Universal Health Care

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Now, I'm going to ask to you critically think about what you just posted. Your words....

"As a matter of fact, the workers had invested their labor. Without them, the business could not possibly operate. Sounds like a significant investment to me."

Agreed. And THEY WERE PAID FOR THEIR LABOR. INVESTMENT RETURNED. If you, as a laborer, feel you are not being paid well enough, you can negotiate for a better compensation package. You either get more, or you don't. If you don't like it, you can leave for a better job (many people do) or you can just accept what's on the table. Where, and on what legal principle, does the employer OWE you a portion of the profits beyond what you negotiated when you were hired?

Your words, again....

"Some of us don't need to be rich. We're perfectly happy having a family and friends waiting for us at home at the end of the day. Not everyone can invent something, or start a business, or even wants to. But they shouldn't be penalized for this."

How is an employer PENALIZING you by paying you the wages and benefits YOU AGREED TO when you were hired? Again, where, and on what legal principle, does the employer OWE you a portion of the profits beyond what you negotiated when you were hired?

This is the UNMITIGATED EVIL of socialism/marxism/communism. Wealth belongs to all, you must share.

No, you do not. The owner of the business took ALL the risk in starting the business. By law, you, the worker, MUST be paid for the time and labor you invest. There is no legal mandate that the employer gets a dime for his work or a significant return on his business venture. He takes the risk, he earns the profits. If he wants to share them with unmatched generosity, that is his CHOICE, not something that should be mandated by law. When you make an entrepreneur hand over the fruits of his labor, you destroy the incentive for being in business for himself. Hence, he decides to be a wage-earner like you.

Oh, but here's what many in your position forget....the vast bulk of jobs for the wager-earned are CREATED by people like you who decide to take the risk in hope of the great reward. Government DOES NOT create the vast majority of jobs. In fact, government jobs cripple the economy because government waste and bureaucracy means taxes must be levied to pay every salary they owe, and it goes much higher than just the gross pay on each employee's pay stub. Corporations DO NOT create the vast majority of domestic jobs. In fact, corporations with the ability to outsource work will always send the work where it can be done cheapest. It is the AVERAGE PERSON here in the USA who takes the risk in hope of realizing great profit who creates most of the jobs in the USA, and the tax/regulation schemes in place today are incredibly hostile against these people. Hence why people are very skittish about going into business for themselves and why 8/10 business fail within 2 years of their creation.

And people like you who are content to draw a check that you agreed was fair and equitable when you accepted the job feel the owner should be compelled to share the excess he enjoys IF his business is successful? Can you not see what is twisted in that mentality?

***

Now, regarding civilization, just read your history. Government fail. Economies fail. See what people resort to when supplies run out. Without being unfairly insulting, you are delusional if you think it can NEVER happen here. Just look at New Orleans and Katrina. Just look at any number of nations hit by natural disaster that did not have relief come in from the outside that met their immediate needs. Perhaps you have a great deal of faith in your fellow man. I do not.

When the economy is struggling, high taxes only hurt recovery and prosperity. The USA now has the HIGHEST corporate tax rate. Japan was #1, but now they realize the failure of that policy. Up to now, only Japan had a worse economic situation with job losses and failure to create new jobs.

SIMPLE FACT...the USA's high tax rate against corporate income had driven jobs overseas. We can't compete with 3rd world countries on income scales. Cost of living is just so much higher here, but when a corporation can locate in some other country with more favorable tax policies and that results in their people getting the jobs that could be here in the USA, only a brain dead person would fail to recognize the benefit of lowering corporate taxes so that more corporations would locate in the USA and bring jobs into the USA.

Americans need jobs. A lot of bad political policy encouraged companies to off-shore large parts of their operations, and bad tax policies made it cheaper to have stuff done overseas then brought into the USA. At the very least, tariffs could be used to compel US market goods and services be rendered/manufactured IN the US, but absent that, the only thing we can do is give corporations a reason to stay in the US rather than move overseas.

The nations with more favorable tax treatment for corporations are getting the jobs. The nations with hostile tax treatment for corporations are losing the jobs.

Simple math.

***

The problem with a lot of Americans is that they are brainwashed with this delusion of "fairness." Everyone should pay their "fair share," and on many levels, it sounds attractive, but the end result is akin to burning down a whole neighborhood of clean, decent huts because Mr. Gotrocks on the hill won't give everyone a mansion. We seem driven to cut our nose off in spite of our face because we can't see that while life is unfair and not everything is equal, often these "inequities" actually benefit the common person in the street.

