Is profit different from unfair tax?

[Imran Siddiqui]

But they may be necessary at certain times in order to expand the business.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by JohnT


inflating the number of outstanding shares are (for the most part) poor, poor substitutes for retained earnings, y'all.

I don't see how given that there is no practical difference between retained earnings and share capital. RE debt, almost every company in the world makes use of an overdraft facility if nothing else. I've also worked on company accounts where they took out loans in order to pay dividends.

[JohnT]

Eh, nevermind that post, Big Crunch. I just woke up (it's 2:30am here) and am quite groggy and wasn't thinking properly. You're quite correct.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If you divide up the same task over a larger number of workers, with more shifts due to shorter work weeks, you have a loss of production. Most jobs involve some non-productive individual transition time at beginning and end of shift - say coal miners who clock in at the mine head, then ride down the elevators and walk out to the current production areas. Or machinery operators who have to shut down at end of shift, secure the whatever it is so it doesn't fall on the next guy, then secure their safety gear before they clock out. Meanwhile, the next guy clocks in, puts on his safety gear, goes over some paperwork, does a safety inspection on his machine (left by the last guy some time before), and then starts being productive. Most construction jobs are the same, if you're not digging a ditch with a shovel - plumbing, piping, electrical, concrete work - there's a beginning of shift and end of shift transition.

Intellectual work such as engineering, software design, etc. not only has those issues, but additional time needed for communication, division of assignments, dealing with all the workers involved in a particular subset of your project - those things all go up in proportion to the number of people involved, so there is in fact a decline in productivity.

Oh boy.

Sorry. Let me be more clear.

Instead of employing workers at unproductive jobs just employ them in productive jobs and cut back the work week. You still have the same amount of man hours working productivily, and you still have the same output. As shortages are identified you move the work to where it is needed and increase the week apropriately.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
No economic/philosophic system "provides jobs." Communism sure doesn't. You still have some form of business enterprises which produce things, and the only difference is how owners and managers are associated with those enterprises, and the motivations of the owners and managers.

Get off of the Microeconomics. This is Macro.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
It's not letting the government "off the hook." You're assuming government has this all-intrusive role of running people's lives and determining what constitute their well-being. I'm assuming that government governs best which stays out of range.

I'm talking about responsible govt. That's what we need to solve our problems. They aren't solved by any invisible hand or anything. Admittedly capitalist govts are not responsible. Communist is.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Your argument is specious - you don't need instant or complete knowledge of others' decisions because those decisions don't result in instantaneous effects in the market. I can go look up data on wages for different types of IT professionals in different areas of the country, and know that that data is not going to sharply change next week or next month. And I can pay attention to industry articles and publication, particularly on the end user side, and get a fair idea of whether a particular new and shiny technology seems to be sticking in the marketplace. You can make intelligent judgments. And most "bad decisions" are recoverable unless you decide to knock off a liquor store and a cop pulls in 30 seconds behind you.

Oh Nonsense.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Flubber

AS soon as you start paying people the same regardless of performance, performance suffers. . .. THis is a common phenomenon -- people can be performing at rate x for 10 years . . you offer a performance bonus and sufddenly they all increase production.

As soon as you tell the best and brightest that their effort or intelligence will not be compensated , they leave. As soon as you start compensating the same for all sorts of jobs, certain jobs get more popular since some jobs are less desirable than others. If I was paid the same , I probably would rather mow lawns than work an office job ( exercise and fresh air would be nice) although I think I would most like to be a security guard since I love to read. Oh oh and I'd want the day shift and don't dare offer a shift differential for those that work mights or weekends

If you are going to tell people that they keep repeating what they are saying the least you can do is know what they are saying. You have not even read my posts in this thread. That is appearant. You have no idea what I'm saying so you have no idea if I'm repeating myself.

[JohnT]

Not nonsense. Life. And the fact that your compatriots in ideology don't leap to defend your assertions, while even the most debate-challenged on our side (like myself) have no problem scoring points against you ought to give you reason to pause. Even MOBIUS defends Sava, you know...

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
Not nonsense. Life. And the fact that your compatriots in ideology don't leap to defend your assertions, while even the most debate-challenged on our side (like myself) have no problem scoring points against you ought to give you reason to pause. Even MOBIUS defends Sava, you know...

