Can we have a civil, thoughtful discussion on this?

Obviously not!

Of course our choices are, always were, and always will be, dependent upon many variables beyond our control. Our degree of success is dependent upon making the best/most right choice available including accepting/declining what others may be willing to offer.

1. Equality is an achievement, not an entitlement or a right.
Even among those who are equals, the opportunities may not exist adequate for the success of all.
That is reality.

2. Remuneration is based on the value of the work or service being performed an employer is willing to pay and an employee is willing to accept.
While many, most?, persons may possess skills or abilities which allow them to acquire their needs/wants within a 40 hour work week, many do not and perhaps never will.
That is reality.

3. Meaning? Most large corporations have a starting wage, with incremental increases over time.

Yes, I believe we recently observed the effect in our last election.

 

I don't see that as a contradiction of capitalism. And while many companies do buy out others and grow larger it does not eliminate others from starting up and competing with them. The primary objective of a business is to produce a product or service that will attract consumer spending. Competition between businesses is not simply based upon the production of similar products or services but more so on where the consumers will spend their money.

 

Proof is not needed if we are looking at the US market-economy. Various economic research has already uncovered the awful truth. Over the years, and under successive Replicant administrations, consolidation of markets (which leads to less competition and higher profit-margins) has been relentless in the US.

This infographic from the Economist:


Looking at the infographic on the right above we see easily enough total "global return on capital" has almost doubled since 2000. But where does that "capital" go?

Not in the pockets of the Mr&Mrs Joe America. See here:


Caption that goes with the above (from the same WikiPedia source):

So what do we do. Stop companies from making profits?

Nope, but we increase Upper-income Taxation that induces corporate managers to seek those higher profit levels in order to enhance their own fortunes (obtained by very high wages, and stock-option buyouts).

That revenue will be re-spent on programs that benefit a much larger number of Americans, and not the TopRich.

 

to move off shore!!!!!!. We already tried that and both left and right in Congress now want to reduce taxes to correct the goofy error. Do you understand?

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exactly I asked him where there was no competition and he could not respond

 

No, and apparently neither do you. Clarification: I don't understand your conflations; you don't understand the facts.

We tried higher taxation of top tax brackets and it worked beautifully until Reagan started cutting it. Recessions weren't as severe and income and wealth inequality were not so severe. Profits were plowed back into businesses and more workers were hired.

Top tax brackets were cut to the bone and we have deep recessions, lousy employment conditions, low wages, and a high degree of inequality.

Where is the effective competition between Frigidaire and Kenmore? Between UnitedHealth Group, Kaiser Foundation Group, Wellpoint Inc. Group, Aetna Group, and Humana Group?

When it comes down to a handful of mega-corporations dominating the market, they collude and competition vanishes.

 

And do you understand that other countries simply make it illegal for companies NOT TO REPORT OFFSHORE PROFITS!!!! (Corporate heads go to jail for doing so!)

What do you think Panama Papers scandal was about?!? Excerpt:

Duhhhhhhhhhh ....

 

Infantile sarcasm with no cogent justification whatsoever ...

 

Marxism killed 120 million through slow starvation so why do you always make collectivist Marxist arguments?

 

our companies have no reason not to report offshore profits since they are not taxed unless they are brought back to America. Now do you understand?

And don't forget we have the corporate tax only to pander to the pure 100% ignorance of liberals who don't have the IQ to understand that the corporate tax cost is passed on to us as customers like any cost is.

 

top 1% pay 44%( up from 21% under Reagan) of all federal incoime tax rather than 1%!!! That is cutting top bracket to the bone??????
See why we say liberalism is based in ignorance??

 

Yes. And, that's one recommendation we need to implement.

Another is that we've smashed collective bargaining in America, meaning that we removed the ability for these people to advocate for themselves.

It's no accident that the end of collective bargaining is also the point at which we're seeing a dramatic widening of the compensation gap between workers and those at the very top.

 

Our choices? You mean your choices.

The collective's choices differ from the individual's choices, a point you won't understand.

Equality of opportunity is a right, enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Re the election of Trump:
He is the non-establishment politician, the outsider, attracting some votes from all across the political spectrum. Much of the Repub party despised him UNTIL he won under the Repub banner.

He was the candidate that spoke most openly of the reality of poverty in the US, (the media called it 'excessively gloomy'); poverty ignored by successive Dem and Repub administrations.

Heard on the radio today: "What would you ask president Trump?"

Woman in Baltimore (on behalf of her community): "Please can you help us? Our life of generational poverty means permament despair for us."

It's a pity Trump had to play to the pro-war faction during his Congress speech, in contrast with the remarks of a former Repub president.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Yes, I mean 'each of our choices', yours, mine, and each other persons.

I stated "Of course our choices are, always were, and always will be, dependent upon many variables beyond our control."

If a location has x number of jobs available and 2x job seekers equally qualified for the jobs available, equal opportunity expires once the jobs have been filled, leaving the remaining to seek opportunities elsewhere.

 

I'm not arguing with that; but you fail to acknowledge the collective (by agreement) can decide policies that increase global security (rule of law) and avoid needless destruction of life (as implied in the Eisenhower quote, which you chose to ignore).

Equality of opportunity is a right that never expires Therefore a functional global economy must ensure the jobs are available, either elsewhere or locally.

Can the president help solve that woman's predicament, in the wealthiest economy in the world, without violating your individualist philosophy?

