Category: Capitalism

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Why do our poor needs so little help and the rich are constantly needing help? If we don’t give the rich more, they just can’t produce the needed wave to lift all boats. The poor, on the other hand, must suffer or else they won’t come to their senses and invest their money in the Stock Market, vacation homes and crypto currencies. Right?

There are two ways to get government assistance. Government can give you assistance through programs and services or government can reduce your tax bill through tax breaks. People who have less money tend to get their assistance in government services while people who have more money receive their assistance through tax breaks. Both, however, are handouts.

But only one carries the weight of does this person deserve to be helped. The idea that if you receive government benefits you also need to prove you are deserving of these benefits. So, for example, a person who receives SNAP benefits are unable to buy alcohol and cigarettes with the money they receive while a person who receives a tax break can buy as much alcohol as they want. Nobody would dream of questioning their purchases.

Why? They are getting money from the government. Why isn’t it monitored with the same vigor that SNAP benefits are watched.

They even get a different spin on their handout — the rich are job creators who need that extra money to power the economy while the person who receives benefits is a welfare recipient — a non-productive member of society, a taker. This glaringly different view of these two handouts also has an effect on how government benefits and tax breaks are perceived so that if belts need to be tightened, it is the poorer people who are squeezed.

Tax breaks, on the other hand, are sacrosanct. Why?

Taxes are an obligation. Now, you may not like paying taxes nor the programs that taxes are used for but this doesn’t take away from the fact that taxes are an agreed upon method for us to pay the government bills. If you don’t like they way taxes are collected or the programs the government uses them for, you can take your position to the public during an election. It is an imperfect system, especially if your position always loses, but it is the one we have and, unless someone has a better idea, the fairest way for government to work.

I am not against tax breaks. I do, however, think that there should be a real verifiable return for the government for any break given. The tax breaks need to prove they are indeed more beneficial than the financial loss to the government tills. So my question is how are tax breaks measured as being successful — good for society or a good return in additional taxes. And, if they aren’t producing the desired effect, why not cut them instead of programs that help our most vulnerable citizens.

The tax breaks will, or so we are told, pay for themselves because the rich will invest in the economy which will eventually raise all boats. But, if this was the case, shouldn’t the government be rolling in dough. This isn’t the case. In fact, the biggest single expenditure in the Federal Government is tax breaks. Since the Reagan years, government has given tax breaks and cut taxes numerous times and yet we are further in debt. The income from tax breaks and tax cuts have failed to raise the promised revenue.

To get rid of these tax breaks, even some of them, would bring in enough additional money to offset some of these expenses. But, eliminating tax breaks is nearly impossible because you are hurting the job creator. They need help. But, then, so does the mother using SNAP. Who needs more help?

Herein is my question then, why do our richest citizens always seem to need so much help? Why can’t they stand on their own two feet, pull themselves up by their boot straps and just pay their taxes without any breaks? It is really sad that the rich have sunk into such dependency on government handouts. It isn’t really helping them they continue their proliferate ways — drinking alcohol, taking vacations — on the government dime. They just need to learn how to live within their means.

All I know is I am getting tired of their constant whining about how difficult it is for them as I have seen very little evidence that they are having a difficult time.

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Hucksters learn faster than any other people how to manipulate new technology to finagle people out of their money. The volume of junk mail, email, and texts I receive as opposed to actual communication from people I know and welcome is amazing. Almost every email I receive is junk — very rarely do I get a legitimate piece of email. Phone and texts are a bit better. I would say about half of what I receive there is legitimate. This is still a lot of junk.

What irritates me about this junk is that I thought laws were passed several years back to help the average citizen stop unwanted communication in what ever form — be it phone, text, letterbox or email. Report the offenders and these nuisances would stop.

But it has not stopped and the junk communications just keep coming. I realize it is complicated. A lot of the problems is the huckster operate outside the national borders so American laws are ineffective. Basically there is nothing we can do. The laws are pointless so the junk will continue to flow. So what if they are trying to sell viagra to lesbians. All they have to do is ignore the message, nobody is hurt.