When are you going to start scoring points on me?

[JohnT]

Correction... just re-noticed Ramo's 2 post support back a page or two.

[Kidicious]

I'm usually debating alone. They usually agree with me, so probably don't bother repeating what I'm saying though. I know they disagree with me on things too, because sometimes they say so.

[Arrian]

I'm talking about responsible govt. That's what we need to solve our problems. They aren't solved by any invisable hand or anything. Admittedly capitalist govts are not responsible. Communist is.

That is signature material! It should be put right next to the famous Fez line (you criminal!). If I were the sort to have such signatures, that is.



You want to give immense authority to government to control people's lives, and at the same time you expect that it will be responsible with that authority! That's hilarious.

-Arrian

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Arrian




That is signature material! It should be put right next to the famous Fez line (you criminal!). If I were the sort to have such signatures, that is.



You want to give immense authority to government to control people's lives, and at the same time you expect that it will be responsible with that authority! That's hilarious.

-Arrian

All govts are resonsible for their actions or inactions. It's the outcomes that count.

[Arrian]

What are you trying to say?

-Arrian

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Jules
For some reason I was under the impression that very little investment is actually financed through retained earnings. I'm trying to find a statistic on that somewhere.

It depends a lot also on the scale of the company.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Arrian


What are you trying to say?

-Arrian

Govt either takes action or doesn't. The measure of the govt is the welfare of the people, not when it acts.

[Arrian]

Um, clearly. What does that have to do with being responsible? Ah, I see. You meant it in the sense of being "accountable" and I meant it in the sense of being "proper" or "good."

The form of government that is responsible/accountable to its people is democracy, which in theory at least can implement either a capitalistic or communistic economic system (or somewhere inbetween).

I want government that is accountable TO me, but NOT a government that is responsible FOR me (cradle to grave, intrusive, most likely tyrannical).

But we already knew I don't want what you want.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Kid: Why should the welfare of the people be so intimately tied to the government?

Are you scared you can't/don't know how to fend for yourself? Do you need a nanny so badly? Do I? If so, that is news to me!

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

And if your barometer for the success of a style of government is the "welfare of the people" then what in the world makes you think a centrally planned economy (communist) is superior to our current system, given the miserable failures communist countries have turned out to be? What type of bizarro world are you living in?

-Arrian

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious

Oh boy.

Sorry. Let me be more clear.

Instead of employing workers at unproductive jobs just employ them in productive jobs and cut back the work week. You still have the same amount of man hours working productivily, and you still have the same output. As shortages are identified you move the work to where it is needed and increase the week apropriately.

And your clarification changes nothing - you're increasing the number of bodies to do the same work, which has a real world (i.e. that place that isn't described in books and modeled in spreadsheets ) impact on productivity. You're also grabbing bodies (the presently unemployed) with a particular set of skills that may or may not be relevant to the filler jobs you give them and assuming they'll be as productive as the bodies whose hours of work you'll be replacing. If you stop working from book theory and try running any form of large scale project or enterprise in the real world, you'll start to see how much of a disconnect some of your ideas have from reality.

Get off of the Microeconomics. This is Macro.

Micro and Macro are just convenient theories for dealing with abstracted issues. Have you ever heard that saying that "Among economists, the real world is most often a special case." I'm talking real enterprises and real operations in the real world, and when I'm running something, I don't give a flying **** what labels the comrade academicians use to describe whatever theories they have.

I'm talking about responsible govt. That's what we need to solve our problems.

And so we should all just trust in the party, and whatever the party does will be responsible. And if we question this, we're obviously counterrevolutionaries who need to be "reeducated," right?

Admittedly capitalist govts are not responsible. Communist is.

Name one.

Oh Nonsense.

Such an eloquent rebuttal. So I guess I should really go back to those scab laborer jobs because I couldn't have gotten any of the subsequent jobs I've gotten without knowing exactly what the employment and training plans of everyone I was potentially competing against were.

And I guess I never should have made a decision or taken a risk back when I was poor, because I couldn't have afforded a wrong decision.

Sorry, but your posts sound more and more like rationalizations and excuses for underperformance.

[Jules]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Get off of the Microeconomics. This is Macro.

