Trump 2020

[Virtual ghost]

Uhh... You have no idea what you're talking about.

A living wage is the bare minimum income needed for a worker to meet their basic needs. Nothing about a living wage violates the concept of a free market or economics. Quite the opposite. If workers failed to acquire a minimum wage, the market and the economy would collapse because workers would lack the resources necessary to work and contribute to the economy.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

I am constantly shocked by how some people don't get this. If workers/people don't survive the economy will collapse for sure.

 

[Maou]

Uhh... You have no idea what you're talking about.

A living wage is the bare minimum income needed for a worker to meet their basic needs. Nothing about a living wage violates the concept of a free market or economics. Quite the opposite. If workers failed to acquire a minimum wage, the market and the economy would collapse because workers would lack the resources necessary to work and contribute to the economy.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

A job is only worth what it is worth, based on market values. Supply and demand. It is not the task of an employer to ensure the survival of anyone they hire. Stop embarassing yourself in the fact you don't understand basic economics and common sense. You and [MENTION=4347]Virtual ghost[/MENTION] need to realize that raising the wages artificially does nothing but cause inflation, and destroy small businesses, and harm low skill labour. And no, the economy wouldn't "collapse" if everyone couldn't survive on a single job. That is just silly. We have already seen these disastrous ideas in action in places like California and Seattle.

 

[Tater]

I am constantly shocked by how some people don't get this.

Likewise.

 

[Virtual ghost]

A job is only worth what it is worth, based on market values. Supply and demand. It is not the task of an employer to ensure the survival of anyone they hire. Stop embarassing yourself in the fact you don't understand basic economics and common sense. You and [MENTION=4347]Virtual ghost[/MENTION] need to realize that raising the wages artificially does nothing but cause inflation, and destroy small businesses, and harm low skill labour. And no, the economy wouldn't "collapse" if everyone couldn't survive on a single job. That is just silly. We have already seen these disastrous ideas in action in places like California and Seattle.

Your economy isn't only possible economy, that was the whole point. You should be careful with minimum wage which should be always moved slowly, but America wants everything instantly. Plus of course this will fail when you just open the market for goods that are made by people who work for 50$ 15 hours a day at gunpoint. The whole point of free market is to milk people at the bottom so that they can't rise.


This nonsense is exactly why more pro-business parties may not win a single seat in my upcoming local elections. Since we all remember some different times before someone was throwing this kind of propaganda at us. Which is BTW incompatible with our culture and can't really stick since we know of certain alternatives and upgrades. There are alternatives.



Have fun working yourself to death through the rest of your life. I have no interest in playing that game.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Plus since we are in the thread we are:

The whole point why people voted for Trump in such number is exactly to limit unfair competition, since people can't compete with high tech slavery of Asia. The idea that a job should be valued purely by it market value is exactly why Trump was elected, since that leads people into abyss. Value of a job is something that can be gamed and isn't static in value.

 

[ceecee]

I am constantly shocked by how some people don't get this. If workers/people don't survive the economy will collapse for sure.

I don't know how people can't grasp this but I've found they are often exactly the people that would benefit from either a minimum wage increase or collective bargaining.

 

[Maou]

Your economy isn't only possible economy, that was the whole point. You should be careful with minimum wage which should be always moved slowly, but America wants everything instantly. Plus of course this will fail when you just open the market for goods that are made by people who work for 50$ 15 hours a day at gunpoint. The whole point of free market is to milk people at the bottom so that they can't rise.

This nonsense is exactly why more pro-business parties may not win a single seat in my upcoming local elections. Since we all remember some different times before someone was throwing this kind of propaganda at us. Which is BTW incompatible with our culture and can't really stick since we know of certain alternatives and upgrades. There are alternatives.

Have fun working yourself to death through the rest of your life. I have no interest in playing that game.

The bold is nonsense. Labour is worth what it is worth, regardless of how worthless you think it is to you. Plenty of businesses have very good upward mobility as well. You actually have the option of not working for a shitty corporation, or getting a real job in USA. And no, that does not include college level jobs.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I don't know how people can't grasp this but I've found they are often exactly the people that would benefit from either a minimum wage increase or collective bargaining.

