necessary if more than one individual exists) is 'universal'. By your logic, rule of law is totalitarian.
Rule of Law balances competing interests of individuals.

Nonsense. Long ago a lad could go out and catch a meal for himself. You think that world of self-sufficiency still exists. AI and IT have erased that world from the face of the earth forever.

See the point above. Now that land (and housing) is owned over vast areas, poverty is more complex than might be expressed in terms of a simple comparison to the third world.

capitalism
/ˈkapɪt(ə)lɪz(ə)m/
noun: capitalism:
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

.....nothing to do with "who owns the enterprise"?
​

 

According to that claim, all enterprises could be state owned, and the system could still be capitalism. So capitalism can be socialism.

socialism
"Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy."
https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=socialism

You made a nonsense of epic proportions.

Some individual, family, or company owns the land their business operates on, making the land privately owned.

 

No need for his sophisticated self to engage woefully ignorant peasants in discussion. If that's how he conducts his classes...

 

I see our professor of economics has decided that you (like me) are unworthy to engage in debate.

Some observations:

1. He shuts out those whose ideas he rejects, resorting to the 'no reply' function, as we see also in twitter (which renders twitter to the status of a mere echo chamber for like-minded individuals)

2. Usually the reason for his action is emotional rather than substantive. eg, you pointed out that the validity of Stiglitz's idea may be independent of its age, and his logic in the ensuing analogy you both pursued (re the longevity of heliocentricity) became hopelessly confused on his part.

3. Professors of economics can be notorious for displaying an ivory tower syndrome; not to mention the closed-mindedness characteristic of ISIS theologians. [I suppose if one has spent a lifetime in academia imbibing and teaching the prevailing orthodoxy in macroeconomics, any ideas which run counter to that orthodoxy will be perceived as 'threatening'].

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Mosler's book entitled "The 7 Deadly innocent Frauds of Economic Policy" ought to be part of the curriculum in any economics 101 department.

https://3drepw14r81maeu421dqauozkd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/7DIF-of-Money-Full.pdf

I explained (in post #1549) the simple (though counter-intuitive) proposition in that book that government spends before it taxes.

Some of the other 'frauds':

Government which issues the currency must always aim to balance its budget, like households who are users of the currency.

Government can "run out of money".

Government debt not covered by taxation is a demand on future generations.

And the list goes on. ​