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David Simon, Co-creator of "The Wire," on America and capitalism


downzy

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Not sure if many of you watched The Wire (you all should, it's amazing), but it's co-creator, David Simon recently gave a speech at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney Australia. He covers a lot ground that's been discussed in this forum lately and does a pretty bang on job of describing my own personal reflection of what's happening not only in America but throughout westernized world. It's long but I highly recommend you have a read. Would love to hear people's thoughts:

America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.

There's no barbed wire around West Baltimore or around East Baltimore, around Pimlico, the areas in my city that have been utterly divorced from the American experience that I know. But there might as well be. We've somehow managed to march on to two separate futures and I think you're seeing this more and more in the west. I don't think it's unique to America.

I think we've perfected a lot of the tragedy and we're getting there faster than a lot of other places that may be a little more reasoned, but my dangerous idea kind of involves this fellow who got left by the wayside in the 20th century and seemed to be almost the butt end of the joke of the 20th century; a fellow named Karl Marx.

I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve that.

You know if you've read Capital or if you've got the Cliff Notes, you know that his imaginings of how classical Marxism – of how his logic would work when applied – kind of devolve into such nonsense as the withering away of the state and platitudes like that. But he was really sharp about what goes wrong when capital wins unequivocally, when it gets everything it asks for.

That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, that it has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without being connected to any other metric for human progress.

We understand profit. In my country we measure things by profit. We listen to the Wall Street analysts. They tell us what we're supposed to do every quarter. The quarterly report is God. Turn to face God. Turn to face Mecca, you know. Did you make your number? Did you not make your number? Do you want your bonus? Do you not want your bonus?

And that notion that capital is the metric, that profit is the metric by which we're going to measure the health of our society is one of the fundamental mistakes of the last 30 years. I would date it in my country to about 1980 exactly, and it has triumphed.

Capitalism stomped the hell out of Marxism by the end of the 20th century and was predominant in all respects, but the great irony of it is that the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is impure, has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of partisan or philosophical perfection.

It's pragmatic, it includes the best aspects of socialistic thought and of free-market capitalism and it works because we don't let it work entirely. And that's a hard idea to think – that there isn't one single silver bullet that gets us out of the mess we've dug for ourselves. But man, we've dug a mess.

After the second world war, the west emerged with the American economy coming out of its wartime extravagance, emerging as the best product. It was the best product. It worked the best. It was demonstrating its might not only in terms of what it did during the war but in terms of just how facile it was in creating mass wealth.

Plus, it provided a lot more freedom and was doing the one thing that guaranteed that the 20th century was going to be – and forgive the jingoistic sound of this – the American century.

It took a working class that had no discretionary income at the beginning of the century, which was working on subsistence wages. It turned it into a consumer class that not only had money to buy all the stuff that they needed to live but enough to buy a bunch of shit that they wanted but didn't need, and that was the engine that drove us.

It wasn't just that we could supply stuff, or that we had the factories or know-how or capital, it was that we created our own demand and started exporting that demand throughout the west. And the standard of living made it possible to manufacture stuff at an incredible rate and sell it.

And how did we do that? We did that by not giving in to either side. That was the new deal. That was the great society. That was all of that argument about collective bargaining and union wages and it was an argument that meant neither side gets to win.

Labour doesn't get to win all its arguments, capital doesn't get to. But it's in the tension, it's in the actual fight between the two, that capitalism actually becomes functional, that it becomes something that every stratum in society has a stake in, that they all share.

The unions actually mattered. The unions were part of the equation. It didn't matter that they won all the time, it didn't matter that they lost all the time, it just mattered that they had to win some of the time and they had to put up a fight and they had to argue for the demand and the equation and for the idea that workers were not worth less, they were worth more.

Ultimately we abandoned that and believed in the idea of trickle-down and the idea of the market economy and the market knows best, to the point where now libertarianism in my country is actually being taken seriously as an intelligent mode of political thought. It's astonishing to me. But it is. People are saying I don't need anything but my own ability to earn a profit. I'm not connected to society. I don't care how the road got built, I don't care where the firefighter comes from, I don't care who educates the kids other than my kids. I am me. It's the triumph of the self. I am me, hear me roar.

That we've gotten to this point is astonishing to me because basically in winning its victory, in seeing that Wall come down and seeing the former Stalinist state's journey towards our way of thinking in terms of markets or being vulnerable, you would have thought that we would have learned what works. Instead we've descended into what can only be described as greed. This is just greed. This is an inability to see that we're all connected, that the idea of two Americas is implausible, or two Australias, or two Spains or two Frances.

Societies are exactly what they sound like. If everybody is invested and if everyone just believes that they have "some", it doesn't mean that everybody's going to get the same amount. It doesn't mean there aren't going to be people who are the venture capitalists who stand to make the most. It's not each according to their needs or anything that is purely Marxist, but it is that everybody feels as if, if the society succeeds, I succeed, I don't get left behind. And there isn't a society in the west now, right now, that is able to sustain that for all of its population.

