The problem of Capitalism

Now you're getting it! Yes, First World poverty is ABSOLUTEY a choice. And the only thing 'dysfunctional' going on is us. WE have become too dysfunctional to pull our own weight. If you can't see that the great flaw in what should be a tremendous life for all - in our rich nations - is PEOPLE, then you need to get that education in human nature asap. But ... if you're curious as to why we have so much more dissolution and apathy than Second and Third World societies .. you can blame the hubris of wealth and safety. We thought the way to polish our already grotesque privilege was to hand personal responsibility to Govt. But not only did we expect nil personal responsibility, we didn't want to be psychically wounded by having to pull our own weight. Or compete, or struggle, or strive, or deny ourselves pleasures. Etc etc. We wanted eternal infancy, so we got it.

I'm not interested in macro economics, I'm interested in remaining a capitalist democray .. which is the most efficient for the provision of the most to the least .. via the good will and hard work of we, the people.

 

The moral justification of capitalism is justice, not altruism.

 

Slight adjustment to the bolded part:
The entire return to land as currently obtained by the landowner is economically useless, even if parasitically useful to the owner. By capturing it before it becomes a return to the parasite, and then using it to fund public expenditure instead of burdening the economy with taxes on productivity, like income and sales, then that wouldn't qualify as economically useless anymore.

 

This debate may have broken you completely. That's like a quack saying, "The cure for cancer is the cure." Circular, and whatever he's selling you most certainly ain't the cure for cancer, and is more likely to entrench, spread, and proliferate it.

 

Socialism and capitalism are both malignant. Capitalism is malignant because one of its defining characteristics is landowning. Remove the landowning and require just compensation for the privilege of exclusive tenure, and it would no longer be capitalism, but geoism. Removal of intellectual property is also a necessary step in the process of recovery.

"Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not the individual who might hold title." -- John Stuart Mill

 

If the ROI for any commodity is good, people will buy it driving up price until the ROI of all commodities is equal. This is why the ROI for supermarket (no assets) is the same as ROI for a nuclear power plant (huge fixed assets). Ever think of taking Finance 101??

 

yes dear, have heard that bubbles burst and people lose money owning land. Only God knows why you brought it up while trying to prove that land is a good investment. See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance?

 

A drug company needs lots of excess to invent new drugs to cure cancer. The more excess they get from the competitive quality of their current products the more money they have to develop next generation products. It's a virtuous cycle. Now do you understand why intelligent people love Republican capitalism??

 

Of course there is competition. Everybody wants to supply or rent their land at the highest possible price. 1+1=2

 

if so everybody would want land and bid up price until you lost money owning it

 

?? private ownership of billions of things by individuals is a wonderful wonderful thing since it creates billions of markets each of which is devoted to establishing a fair or relative price so that our scarce resources are used in the most efficient way possible.

Govt could not possibly know fair or relative prices for billions of items every second of every day. Only a free market can. Now are you a conservative/libertarian?

 

you mean necessary to ensure that there is no incentive to develop intellectual property. See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance?

 

sounds ideal so why don't we all become landlords?? Obviously, because its very very hard to find a piece of and from which you can make money.

 

wow I'm going to run out and buy land then since I like having money shoveled into my pockets. Should be very very easy to get loans to buy most of Manhattan since the loans will be easy to repay with the shoveled money!!

 

actually buying or renting land from land owners on which to live and sleep is a huge benefit since we badly need to live and sleep. See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance?

 

dear, we already spend 2-3 times more on education per capita than anyone in the world and we get no results. To end poverty, liberals need to call off their attack on love, family, schools, religion, and capitalism. Now do you understand?

 

Did people lose money in owning land during the GFC? I thought the loss was in owning houses....

 

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You have reviewed some of the solutions. Still, looking at some figures:

1. a)In the US, un (3.9%) + under (7.3%) employment = 11.2%.
b) poverty rate = c.14%.

