Which one does your “laborer” use when asking the “capitalist”?
Which one does your “laborer” use when asking the “capitalist”?
Idk, when is the last time United Way beat you up for a donation?
How the crap would I know how this hypothetical laborer would react? Why are all people who want help violent to you, what end does this accomplish? Does it allow you to look down on them, thereby absolving yourself of any guilt? Ad hominems (like the one I just employed on you, sorry it was just a teaching tactic) are worthless man, I don’t know you, and you don’t know this laborer. We should move above these petty biases.
BTW, that means I didn’t in any way mean what I asked of you, as I do not know you.
<<<Rob,
The monetary value of your work is nothing but the amount that somebody else is willing to pay you. Nothing less and nothing more.
It is this point that you must understand or challenge further if you like. But there really is no point in debating about anything else until the above can be agreed upon.
Actually, that is not true.
Read this (damn interesting) post that proofs the Marxist labour theory of value, in a very extra ordinary fashion, applying outcomes of researches of thermodynamics and chaos theory onto a capitalist economy, and by which it could be (from statistical data) be proven that the Marxist labour theory of value is right.
Similar as in the economy, in a gas, any molecule has degrees of freedom (speed, position of the gas molecule). And the gas behaves chaotically. Yet, on top of this chaotic behaviour there is still some systematic behaviour for the aggregate, like the average speed (temperature) and distribution.
So, your claim that anyone is “free” to pay you any price he/she wants for your work, there is still a significant and systematic price label attached to the value of some one’s labor, which is in full accordance with the labour theory of value.
The article is posted on this forum.
We’re saying that the price depends on stuff like supply and demand… not how much “sweat” or “hours” went into producing it.
If you pay me to mow your lawn, and I get down on my hands and knees and trim each blade of grass individually, should you pay me more than a dude who uses a lawnmower?
I could almost bet you money that this question won’t get answered. He could bring up the “different kinds” of value.
Id pay you more if you could do it just as fast. That would be impressive lol
<<< again, I can’t understand why credit expansion doesn’t permanently solve the problems of capitalism and I can’t see it in your original post.
I suppose that interest and unpaid debt is what ruins the system again but if credit infact is enough to close the gap between goods and income, that is, to fully realize the potential of the capitalist economy; then why is an instance of that economy -interest payments, on aggregate unaffordable? >>>
Taking up credit to close-up the gap between loans and production is not a solution, because if you have already not enough money to buy the goods you need, taking up credit worsens your situation, as you now have even less to spent, because you pay interests and have to pay back the original amount of credit. At a certain moment, the ability to pay the original sum of money back, becomes impossible, and when this happens for a significant amount of debt, the whole financial system will collapse.
I think this is all but common sense understanding, any credit service can tell you this.
Hyman Minsky says that credit expansion leads to over-investment and eventually your term-structure collapses as you move from the hedge position to the ponzi position.
The apologists of capitalismo argue on “time preference”. But what “preference time” can have a family of low earnings, whose earnings can only ensure the survival? What a family in this situation can save?
Well some sustenance farmers had to be able to save… else no capitalists.
And you think the vast majority of that was non-coercive?
haha
What does that condition have to do with capitalism?
Because they are people in the capitalist system who find it very hard to save, meaning it will be nigh impossible to become a capitalist for them.
<<< So you deduce that a human cannot survive without being a worker for someone else? By chance how do subsistence farmers live? >>>
Not for the majority of workers.
<<< . Your statement implies that an employer can live in a static state for an extended period of time without the need of others production in order to sustain their lifestyle while workers are in a constantly dynamic state of necessity. There is no separation. >>>
There is. An employer could live from his capital quite some time, the worker is in no such position.
Why do they find it hard to save?
$3-500 rent
$150-300 groceries (depending on family size)
$80-100 gas
$100-300 bills
not to mention medical expenses, taxes, car maintenance, unkown random expenses, etc
$7/hr x 40 = $280/week x 4 = $1120/month
1120 - 300 - 150 - 100 = $570 left. Let us assume a modest $150 for unkown expenses that leaves $420 over 4 weeks = 105 a week.
I don’t know about you, but I dont see a life devoid of any fun as a meaningful life… in fact I see it as a waste of life so…
$50/week in entertainment leaves $55/month
3000 (to open a CD) / 55 = 54 weeks to save up for one pitiful cd @ 3% interest.
3000 x .03 = 90/year in capital gains! That’s going far…
And this whole exercise assumes you are single, no kids.
I am not saying it isnt possible. People do it everyday (a small minority by all accounts). But it isnt that easy. Especially if you are not very smart or educated.
What are they doing the other 58 hours of the week?
(assuming 8 hours for sleep, 1 hour on each side of sleep for personal maintenance, 7 days a week)
Volunteering, visiting friends/family, studying late at the local community college (another expense), going to church, or maybe wasting time at the bar.. who knows.
Sounds like leisure time to me. People who engage in leisure when they don’t have the productive capacity to afford it are fools, not economically disadvantaged.
I have been very poor before. You don’t work a 40 hour week and have a social life if you are at the bottom of the economic ladder. Leisure and a better standard of living must be earned, either by increasing productivity through experience and skills development, allowing for a higher wage, or working multiple unskilled jobs to compensate for a lack of productivity.
Also, poor people don’t need money for gas, they can’t afford a car. They walk or take the bus.