Economics Discussion Thread

[Donut section]

Which is dumb. A company doesn't exist to benefit it's employees. And it absolutely should not exist to do so.

The employees are the ones who make up the company. They are the ones who do the work and produce the product. They are the company. They are investing their labor and time. Why shouldn't those who do the work be the ones who benefit from said work?

No, the owners are the company. Employees are only affiliated with company activity, which they get paid for. Which they voluntarily agreed to. If they wanted to be a company they should start one.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Which is dumb. A company doesn't exist to benefit it's employees. And it absolutely should not exist to do so.

The employees are the ones who make up the company. They are the ones who do the work and produce the product. They are the company. They are investing their labor and time. Why shouldn't those who do the work be the ones who benefit from said work?

~capital and labor are complementary~
~if you don't think so try building a road with your bare hands~

[Telconi]

I do benefit from my work, it's called a paycheck.

The upper class gets paid SUBSTANTIALLY MORE than the lower class. There's a video about income inequaltiy I watched in class, but I can't find it.

So?

[Donut section]

I do benefit from my work, it's called a paycheck.

The upper class gets paid SUBSTANTIALLY MORE than the lower class. There's a video about income inequaltiy I watched in class, but I can't find it.

The owners are entitled to more. You do not need to be upper class, which let's face it is an inaccurate term, to be an owner.

[Kubumba Tribe]

The upper class gets paid SUBSTANTIALLY MORE than the lower class. There's a video about income inequaltiy I watched in class, but I can't find it.

So?

Watch the video I linked, that'll answer your "so?"

[Collatis]

The employees are the ones who make up the company. They are the ones who do the work and produce the product. They are the company. They are investing their labor and time. Why shouldn't those who do the work be the ones who benefit from said work?

I do benefit from my work, it's called a paycheck.

A very minor thing compared to how others benefit from your work, while they do none. Why is there such a discrepancy in income between those who work and those who do not? Perhaps it is because management is in no way accountable to those under them.

[Taihei Tengoku]

So?

Watch the video I linked, that'll answer your "so?"

How is the tenth grade going?

I do benefit from my work, it's called a paycheck.

A very minor thing compared to how others benefit from your work, while they do none. Why is there such a discrepancy in income between those who work and those who do not? Perhaps it is because management is in no way accountable to those under them.

If labor theory of value was correct these freeloaders would have been fired as people realized they could make more money without them. But we can see they have not been fired; they add value because capital and labor contribute to production.

[Constantinopolis]

You still have not mentioned a single reason to believe that central planning had actually reached its limits.

The most I can make out from your assertions is that you believe that Gorbachev's decision to change the system constitutes evidence that it had to be changed. That's utter nonsense. The fact that a government decided to do something doesn't mean there was no other way to handle that particular situation.

I didn't really feel the need to do so since you kindly pointed out the flaws of your own system in this regard.

I pointed out problems that could have been solved by adopting different policies while keeping the economic system of central planning intact.

My argument is that the Soviet Union could have kept central planning and done just fine, had it adopted certain policies. Your argument is... what? That it wasn't going to ever adopt those policies? That may be true, but it doesn't invalidate my point. The problem was with the people in charge (and the politics that put them there), not with the economic system.

As you already said, after a certain point, it hadn't the slightest clue how to distribute economic resources. The fact Gorbachev went ahead with Perestroika and Glasnost after realizing that the USSR could no longer compete with the USA in the long-run under the current paradigm is far more indicative of the system's broader failings than it is Gorbachev's as a man. I mean, goodness gracious, this man was intended as the Soviet counter-measure to Reagan, not some spur-of-the-moment incompetent nobody who didn't actually believe in the cause.

So you mean that after a central point, the people in charge of the Soviet system proved unable to make correct decisions?

Fair enough. That would be a problem with the Soviet political system - with the way people got to be in leadership positions. I agree, that system sucked.

But it wasn't a problem with the Soviet economic system.

The Soviet economy stagnated for a little over a decade before Gorbachev decided to radically change it. That's not "fucking perpetual".

We don't know how much longer the stagnation would have continued if Gorbachev hadn't done his thing. Maybe it would have been perpetual. Or maybe not. How do you know?

>little over a decade
>not perpetual
>maybe it would have picked up

No, just no. I realize you're an apologist, but ffs, this blatant pseudo-intellectualism is unnecessary.

So, in your estimation, are Greece or Spain or Italy going to stagnate forever? Or Japan? Because they've been stagnating for quite a while now. Is there no hope for them except to abandon capitalism altogether?

