Far-left, Anti-Austerity Party Triumphs in Greek Election.

[pErvinalia]

Just because wealth isn't a zero sum game, doesn't mean that wealth can't be stripped off the majority and directed towards the rich minority. And that's the exact thing that has happened in the US with median wages and wealth declining in real terms for the last 30 odd years. And we've been through what the wealthy do with their money. Don't make me smash my computer up out of frustration that you still can't fucking read after all these years.

Nonsense. The wealthy spend and invest their money in things that support business and workers and create new products and jobs. They don't "take" anything from anybody that the individual involved does not willingly give to them in exchange for a product or service they want. Should the "majority" be forbidden from buying what they want on the theory that allowing them to do so makes somebody else wealthy and that should not be allowed for reasons of Marxist "share the pain" egalitarianism?

Only government takes from people involuntarily and without their consent and gives them precious little back in return.

Now please, please, pretty please with sugar on it, smash that computer to flinders and fuck off somewhere else...India for example.

See you when you get back!

It doesn't matter how much you try and move the goal posts. The fact remains that without demand, supply is useless. And your capacity for demand has been reduced as the average (median) American has got poorer over the last 30 years. And look at your trade deficit. Forrrrrgnrrs aren't buying your stuff, so you're not making up demand there. No amount of idiotic Marxist fear mongering will change this fact.

[pErvinalia]

piscator wrote:

Both Jonno and I know way more about business and money than you

Jonno?

[Seth]

Just because wealth isn't a zero sum game, doesn't mean that wealth can't be stripped off the majority and directed towards the rich minority. And that's the exact thing that has happened in the US with median wages and wealth declining in real terms for the last 30 odd years. And we've been through what the wealthy do with their money. Don't make me smash my computer up out of frustration that you still can't fucking read after all these years.

Nonsense. The wealthy spend and invest their money in things that support business and workers and create new products and jobs. They don't "take" anything from anybody that the individual involved does not willingly give to them in exchange for a product or service they want. Should the "majority" be forbidden from buying what they want on the theory that allowing them to do so makes somebody else wealthy and that should not be allowed for reasons of Marxist "share the pain" egalitarianism?

Only government takes from people involuntarily and without their consent and gives them precious little back in return.

Now please, please, pretty please with sugar on it, smash that computer to flinders and fuck off somewhere else...India for example.

See you when you get back!

It doesn't matter how much you try and move the goal posts. The fact remains that without demand, supply is useless.

That depends on the product. There was no demand for pet rocks until someone created a supply of them and marketed them and thereby created demand.

And your capacity for demand has been reduced as the average (median) American has got poorer over the last 30 years.

Except it hasn't. It's increased. Even the economic status of the poor has risen more than 14 percent in the last 30 years. The poor, and everybody else, are much better off today than they were 30 years ago. Sure there have been ups and downs, but the overall trend remains upward.

And look at your trade deficit. Forrrrrgnrrs aren't buying your stuff, so you're not making up demand there.

True enough. And we import way too much stuff. But that's entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing, which is how socialism drives economies into the ground as inevitably as entropy.

No amount of idiotic Marxist fear mongering will change this fact.

No amount of idiotic evasion and attempts at derail and diversion is going to change the fact that socialism doesn't work in the long run, it only works until the OPM runs out, then the system collapses. Always. It's a mathematical certainty that's been demonstrated time after time and is happening again right now in Europe and Venezuela, among other socialist societies where the something-for-nothing chickens are coming home to roost. The only thing that has been supporting socialism worldwide is the availability of a capitalist marketplace where socialists can market products to try to stave off the inevitable a little longer. Therefore, socialism cannot exist even temporarily without a much larger capitalist pool of OPM to draw from.

[piscator]

>Therefore, socialism cannot exist even temporarily without a much larger capitalist pool of OPM to draw from.

Neither can my business. I guess that makes it a Socialism.

[Seth]

Neither can my business. I guess that makes it a Socialism.

You're not a government. The fact that capitalism and free markets run on OPM is not relevant.

[piscator]

...capitalism and free markets run on OPM ...

A night watchman state wouldn't run on its good looks.

[pErvinalia]

Just because wealth isn't a zero sum game, doesn't mean that wealth can't be stripped off the majority and directed towards the rich minority. And that's the exact thing that has happened in the US with median wages and wealth declining in real terms for the last 30 odd years. And we've been through what the wealthy do with their money. Don't make me smash my computer up out of frustration that you still can't fucking read after all these years.

Nonsense. The wealthy spend and invest their money in things that support business and workers and create new products and jobs. They don't "take" anything from anybody that the individual involved does not willingly give to them in exchange for a product or service they want. Should the "majority" be forbidden from buying what they want on the theory that allowing them to do so makes somebody else wealthy and that should not be allowed for reasons of Marxist "share the pain" egalitarianism?

Only government takes from people involuntarily and without their consent and gives them precious little back in return.

Now please, please, pretty please with sugar on it, smash that computer to flinders and fuck off somewhere else...India for example.

See you when you get back!

It doesn't matter how much you try and move the goal posts. The fact remains that without demand, supply is useless.

That depends on the product. There was no demand for pet rocks until someone created a supply of them and marketed them and thereby created demand.

You STILL don't get it. Demand requires cashed up customers. If the majority of customers are seeing their wealth (and more pertinently wages) reduce, then they are going to be more hard pressed to support demand. You really have such a blinkered view of how economies work. You really do think that supply creates demand. You need to read more widely than von Mises.

And your capacity for demand has been reduced as the average (median) American has got poorer over the last 30 years.

Except it hasn't. It's increased. Even the economic status of the poor has risen more than 14 percent in the last 30 years. The poor, and everybody else, are much better off today than they were 30 years ago. Sure there have been ups and downs, but the overall trend remains upward.

Bullshit. I was not quite correct about "wealth", and perhaps should have said "income" as it is more pertinent to demand, but wealth for the bottom 90% of people is at the same level as it was in 1982. - http://equitablegrowth.org/research/exp ... ed-states/ , and has plummeted in the last 8 years.

On income:

The main culprit behind the languishing fortunes of America’s middle class is slow wage growth. After peaking in the early 1970s, real (inflation-adjusted) median earnings of full-time workers aged 25-64 stagnated, partly owing to a slowdown in productivity growth and partly because of a yawning gap between productivity and wage growth.

Since 1980, average real hourly compensation has increased at an annual rate of 1%, or half the rate of productivity growth. Wage gains have also become considerably more unequal, with the biggest increases claimed by the top 10% of earners.

Moreover, technological change and globalization have reduced the share of middle-skill jobs in overall employment, while the share of lower-skill jobs has increased. These trends, along with a falling labor-force participation rate during the last decade, explain the stagnation of middle-class incomes.

For most Americans, wages are the primary source of disposable income, which in turn drives personal consumption spending – by far the largest component of aggregate demand. Over the past several decades, as growth in disposable income slowed, middle- and lower-income households turned to debt to sustain consumption.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... on-2014-11

And look at your trade deficit. Forrrrrgnrrs aren't buying your stuff, so you're not making up demand there.

True enough. And we import way too much stuff. But that's entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing, which is how socialism drives economies into the ground as inevitably as entropy.

No, we're not discussing that, as no one here will discuss socialism with you as you have no fucking clue what it is. What we are discussing here is your failure to understand that reducing the income and wealth of the consumers in a society is economically disastrous, and no amount of supply can overcome a lack of demand.

No amount of idiotic Marxist fear mongering will change this fact.

No amount of idiotic evasion and attempts at derail and diversion is going to change the fact that socialism doesn't work in the long run, it only works until the OPM runs out, then the system collapses. Always. It's a mathematical certainty that's been demonstrated time after time and is happening again right now in Europe and Venezuela, among other socialist societies where the something-for-nothing chickens are coming home to roost. The only thing that has been supporting socialism worldwide is the availability of a capitalist marketplace where socialists can market products to try to stave off the inevitable a little longer. Therefore, socialism cannot exist even temporarily without a much larger capitalist pool of OPM to draw from.

[/quote]

Pretty ironic you answer a charge of idiotic off topic rhetoric with more idiotic off topic rhetoric.

[JimC]

Any word on how the red Greeks are doing? Have Retsina and Ouzo prices gone up?

[laklak]

I await, with giggly anticipation and high spirits, the results of this little economic experiment. Is this the title bout? Is socialism Sonny Liston and capitalism Cassius Clay, or the other way round? Will Germany finally have a port on the Aegean? Stay tuned, folks.

[pErvinalia]

Any word on how the red Greeks are doing? Have Retsina and Ouzo prices gone up?

It's gone suddenly quite. The corporate media is going to turn Greece into an information backwater while Herr Chancelor works out whether they can kill Tsipiaris or invade for reasons of trrrrrsm. Or, perhaps nothing much is actually happening...

[JimC]

Any word on how the red Greeks are doing? Have Retsina and Ouzo prices gone up?

It's gone suddenly quite. The corporate media is going to turn Greece into an information backwater while Herr Chancelor works out whether they can kill Tsipiaris or invade for reasons of trrrrrsm. Or, perhaps nothing much is actually happening...

It's gone suddenly quite what?

[JimC]

I await, with giggly anticipation and high spirits, the results of this little economic experiment. Is this the title bout? Is socialism Sonny Liston and capitalism Cassius Clay, or the other way round? Will Germany finally have a port on the Aegean? Stay tuned, folks.

Parachutists over Crete yet again?

[pErvinalia]

Any word on how the red Greeks are doing? Have Retsina and Ouzo prices gone up?

It's gone suddenly quite. The corporate media is going to turn Greece into an information backwater while Herr Chancelor works out whether they can kill Tsipiaris or invade for reasons of trrrrrsm. Or, perhaps nothing much is actually happening...

It's gone suddenly quite what?

quite bothering me!

[Seth]

You STILL don't get it. Demand requires cashed up customers. If the majority of customers are seeing their wealth (and more pertinently wages) reduce, then they are going to be more hard pressed to support demand.

Yup, exactly. And how do they get their wages and disposable income up? By having jobs, in which they can input labor to produce wealth that keeps the company that they work for from falling into bankruptcy, like General Motors. But there is a delicate balance between the costs of production represented by wages and the profitability of the product that the employer has to keep carefully under control. When, for example, the government intervenes in the markets (including the marketplace of labor) and mandates that the employer pay the employee a "living wage" or otherwise coerces the business owner (as in legally favoring unionization) into paying more for the labor necessary to produce the product at an acceptable profit margin, the business owner must find a way to cut costs to bring things back into balance. The owner can cut other non-labor expenses to some extent in order to try to retain trained and valuable employees under the wage mandate, but if the wage requirements are too high, the only place to cut is in the number of employees themselves, which results in fewer employees working harder to do the same amount of labor at the mandated wage rate.

The others are now unemployed and are therefore unable to input labor to the economy to generate wealth from which they would, and used to, receive their disposable income. They become dependent on government for basics, which taxes the producer to pay for the social welfare programs, which reduces the producer's profit margin again, which causes him to have to lay off more employees, who become dependent on government for basics, which taxes the producer to pay for the social welfare programs, which reduces the producer's profit margins again, which causes him to have to lay off more employees right up until his ability to make a profit disappears and he closes the business, which makes EVERYBODY who worked for him unemployed, at which point they become dependent on the government for basics, which taxes some other producer to pay for the social welfare programs, which reduces that producer's profit margins, which causes him to have to lay off employees, which makes them dependent on the government for basics, and the whole thing repeats itself over and over and over until the economy is completely destroyed by the tax and spend policies of a government that hasn't the intestinal fortitude to tell people that they either have to work or starve and that there is a limit to the amount of largess that the treasury can afford to dole out to them when they aren't working.

You really have such a blinkered view of how economies work. You really do think that supply creates demand. You need to read more widely than von Mises.

Sometimes it does. Most time it doesn't. But the supply/demand function only works properly when there is free capital available to create and market the products that are being demanded by the public. Without that free capital, and without capital owners willing to risk that capital on capital improvements in anticipation of a profit, no widget factories get built and nobody is employed to make widgets. It takes money to make money, and when the government taxes away or (as Obama is proposing now) simply confiscates wealth, that money is not available for capital expenditures that create jobs in which people can input labor to produce wealth that keeps the whole thing running.

And your capacity for demand has been reduced as the average (median) American has got poorer over the last 30 years.

Except it hasn't. It's increased. Even the economic status of the poor has risen more than 14 percent in the last 30 years. The poor, and everybody else, are much better off today than they were 30 years ago. Sure there have been ups and downs, but the overall trend remains upward.

Bullshit. I was not quite correct about "wealth", and perhaps should have said "income" as it is more pertinent to demand, but wealth for the bottom 90% of people is at the same level as it was in 1982. - http://equitablegrowth.org/research/exp ... ed-states/ , and has plummeted in the last 8 years.

And we have the Marxist Progressive-in-Chief Barack Obama to thank for that.

On income:

The main culprit behind the languishing fortunes of America’s middle class is slow wage growth. After peaking in the early 1970s, real (inflation-adjusted) median earnings of full-time workers aged 25-64 stagnated, partly owing to a slowdown in productivity growth and partly because of a yawning gap between productivity and wage growth.