And so in my country you're seeing a horror show. You're seeing a retrenchment in terms of family income, you're seeing the abandonment of basic services, such as public education, functional public education. You're seeing the underclass hunted through an alleged war on dangerous drugs that is in fact merely a war on the poor and has turned us into the most incarcerative state in the history of mankind, in terms of the sheer numbers of people we've put in American prisons and the percentage of Americans we put into prisons. No other country on the face of the Earth jails people at the number and rate that we are.

We have become something other than what we claim for the American dream and all because of our inability to basically share, to even contemplate a socialist impulse.

Socialism is a dirty word in my country. I have to give that disclaimer at the beginning of every speech, "Oh by the way I'm not a Marxist you know". I lived through the 20th century. I don't believe that a state-run economy can be as viable as market capitalism in producing mass wealth. I don't.

I'm utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century. That argument's over. But the idea that it's not going to be married to a social compact, that how you distribute the benefits of capitalism isn't going to include everyone in the society to a reasonable extent, that's astonishing to me.

And so capitalism is about to seize defeat from the jaws of victory all by its own hand. That's the astonishing end of this story, unless we reverse course. Unless we take into consideration, if not the remedies of Marx then the diagnosis, because he saw what would happen if capital triumphed unequivocally, if it got everything it wanted.

And one of the things that capital would want unequivocally and for certain is the diminishment of labour. They would want labour to be diminished because labour's a cost. And if labour is diminished, let's translate that: in human terms, it means human beings are worth less.

From this moment forward unless we reverse course, the average human being is worth less on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism.

Mistaking capitalism for a blueprint as to how to build a society strikes me as a really dangerous idea in a bad way. Capitalism is a remarkable engine again for producing wealth. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to build a society and have that society advance. You wouldn't want to go forward at this point without it. But it's not a blueprint for how to build the just society. There are other metrics besides that quarterly profit report.

The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all in this together or are we all not?

If you watched the debacle that was, and is, the fight over something as basic as public health policy in my country over the last couple of years, imagine the ineffectiveness that Americans are going to offer the world when it comes to something really complicated like global warming. We can't even get healthcare for our citizens on a basic level. And the argument comes down to: "Goddamn this socialist president. Does he think I'm going to pay to keep other people healthy? It's socialism, motherfucker."

What do you think group health insurance is? You know you ask these guys, "Do you have group health insurance where you …?" "Oh yeah, I get …" you know, "my law firm …" So when you get sick you're able to afford the treatment.

The treatment comes because you have enough people in your law firm so you're able to get health insurance enough for them to stay healthy. So the actuarial tables work and all of you, when you do get sick, are able to have the resources there to get better because you're relying on the idea of the group. Yeah. And they nod their heads, and you go "Brother, that's socialism. You know it is."

And ... you know when you say, OK, we're going to do what we're doing for your law firm but we're going to do it for 300 million Americans and we're going to make it affordable for everybody that way. And yes, it means that you're going to be paying for the other guys in the society, the same way you pay for the other guys in the law firm … Their eyes glaze. You know they don't want to hear it. It's too much. Too much to contemplate the idea that the whole country might be actually connected.

So I'm astonished that at this late date I'm standing here and saying we might want to go back for this guy Marx that we were laughing at, if not for his prescriptions, then at least for his depiction of what is possible if you don't mitigate the authority of capitalism, if you don't embrace some other values for human endeavour.

And that's what The Wire was about basically, it was about people who were worth less and who were no longer necessary, as maybe 10 or 15% of my country is no longer necessary to the operation of the economy. It was about them trying to solve, for lack of a better term, an existential crisis. In their irrelevance, their economic irrelevance, they were nonetheless still on the ground occupying this place called Baltimore and they were going to have to endure somehow.

That's the great horror show. What are we going to do with all these people that we've managed to marginalise? It was kind of interesting when it was only race, when you could do this on the basis of people's racial fears and it was just the black and brown people in American cities who had the higher rates of unemployment and the higher rates of addiction and were marginalised and had the shitty school systems and the lack of opportunity.

And kind of interesting in this last recession to see the economy shrug and start to throw white middle-class people into the same boat, so that they became vulnerable to the drug war, say from methamphetamine, or they became unable to qualify for college loans. And all of a sudden a certain faith in the economic engine and the economic authority of Wall Street and market logic started to fall away from people. And they realised it's not just about race, it's about something even more terrifying. It's about class. Are you at the top of the wave or are you at the bottom?

So how does it get better? In 1932, it got better because they dealt the cards again and there was a communal logic that said nobody's going to get left behind. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get the banks open. From the depths of that depression a social compact was made between worker, between labour and capital that actually allowed people to have some hope.

We're either going to do that in some practical way when things get bad enough or we're going to keep going the way we're going, at which point there's going to be enough people standing on the outside of this mess that somebody's going to pick up a brick, because you know when people get to the end there's always the brick. I hope we go for the first option but I'm losing faith.

The other thing that was there in 1932 that isn't there now is that some element of the popular will could be expressed through the electoral process in my country.

The last job of capitalism – having won all the battles against labour, having acquired the ultimate authority, almost the ultimate moral authority over what's a good idea or what's not, or what's valued and what's not – the last journey for capital in my country has been to buy the electoral process, the one venue for reform that remained to Americans.