2. In France, the situation is worse.....and better unemployment benefits don't solve the problem.
a) google figures show: un (8.6%) + under (5.3%) employment = 13.9%
b) poverty rate about the same 14%

https://www.thelocal.fr/20181108/report-the-shocking-truth-about-poverty-in-france-in-2018

"In total there were around 8.8 million people living below the poverty line in France in 2017. In France this means they are living on an income of less than €1,026 a month, and many of them live on considerably less".

From the MMT link I posted yesterday:

"ECB confirms monetary policy has run its course"

The ECB has now joined a host of central bankers around the world in, more or less, admitting that monetary policy has run its course and is being pushed into ever more desperate configurations. At the same time, the corollary is that fiscal policy makers are failing in their responsibility to use policy to avoid stagnation and elevated levels of unemployment. Despite rather significant monetary policy gymnastics, aimed at stimulating economic growth and lifting inflation rates, central bankers have largely failed. They have failed because they are wedded to mainstream theory. Fiscal policy makers are constrained by an austerity-biased ideology and/or voluntary institutional machinery that has been created to stifle fiscal initiative (destructive fiscal rules). The cracks are widening. We are approaching the period of fiscal policy dominance – finally! "
………..

Meanwhile, I suppose you are still teaching your students that governments need to be fiscally conservative (they don't, unlike households); and that there is a certain level of unemployment below which inflation will occur (that's also nonsense).

The fact is: fiat-currency issuing governments are constrained by resources (+ labour + education), NOT by money, and hence can buy idle labour (ie employ idle labour in a JG program) in a downturn (as at present) without raising taxation, and without necessarily facing demand inflation - since labour and some resources are currently idle.

Time to modernise your curriculum.

Note: we are no longer on the gold standard. Floating exchange-rate, fiat currencies (and hence 'money') are simply catalysts (with no intrinsic value in themselves) to facilitate sustainable development of resources+labour+education, wherein lies a community's real 'wealth'.

 

Yes, Optimism has a roll. The problem being (as I discussed mentality) to eradicate poverty and war Crank is half right, that humans would need totalitarianism except the very nature of the problem with capitalism is the people’s personal greed. First one has to recognise that greed because it would exist to the same or worse extent in a totalitarian regime as well. To have it work the world would have to cut it out by isolating it or flat out refusing it. However, this would be impossible the very nature of human is to dominate and consume for the single purpose of progressing one’s own desires. It could be that you make people understand that their greed is better when the whole is satisfied not just the one. But take a look at your green groups, your so called humanitarian groups or basically any do-gooder group you can think of, they refuse the complete to demand the one,. gain greed of that group to force others to live and function in a their own personal desired way. Most often they tell you how to live yet refuse to act in the same themselves. In other words they want the rest of the world to pay for their desired outcome, as long as it doesn’t affect them…

Take bringiton, who clearly would rather blame capitalism than admit their own personal greed. “it is capitalism that won’t give me what I want” If you won’t recognise greed where it lays in oneself then how do you stop the actions it causes??? The UN while good in theory, also remains to the power of the greed of the most powerful in whatever situation it is acting upon. Thus universal acceptance will never be unanimous and much will be lost as the UN stumbles along trying to please the elites.


Many don’t understand what war actually is. Sure the bullets fly we can see the war but all has started well before. The manoeuvres, the manipulations and the posturing all go to war. If it could be kept to such we could live peacefully, but again the rights of anything also depend on your culture and location... We may not want it but unfortunately whenever there are people who think they have a god given right to rule and take for no other purpose than to satisfy their greed, we will never eradicate war OR poverty.


