Perhaps the lesson for the wealthy that trashing the social support is trashing self will soon be apparant. The writing is on the wall, and the night is falling.
No less of a Robber Baron than Henry Ford said (paraphrased) if I pay my workers enough to afford a car they will buy one and support the economy. The other car companies had to follow and for better or for worse the American economy was built on the automobile and the auto workers. Short lived as all progress is, by the late 20's wealth was moving up again and Hoover was attached to informal communities all over the country.
I recently read an article that by the end of each month even Wal-Mart is finding out that starvation wages can't even buy the cheapest shit in town.
8 comments:
I guess I don't understand who is "thrashing" social support. I get Ms. Warren's quote because it is the classic Socialist's argument...."We (society) made it possible for you (inventor/creator) to build a factory and become successful; therefore, you owe "us." There were a few facts that Ms. Warren didn't see or thought them of little or no importance -
1. The value of money comes from the products invented, built and exchanged in the Market.
2. A workers share of their productivity is proportional to their value as a producer. The Engineers are paid more than the unskilled laborers for the reason that their contributions are more valuable.
3. No roads (or any other infrastructure), schools or such things as Food Stamps would exist without productive industry creating the "real wealth."
4. Ms. Warren says the Factory owner should "Pay it forward" for the benefit of "the kid coming along in the future." The productive factory is the gift for future generations.
1. You left out the value of place. The wonderful invention/creation sitting on the shipping dock is worthless. The whole infrastructure to get it to the user didn't just happen. Somebody had to build it and manage it.
2. Your inventor/creator neither educated the engineer nor the unskilled laborer, but both need to know how to fit into their places on the factory floor.
3. Simple objectiveist BS. There is real wealth in transportation, marketing, and education. There is even real wealth in trading worthless derivatives. Or selling worthless entertainment like reality shows, sport entertainment, religion, etc. As long as people buy wealth is created. Ignoring the buyer is one of the most frequent failures of the creators of that "real wealth." No buyers, it sits on the dock. Worthless.
4. The productive factory is an empty shell, see Flint MI, without the flush buyers, the workers, the transporters, the marketers, all of whom need to be educated. Who does it? God?
There are many social infrastructure functions that seem to be only workable in the public secttor.
K-12 education has not worked well either as a private sector eg commercial function, or as a religious function. Both as a supplement to public supported K-12 for all seems to work. But good educational opportunities for all who choose neither seems to be fundamental to a working society. The correlation between property values and good public education is well documented.
Transportation infrastructure, roads, rails, airports and flight control, and basic communication infrastructure have all failed as private sector functions. Again private sector supplementation seems desirable particularly at the delivery level.
In basic health care the private sector has been a collossal failure, unless weeding out the unfit by letting them die from simple treatable ailments is a socially desirable function. Again private supplement seem to be the way to go for life extention and cosmetics.
Those are the big 3.
The Socialist ideal in a nutshell.. "As long as people buy "something," wealth is created." So, to "fix an economy," give all the people "money." And the following things are "Rights" that every citizen must have, whether they work to provide them or not - Food, Housing, Healthcare, Education - Equal Outcomes, regardless of ability or effort.
Infrastructures like railroads, highways, freight airlines and ocean shipping are not just built and maintained by whim or maintained by random choice. Productive people choose to live and work where the most opportunity is found and that is at the Market Hubs. Infrastructure is paid for by the users....no users means no infrastructure, except in the case of a Socialist government that thinks such things are "Rights."
You have an intimate knowledge of the Automobile Business; are fewer cars being produced and purchased now compared to the peak production years in the Detroit area? Why did so many factories close there and reopen elsewhere? Boeing is now attempting to move all airplane manufacturing out of the State of Washington just like they moved most all manufacturing out of California...and they will move it elsewhere, just like the Steel, Tire, Chemical, Auto, Textile and other basic industries have moved. Social Structures, created and maintained by draining the lifeblood from the Market (ever increasing taxes), running up an astronomical and unsupportable Debt is crushing the economy. You and I will probably not live long enough to see the full collapse but I worry for my children and their children.
The Big 3 -
Education...Fiscal 2011 Government Spending on education is 900+ billion dollars...who's failing at educating the youth of this country? And if so, how much more money is required to provide a "good education" for everyone?
Transportation Infrastructure...I am unfamiliar with any infrastructures not built or maintained by tax dollars. Government provides tax monies to private contractors through "competitive bids," [whenever the tax dollars generated by user fees and fuel taxes are not diverted to "more important social uses."]
Healthcare....Medicare/Medicaid costs for fiscal 2011 will exceed 1.1 trillion dollars. These programs are supposed to be covering the "shortfall" left over by the "failures of private healthcare insurances???" Failures to do what?? I was utterly astonished to find out that the Boeing Company pays $1400 per month [my Retiree Medical Policy] to my HMO to cover myself and my daughter for approximately 90% of the actual costs!! Multiply that number by 307 million and you can see that Universal Healthcare is a pipe-dream. Like many other businesses have indicated, they will cease offering healthcare plans to their employees when "Obamacare" takes over; then we will see the the real failure of private healthcare insurance in all its glory.
You are welcome to your socialist ideal strawman. It is not worth the match.
Please make up your mind about infrastructture. The only infrastructure that is still FUBAR is the private railroad right of ways.
Industries are moving out of the areas that built and supported them with a well educated and well supported work force. So much for the productive factory as a gift for future generations.
By the way how much of Boeing's Dreamliner delay was due to trying to find outsourced, uneducated cheap labor to build components?
Yeah, education is expensive. $50K/kid/year for those who can afford an education inferior to the one available in my neighborhood "free" not counting a $fewK in the parcel taxes we pay, or the 2X market price we pay for a house in the district.
As for health care USA private health system is most expensive in the world and results are somewhere in the bottom of the developed nations almost all of which have universal govt. health care. Scream socialist all you want to but the alternative is death panels for the poor.
Boeing has been "outsourcing" large chunks of all their aircraft for the last 50 years. The simple reason is most airlines outside the U. S. are partially or fully owned by their Governments and they require such arrangements as a condition of the sales. During the years I was traveling for the Company, I took many trips to various manufacturing firms in Canada for both Commercial and Military projects.
The Dreamliner's worst components came from two firms in Italy....they were delivered over a year late... the components were incomplete and not well made (when they finally arrived.) [Airbus had major troubles with Italian, British and German made components, too.]
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