Right now capital has effectively purchased the government, and you witnessed it again with the healthcare debacle in terms of the $450m that was heaved into Congress, the most broken part of my government, in order that the popular will never actually emerged in any of that legislative process.

So I don't know what we do if we can't actually control the representative government that we claim will manifest the popular will. Even if we all start having the same sentiments that I'm arguing for now, I'm not sure we can effect them any more in the same way that we could at the rise of the Great Depression, so maybe it will be the brick. But I hope not.

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No, very few of us ever say anything that hasn't been said before.

But there's two reasons why I decided to post it.

First, I'm a huge fan of Simon's writings and I like the way he describes the issue in this speech. Very few ideas are original, but even fewer are stated well. Simon writes in a way that I think would make many to question their faith on their absolutism regarding capitalism. I was interested in talking about areas that people might disagree with his argument.

Second, I think that what he's saying is going to be something that will become more commonplace as we move forward. For the last 30 years the pursuit of profit has superseded everything else to the growing chagrin of many. I also think he makes a valid point that as capitalism, as it is being currently practiced, begins to swallow up groups of people who usually found themselves in the winner category you'll begin to see a sea-change on the merits of individualism. He comes across as realistic in his expectation that it all ends peacefully, though I'm not sure why it can't since it was done before in the early 1930s.

What happens when capitalism has squeezed out enough efficiency where a large percentage of the population becomes redundant?

Edited by downzy
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A large percentage of the population became redundant when England gave the world the Industrial Revolution and we moved on from subsistence farming. Again, it isn't a new concept that he is trying to espouse as the underlying path has already been well and truly trodden,

Edited by PappyTron
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I don't know Pappy, because if you spend any time in America, you'd know what he's expressing goes against dogma. The concepts may have been well trodden, but in America, those paths have been grown over by a fertile garden of bullshit known as one's undying faith in the markets.

EDIT: So if the problem is well known, then what do you suggest Pappy to fix it? Or does it get fixed? Or is a revolution inevitable?

Edited by downzy
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I don't know Pappy, because if you spend any time in America, you'd know what he's expressing goes against dogma. The concepts may have been well trodden, but in America, those paths have been grown over by a fertile garden of bullshit known as one's undying faith in the markets.

EDIT: So if the problem is well known, then what do you suggest Pappy to fix it?

The dogma of who? The people in charge? The same people who pushed through socialised medicine? The cold, hard truth of the matter is that your average person is not particularly intelligent, industrious, unique or qualified and that means, from a societal point of view, that the majority of people are at the bottom of the pyramid; always have been, are now, and always will be in the future. No matter how you feel about it, as an individual, it doesn't change the fact of basic human nature; most people are not beautiful snowflakes.

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I don't know Pappy, because if you spend any time in America, you'd know what he's expressing goes against dogma. The concepts may have been well trodden, but in America, those paths have been grown over by a fertile garden of bullshit known as one's undying faith in the markets.

EDIT: So if the problem is well known, then what do you suggest Pappy to fix it?

The dogma of who? The people in charge? The same people who pushed through socialised medicine? The cold, hard truth of the matter is that your average person is not particularly intelligent, industrious, unique or qualified and that means, from a societal point of view, that the majority of people are at the bottom of the pyramid; always have been, are now, and always will be in the future. No matter how you feel about it, as an individual, it doesn't change the fact of basic human nature; most people are not beautiful snowflakes.

So that means what exactly? I don't disagree with anything you say, but how do we organized society as a result? How do we distribute the benefits? Do we allow for a widening gap between rich and poor? Does the fact that most individuals aren't beautiful snowflakes allow for society to organize in such a way that they live in turmoil and distress?

And this gets to the root of what Simon is talking about: what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

Edited by downzy
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I don't know Pappy, because if you spend any time in America, you'd know what he's expressing goes against dogma. The concepts may have been well trodden, but in America, those paths have been grown over by a fertile garden of bullshit known as one's undying faith in the markets.

EDIT: So if the problem is well known, then what do you suggest Pappy to fix it?

The dogma of who? The people in charge? The same people who pushed through socialised medicine? The cold, hard truth of the matter is that your average person is not particularly intelligent, industrious, unique or qualified and that means, from a societal point of view, that the majority of people are at the bottom of the pyramid; always have been, are now, and always will be in the future. No matter how you feel about it, as an individual, it doesn't change the fact of basic human nature; most people are not beautiful snowflakes.

So that means what exactly? I don't disagree with anything you say, but how do we organized society as a result? How do we distribute the benefits? Do we allow for a widening gap between rich and poor? Does the fact that most individuals aren't beautiful snowflakes allow for society to organize in such a way that they live in turmoil and distress?

And this gets to the root of what Simon is talking about: what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

I don't see it as a fundamentally capitalism issue. For all of the decrying against capitalism, it is a system that has given a better standard of living to more people than any other system to date. As my previous post stated, people are not unique and there are very few people who are individually important, but the inherent structure of capitalism ensures that the system, as a whole, keeps moving forward. I don't believe that there will be a point where capitalism pushes society to a saturation point as it will always require workers, labourers, innovators, traders and the like. What we perceive as societal norm may well change and in the future your average worker will almost certainly have a different work-role than the worker of today, but that is a very distinct difference from what Simon is suggesting; the people will be needed, just in a different capacity and that is a good thing as it indicates societal progress, not stagnation or retardation.