And even then, the inherent problem of central planning is that your entire argument is based of the hypothetical that the Politburo would magically decide to divest resources from its military-industrial complex into other, new sectors. Something as important as the macroeconomic model of an entire empire should not rely on the unwieldy whims of bureaucrats who are disconnected from reality.

Agreed. But that's a problem with the Soviet political system, with the fact that it put the macroeconomic model of an entire empire in the hands of a few unelected bureaucrats who could not be removed if they messed up.

It is not a problem that a centrally planned economy with democratically elected bureaucrats would have.

[Taihei Tengoku]

In a democratic command economy not only must people consciously decide what the production quotas for tractors will be, people must decide on the people to decide on the production quotas.

Imagine planning anything when you can't even plan who the planners will be!

[Sanctissima]

I do benefit from my work, it's called a paycheck.

A very minor thing compared to how others benefit from your work, while they do none. Why is there such a discrepancy in income between those who work and those who do not? Perhaps it is because management is in no way accountable to those under them.

Pfft, you think the rich don't work?

Try running a moderately successful lawfirm, let alone a major corporation, and see if you still have time to raise a family. Chances are, you'll find that you can't, and must choose one or the other.

The upper class generally work their asses off for what they earn. Precisely what do you think they do? Wear top hats and sip from martinis in between laughing maniacally?

[Kubumba Tribe]

www.aljazeera.com/.../nafta-ghost-union ... -mexico-...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2001/06/13/mig ... e-abuse-us
http://www.globalissues.org/article/57/ ... ers-rights

[Orostan]

Then why did the graphs not start diverging immidiently?

Before 1973 there was very little wage beyond your payslip, and due to certain structural changes (increases in the rate of capital depreciation) in the economy since then.

So far I can only find something about employee benefits for retirement plans. You're telling me that structural changes and retirement benefits are to blame for that huge gap? We can also see that a decline in union membership correlates to a decline in middle class incomes, further reinforcing my argument that pay has not risen with productivity.

[Constantinopolis]

That doesn't change the fact that many other capitalist states didn't break away. You can't just point to the capitalist success stories and ignore the failures and claim that capitalism is great.

True, just having "private property" doesn't make things grow--nobody was socialist but everyone was stagnant before ~1750. That being said:

The only phase in which the Soviet Union converged with the West (i.e. produce more prosperity faster) is during the catastrophe years of 1929-1945. The divergence begins anew with the end of WW2. There simply are no socialist success stories.

I notice your graph conveniently leaves out the entire rest of the capitalist world besides Europe and "European offshoots" (??? - I imagine this means North America and Australia...?).

So, once again, you are selectively leaving out the majority of capitalist countries and picking only those that make capitalism look good.

[Kubumba Tribe]

Watch the video I linked, that'll answer your "so?"

How is the tenth grade going?

So good that I was promoted to the next grade
Idk if this is snark, but I'll answer it anyway

[Taihei Tengoku]

True, just having "private property" doesn't make things grow--nobody was socialist but everyone was stagnant before ~1750. That being said:
(Image)
The only phase in which the Soviet Union converged with the West (i.e. produce more prosperity faster) is during the catastrophe years of 1929-1945. The divergence begins anew with the end of WW2. There simply are no socialist success stories.

I notice your graph conveniently leaves out the entire rest of the capitalist world besides Europe and "European offshoots" (??? - I imagine this means North America and Australia...?).

So, once again, you are selectively leaving out the majority of capitalist countries and picking only those that make capitalism look good.

countries in sequential order by economic freedom (1=1st place, so on so forth)

[Collatis]

No, the owners are the company. Employees are only affiliated with company activity, which they get paid for. Which they voluntarily agreed to. If they wanted to be a company they should start one.

Why are they the company? You voluntarily agreed to live in your nation, state, and/or city. Does that mean you suddenly surrender your say in how said thing is run?

~capital and labor are complementary~
~if you don't think so try building a road with your bare hands~

Of course they are, though one is certainly more important than the other. What I'm suggesting is that capital must be held accountable to labor. If they are complementary, then they must be linked by a democratic process, rather than by a unilateral, autocratic process.

A very minor thing compared to how others benefit from your work, while they do none. Why is there such a discrepancy in income between those who work and those who do not? Perhaps it is because management is in no way accountable to those under them.

If labor theory of value was correct these freeloaders would have been fired as people realized they could make more money without them. But we can see they have not been fired; they add value because capital and labor contribute to production.

I don't believe in the labor theory of value.

Pfft, you think the rich don't work?

Try running a moderately successful lawfirm, let alone a major corporation, and see if you still have time to raise a family. Chances are, you'll find that you can't, and must choose one or the other.

The upper class generally work their asses off for what they earn. Precisely what do you think they do? Wear top hats and sip from martinis in between laughing maniacally?

