World Eyes that see unreality

[psalms 91]

Greed is the problem

 

[tango]

Greed is the problem

Yep, but the greed usually goes both ways.

There's a degree of greed in the CEO who wants the staff to work ever harder while not wanting to give them any extra money. But there's much the same degree of greed in the self-entitled types who think the world owes them a living.

Fundamentally both are doing the same thing, they are seeing what Someone Else has and figuring what they have to do to take it for themselves.

The idea of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay works equally well for everybody, but there's always someone who wants to take the day's work while only giving half a day's pay and someone else who wants the day's pay for half a day's work.

 

[psalms 91]

The poor may be greedy but obviously they have no power to gain, businesses and those who have do

 

[tango]

The poor may be greedy but obviously they have no power to gain, businesses and those who have do

They do have power to gain, if they take a day's pay for doing significantly less than a day's work.

Ultimately if greed is the problem then greed cuts both ways. The greed that works the staff to the bone for a pittance is the same greed that seeks to impose punitive taxes or other means to assure a wage higher than the work is worth. It just expresses itself differently.

In that regard it's much like the fraudster who rips off the gullible. They are the ones who take the money but they usually couldn't do it unless the victim were also seeking to commit a fraud. Paying cash to avoid taxes, investing in a dodgy scheme to make a rapid fortune off the record, whatever form it takes the victim is often just as guilty as the fraudster. They just got the bad end of the deal.

 

[psalms 91]

I will tell you what I do know and that is the income gap between rich and poor is getter wider while businesses in this country make insane profits and pay their workers a fraction nof what they are worth. Capitalism is a system I believe in but not when it has run amuk like it has. There has to be protections for workers and business should be made to pay living wages, there is no trickle down and never has been, there is only the rich grabbing all they can at the expense of those under them

 

[tango]

I will tell you what I do know and that is the income gap between rich and poor is getter wider while businesses in this country make insane profits and pay their workers a fraction nof what they are worth. Capitalism is a system I believe in but not when it has run amuk like it has. There has to be protections for workers and business should be made to pay living wages, there is no trickle down and never has been, there is only the rich grabbing all they can at the expense of those under them

This is the sort of thing that should be expected under corporate socialism, aka crony capitalism. Crush small businesses with regulations so most people have little choice but to work for the big corporations, then throw them enough crumbs that they don't revolt, but only just.

In a truly free market companies that do badly go to the wall and the directors get to look for another job just the rest of the staff. In a manipulated crony capitalist market the workers lose their jobs, the directors somehow get a handy golden parachute and walk straight into another managerial role.

The trouble with mandating a "living wage" is that a job has a value regardless of who is doing it. When you refer to a "living wage" do you mean enough to support an 18-year-old living with his parents, or a 45-year-old with a wife, two children and a mortgage? You clearly can't expect the two people to be paid vastly different sums for doing the same job.

One problem is that people like ideas that save them money but only later realise that those very same ideas come back to bite them. A concept like globalisation is great when it means all the doodads I want to buy are now half the price because they are imported from China. Too bad for the mostly unskilled guys who lost their jobs along the way, they can retrain. But when my job is outsourced to China it's a different matter entirely. It's the exact same principle, it just comes to bite someone else. And in many cases people are fine as long as the system makes them better off, but then howl against it when it leaves them much worse off.

There's always a form of trickle down in the sense that rich people spend money. It's just a question of where they spend it, and where the money ends up as it trickles down. When nations stop making stuff and import it, the money will still trickle down but will end up offshore. When regulations make it difficult to get rid of workers, it's less likely that workers will be hired in the first place (look at places like France). If you can hire and fire relatively freely you can afford to hire someone to see how they work out because you know you can get rid of them if they aren't any good.

At present the balance of power seems badly skewed but throwing a few more crumbs to the serfs in the form of increased job security isn't the answer. To set people free you need to do more than give them marginally more security in a way that all but chains them to their desks. The trouble is the kind of economic overhaul that might fix some problems would cause unspeakable financial pain along the way, and many in the lower sections of the socioeconomic heap would bear the brunt of it.

 

[visionary]

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