Re: Wal-Mart and Wages?

From: The Trucker (mikcob_at_verizon.net)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:19:02 -0700

Dez Akin wrote:

> Mason A. Clark <masoncNOT@THISix.netcom.comQQQ> wrote in message
> news:<fs6pf0pajf8id236devsiah2c03eea33kc@4ax.com>...
>> >
>> >Hi,
>> >
>> >Mason, countries don't have a strong economy because they pay high
>> >wages.
>>
>> Jim, a circle here? There are notorious countries that have a strong
>> economy as measured by the usual GDP but pay low wages. Examples aplenty
>> in
>> Africa. The GDP is not equitably distributed -- the god king and his
>> family and friends keep most of it.
>
> Thats not exactly a shining example of the social failure of market
> based wages. Most of your examples are war torn countries with a
> slippery black substance as a prime export, not industrial economies.
>
>> In recent years the U.S. has been drifting in that direction, the god
>> king
>> and friends being the growing aristocracy. (come visit here and I'll
>> take you on a tour of the palaces).
>
> Erm, sounds like the beginning of a marxist manifesto.
> ---snip---

Looks like the typical neocon sound bite rebuttal of anything that might
contradict the religious position of the neocon. So we use the word
neocon just like the neocon uses the word Marx. It is the conjuring of
the devil, of evil, of the bogeyman.

>> An important equity mechanism is -- or was -- the labor union. Unions
>> provided some balance between the power of employers and workers.
>> In the U.S. in recent decades unions have become largely ineffective or
>> non-existent. ( It would be worth your job if not your life to be a Wal-
>> Mart union organizer. )
>
> Instead of attending the very affordable colleges and trade schools?

The H1B system destroyed all of that. It is not cost effective to
waste one's time learning anythin other than how to use government
and monopoly rights to fleece everyone else.

> Historically, unions have done little except ration out jobs for
> non-professional labor as cartels, reduce business competitiveness and
> foster organized crime.

The typical rewrite of history that graces most right winged positions:
Just leave out the data you don't like.

> Far better 'equity mechanisms' would be punishing estate taxes,
> simplification of income tax, and comprehensive public education
> programs that turns the poor into professionals.

Not a bad conclusion, however. But then there is that One World
stuff that insists that Americans must be impoverished so as to
raise the poor of other nations.

>> >
>> >I sense a theological belief in salvation through higher wages in your
>> >posts.
>> >
>> God forbid we descend into a French Revolution. We're a long way
>> from it now but the trend is in that direction -- if you squint when you
>> look at the horizon.
>
> Revolution that you are implying comes when the vast poor majority
> have nothing to lose, when people are really suffering. The trend
> isn't even pointed in that direction. Everyone in the US is getting
> wealthier, and has been for the entirety of the existance of the US
> history, and starvation is the last concern of the poor.

(snicker) Talk about smoking your own dope! Wealth is not measured
in food. It is measured is freedom.

http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/economic_decline.php

> You might be able to convince yourself that the rich are getting
> richer and the poor aren't getting rich as fast (or even getting
> poorer), that the inequity is growing, but that doesn't breed
> revolution of the French variety. That comes from more than envy,

Ah, yes. The envy pony. The Republican favorite.

> but
> inflicted misery in a state that has no concept of democratic veto and
> hereditary privlege enshrined by law. If you honestly believe that the
> US is moving _closer_ to such a state of affairs, your living in a
> willfully ignorant fantasyland.

And if you believe anything OTHER than the facts of growing wealth
disparity then you are blind as a bat.

> It may be pleasant to believe that such naive approaches as 'pay them
> more and the economy will grow' apply, and its certainly appropriate
> to be skeptical of the market finding optimal solutions in all
> scenarios. Markets tend degenerate into monopolies and cartels (see
> the rise of Standard Oil, De Beers, and ironically the rise of labor
> unions) and occasionally markets allocate resources less than
> optimally. But in the absence of an omnicient oracle, markets usually
> work better than fiat dictated by a central planner driven by a single
> economic theory, or even worse, naive idealism.

Thank you very much for your confirmation of the current problem:

"markets usually work better than fiat dictated by a central planner
driven by a single economic theory".

The Republicans seek to maximize rent at all times. To therefore maximize
wealth disparity on the premise that a caste system is necessary to
the moral guidance of the ignorant masses.

http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php

Of course it helps to employ Faux news and controlled "statistics"
to keep the masses as ignorant as possible. 

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