d.reamonn wrote:You spin jolly yarn. Permit me to mock you gingerly in my usual passive/aggressive manner
SuburbanThug wrote:
Nah, but seriously. If you think that the majority of people in the world have some kind of actual choice in where they work and have some kind of equal opportunity to gain education then you live in a much nicer place than me (I live in Detroit.)
This is a stereotypical Marxist bait-and-switch. We were talking about Wal-Mart employees, not "the majority of people in the world". If you wish to rephrase your comment in a way that is not intellectually dishonest, you may. That's one.
SuburbanThug wrote:And if you think that the head CEO of Wal-Mart making 16,000 dollars an hour while paying his full time employees 7 dollars an hour and forcing the taxpayer to subsidize his payroll is somehow morally defensible I doubt there's even any common ground for us to have a sensible conversation about how I really feel.
Ah yes, another Marxist stereotype. Where logic fails, use feelings, we must. The points I raised in my previous post do not concern "unjust" wage-gaps, but rather the Marxist notion that the term "slavery" should be applied to those who are clearly free, albeit poor. The use of the word slavery is just another appeal to emotions. That's two.
SuburbanThug wrote:There was actually a time when mainstream economists spoke out against this kind of immorality in business practice.
There was also a time when blacks were genuine slaves and the Targaryens ruled Middle-Earth. (Two-and-a-half).
SuburbanThug wrote:In my country (and possibly your own [the Bank of Switzerland?]) the money is minted by a private banking organization, The Federal Reserve.
Indeed. In my village, we call this institution la BNS, or Banque National Suisse. It's primary mandate includes pepperminting candy-corns and hoarding Nazi gold. (Random nonsense).
SuburbanThug wrote:
It's basically those folks that control how much money we're going to make, not us. I'm not a slave. But I have at times been a wage slave meaning that to quit my job I would be risking my life and if I were to keep it I'd still be looked upon as a lower functioning human being and barely able to take care of my own self let alone a family.
I understand your plight, as I also have to work for a living. Back in the Targaryen days, of course, nobody had to work to survive. Food simply
was and everybody was happy. That's three.
SuburbanThug wrote:Yet my employer needed me in order to maintain his profits so why should I bear this stigma and fear for the quality of my life? If the minimum wage in this country had been increased for inflation it would be three times higher than it is now and people earning it would still be living with their heads just above the poverty line.
And yet you signed that contract. It sounds like you should take up your complaint with the party responsible for the inflation (the Fed), rather than the company that was kind enough to offer you a job and keep you from starvation. Four.
SuburbanThug wrote:Personally I would love to see the kind of socialist utopia depicted in, say, Star Trek...
Adam Smith would agree with you. If I recall my economics lessons correctly, he theorised that "^ this, plus I'd do Spock". Point five.
SuburbanThug wrote:...but would really settle for free market capitalism and democracy which were pretty much completely destroyed by 2002 and replaced with a dominant capital market based on military industry and banking.
Three possibilities, either you haven't understood what is meant by "free market capitalism", or you haven't understood what is meant by "democracy", or you are trolling. Democracy is by definition the destruction of the free market, as a market governed by the *cough*
right to vote can no longer function freely. Six. And that's a big one.
SuburbanThug wrote:I like your music by the way.
Appreciated, thank you.
1. The majority of the world
are Wal-Mart employees or worse off than that. 'Nilla, please.
2. There is nothing illogical about applying morality to business practice. Business's in the U.S. these days don't work on a platform of sustainability and will soon fail/have been failing in the world market as has been seen in the auto industry. We now rely on bailouts from the taxpayer. If our autos were built just as much for the customer as they are for profit people wouldn't look to import. Same goes for how you treat your employees. A business/industry works better with happy workers. This is just common sense. I don't even want to walk into a fast food joint these days, everybody is so pissed off. And that's why they've been striking in Chicago and New York. "Clearly free, albeit poor." A person in poverty is hardly free. They have as much chance at success as a slave escaping from a plantation. Sure, they can walk to the corner store whenever they want. But not much farther than that. That's no mistake.
3. Not even trying are you? There was also a time a couple hundred thousand years ago when we lived in matriarchies. I'd also like to see that in the present day. Somewhere, anywhere.
4. Why is there a bullet point for this? Apparently you don't understand what I mean by freedom. Freedom to me means that there is no one actively controlling my fate or what I am capable of. How can I be free if The Federal Reserve is legally allowed to mint it's own money?
Step 1. The Fed Open Market Committee approves the purchase of U.S. Bonds on the open market.
Step 2. The bonds are purchased by the New York Fed Bank from whomever is offering them for sale on the open market.
Step 2.5. The Fed pays for the bonds with electronic credits to the seller’s bank, which in turn credits the seller’s bank account. These credits are based on nothing tangible. The Fed just creates them.
Step Random. The banks use these deposits as reserves. Most banks may loan out ten times (10x) the amount of their reserves to new borrowers, all at interest.
In this way, a Fed purchase of, say a million dollars worth of bonds, gets turned into over 10 million dollars in bank deposits. The Fed, in effect, creates 10% of this totally new money and the banks create the other 90%.
3. Of course I understand work, and am not against it. But to me, and pretty much by definition, a society (civilization) supports all people involved. We have social security here though it has been threatened in the last fifteen years. People are being encouraged to look down on welfare recipients as lesser people in our society. They are being encouraged to believe that no one could ever reasonably deserve help from the taxpayer. It's being called socialism when in fact it's just society. It's being called communism when in fact it is just community. You seem to forget that there was a time when there was no 40 hour work week (or whatever full time is in Switzerland), children were being employed in factories, and there was no maternity leave. If you don't believe a person employed in a sweat shop is not a slave of sorts maybe you should give it a try.
4. A choice between a job and starvation is no choice at all.
5. Oh, shit, I'm getting trolled ain't I?
6. Sweet Jesus, now you've actually brought up a valid point. By the strict definition of free market I'm pretty sure there has never been one and won't be one for some time. But what I mean is that lawmakers formerly would be held accountable for conflicts of interest and now they aren't. So they are allowed to create a dominant capital market.
This thread was begging to be derailed anyhow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQhgbJSpmI