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

So the issue isn't how we organize and distribute our planet's resources, but that people are having too many babies?

And sure, there has always been inequality, but it's also true that there have been periods where it was far less prevalent than it exists today. A fair distribution of wealth doesn't mean an equal distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality was not a pressing concern between the 1950s and the late 1970s when CEOs didn't make hundreds of times what their factory workers made.

And why do you assume that it is the wealthy who are wealthy by virtue of them being special and unique? Do you truly believe that capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S. today, represents a true meritocracy?

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

So the issue isn't how we organize and distribute our planet's resources, but that people are having too many babies?

And sure, there has always been inequality, but it's also true that there have been periods where it was far less prevalent than it exists today. A fair distribution of wealth doesn't mean an equal distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality was not a pressing concern between the 1950s and the late 1970s when CEOs didn't make hundreds of times what their factory workers made.

And why do you assume that it is the wealthy who are wealthy by virtue of them being special and unique? Do you truly believe that capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S. today, represents a true meritocracy?

In a finite system how many times the resources need to be divided is always of more importance than how we choose to divide them in the first place; less people means more opportunity for a given resource to be in the hands of a particular person. The world having more than 7 billion people is not conducive to a large percentage of them having a high standard of living, even for their locals.

A distribution of resources is the true measure of wealth as defined by the meaning of the second word - I believe that you are referring to "money" which is not the same at all - if a CEO is paid $25,000,000 a year that is very different than them being paid the market equivalent of $25,000,000 in tangible resources.

I don't assume that the wealthy are such by virtue of uniqueness, and never said so. Moreover, I never pointed to the US being a meritocracy, and would state that a belief in the concept of a possible true meritocracy as being a fallacious one.

Edited by PappyTron
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I like the article, but you guys took a whack tangent.

The world's a mess right now due to bastardised, unfettered Capitalism (and its progeny, the derivatives market.) That, and the inevitable union of money into politics (the Koch Bros nearly bought the 2012 political election) has gotten us to this point. Short of some sort of violent upheaval -- nothing is going to change the situation in the States.

And well, the Euro's a mess. Then you've got real estate bubbles worldwide due to new Southeast Asian millionaires, and rapid Chinese expansion. Plus why pay American workers a fair wage, when you can pay people a lower wage in third-world countries. Plus, you've got Wall Street tethering that $600 trillion derivatives bubble.

Ahhhh. I hate thinking about this crap.

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

So the issue isn't how we organize and distribute our planet's resources, but that people are having too many babies?

And sure, there has always been inequality, but it's also true that there have been periods where it was far less prevalent than it exists today. A fair distribution of wealth doesn't mean an equal distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality was not a pressing concern between the 1950s and the late 1970s when CEOs didn't make hundreds of times what their factory workers made.

And why do you assume that it is the wealthy who are wealthy by virtue of them being special and unique? Do you truly believe that capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S. today, represents a true meritocracy?

In a finite system how many times the resources need to be divided is always of more importance than how we choose to divide them in the first place; less people means more opportunity for a given resource to be in the hands of a particular person. The world having more than 7 billion people is not conducive to a large percentage of them having a high standard of living, even for their locals.

A distribution of resources is the true measure of wealth as defined by the meaning of the second word - I believe that you are referring to "money" which is not the same at all - if a CEO is paid $25,000,000 a year that is very different than them being paid the market equivalent of $25,000,000 in tangible resources.

I don't assume that the wealthy are such by virtue of uniqueness, and never said so. Moreover, I never pointed to the US being a meritocracy, and would state that a belief in the concept of a possible true meritocracy as being a fallacious one.

Sorry, your statement, "most people are not special or unique and are compensated as such," suggests that people are worth whatever they are paid. Hence my assumption that you drew a correlation between wage and value.

But I disagree that how often resources get divided is more important than how they are divided. Your solution seems far less practical (and a little ruthless) than adjusting the means by which a system distributes its resources. We're not going to remove a billion people from the planet anytime soon, why not focus on the other variable in the equation. If your concern is raising the standard for everyone, you need not only reduce the number of recipients, especially when so few receive so much.

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Most of the rich people in the US got that way through buying the land that got sold off by the government state. And none of them are selling it. So the 2% have the stranglehold. They have to find a way to keep the people happy so they don't go apeshit. You can see around the world in other dictatorships or plutocracies that sometimes revolution happens. I give it 20 years before there is that American revolution. It won't be pretty.

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I like the article, but you guys took a whack tangent.

The world's a mess right now due to bastardised, unfettered Capitalism (and its progeny, the derivatives market.) That, and the inevitable union of money into politics (the Koch Bros nearly bought the 2012 political election) has gotten us to this point. Short of some sort of violent upheaval -- nothing is going to change the situation in the States.

