The problem of Capitalism

No we need a democracy of informed citizens who can agree on the nature of reality.

...because the jobs are not there: underemployment is the crushing reality in the present economy.

btw, how many people - living on welfare - would need to share a good standard private rental house outside a ghetto? 3 to a bedroom in a 4 bedroom house?

And you say I'm a dreamer......that family would need an incredible amount of functionality, both as individuals members and as a family unit.
Escape from poverty is a complex business in a world with a shortage of above-poverty, entry level jobs.

Meantime Trump is bemoaning the "disgraceful prevalence of crime in Chicago". (Hint: it's not in the affluent suburbs).

 

1) On the contrary, your "JG" would very quickly reveal just how unwilling many people are to do whatever work is available. Such people literally don't want the financial security that you think they want. They know they'll survive, because decades of enabling the lazy has shown them they won't starve (on the contrary, many will do just the opposite - given the corruption of First World 'welfare'). The JG scheme can ONLY work in a unified and universally productive populace, who're universally willing to forfeit the freedoms of democratic capitalism. IOW, it will never work.

2) Housing and food etc are a function of what we spend, not what we earn. A welfare recipient can live and eat well if they make good choices.

3) And there you go AGAIN, demanding that every lazy First World asshat be carefully considered lest his excuses aren't factored in. It's downright offensive - when people elsewhere are starving - along with being absurd. If people deeply traumatised by war, followed by stints in awful refugee camps, followed by evacuation to a strange land where they knew no one, couldn't speak the language, suffered racism and discrimination, and had no education or money .. can leave poverty behind in a generation via the incredible opportunities of a First World capitalist democracy, then anyone can. I speak, of course, of the Indo-Chinese refugees who came to the West in the 1970s. Many refugees and poorer migrants are still doing that today. Especially those from Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and SE Asia. Oh yeah, and they're not becoming obese. CHOICES.

 

1) Informed according to whom? You? Me? Trump? Bernie Sanders? Karl Marx?. And the idea that you will EVER have agreement in a massive multicultural nation is beyond laughable. In fact if you suddenly got it, you should run for the hills. It would mean democracy is lost, and totalitarianism has replaced it.

2) Why would a family on welfare live in a 'good standard 4 bedroom house outside the ghetto'? That would fall under the category of 'poor choices', and is the kind of self-indulgence which leads to poverty.

3) Dreamer? Because the self-discipline needed for a family to pull together and purchase a cheap property (houses can be had for as little as $5000 in America, as we both know), and the sacrifice of a cushy life in an expensive city is just too much to ask? Refugee and poorer migrant families do exactly that, in my country. Pull together and buy cheap. That's what gets them ahead - that plus preparedness to do whatever work is available. Add in determination to ensure their kids are educated and you have a clear picture of the difference between good and bad choices. "COMPLEX" is code for "EXCUSE". Given the success of so many refugees - with far more 'complex' histories - you cannot argue with this.

 

No, the JG would ensure permanent zero labour underutilisation (which is high in our mostly "invisible hand" economies). There simply aren't sufficient above poverty jobs available.

Your "invisible hand", "democratic capitalism", lacking the necessary planned, interventionist public sector, is part of the problem.

Er….what we spend depends on what we earn, 100% in the case of low income earners. But in any case subsidized* public sector housing and transport are a necessary part of a fully employed community.

*subsidized by a central bank being part of a consolidated government sector, overseeing the capitalist sector of the economy. See MMT.

Just shows, when you begin with a faulty world view - that all individuals make rational choices to produce a functioning fully employed economy (ie, the classical liberal view) - you end up blaming the victims for starving....

The state has to be responsible for education, because parents are likely to want to indoctrinate their children with their own view of reality.

That is: "a clear difference between good and bad choices" is one thing - desirable - but parents are subject to "the human condition"....including prejudice, and ignorance.

According to a distillation of the contributions of all the great social and economic philosophers/researchers. That's the function and the goal of public education, to understand the human condition.

 

But unalloyed classical liberalism also has egregious outcomes; a synthesis of the two schools of thought is required for a well-functioning local and global economy.