Think Bill Gates is evil (I do)? His greed produced a fairly universal operating system (not everyone sees that as a plus...granted) but it resorted in PCs being all over the world...even in homes that should not be able to afford a computer.

FACT - IBM went the cheap route in making their PC. Apple custom-made their computer. Most everything was patented. IBM went "open architecture." That means they build a PC out of off-the-shelf parts already in existence. The only proprietary part that IBM developed was the BIOS chip. Bill Gates was contracted to provide the software for their PC. Guess what? When other people reverse-engineered the BIOS chip, ANYONE could build an IBM-comparable PC. Since IBM didn't own the software and Microsoft retained the rights to sell it to anyone, the PC market exploded overnight. IBM's short-sightedness and greed for an easy buck ultimately benefited the whole world. If Apple remained the top dog, how long would it have taken to have similar market penetration? There was no "Apple clone" for many years, and the few that came out never had much market success.

It might seem bad that Big Bad Corp, Inc. gets to pay a fraction of taxes compared to you and I, but if they bring 10,000 jobs into the area, how much money is that pumping into the economy? If you drive that company overseas, who will replace those 10,000 jobs?

Hurray! We Win! Big Bad Corp, Inc. must pay 50% taxes on profits. Oh, Big Bad Corp, Inc. is closing down and moving to India? Who will support all of these people who are unemployed? Oh, who will hire the people laid off from the 12 neighborhood businesses who got most of their income from contracts with Big Bad Corp, Inc?

Sometimes "equity" is not helpful. You can "fairness" yourself into poverty.

Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth. Socialism is the equal distribution of misery.

Try the Hilbert Nullstellensatz. Revenue to the government is Zero when the tax rate is Zero or 100%. The latter occurs because people must hide their income to keep it from being seized.

It follows that the maximum revenue to the government occurs at some tax rate between 0 and 100 percent.

Q.E.D..

ruveyn

Now....THERE IS AN ISSUE with the employer who profits greatly by cheating his workers. Certainly, I have seen situations where a company cuts pay and benefits then reports record profits.

Most people don't mind taking cuts when the company is struggling to survive. They get ticked off when those cuts result in record profits for a company that's not really hurting.

I've been through this growing up (done to my dad), and certainly understand that outrage.

However, you wind up with the same problems.

If you penalize a company for doing this, you risk the businessperson choosing to shut down the operation...costing more than you hoped to gain. It certainly seems justified when such a tactic is employed only to maximize profits at the expense of workers who had negotiated better compensation packages when they were initially hired.

However, what about in bad economic times. There are people who are paid $20/hour in a world where now the competing industries are only paying $12/hour. A business can not last indefinitely paying people more than the competition pays their workers. When unemployment is high, the supply/demand curve works against the common worker. Should the employer cut everyone's wage so everyone still has a job? Should the employer cut jobs but maintain the wages of those retained? Can the employer force those who keep their jobs to take up the slack of those who were laid off?

Just and businesses can thrive or perish based on shifts in economic realities, employees are equally as vulnerable. In good times, they have good reason to ask for better pay and benefits because the company is doing well. In bad times, they must expect to sacrifice if they don't want to risk being laid off by the employer. That's the way things work.

Now, there is also a matter of exploitative employers (a la Wal-Mart). Declarations from the government is not the way to deal with this. Don't like Wal-Mart's poor treatment of workers (and business practices that drive small businesses out of business)? DO NOT SHOP THERE! So many whiners complain about the negative impact Wal-Mart has had on the US economy, but the vast majority of those same whiners keep going there for the cheap-made foreign goods...love those low prices.

Think an employer/manufacturer is unfair? Boycott them! Probably won't have any effect because Americans have become spineless lemmings with no resolve to stick something out for the long-haul, but if they would...it works.

Lately, many Americans want government to steal from those who have and give to those who don't. That's not how it works in a free society. Don't like Big Bad Corp, Inc? BOYCOTT THEM! Don't shop in their stores. Don't buy their products. Organize others to do the same. They will either change their practices to get the business back or go under in favor of their competitor who does not do as they do....but Americans are so lazy. They don't want to work to effect change via the proper methods in a free society. They want to name a man Caesar and let him do it by brute force...then complain over the long-term consequences such a method produces.

Committing fraud or breach of contract is actionable.

ruveyn

I'm speaking more in terms of moral cheating, not legal.

Wal-Mart might be a good example. Refusing to give decent pay increases, cutting hours, cutting benefits...all of which could be easily afforded just so they could post record profits. That's the kind of "cheating" I'm talking about, and why I feel people opposed to such need to boycott Wal-Mart and take their business elsewhere.

there's also the old and tried method of cutting down personnel so 1 employee ends up doing the job of 3 employees for no additional compensation . Then the pay cuts and benefits trimming happen... forbidding overtime and creating an environment where errors and slip-ups are guaranteed to occur due to the overbearing workload.