Since 1980, average real hourly compensation has increased at an annual rate of 1%, or half the rate of productivity growth. Wage gains have also become considerably more unequal, with the biggest increases claimed by the top 10% of earners.

Moreover, technological change and globalization have reduced the share of middle-skill jobs in overall employment, while the share of lower-skill jobs has increased. These trends, along with a falling labor-force participation rate during the last decade, explain the stagnation of middle-class incomes.

For most Americans, wages are the primary source of disposable income, which in turn drives personal consumption spending – by far the largest component of aggregate demand. Over the past several decades, as growth in disposable income slowed, middle- and lower-income households turned to debt to sustain consumption.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... on-2014-11

Sounds to me like employees need to find ways to make themselves more valuable to employers so that their wages can go up.

Part of the problem is the parlous state of education and knowledge in the US that leaves more than half of college freshmen requiring remedial classes in basic subjects like math and English that they are supposed to have mastered by high school.

This phenomenon has been caused by the Marxist influence on American education that deliberately dumbs-down curricula and shifts the grade structure to allow students who have clearly not mastered basic knowledge and skills to graduate from high school. This happens because educators and parents claim it's "unfair" that some students (white and Asian) get "better educations" than other minorities (black and Hispanic). Rather than demand more of the minority students who are not doing well, they demand that the better schools be dragged down to the level of the failing urban minority-dominated schools where incompetent unionized teachers simply cannot be fired and "education" is the exception rather than the rule.

This occurs not by accident, but by deliberate design of the Frankfurt School Marxist Progressives in the NEA and other left-wing educational organizations and teacher's unions who have a specific agenda to NOT allow minorities to be successful in primary education. The reason for this deliberate sabotage of minority education, aside from the innate greed of union teachers, is that the Marxists who run the system, like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, don't want minorities to succeed in education because success in education teaches students that Marxism doesn't work and Capitalism is their path to economic success, and that scares the hell out of the Marxists because if minorities become economically independent and successful, they cannot be manipulated by the Marxist political establishment by keeping them in poverty and dependent on liberal/Marxist welfare policies that allow the Marxists to control their votes to keep the Marxists in power.

And that is exactly why Obama, a Marxist Progressive to the core, suspended Bill Clinton's "welfare to work" rules that limited the amount of time a person could get federal welfare benefits. He knew that this system, which was demonstrably working to bring people OUT of poverty and making them economically independent, threatened the Marxist Progressive hegemony over the voting block of the dependent class.

So, the stagnation in wages is a deliberate agenda of the Left being used as political control of the dependent class vote.

No, we're not discussing that, as no one here will discuss socialism with you as you have no fucking clue what it is. What we are discussing here is your failure to understand that reducing the income and wealth of the consumers in a society is economically disastrous, and no amount of supply can overcome a lack of demand.

We're not in disagreement about that at all. We simply disagree as to why this is happening and who is responsible for it and how to fix it. Then again, the reduction in income and wealth of the middle class is not at all accidental or a function of Capitalism or free markets, it's part of an express and well-understood agenda of the Marxist Progressives to maintain political control of the nation by permanently suturing more and more people to the federal tit. Anybody with a lick of sense or a modicum of awareness or knowledge can clearly see that the Obama administration's agenda is not to improve the economy, it is to destroy the economy through regulations that wipe out the ability of the producers to produce in order to create just the sort of artificially induced economic crisis that will permit full-blown Marxism to take over.

By way of example, raising the minimum wage causes low-income entry-level workers to lose their jobs or not be hired in the first place. The direct impacts of this 40 to 50% unemployment rate for young black males in urban areas who can't even get a job flipping burgers at McDonalds is that they become more dependent on government as employers hire more experienced, more mature unemployed workers driven into unemployment by over taxation of their previous employer, thus driving down wages for everyone by driving marginal businesses out of the market.

This is not an accident or an artifact, it's part of a deliberate, calculated long-term plan by Marxists, using their Progressive useful idiots to create the conditions necessary for Marxist revolutionary action, as we saw plainly demonstrated in Ferguson, where Marxist agitators incited riot in an attempt to start a general uprising by blacks in St. Louis.

It's you who doesn't understand what's going on, not even a little bit.

[MrJonno]

By way of example, raising the minimum wage causes low-income entry-level workers to lose their jobs or not be hired in the first place

Raising the minimum wage means I as a tax payer don't have to subsidise corporations to pay to keep these people alive.

If its a choice between corporations paying someone wages or me as a tax payer I choose the corporation