I disagree. The best case scenario here is that I have to wade through hundreds of unnecessary emails and texts in order to find the ones that I actually need. This takes time. Every day precious minutes are stolen from me as I try to find what really matters to me amongst all this junk. This may be a small problem, but it is a problem. I don’t like it one bit and apparently there is nothing I can do about it because we couldn’t possibly stop hucksters from pursuing their businesses.

Never mind that these businesses are quite often engaged in ways to steal money from naive people. See the huckster has rights. It is the individual’s responsibility to stop the huckster.

It is so ingrained in our belief system of right and wrong that when we hear stories about someone getting bilked out of money, the gut reaction is why were the victims so stupid to fall for the huckster. The victim needs to smarten up because there is nothing wrong with parting a fool from his money. Unfortunately, the fool is in a dog eat dog world and apparently that is the way we like it.

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It always irritates me when I read articles like Barton Swaim in the Wall Street Journal (paywall though you can get a free article if you get a log in). Swaim thinks that the adherence to the Protestant Work Ethic is in decline and he pins this decline on Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and every other helpful thing ever done for poor people since then because the poor have no reason to work hard when they can get so much free shit from the government. The USA has just made it too easy for poor people to goof off instead of work.

Those retched poor people are just too God damn powerful and greedy as opposed to those put upon rich people who everybody keeps picking on. Swaim’s thinking is that we need to make the poor more miserable than they already are. They will never understand the value of hard work because they are given too much. His search for a villain in this story stops directly where his prejudices end — the poor.

Where to begin? First, we have to take him at his word that people would rather not work. It is mostly word of mouth drivel about adult men living with their parents, COVID subsidies and Somali refugees. Some of these may be problems but Swaim doesn’t really give much insight on how these unrelated problems have undermined the Protestant Work Ethic or how they are related to Johnson’s War on Poverty. He is flinging them out like a mad ape throwing shit at patrons at a zoo. He is hoping one of them will hit the target. They don’t. Adult men living off their parents, I am afraid to say, are living off their parents and not the government. COVID subsidies are long gone and no longer an issue. Which leaves the Somali refugee scandal which may or may not be a problem (it is still under investigation) but hardly a reason to eliminate a whole system. You wouldn’t call for the end of Corporate Capitalism based on the bad behavior of Bernie Madoff or Enron now would you? Why apply a different standard to government assistance.

Swaim also mythologizes life in pre-War on Poverty America. It was not sweetness and light. It was grinding poverty for most Americans — with estimated poverty rates between 40 to 60 % of the American people. And I am not talking the Great Depression either because even before the Great Depression an awful lot of Americans lived in poverty. It was only after Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that this rate came down to about 20% in 1960. After Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate now hovers around 11%. So government services lifted many poor Americans out of poverty.

Next lets look at those patriotic Capitalists who, in order to avoid paying higher American wages, brought to you, thank you very much by unions, fled the country in order to pay lower wages to workers outside the country. These “good” Americans pulled the rug out from under high wage workers in order to make more money with absolutely no concern for how this affected their now out-of-work employees. Nobody, by the way, stopped them. They were free to undermine union workers wages and unions themselves with nary a complaint from anyone.

This left getting a good education which has turned out to be bit of a trap for some. Many took out loans for educations that turned out to have very little benefit in the job market. People came out of college owing a bundle of money with little chance of recouping on their investment. So much for a home and a family.

Now AI is whittling away at the functions in the better jobs so that workers even in medicine, law and engineering are being threatened. What type of jobs does Swaim have to offer these young people with the advent of AI? Even a $15 minimum wage is insufficient to pay the rent in most states. The lowest possible wage can’t provide a meaningful income for survival. Some companies like Walmart and McDonald’s encourage their workers to use government benefits to supplement the low wages they pay their employees.. People actually are working full time jobs while receiving government assistance. Then these same assholes are trying to take away these benefits from full time workers because it discourages them from hard work.

Fuck them. Talking about how government benefits discourages people from fully engaging in the Protestant Work Ethic is just bull shit. People can see their reality. Hard work without a pay off is a meaningless exercise. I am surprised that so many low wage workers are still punching a time clock.