It is simple: 24/7 propaganda. This is exactly why I said that neoliberalism is fundamentally totalitarian ideology. Since normal people will never come to these conclusions unless if you throw at them propaganda over and over again.

How many big American companies went down over the last 15 years ? And most of them simply because the consumers lost the purchasing power, since those consumers are mostly average workers and their families. This is main consumer base in any country and when you mess that up the society crumbles.


To be honest I do have a horse in this race because deregulations, opening borders, free trade etc. have hit my country to hard, to the point that many people actually want back into Communism. It wasn't great but we at least had jobs with witch you could live, profit had local owners, imports were much smaller ... etc. Even the many nationalists agree that from purely economic point it was better for the most before and life was so much simpler. So we came to the absurd situation of why we even made the changes when now someone is pushing neoliberlism at us, which is even worse shit than what we had. Not to mention that we still didn't even introduce neoliberlism fully, since you can't sell that in elections. The whole parties disappeared on this issue.


I wrote quite a number of posts about what Russians are doing around my region and they can do that since plenty of local people don't really mind that, since silently they are hopping that the current system/trends will be taken over, pushed out or whatever. Russian state banks took over the spine of our economy in a deal with previous private owner that went bankrupt last year and nothing ... crickets, no protests no nothing. Do we really have to restore the dictatorship in order to have workers on livable wages ? As it stands we do.

 

[Virtual ghost]

The bold is nonsense. Labour is worth what it is worth, regardless of how worthless you think it is to you. Plenty of businesses have very good upward mobility as well. You actually have the option of not working for a shitty corporation, or getting a real job in USA. And no, that does not include college level jobs.

If bolded is nonsense does that mean that the rest of the post is correct ? Stop cherry picking.
And it isn't nonsense, modern free market is build on sucking out everything, often regardless of well being of people and environment in which people should live. The very fact that advertisement is everywhere to the point that people are become mentally ill or stressed due to that proves that milking is the bottom line.


But this conversation is fundamentally pointless since I am not buying your whole life philosophy that revolves around money.

 

[Maou]

If bolded is nonsense does that mean that the rest of the post is correct ? Stop cherry picking.
And it isn't nonsense, modern free market is build on sucking out everything, often regardless of well being of people and environment in which people should live. The very fact that advertisement is everywhere to the point that people are become mentally ill or stressed due to that proves that milking is the bottom line.


But this conversation is fundamentally pointless since I am not buying your whole life philosophy that revolves around money.

Only because you're once again, beginning to go off on a tangent about the evils of capitalism, instead of addressing the fact, that a "living wage" violates the nature of a free market. You seem to have a very black and white view on how wealth is obtained, and at the same time holding a moral conundrum about how not everyone is in an equal status. Sorry to break it to you, but true equality will never exist how you want it. There will always be struggle.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Only because you're once again, beginning to go off on a tangent about the evils of capitalism, instead of addressing the fact, that a "living wage" violates the nature of a free market. You seem to have a very black and white view on how wealth is obtained, and at the same time holding a moral conundrum about how not everyone is in an equal status. Sorry to break it to you, but true equality will never exist how you want it. There will always be struggle.

And you think that minimal/livable wages will make anyone equal ? That isn't what they do or they are meant to do, what only proves that you don't know about what you are talking about.

 

[Maou]

And you think that minimal/livable wages will make anyone equal ? That isn't what they do or they are meant to do, what only proves that you don't know about what you are talking about.

I think labour is worth what it is worth, and no amount of whining about how unfair life is should change that. It isn't a question of equality. It is not the responsibility of employers to keep you alive and well. You work for them, for money, by choice. If you don't like where that sets you, get a better job. Life is also a competition. Just because you try hard, doesn't always mean you make it to the top. This fact will never change about humanity, or nature.