And well, the Euro's a mess. Then you've got real estate bubbles worldwide due to new Southeast Asian millionaires, and rapid Chinese expansion. Plus why pay American workers a fair wage, when you can pay people a lower wage in third-world countries. Plus, you've got Wall Street tethering that $600 trillion derivatives bubble.

Ahhhh. I hate thinking about this crap.

Yeah, I agree that Pappy and I have been on a rather wondering journey. But at the heart of what Simon talks about is how capitalism has lost its social compact, and a byproduct of this loss has been greater inequality. Or as Simon puts it, two Americas.

The cynic in me agrees with you that a violent upheaval will result if the system isn't checked. But I also believe that demographics and the rise of wealth inequality might be boon to those who wish to see change. Those watching the Democratic party right now see a resurgence in left-based ideologies. Also, the rise of the Latino voting block (which is generally centre-left ideologically) and a younger generation who are far more aligned to the Democratic Party should provide electoral motivations for those seeking office. I don't think it will happen over night, but I do think that Reagan-era conservatism that was brought in 30 years ago is slowly fading.

We shall see...

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The American Empire will fall, like all empires do.

Dude, if America falls -- we all fall (due to globalisation.)

There maybe some down time in the post-apocalytic world. It's only really the US and western europe who have been having a party. When the party ends people go crazy. It really more a case of how long it will last. But it will end, history has shown us. Nothing is set in stone, that's why we have wars constantly and always fighting to get stuff.

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I like the article, but you guys took a whack tangent.

The world's a mess right now due to bastardised, unfettered Capitalism (and its progeny, the derivatives market.) That, and the inevitable union of money into politics (the Koch Bros nearly bought the 2012 political election) has gotten us to this point. Short of some sort of violent upheaval -- nothing is going to change the situation in the States.

And well, the Euro's a mess. Then you've got real estate bubbles worldwide due to new Southeast Asian millionaires, and rapid Chinese expansion. Plus why pay American workers a fair wage, when you can pay people a lower wage in third-world countries. Plus, you've got Wall Street tethering that $600 trillion derivatives bubble.

Ahhhh. I hate thinking about this crap.

Yeah, I agree that Pappy and I have been on a rather wondering journey. But at the heart of what Simon talks about is how capitalism has lost its social compact, and a byproduct of this loss has been greater inequality.

The cynic in me agrees with you that a violent upheaval will result if the system isn't checked. But I also believe that demographics and the rise of wealth inequality might be boon to those who wish to see change. Those watching the Democratic party right now see a resurgence in left-based ideologies. Also, the rise of the Latino voting block (which is generally centre-left ideologically) and a younger generation who are far more aligned to the Democratic Party should provide electoral motivations for those seeking office. I don't think it will happen over night, but I do think that Reagan-era conservatism that was brought in 30 years ago is slowly fading.

We shall see...

It's even beyond just "greater inequality". I alluded to all of us falling if America were to fall. That wasn't hyperbole.

As we're economically interconnected, we're better off in ways (more lax trading), yet we're also more fragile. I think politically, that last election was the end for the Koch Bros (in terms of getting themselves a President.) Yet the Koch Bros (and their peers) are winning in other arenas. Check out the Trans-Pacific Partnership's Patent Agreement that is getting signed right now. It will essentially enforce patent laws globally. The wealthy spin it as "protecting corporate rights". Oh, boy.

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

So the issue isn't how we organize and distribute our planet's resources, but that people are having too many babies?

And sure, there has always been inequality, but it's also true that there have been periods where it was far less prevalent than it exists today. A fair distribution of wealth doesn't mean an equal distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality was not a pressing concern between the 1950s and the late 1970s when CEOs didn't make hundreds of times what their factory workers made.

And why do you assume that it is the wealthy who are wealthy by virtue of them being special and unique? Do you truly believe that capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S. today, represents a true meritocracy?

In a finite system how many times the resources need to be divided is always of more importance than how we choose to divide them in the first place; less people means more opportunity for a given resource to be in the hands of a particular person. The world having more than 7 billion people is not conducive to a large percentage of them having a high standard of living, even for their locals.

A distribution of resources is the true measure of wealth as defined by the meaning of the second word - I believe that you are referring to "money" which is not the same at all - if a CEO is paid $25,000,000 a year that is very different than them being paid the market equivalent of $25,000,000 in tangible resources.

I don't assume that the wealthy are such by virtue of uniqueness, and never said so. Moreover, I never pointed to the US being a meritocracy, and would state that a belief in the concept of a possible true meritocracy as being a fallacious one.

Sorry, your statement, "most people are not special or unique and are compensated as such," suggests that people are worth whatever they are paid. Hence my assumption that you drew a correlation between wage and value.

But I disagree that how often resources get divided is more important than how they are divided. Your solution seems far less practical (and a little ruthless) than adjusting the means by which a system distributes its resources. We're not going to remove a billion people from the planet anytime soon, why not focus on the other variable in the equation. If your concern is raising the standard for everyone, you need not only reduce the number of recipients, especially when so few receive so much.

Within the realm of the free market people are worth what the market will abide to pay them. That is not meritocratic, but it is a reality - the market will attempt to pay the lowest amount for any given service at any given time.