If only the poor worked harder, the world would be a better place. Maybe for the rich but there is little evidence that it would help the poor. The corollary to this rule is that rich people need even more money or else they will stop working so hard. Do you see the problem here? Rich people need more money are they won’t work while poor people need less money are they won’t work. Genius.

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One of the most remarkable accomplishments of modern marketing is the one the Rich have pulled on the American Middle Class. They have managed to make Americans more afraid of taxing wealthy people in the unlikely event that these members of the Middle Class become billionaires than the much more likely event that they will need, at some point in their life, available social services that will help them weather a financial storm.

It is peculiarly American trait which turns its full power against the Poor for being poor and fuels fear in the Middle Class that if they tax too much the whole money machine we have come to depend upon will come crashing down around them and, then, everybody will be poor. Is that what you want? Everyone being poor. How this message continues to attract believers is beyond me but lets face it, it somehow continues to hold a large segment of the American population in it’s thrall.

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The Trump Administration began raising tariffs back in April. Since then some have been lowered and some have been raised mostly based on the feelings Trump has towards the particular countries involved. In a remarkable display of peevishness, he raised tariffs on Canada based solely on the behavior of one Canadian citizen who deigned to remind Trump of Ronald Reagan’s Free Market philosophy. One Canadian playfully reminds Trump of one of the base tenants of market capitalism and all of Canada must suffer.

There is no explaining Trump at this point so I won’t even try but it is interesting how business people and libertarians continue to support Trump when his actions are contrary to their philosophy. Trump clearly believes that government can be used to interfere in the market and help individual players he likes. This isn’t laissez faire capitalism.

Raise tariffs to protect American businesses. Lower tariffs because Americans need cheaper beef. Raise tariffs because someone was mean to me. How are businesses supposed to rationally price their products in a global economy based on the capricious actions of one man is beyond me. But then, and this is the real lesson here, American Business has never been a big supporter of laissez faire capitalism. No matter what they say.

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I am amazed when I see posts like the one above. People who want to do away with taxes and regulations have this idea that once they are free from taxes and regulation that they will have all this extra money to spend and lead a glorious government free life. Unfortunately the tax free, regulation free past was miserable. It is only with the expansion of government which regulated the market economy and the taxes paid by the public for these changes did this general misery end.

Once you remove taxation and regulation, people will be presented with an array of new bills which have to be paid. Things like nuclear weapons, the army, the navy, the air force, the justice system, police protection, fire protection, road repair, street lights — all these things and so much more will need to be paid for. Then people will have to figure out if their restaurants meet health standards, buildings are being built so that they will stay up during earthquakes, stopping people from dumping toxins into rivers, checking to see if every household is disposing of human waste properly, to name just a few. Who will do it? How will they be paid?

Is Government perfect? Absolutely not. Could it be done better? Of course. Is this a reason to do away with it completely. No. No more than a Market Economy can’t do everything to meet all of our needs, at least, not without the help of government.

Here is the bottom line — the vast majority of people in this country want a market economy. This isn’t going to change in the near future. In order to make this market economy work, we also need a strong government presence to ensure that the rich, people who have power and money, don’t abuse this power and money to take advantage of people who do not have power and money. This also isn’t going to change in the near future.

This means that we have to figure out a way to make these two, sometimes, antagonistic systems work together. Is this perfect? No but then no system is perfect. Ever. This is our common challenge — how to make an imperfect world work for as many people as humanly possible. It will always be imperfect and we will always be working to make it better. But, given the present interlocking structures that is our system, eliminating Government is absurd and unworkable.

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The raid on John Bolton’s house is more than a little worrisome. To start with, Bolton is a Republican who, at least on paper, agrees with Trump on most of the issues. He actually served in Trump’s first term as president. But Bolton disagrees with Trump and he personally seems to hate Trump. These type of disagreements, at least in the past, were a part of the big tent parties. You occasionally disagreed with each other. But Trump must have 100% allegiance to him.