 

As opposed to raising taxes first (as proposed by Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren).
MMT raises taxes - if necessary - after the currency issuing government has directly funded a JG, and then raises taxation on identified sectors of the economy as required to control inflation, if inflation becomes an issue.

It's a more flexible, efficient method of achieving a continuous sustainable utilisation of all available resources, including labour.

 

Unalloyed classical liberalism? What even is that? Is there an alloyed classical liberalism?

 

'Pure' classical liberalism - that individuals make informed rational choices, and hence societies function smoothly via voluntary agreement. Pure fantasy.

 

I can't get behind what you just described. It sounds ludicrous.

I'd rather that each of us owns (or, if you will, administers) a small piece of land rather than the state do so for all land in the jurisdiction.

What I'm saying is that I'm basically opposed to communism.

 

Many cannot afford to own or administer "a small piece of land", where work is available.

Yes classical economics - AND the present neoliberal economic orthodoxy which is based on it - is ludicrous

 

I don't see that as a valid argument for a state monopoly in land. I oppose monopolies.

 

No. It will change when we -- you -- can find a willingness to distinguish between income that is earned by commensurate contribution to production and that obtained by dint of privilege, and have the honesty to leave the former alone and tax away the latter.

 

What on earth do you incorrectly imagine a fiefdom is? Is that what you think happens in Hong Kong?

I've heard it. It's just puerile, "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" nonsense with no basis in fact.

 

Income is not property.

 

An area over which a feudal lord reigns.

From what I understand, the state owns all the land in Hong Kong.

I simply don't like concentrations of power. I would rather hundreds of millions of people each own a small part of the US than the US government owning all of the land. That would result in a massive concentration of power.

 

What do you mean, "liberty to own land"?? If you have to pay someone else for permission to exercise it, it's not liberty. Let's say there is a thug out on the sidewalk in front of your house. If you try to leave your house and use the sidewalk, he demands money from you. When you protest that you have the liberty right to use the sidewalk, he informs you that yes, you have the liberty to pay him for permission to use the sidewalk. That is your absurd and disingenuous "liberty to own land."

That is objectively false. I never agreed -- no one else did, either, AFAIK -- to give my right to liberty to landowners. And yet somehow, they have taken it, and own it.

 

Of course it is. It is property acquired in a certain interval of time. Give your head a shake. You are now pretending that common English words do not mean what they clearly do mean.

 

Exactly. As I said, income is not property. Income is the transfer of property.

 

GARBAGE.

There are some people who are so benighted, they think democratically accountable government -- government BY and FOR the people -- is the same as irresponsible rule by an absolute monarch. How such people even get their shoes tied in the morning is an enduring mystery.

 

All of us who are citizens of First World capitalist democracies are free to choose land ownership, or choose rent 'slavery'. Whether people do or not is not the point, the freedom exists. That is the liberty you speak of - the freedom to choose, and to act according to that choice.

 

No, uncounted trillions of them. Every dollar, pound, peso, rupee, etc. taken by landowners in location rent, for starters. That's billions of things taken from their legal owners every single freakin' day.

 

Ah, equivocation. Such a cool tactic.

If I give you a gift, you take it.

If you stick a knife in my ribs and demand my wallet, you take it.

What I said in my previous post is that nobody is actually forcibly taking the property of anyone.

 

So you are just makin' $#!+ up again. Someone who pays the community full market value for what he takes from everyone else by excluding them from advantageous land is not a feudal lord. You of course know this. You are merely pretending not to know it because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

Right. And there are no fiefdoms or feudal lords to hold them. So you are just makin' $#!+ up again.

No. What you really don't like is justice, and other people having equal individual rights to liberty. You want all power to be concentrated in the hands of property owners.

How could any of those hundreds of millions own any part of the land unless government administered possession and use thereof? Who would secure their titles, their exclusive tenure?

No it wouldn't, because democratic government is accountable to the people. OTC, we know that what you advocate -- absolute monarchy based on landholding -- DOES result in massive concentration of power.

 

I prefer millions of property owners to one single property owner. I don't like monopolies.

 

No, it is not. Income is WHAT is transferred when people have a net gain in property, not the ACT of transferring such property. You are again just using words incorrectly. You have to do that because you have already realized that correct use of words leaves you unable to defend your false and evil beliefs.