But nice strawman you got there.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I think labour is worth what it is worth, and no amount of whining about how unfair life is should change that. It isn't a question of equality. It is not the responsibility of employers to keep you alive and well. You work for them, for money, by choice. If you don't like where that sets you, get a better job. Life is also a competition. Just because you try hard, doesn't always mean you make it to the top. This fact will never change about humanity, or nature.

But nice strawman you got there.

Sticking for yourself or people around yourself isn't whining. Accepting that your employer uses you is actually the cowardice and uncompetitive behavior. However not everyone can be a freelancer since many products require larger companies to produce.


America turned into this mess exactly since it lost competitiveness and that was because you are suppose to do everything by yourself and many just don't make it for whatever the reason. Or they simply weren't educated enough for modern international competition. While more structured countries are taking more and more market due to social stability. Minimum wage only serves that no one can in desperation sell itself into nothingness, since they are sick, from bad family or whatever. Therefore if employer cares about all of this they should at least pay to the point that the person has something decent to eat, pay the bills and have a living space for doing a full time job. Therefore if the job can't provide at least this the job shouldn't be open in the first place, since it is a waste through which people have to sort out in a search for a decent job. As the name says minimum wage is minimum wage and wouldn't make anyone rich, it is simply a low threshold below which we shouldn't go for the sake of social stability and emotional stability of the society. What is vital for large scale stability, what increases productivity by definition. If anything simply because everyone employed has some guaranteed purchasing power and money doesn't pile up with a few people so much, that even if they are going to spend it that probably wouldn't be locally.




What you are proposing is pure masochism without any clear goals.

 

[Coriolis]

Quit beating around the bush. We were not debating anything BUT the fact Trump created jobs. That's it. We are not comparing it to the Democrats, nor talking about your opinions on economics. All you had to acknowledge Yes, Trump created jobs.

Then your standards for a successful president are abysmally low. The fact that jobs were created while Trump was in office does not require that he was the cause. It is quite possible that his presence limited the number of jobs created, or that any of his challengers - democratic or republican - could have created more jobs.

Correct, everyone can create jobs like that.
Not to mention that good chunk of them probably isn't even providing a living wage. (and therefore those don't really count, since they don't fulfill the basic premise/goal behind job creation)

Exactly, to be meaningful, metrics must measure something consequential.

A "living wage" violates the very concept of a free market, and economics. Its literally nonsense, and people bitching they can't raise s family of 6 on a min wage job.

Now the truth comes out. Aside of any humanitarian motivation, people not earning a living wage are horrible consumers. Somehow "free markets" have not figured that one out.

You can sell this in USA but not to me. Plus this only suggests that minimum wage is too small.

The thing is that there isn't such a thing as truly free market. Either the so called market it is defined more by elected officials for better of for worse or it is defined by those with money in the case it is deregulated. Perhaps before internet and globalization we could perhaps talk about free market but there is no way this can be genuinely free now, especially since other countries aren't afraid to involve their governments into the mix. As a matter of fact I am willing to argue that your whole life from what understand looks as it looks exactly because of "free market". Since the so called free market is exactly what outsourced so many concrete jobs and now you have whole communities in the ruins. Why pay few thousand dollars for a genuine worker when you can just pay a slave in some dictatorship 50$ and place the difference into you pockets ? Plus you push further deregulation so that people don't see any of even that money. This is exactly why all your tax brakes don't provide any meaningful results since they just keep the money away from people. Back in a day when countries were closed economies that meant that if you reduced taxes the difference would go to the economy, however now people with the money can just invest somewhere around the globe where the profits are the highest. Deregulation broke the circles and now you have free fall.

Exactly. Excellent post all round. The best regulation acts to keep the market free by ensuring a level playing field for business. Moneyed interests consistently shoot this down, smearing it as "big government". This ultimately limits competition across the board.

Fortunately not all Americans buy that empty argument.

And it isn't nonsense, modern free market is build on sucking out everything, often regardless of well being of people and environment in which people should live. The very fact that advertisement is everywhere to the point that people are become mentally ill or stressed due to that proves that milking is the bottom line.