So, if you won’t keep your mouth shut willingly, Trump is going to scare you into submission. Trump is using intimidation to stop his opponents from speaking. There is a big difference between calling a person stupid and opening a Department of Justice Investigation into a person’s activities.

If Bolton has nothing to hide what is he worried about? If only it was that easy. Investigations require lawyers to gather evidence to support your case. This, of course, means you have to have money in the bank to take on a Trump investigation. You have to take time out of your life to appear in court. So, even if you are found innocent, you lose time and money to Trump’s petty harassment. There might be people who would risk irritating Trump, but there also are people who will decide to keep their mouths shut instead.

It certainly seems to have shut down any criticism from anyone in the Republican party. Any Republican who disagrees with Trump is silenced — either by keeping their mouth shuts or through making their lives so miserable they quit or are pushed out in primaries. There is only Trump and what Trump says goes.

The deafening silence of party elders is baffling. I am talking about you Mitch McConnell (83 years of age) and you Chuck Grassley (91years of age). Here are two old men without a political future. Their political futures, and let’s face it their personal futures, have a very limited time line. They have nothing to lose. Why not raise a little Hell on your way out? What are they saving their gravitas for? Future power.

Trump’s behavior is so blatantly corrupt now that it is beyond shocking. He is selling presidential pardons. He owns stock in companies the government is doing business with. He openly shakes down business leaders for their spare change. He threatens anyone who crosses him with investigation. What line does Trump have to cross before these men speak up? There is very little power in nodding your head in agreement to everything Trump says. Yet they still continue to quietly nod.

Democracies occasionally put bad people in power. It is inevitable. They aren’t, however, the real problem, it is the people who keep their mouths’ shut hoping to hold onto what little power they have when any real power they had is long gone. They are powerless intimidated people who would rather give Trump what he wants than take him to task.

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I managed people who held low level jobs and limited opportunities for advancement. They are, by and large, an unmotivated bunch. They did their work adequately and left on time. They weren’t there for more than a paycheck. Good for them, I say.

One of the things my managers frequently tasked me with is how to motivate these people. And before I could say more money they then added the painful restriction without offering them more money. More money was always the hitch. The companies wanted to motivate the employees without paying them more. Needless to say, nothing we ever came up with worked.

The problem here is that the highly compensated people who run companies have convinced themselves that more money only works to motivate high level people. Low level people want something else. I attended seminars where I was told countless times that employees actually want other things than more money. They want respect. They want autonomy. They want acknowledgment. Notice that all of these things are free for the company. They are also vague and difficult to deliver for the direct managers. How much autonomy can you give to a person who has a highly structured job with expectations of coming in on budget and on time? If you didn’t deliver, you were encouraged to do better; if you did well, you got a pat on the back.

The budget for employee incentives were such that it was easiest to reward the group instead of the individual. So Donut Fridays and elegant Christmas parties were thought of enticements which never delivered the expected punch. I actually had one employee ask if instead of going to the Christmas party could she instead have the percentage we paid on a per person catering charge in cash. She would rather have the 29.99 than spend time at the party. I had to explain to her that this was a group incentive and her choice was the party or nothing. She, obviously, was being facetious but her point was made — the company was giving her something she didn’t want.

Even more ironical is that when I relayed this information to my boss, she completely understood. This to me, speaks volumes, about corporate culture — everybody knows this won’t work, but since we can’t give more money individually we are stuck we these group benefits that nobody cares about and won’t deliver. In other words, everyone knows these actions are doomed to failure from the start but continue doing them because nobody has a better idea.

I worked for a company that diligently surveyed their employees on how they felt about work. A neutral company took the survey, the results tallied and delivered to the employees. Every year the areas where my department scored lowest would be our focus to improve for the next survey. Except, of course, low pay. Everyone knew we couldn’t change that so low pay was a problem when the first survey was taken and low pay was a problem on the last survey I was there for. I am betting, with almost 100 % chance that I am right and after being away for six years, low pay is still one of the lowest scoring areas for my department.