Chief executives and managers work and contribute towards producing the product of the company. Stockholders do not. And yet it is the stockholders who elect the CEO and board of directors, not the employees.

[Taihei Tengoku]

If labor theory of value was correct these freeloaders would have been fired as people realized they could make more money without them. But we can see they have not been fired; they add value because capital and labor contribute to production.

I don't believe in the labor theory of value.

You cannot believe in surplus value without accepting LTV.

[Constantinopolis]

I notice your graph conveniently leaves out the entire rest of the capitalist world besides Europe and "European offshoots" (??? - I imagine this means North America and Australia...?).

So, once again, you are selectively leaving out the majority of capitalist countries and picking only those that make capitalism look good.

countries in sequential order by economic freedom (1=1st place, so on so forth)

High "economic freedom" is not the same as being more capitalist, and low "economic freedom" is not the same as being more socialist.

Ask any socialist which countries in the capitalist world are the closest to socialism, and he will list places like Norway, Sweden and Denmark - all of them with high "economic freedom". The "economic freedom" scale is basically unrelated to the capitalism-vs-socialism scale.

How is this possible? Because simple corruption is usually the thing that makes the most difference in those "economic freedom" indices.

[Constantinopolis]

Ok, I have to go offline now, but let me make my argument clear:

Historical central planning (i.e. the Soviet model) doesn't produce more prosperity faster than the best examples of capitalism, but it does produce more prosperity faster than the worst examples of capitalism. Its economic performance wasn't great, but it also wasn't horrible. It was middle-of-the-road. Assuming that future socialist models of central planning can do at least as good as this, socialism cannot be criticized for "not working" or not providing enough prosperity. It is good enough - not great, but good enough - at providing prosperity, while also accomplishing its other, more important, goals. We can have equality and full employment and all the other benefits of socialism, and we'll still get moderate levels of growth to go along with it.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Ask any socialist which countries in the capitalist world are the closest to socialism, and he will list places like Norway, Sweden and Denmark - all of them with high "economic freedom".

[Donut section]

No, the owners are the company. Employees are only affiliated with company activity, which they get paid for. Which they voluntarily agreed to. If they wanted to be a company they should start one.

Why are they the company? You voluntarily agreed to live in your nation, state, and/or city. Does that mean you suddenly surrender your say in how said thing is run?

~capital and labor are complementary~
~if you don't think so try building a road with your bare hands~

Of course they are, though one is certainly more important than the other. What I'm suggesting is that capital must be held accountable to labor. If they are complementary, then they must be linked by a democratic process, rather than by a unilateral, autocratic process.

If labor theory of value was correct these freeloaders would have been fired as people realized they could make more money without them. But we can see they have not been fired; they add value because capital and labor contribute to production.

I don't believe in the labor theory of value.

Pfft, you think the rich don't work?

Try running a moderately successful lawfirm, let alone a major corporation, and see if you still have time to raise a family. Chances are, you'll find that you can't, and must choose one or the other.

The upper class generally work their asses off for what they earn. Precisely what do you think they do? Wear top hats and sip from martinis in between laughing maniacally?

Chief executives and managers work and contribute towards producing the product of the company. Stockholders do not. And yet it is the stockholders who elect the CEO and board of directors, not the employees.

Because they are the holders of all the assets in the company.

I voluntarily agree to live in a minarchist state. In which I would elect my preferred persons to maintain law and national security. I do not voluntarily agree to more than that.

[Collatis]

I don't believe in the labor theory of value.

You cannot believe in surplus value without accepting LTV.

I believe that workers are not fairly compensated for their work when they have no role in the decision-making process, rather than because of the labor theory of value.

[Taihei Tengoku]

You cannot believe in surplus value without accepting LTV.

I believe that workers are not fairly compensated for their work when they have no role in the decision-making process, rather than because of the labor theory of value.

Their compensation tracks productivity, as shown in the graphs I posted previously. A "democratic shop floor" does nothing to overturn this--in fact it introduces additional hiring costs.

[Collatis]

Because they are the holders of all the assets in the company.

I voluntarily agree to live in a minarchist state. In which I would elect my preferred persons to maintain law and national security. I do not voluntarily agree to more than that.

But by continuing to live in a non-minarchist state, aren't you "voluntarily agreeing" to the rules of said state, the same way a worker "voluntarily agrees" to the rules of the company?

[Aillyria]

Ask any socialist which countries in the capitalist world are the closest to socialism, and he will list places like Norway, Sweden and Denmark - all of them with high "economic freedom".

What is that graph supposed to prove? Less government spending is just that, less government spending. That has nothing to do with whether or not a nation is capitalist or socialist. Statism =/= Socialism