But this conversation is fundamentally pointless since I am not buying your whole life philosophy that revolves around money.

Even business leaders are starting to question the notion that the only goal of business is to make a profit. Money is a critical concern of any business, just as of any individual or household, but if that is their/your only concern, that is a myopic and ultimately counterproductive view.

I think labour is worth what it is worth, and no amount of whining about how unfair life is should change that. It isn't a question of equality. It is not the responsibility of employers to keep you alive and well. You work for them, for money, by choice. If you don't like where that sets you, get a better job. Life is also a competition. Just because you try hard, doesn't always mean you make it to the top. This fact will never change about humanity, or nature.

Who determines the worth of labor? Don't say "free markets" becauses we don't have that and perhaps never had. There is a huge gulf between "making it to the top" and meeting your and your family's basic needs. Sure - we all work for our employers by choice, but when the only alternative is unemployment or an even lower paying job, that's not much of a choice. Getting a better job is also prohibitive for many people. Like many other things you have mentioned in this thread, it may work in theory, but not in practice, as demonstrated over generations of economic activity.

 

[Coriolis]

Walls are stupid, they'll just dig tunnels or find other ways in if they really want to come here.

Trump may not need a wall. He is turning the US into a place people won't want to come to. That's a "cure" worse than the disease.

 

[The Cat]

Walls have two sides. Often billed as a bargain to keep things locked out; often lamented too late, as they keep things locked in...

 

[Red Herring]

Trump may not need a wall. He is turning the US into a place people won't want to come to. That's a "cure" worse than the disease.

IIRC there have been more people leaving the USA for Mexico than coming in from Mexico for some time even before Trump got elected.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Exactly. Excellent post all round. The best regulation acts to keep the market free by ensuring a level playing field for business. Moneyed interests consistently shoot this down, smearing it as "big government". This ultimately limits competition across the board.

Fortunately not all Americans buy that empty argument.

The problem is that some people don't understand that regulated market that is in privately ownership is still Capitalism and not Socialism. Today we have so many options and technologies that you just can't leave everything to a chance. Long ago when you could learn any job in a few months, when trade barrier were in the fact that you need 2 days to the next town you could leave everything to chance. While today you can't do that, since there is a million ways how to manipulate people. Not many people have the knowledge and the the lab to realized which piece of food is toxic and therefore it is batter just to make laws that limit the use of toxins. Unregulated nuclear energy would also be a bad idea. Allowing doctors to basically extort money from sick people also isn't really Ok .... etc.


However to fix this you don't really need genuine socialism, regulated capitalism is more than enough. However that doesn't fit some people so they scream "SOCIALISM!". While on the other hand you have plenty of people who wear this title of shame with pride, even if it is obvious they aren't really socialists.

Here is interesting map. I understand that US has trade deficit with 3rd world countries but why on earth it has so large trade deficit with developed nations ? The answer is probably disorder since structured society is more productive and it makes more advanced product due to better education and structure. Plus US often can't trade back since its products don't match health standards in a more structured country. What isn't really braking of market rules because there is no need for such products. One of main scares in Europe is that declaration on the products is fake and you are buying toxic garbage. So when someone plans deregulation in this regard there are very active protest over this. Therefore the person who wants toxic products is more of a ideologue that someone who thinks about what market really wants.



Plus that trade deficit with China is pure "greed is good" and the lack of concrete industrial policy. US as a country can stand some trade deficits but if it looses over half a trillion every year that is just too much. However this is more of a problem of production and quality problem than trade deals themselves, especially when it comes more developed countries that have similar wages.

 

[cacaia]

All I'm going to say here is that all of this is too overwhelming. Too turbulent and surreal. Anything else I may say may get misconstrued or disagreed upon, and I just don't have the energy or time for that .

 

[draon9]

If the wall happen people will eventually be out of jobs and crime will shoot up the roof since majority of our food come from foreign countries and people will only be forced to eat each other and all the technology we have will be a thing of the pass and will be scarce.