The higher ups, convinced by seminars they attended where they were told that higher pay is not the major concern for employees, made us middle managers attend these same seminars so that we too can understand that higher pay was not the reason people worked. We learned how to encourage employees, how to discipline employees, how to reward them without giving them any money and, of course, nobody was convinced.

What is so baffling to me is this resistance to giving more money when the higher ups know the way to get people to work harder is to give them more money. This is, after all, the argument for giving rich people more money. We want them to work hard right? These people are the innovators, the entrepreneurs, and the risk takers. They have to be rewarded. If you take away their money, they won’t work very hard. But if you give them money — will the sky is the limit.

Exactly. So why should regular employees be treated differently? It is a blindness to the very economic tenets that Business so enthusiastically embraces. But by all means, continue with the Pizza Parties and Donut Fridays. I am sure one day that it will eventually work.

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So farmers and hotel companies are having trouble finding replacement for immigrants who, fearing for their safety, are leaving these jobs because they are vulnerable targets for ICE raids. Trump, being a hotelier and dependent on this same immigrant labor force, is now being forced to choose between cheap labor or cracking down on illegal immigration.

The whole point of Trump and the Republican’s campaign against illegal of immigrants, as Matt Walsh points out, is Americans now will take these jobs at a higher and more livable wage. Labor will become more dear and thus business will have to pay higher wages in order to fill those jobs.

And it was not some unintended consequence of their actions. Trump and his cronies said as much in their campaign. Immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. Get rid of the illegal immigrant and the Americans would take the jobs. The problem these economic wizards didn’t count on is that Americans would refuse to do these jobs at the immigrant low wage.

You can have low pay jobs with immigrant labor (more workers) or higher paying jobs with American labor (less workers) but you can’t have low wages with just American labor. It is all down to supply and demand.

Trump, being a Wharton School of Economics graduate, should know this. That he continues to have problems with understanding basic Capitalist theory is trouble particularly since he sees Capitalism as the solution to USA’s economic woes. He was wrong about tariffs and he is wrong about immigrant labor. He also gives an inordinate value to bullying people as a method of negotiating.

Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand would be appalled.

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I had numerous misgivings about Bryan Caplan’s It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who You Are. Caplan’s bottom line is that there is no advantage to being rich in a capitalist society. The cream always rises to the top and it is because the rich have better genes than the poor and middle class and this is why they always rise to the top.

How did he determine this? Did he give a bunch of poor kids a million dollar trust fund, a financial advisor and entrance into all the best private schools and then compare it to the rich kids who had this advantage already? Or did he force rich kids into resource stretched public schools, make them work three jobs just to meet rent, and made it impossible to talk to Daddy during the length of the study? A little more information is needed here in order for me to buy the bull shit Caplan is selling.

If he is just looking at where people ended up, then he failed to prove his point. Are you telling me that knowing other rich people isn’t helpful to rich kids looking for jobs? Almost every job I have ever gotten was because I knew someone in the company. I knew a job was available and I knew who to talk to in order to be seen. Being seen is half the battle in getting a job. This is a tremendous advantage over someone who knows no one. How does he factor that in to his analysis?

Why would rich people spend upwards to $100,00 a year for private education if this doesn’t give their child some advantage? If their child got the same education in a local public school, they would be a fool not to — it comes with their taxes. Yet these rich people, and Caplan believes smarter people, still spend a lot of money on a private education for their genetically superior kids. There can only be one explanation — expensive private schools make a difference. They are worth the money. If, of course, you have it.

Finally, I thought one of the assumptions of market capitalism is that poor people have to learn to work hard in order to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Anyone can make it to the top if they work hard, they too can become rich. But if they are too genetically inferior to make it happen, why needlessly raise their hopes if they are going to end up being poor no matter how hard they work. How sadistic is that.

Genetic superiority is a pernicious and dangerous lie. When people believe they are superior, it opens them up to differentiate between human beings. There are better people who deserve more. To diminish the value of money is equally dangerous. Why have public schools and Head Start if the kids are hopeless. You can’t spend enough money on rich kids and no amount of money will change the results for poor kids. Why waste time and money on lost causes? Nothing personal here. It is all genetic.