To put it simply, ideally it would be great to eradicate the poverty, war and so on, but realistically mankind is so far removed from actually achieving the first steps to do so, it is ludicrous to think of jumping so far and expecting not to die. One day we might see humans realise the futility of fighting within, but I don’t think that will occur in our lifetime…

 

The problem with the ignorant is they are easily offended when you point out their obvious lack of knowledge. It’s not a sin to be ignorant; it’s a sin to purposely remain so. And the sin is not in the harm the woefully ignorant cause others, the sin is willingly stunting their own intellectual growth, i,e., the shrinking of their own souls.

Ayn Rand: ”Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.”


And capitalism is the greatest protection of that freedom.

 

WHAT ABOUT THOSE NOT-SEEKING EMPLOYMENT?

Your rambling.

France - in this time of high unemployment - is a far, far better place to "live" than the US. America is being plagued by opiates and people are falling dead on the roadside. That doesn't happen anywhere in France, where opiates are forbidden - except upon a doctor's prescription and obtainable at a pharmacy (and not a grocery store).

In the data, you are also comparing apples and oranges because both are fruit - but only categorically. France has a population the size of California. So, any economic comparison between the two stops-right-there! The EU unemployment rate (of a population of 513 million individuals) is 6.3%. Which is on the high-side . About two-and-a-half percent higher than the US. (BFD!)

And we shall see how US unemployment rates evolve over the coming months. (And if the Brits think that trading more with US is "their way out of Brexit", then they are sadly mistaken.)

The fact of the matter is that since the 1990s economies have changed dramatically. Now, more than ever before, they are international in nature. And by that I mean China must be taken into account. Cheap-labor in China has replaced cheap-labor in the US. For the moment. Because what you don't see in the employment statistics are those that are not counted because they are NOT REGISTERED AS SEEKING EMPLOYMENT.

From here:
Americans need to stop obsessing over the unemployment rate

There is factual evidence and then there are statistics - let's not confuse both ...

 

Rand: "Since knowledge (yes) thinking (yes) and rational action (well....not assured) are the properties of the individual..."

See Rand's error?

Wait, there's more.

Rand: "since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual..."

Lot's of confusion in that proposition.

The choice to think or not - regardless of whether said thinking is rational or not - is of course the property of the individual.

But guess why rule of law is not the "property of the individual"....

 

Blah Blah Blah!

Your world is what you make of it. The US is also one of the best places on earth to go from poor to middle class. or even wealthy.

Income disparity exists every where, and under every system.

Get over it.

 

What about them? Some don't need employment (since they are wealthy enough), but the rest have given-up looking for work against their will. Hence they don't even register as 'unemployed'. Are you saying they are comfortable?

That means the official un+(involuntary) underemployed figures (U6) I gave for the US and France are in reality made even worse in both countries, as far as all individuals being able to gain sufficient work (who want work) are concerned - which the entire long quote in the 2nd half of your post confirms!

I must say you are apparently easily satisfied with conditions in France...the 'yellow-vest' riots are not my idea of community/social harmony.

Now, I know your cure for the US's ills is 'fair' (ie much higher) taxation rates on the wealthy (and less expenditure by the DoD). Fair enough...BUT look at TheKeefer's response above, typical in the US itself.

But if you are going to claim Europe doesn't have it own HUGE economic problems....cor blimey, gimme a break.

And are you still insisting the ECB must balance the budget?

https://underground.net/7dif/

"The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy" by Warren Mosler.

This booklet is very easy to read and will give you a whole new perspective on how money works. It is truly an eye-opener when you first read it and it's all so simple, even a child can understand it.

One deadly fraud is the orthodoxy that government must tax in order to spend.

Consider a new nation, with a government that issues its own new currency.

The only way the citizens (who are users of this currency) can come into possession of the currency (hence 'money') is when the government spends it into the economy (eg, by buying labour services from the private sector eg to construct the first government building; taxation follows government spending (when required to control overheating in (a sector of) the economy.

That's your first lesson for the day (so you don't accuse me of rambling...intelligent criticism of the above 'fraud'-exposure is welcome).

 

Omission: "Hence they don't even register, either as 'unemployed' or (involutary) under-employed".