 

Would less defense spending make us safer and more secure AND increase employment? Perhaps a law making it illegal to attack the U.S. is all we need? I'm sure we could rely on the UNSC to enforce that law.

Again, I stated "If a location has x number of jobs available and 2x job seekers equally qualified for the jobs available, equal opportunity expires once the jobs have been filled, leaving the remaining to seek opportunities elsewhere."
Obviously there MUST be jobs available elsewhere in the U.S. if both legal immigrants and those who enter our borders illegally are able to find work.

Perhaps she should direct her question to her local government, not the Federal government or the President. If the local government cannot help her perhaps she needs to think about moving.

 

Oh yeah jobs are available. There would be more jobs than seekers if we were to match Bangladesh's minimum wage of 9¢ per hour. Will that make America great again?

The average middle class real income has not improved in 40 years, yet productivity has soared. That means the gains went to the top and even that wasn't good enough for the top folks. They wanted even more so they moved to Bangladesh.

How did the illusion of the rising middle class standard of living get created in the last 40 years? -the credit card. People went into debt to fund their lifestyle. And now the downward spiral continues. Jobs moved overseas and they aren't coming back. Employers are more and more turning to robotics to eliminate even more workers and profit from the savings.

The good days of U.S. capitalism are over. Trump can't fix it. He is a symptom of the problem. Tax cuts for the rich can't fix it. They further enrich the wealthy while harming the middle class who the burden will be shifted to. It is a fools errand to look for some "great leader" to save us from the destruction that is coming, and believe me it is coming. It's up to us. We've been abandoned. So it's up to us now.

 

Collective bargaining has broken down because American workers do not think that it delivers the goods in terms of defending income. Frankly, nothing does that job better. Hopping from job-to-job for better pay? Nope.

So, what's the alternative?

Why do companies de-unionize? I'd like to know, because markets have been consolidating greatly over the past three decades. And what has been the consequence? Fewer companies competing in a market-sector and (perhaps) less unionization in that sector.

Without union protection, when push comes to shove, it's the worker who's shown the door - not management ...

 

Sometimes, not always.

Keep harping on the "individual" and you lose focus. Want to live on deserted island? That's real individualism.

But you weren't born on a deserted island. You were born in a collective community - a town, a city, a state, a nation. You share the same language with millions of others, you went to the same sort of schools. You are governed by representatives that you send to Congress or the White House.

You enjoy public services that your taxation helps to pay.

You're an individual, yes. It says so on your driver's license. But, you do not live like one. You live in a collective of other people upon whom you depend, and they depend upon you. Because the Supply&Demand mechanism is a market-economy. One in which you consume, but your work provides the products/services that are consumed by others.

And so? And so you live a "collective existence". Meaning that what matters mostly to the individual is what matters mostly also to the collective in which s/he lives ...

 

Layfette uses "collective" so there is no mistaking his obvious Marxism

Socialization (Marxism) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization_(Marxism)
‎
In the theoretical work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, socialization is the process of transforming a solitary economic activity into a social relationship and collective endeavor.

 

capitalism does it best of all of course. New inventions make work more productive and thus make it pay more. This is why we make so much more than we made 100 years ago. Econ 101.

 

simple, because unions drive up the prices of what they make too much and bankrupt the companies or force them to move off shore. Unions should be made illegal again.

 

And so you should be a communist even after communist "collective existence" slowly starved 120 million to death. Layfayett studied all of human history and picked the deadliest theory in all of human history!! Completely utterly nuts!!

 

The deadliest in all human history? Marx lived in the 19th century. I think you forgot the 6000 years of recorded history before that. (Hint: it ain't pretty).

 

The military industrial complex should be closed down. As Eisenhower said, it's no life at all - humanity hanging on a cross of iron. .

Employment? There is an infinite amount of work to be done, from the highest research to the lowliest necessary labour. Purely a matter of social and economic organisation (through an intelligent combination of private sector activity based on self interest and competition, and complementary public sector activity based on co-operation, at both the micro and macro level (eg IMF)..

Ofcourse war is obsolete, now that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible. We just haven't quite got there yet, re implimenting the machinery necessary to defend that position As I said, Trump could present a plan for reform of the UNSC today, which enlightened self interest among all 195 UN member nations would find irresistable.

WE agreed Trump was elected partly owing to the relentless increase in inequality under capitalism . Now you say it's not his job to do anything about it, even though he visited Detroit, etc, and promised to deal with the decade-long processes responsible for the city's decay.

 

And I suppose Bangladesh would become an economic giant overnight if they were to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour?

Isn't inflation great? Wages are paid relative to the value of the work to be performed, and inflation does not apply equally to each and every job.

Monkey see, monkey do? Government lives on growing debt, and that might make some sense if the inflation rate was kept greater than the interest rate, but it is not. The real illusion is that many have become to believe that spending today and paying tomorrow results in paying back less than borrowed. It does NOT.

Capitalism is not over, but perhaps more are beginning to recognize Collectivism, regardless of what you call it, Socialism, Communism, Progressivism, etc. as Margaret Thatcher once said, "only works until you run out of other people's money."

Yes, it IS up to us, and perhaps it's time we began to look at the source of the problem, population, which does NOT increase human job opportunities but always increases needs, wants, trash accumulation, pollution, crime, debt, need/want for more laws, etc.