If we have 10 pieces of pie and 10 people then there is only one "fair" way to divide the food. If however, we have 10 pieces of pie and only 5 people then everyone is free to have more pie, even if one person takes more than their fair share (a reality based on human nature). It is all well and good suggesting that resources should be divided more equitably, but the reality (what we always have to work with) is that the means of labour is not equal, let alone the means of ownership. By way of example - if you and I work in an office and are employed to do the same job, but you work twice as hard and twice as efficiently as I do, should you be paid more than me or the same?

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@ Pappy.

But capitalism has always produced an excess population (it's called the natural rate of unemployment). You don't believe that with the current pace of technological progress that we won't reach a point where a large portion of an economy's labourers are not needed? If and when we get to the point where the threshold for moving things forward requires Einstein-like intelligence or an unimaginable amount of luck or doctoral degrees in three different fields, how do you suppose society ensures a modest livelihood for the majority of individuals who can't measure up?

The U.S. currently has a larger GDP now than it did back in 2008, but there are far more people out of work. This means there are fewer people moving a bigger machine. If we continue that trend, how do we ensure that a society that fosters profits also ensures reasonable living for most (if not all)? Capitalism dictates that markets should decide, but it does not bode well if markets dictates that only a few get most.

what do we do when capitalism no longer needs even those who are smart, hardworking, unique and qualified? What happens when labor has been reduced to such a point in the money producing equation that it becomes irrelevant? What then, Pappy?

you might of heard of the georgia guidestones

No, what are those?

The "few get most" doom-mongers are forgetting that "few get most" is as it has always been. The point being, that the majority of people are not special or unique and are compensated as such. As the needs of society changes so does the population; as we become more technologically advanced the need for many of today's jobs will no longer exist, just the same as we don't need as many people to roam the streets lighting the gas lamps. That is a separate issue to not needing the people themselves - they will be needed just in a different capacity. The real demon of today is not capitalism (though governmental restraint is required - I don't believe in the "too big to fail!" mantra) but rather population; the world has finite resources and as countries such as China, Russia and India endeavor to move away from being agricultural societies and instead increase their middle classes, the strain on what the world can provide becomes an issue. If there were only 5 billion people on the planet instead of the 7 billion + that we have there would be a much higher potential standard of living for all.

So the issue isn't how we organize and distribute our planet's resources, but that people are having too many babies?

And sure, there has always been inequality, but it's also true that there have been periods where it was far less prevalent than it exists today. A fair distribution of wealth doesn't mean an equal distribution of wealth. Wealth inequality was not a pressing concern between the 1950s and the late 1970s when CEOs didn't make hundreds of times what their factory workers made.

And why do you assume that it is the wealthy who are wealthy by virtue of them being special and unique? Do you truly believe that capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S. today, represents a true meritocracy?

In a finite system how many times the resources need to be divided is always of more importance than how we choose to divide them in the first place; less people means more opportunity for a given resource to be in the hands of a particular person. The world having more than 7 billion people is not conducive to a large percentage of them having a high standard of living, even for their locals.

A distribution of resources is the true measure of wealth as defined by the meaning of the second word - I believe that you are referring to "money" which is not the same at all - if a CEO is paid $25,000,000 a year that is very different than them being paid the market equivalent of $25,000,000 in tangible resources.

I don't assume that the wealthy are such by virtue of uniqueness, and never said so. Moreover, I never pointed to the US being a meritocracy, and would state that a belief in the concept of a possible true meritocracy as being a fallacious one.

Sorry, your statement, "most people are not special or unique and are compensated as such," suggests that people are worth whatever they are paid. Hence my assumption that you drew a correlation between wage and value.

But I disagree that how often resources get divided is more important than how they are divided. Your solution seems far less practical (and a little ruthless) than adjusting the means by which a system distributes its resources. We're not going to remove a billion people from the planet anytime soon, why not focus on the other variable in the equation. If your concern is raising the standard for everyone, you need not only reduce the number of recipients, especially when so few receive so much.

Within the realm of the free market people are worth what the market will abide to pay them. That is not meritocratic, but it is a reality - the market will attempt to pay the lowest amount for any given service at any given time.

If we have 10 pieces of pie and 10 people then there is only one "fair" way to divide the food. If however, we have 10 pieces of pie and only 5 people then everyone is free to have more pie, even if one person takes more than their fair share (a reality based on human nature). It is all well and good suggesting that resources should be divided more equitably, but the reality (what we always have to work with) is that the means of labour is not equal, let alone the means of ownership. By way of example - if you and I work in an office and are employed to do the same job, but you work twice as hard and twice as efficiently as I do, should you be paid more than me or the same?

But what I don't understand Pappy is that you've already stated that you're fine with regulated capitalism, but you stick with this notion that people's worth should be determined by nothing more than what markets dictate. I don't disagree that the market will attempt to pay the lowest amount for any given service at any given time, but that doesn't mean we should allow it.

Governmental policy has a profound effect on how the market evaluates workers. Legalized professional societies often raise salaries arbitrarily by raising the barrier to entry. The minimum wage ensures that companies cannot pay workers slave wages. This isn't a binary proposition. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. What seems necessary at this point in time, with inequality at all time highs for the past 120 years, is to reshuffle the deck to ensure that resources are shared a bit more fairly. As Simon points out, it was done before to great effect.