There is a set period of about 6 months after this that the company uses to let errors and other problems accumulate in employee records... this allows them to legally fire the employee (due to poor performance) without having to pay unemployment benefits. Those who quit from the stress also dont have to be paid unemployment.

This is good for the company because this is the one way they can legally get rid of long term, higher benefits,higher pay employees with people they can pay the absolute bare minimum and under crappy benefits to do the same job.

end result? lower operating costs, the same job gets done and more profits..all at the expense of the quality of life/quality of work of the employees.

Cheating = fraud or breach of contract. Anything else, let the worker beware.

ruveyn

And what if all the "big box stores" are doing the same thing? Where do you take your business? To a ma and pa store where they have to charge three times as much?

ruveyn

I warned people YEARS AGO about the "downward spiral" of cheap-made goods sold in the USA. Wal-Mart became a threat to American when Sam Walton died and his heirs made Wal-Mart all about profit at any cost. In Mr. Walton's time, he wanted Wal-Mart to carry real "made in the USA" goods as much as possible, and he sincerely cared about his workers. After he died, I would guess the company milked that image for about a decade before the atrocities became too public for people to believe the old image had any truth to it.

Wal-Mart drove out the competition (cheaper goods). They also unfairly pressures suppliers to sell to them cheaper than to other merchants. This drove many competitors out of business, but now that Wal-Mart's evil is coming home to roost, a lot of the "big box" stores are finding customers who will reward those who DO NOT do like Wal-Mart does.

However, the danger of this downward spiral is that the demand for cheap goods, forces people out of decent jobs...into lower-paying jobs, increasing the demand for more cheap goods, forcing more people out of decent jobs...etc. If we don't bear the hardship of paying higher prices for those who do right and sell quality goods, then we just foster the downward spiral and WE are part of the problem.

As a matter of fact, when I wrote about sharing the wealth, I was talking about wages. I am frankly surprised you seem to support collective bargaining. But workers labor is still an investment.
Regarding ordinary workers and the poor being penalized; it's happening all the time. The right - from blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, to politicians like Wisconsin Governor Walker - use working people and the poor as a scapegoat for society's and the economy's problems. Making more than a living wage, with benefits, or receiving help from the government is supposedly the cause of all our problems. For some time now, workers benefits and wages, as well as government aid has been declining, and that is undeniable. And as a matter of fact, just because a person creates his or her own business doesn't make that person of more worth than the rest of us. Nor does living on welfare make you any less. That's what I mean by penalizing the rest of us.
As for the notion of a looming disaster - sure, I'll give you that a meteor may someday hit the Earth, and send us back to early paleolithic living - if we're left alive at all. But in all honesty, disasters are few and far in between. Currently, the ilk who are pushing the coming disaster scare are either trying to sell gold to the gullible, or have some far fetched theology about the end times. Glenn Beck seems to be a combination of both. And if you're wondering, no, I don't believe in the apocalypse, or the rapture, or the millennial reign of Christ (outside the kingdom of God ruling in all true believers hearts). Such persons promoting apocalyptic futures are without credibility.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Then we are in trouble. Very few will pay a premium for moral rectitude.

How long has it been since quality goods were made in the U.S.?

ruveyn

Which companies have taken business out of the US over the issue of taxes, and not over the issue of labor costs?

I admire what you've done for yourself but that does not mean everyone can do the same, or be pushed or prodded to do the same. I believe that I know for a fact many who cannot.

Ultimately, taking control of ones life and rising above the burdens reaps it's own reward. For yourself. But there is no way to force that sense or ability onto others.

Bush was going to invade Iraq intelligence or no intelligence support. It's pretty clear to me he didn't want to hear that there were no WMDs. He ignored what he didn't want to hear and pushed his unfounded hunch on the public.

Do you even know you are not being f*****g logical at all? How can you project your personal anecdote onto every other person and situation in the world and then use it to sell an ideology? Why can't you have the f*****g humility to face your own ignorance? You know there are people who work just as hard or even harder than you do who still face even greater obstacles. To say that will power alone can overcome any obstacle, you might as well be trying to sell the easter bunny. I mean, let's face it, if we can both afford to be sitting around typing on a computer we are rather fortunate in the grand scheme of things.

Yes. And putting more and more obstacles in front of those who are already disadvantaged only leads to dis-empowerment and further feelings of helplessness. In order to learn that they can overcome obstacles, the situation needs to be realistic. Overcoming social anxiety is one thing.