Your analogy just simply supports the assumption that you believe that we do live in a true meritocracy. Are you suggesting that the CEO of a Fortune 500 company works 300 times harder than the employee who works the factory line? Do you believe that that CEO became the man (or woman) he or she is today simply because they were the brightest and hardest working? Does not environment play a factor? Chance? Luck? As Simon points out, there are two Baltimores. One where those members have all the advantages and another where those who have none. This assumption that all workers who can't get ahead are simply not hard working enough or not smart enough is outdated. And this is the point: when the market has squeezed out much of the opportunity for even the smart and hardworking, how does that bode well for those trapped in the market but not reaping the benefits? You keep on suggesting that we must deal with reality. Fine, great! Let's deal with the fact that there are fewer and fewer opportunities for people who worked and studied hard, got a good education, and now have nothing to show for it but hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt. Let's deal with the fact that it was only 40 years ago that someone with only a highschool diploma could walk into a factory and make a decent living. This is the reality for many Americans today and more going forward. You have hundreds of towns that have been gutted by companies like Walmart that now are the sole places for employment. While the Waltons make billions their workers resort to food banks to live.

There are simpler solutions than suggesting that we simply need to reduce the world's population. In that assessment is the assumption that inequality would be tamed. But there's no reason to believe such to be the case if we continue policies currently in place. If we were to somehow get the population down to 500 million, where each person now represents an equal share of the world's resources, why wouldn't one person control most and leave the 499,999 million with nothing. Our history is riddled with stories of how this has come to be. When the world was a lot less populated we saw inequality more rank than it exists today. The problem isn't with how much resources we have or how many people there are who want them. It's a distribution problem.

Unbridled capitalism generally requires fewer people than the population provides. So why not trim the excesses of capitalism to ensure a reasonable living standard for those deemed unnecessary by the market? Why do CEOs need to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year when their workers depend on food stamps?

maintain humanity under 500 million, how? kill off 6.5 billion?

Sustainable reproductive control. Say, max two children per couple? That would result in a negative growth rate. Eventually we would reach 500 mill.

But how long would that take? Centuries? A millennium?

And in the mean time, how do we solve growing inequality? That's the issue I'm pressing with Pappy. His solution is the least bit pragmatic.

Edited by downzy
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I have never said that those who don't get to the top aren't smart enough or work hard enough - plenty of people on the bottom rungs are intelligent and hard working. That isn't the same as looking at the entire system from an outsider's point of view, though. Any system will have people on the bottom who are rewarded less and those at the top who are rewarded more - what roles get what changes over time as technology and society advances and changes, but the pyramid will always be there. As I said in my example, if you are I work the same job but you work harder, should we be paid the same? As for the CEO, it doesn't come down to how hard he works, but rather how intelligently - the CEO could almost certainly turn his hand to working in the company shop or stocking the company shelves, but could the company's warehouse worker run a multi-million or multi-billion dollar company without an in-depth knowledge of market forces, company financial, market possession and a hundred other factors? Almost certainly not.

On the matter of governmental regulation, I believe that it is the government's role to set the playing field and then get off it. It is not the government's role to use public funds to bail out private companies who have mismanaged their affairs, nor is it the government's role to use public funds to subsidise private industries such as wind farms. It is the government's role to set out things such as minimum wage, for the very reason of avoiding "slave labour" but let's not kid ourselves here - a minimum wage is nothing to dance down the street over and it isn't going to provide anything more than basic needs, and in oftentimes, not even that.

The fact that there are more people with degrees who are out of work and can't find a job to their satisfaction doesn't show anything in and of itself; how many people had degrees, as a percentage, in the 50s, compared to those who have a degree today? Having a degree does not entitle a person to a job and huge numbers of people get degrees in not exactly in-demand subjects from production line universities and then find themselves shocked that nobody wants to hire a 22 year old with no work experience and an undergraduate degree in Mesopotamian pottery from their local community college.

The Waltons make billions per year because they own the largest company in the world, that employs hundreds of thousands of people in multiple countries and feeds half of America in a given week. Why should they not make billions from that? David Simon is a writer and makes millions a year, no doubt, so should he be castigated too? I'm sure that he earns more, as a percentage, off of the backs of the people his scripts provide jobs for (actors, crew and such) than the Waltons receive from the people they employ. If you dislike WalMart that is fine (I dislike their stores as they feel so soulless) but if you removed them, along with Costco and all of the other big box stores, where would the average US family be? Nobody would be happy having to pay artisanal prices for their bread, milk and other sundries and there is no way that an average family could afford to shop at farmers' market prices.

Population is the number one threat to the world at this point in time, not meteors, not terrorism and not other boogie men. The fact that we have 7 billion people in the world puts a massive strain on the resources for each and every one of us. If we only had, say, 5 billion, the world would be a much more pleasant place for one and all. Reducing the number is a future goal but one that needs to be moved towards as population expansion is out of control, quite frankly. That, combined with a desire to live a more "western" lifestyle for the burgeoning middle classes of China, Russia, India et al, is the real millstone.

Most of the world has always lived a subsistence existence yet people want to claim that as the witchcraft of Capitalism too, but it will be Capitalism that will be at the forefront of potential innovation for food shortages in Africa via a solution through improved production. Capitalism is simply the trade of commodities and ideas and that is not a a bad thing; but people want to believe that it is. The system is not the issue, but rather human nature.

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Pappy, there's just so many questionable assumptions and non-answers in your response.

First, you didn't answer my question with respect to the salary of a CEO versus a dock worker or factory worker. Sure, a factory worker likely could not run the company, but does that entitle the CEO to 300 times the salary? Does the CEO get to make hundreds of millions of dollars to the detriment of those who work below him or her? As for your analogy, the harder working employee will likely have better job security and/or advancement versus the lazy employee. But that doesn't mean that you pay the lazy employee nothing. If his or her job performance proves unsatisfactory, you replace him or her with someone who can do the job. This has nothing to do with salary. Sure, you can include incentivized bonuses, but again, this analogy of yours speaks little to the issue of whether people should be afforded a reasonable salary for a job done well.

Second, yes, minimum wage is currently not, and should not be, anything to write home about. But it should, at the very least, provide for the basic necessities of life. And currently, factoring in inflation, minimum wage pays less now in most U.S. states than it has in over 60 years. Moreover, raising the minimum wage does little in the way of affecting prices to the point where they become less competitive. Papa John's CEO complained that if Obamacare were to become law (this was back prior it to becoming law), he'd have to raise prices on his pizzas by 12 cents. Really? 12 cents is going to break people buying pizza from take out joints? Or how about McDonalds, where doubling the minimum wage from $7.50 to $15.00 would see the price of a Big Mac jump to a paltry $5.27 (though there's some reports suggesting that it wouldn't jump at all since competition would dictate that McDonalds keep its prices in check).

But the greater point is that as North America loses most of its industrial base and as workers who made decent wages in a factory move to the service-based economy, the discrepancy between rich and poor will only widen. It's not as though many of these workers have a choice as to where they can find employment. Capital can be easily moved and transported from one space to another: people and workers can't. And this explains the slow death witnessed in the U.S. rust belt.

Third, you do understand that most of the innovation that came about throughout the Cold War was a direct result of government subsidy and financial support? The massive amounts of money used to develop technologies such as radio/satellite transmissions, rocket technologies, the Internet, and many other innovations would not have happened (or would have taken a hell of a lot longer) to become a reality had it not been for government support and involvement. This notion that free enterprise has been the dominant factor in shaping industrial and technological innovation is ignorant regarding how important the public sector played in developing these industries and advancements. Most innovations do not come with sound business models and hence there has been little financial support or reason to fund them. That's where government plays a role.

Fourth, I love how you assume that people are out of work simply because it's a matter of jobs not being up to their satisfaction. Really? Have any stats to back that up? Because from my viewpoint I see many friends and family members taking jobs well below their qualifications and pay expectations/requirements just to stay alive. As for your comment that a huge number of people get their degrees from production line universities is devoid of supportive evidence. I'm going to have to ask for actual proof that the unemployment problem among college grads is due to the inferior nature of their degrees or education, because I think you're reaching here.

Why shouldn't the Waltons make a billion dollars each? Oh, I don't know, probably because currently the U.S. government subsidizes their workers so they can eat and live. If you truly believe that government should stay out of the economy, then you're sentencing many of Walmart's workers to death since the company does not pay many of their workers enough to pay for basic services. And again, your treatment of this subject is fairly binary in nature. Find me one economist who states that if it weren't for Walmart's prices most U.S. families would starve. I can recall prior to Walmart's massive expansion in the 1970s and 1980s many smaller retailers were charging reasonable prices for their goods. We don't need prices to rise to farmer market levels, but either a mixture of reasonable price increases to support increased wages or policies that ensure that the Walton's aren't making billions while their employees starve. You can take a reasonable position on most of these matters, they don't have to be all doom and gloom as you're suggesting. As for your comment about David Simon making more as a percentage than the Waltons do with respect to their employees, that's a charge again you could not prove even if you had that information. First, most workers in the entertainment field work for a union. I have many friends who work in the entertainment industry as writers, camera operators, and the like and they do fairly well for themselves. So no, your assessment regarding David Simon versus Walmart is wrong.

Fifth, when the world was at 5 billion people (just ten years ago I believe), was inequality drastically lower than it is now? And wishing that we had 2 billion less people is like wishing every chair was made of gold. It's not a plausible solution to today's pressing problems. I don't understand how you don't get that.

Sixth, if you truly believe that capitalism will be Africa's saving grace, man on man, do I have a bridge to sell you. Do yourself a favor and explore medical patent issues as it relates to getting generic drugs into Africa. Do you not know anything of capital extraction that has ravaged Africa for centuries?

The system is a human invention, hence it's prone to mistakes and errors. It can be fixed, altered, improved or destroyed. By separating mankind from its systems of shared existence you're letting man off the hook and doing a disservice to those who unjustly suffer from the system.

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