You've obviously never taken a graduate level macroeconomics course. Micro foundations are key to the models. Individual households maximize lifetime utility; firms maximize profits; the economy is competitive; and so on.

[Ramo]

You know what it means, and we aren't going to get into another "the land was stolen" debate. We've gone through that one before and you know my position.

And you know mine. Regardless of the "land is stolen debate" which isn't directly relevant, I'm just making a comment on the concept of ownership. If the state owns all property, it has every right to taxes from "tenants." Just as if corporations own the means of production, they have every right to total influence over what happens to profits.

Isn't that what communism comes down to (in theory, not in practice)?

Not really. In theory, the state dissolves in a communist society. In practice, of course it doesn't work out that well.

How can we all be squatters when the state is run by people?

The state is only superficially run by the people. And it'd be pretty easy, depending on the specifics of ownership. Suppose you've got stock in a land corporation. Does that mean you're not a squatter if you occupy part of it without the consent of the corporation?

Doesn't that mean one group of people own the land and another "squats"?

Nope.

Provide a specific because it's not only not easy, it's non-existent.

Any non-worker owned business. By definition, wages aren't included in profits.

Huh? Introducing a strawman in response to a strawman I didn't bring up? We're debating communism in this thread, not anarchism.

Where did I defend communism? As far as I can tell, I have only criticized capitalism.

But would you really allow capitalists to co-exist with anarchism? Or would you find a reason to accuse the capitalist who doesn't want to sell out to the workers of stealing property and then just seize their assets?

No doubt you would murder strikers whenever you evil libertarians sieze power.

Then tell Kid because he refuses to understand that both parties "profit". Now, does capitalism prohibit a group of workers from buying out the investments of the owner and owning their own business? Nope... That too is capitalism...

I define capitalism to exclude worker-control of the means of production. So yes, it does.

How will a business expand if all the profit goes back to stockholders?

Well yes, I wasn't taking into account re-investment of profits (a decision to be taken by the workers of the business).

Most workers are self-absorbed morons with little or no concept of the overall business picture, and most really don't give a **** to know, as long as they get paid and you go through the motions of treating them decently.
That's why most "employee owned" companies hire real management to run things.

And yet economic democracy, in places like Italy and the Mondragon Cooperatives of the Spanish Basque country, is quite successful, despite the workers supposedly being morons.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ramo
And yet economic democracy, in places like Italy and the Mondragon Cooperatives of the Spanish Basque country, is quite successful, despite the workers supposedly being morons.

So Berlusconi and his ilk are a product of economic democracy? News to many, I'd expect.

And what exactly have those economic powerhouses of the Spanish Basque country brought us?

Try economic democracy someplace like Intel, or GM.

[Ramo]

The PM doesn't have to be a socialist for there to exist socialist businesses. Parts of Italy have a fairly decent co-op movement.

And what does it matter if there isn't a significant amount of socialist computer companies at the moment?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I'm usually debating alone. They usually agree with me, so probably don't bother repeating what I'm saying though. I know they disagree with me on things too, because sometimes they say so.

Just keep telling yourself that...

[Flubber]

Worker controlled businesses are totally in line with capitalism. I know of several small scale businesses where workers gathered resources to own a small piece of a larger business . .. Many people were both worker and capitalist at the same time

Some of these succeeded . . . and some failed, just like any other business.

I live in Canada ands while there are many things I dislike about our variation of a welfare state, I do like that there ismore than a basic attempt to meet the needs of the citizens.


However, The Communist model has failed spectacularly everywhere it is tried ( even Cuba allows a large number of capitalists to invest in and run their industries. Capitalism has its flaws and thats the reason that unrestricted capitalism is NOT permitted without some government controls

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


If you are going to tell people that they keep repeating what they are saying the least you can do is know what they are saying. You have not even read my posts in this thread. That is appearant. You have no idea what I'm saying so you have no idea if I'm repeating myself.

Well I DID read what you had to say and my conclusions were the same as a number of other readers/posters.

Lets clarify with a two very simple questions

In your system would it be permissible/accepted that some jobs such as doctor or CEO or airline pilot would be remunerated at a higher rate than others working other jobs such as dishwasher, janitorial and if so who would determine.

In your system could a worker earn additional income by choosing to work additional hours or by performing better and thereby earn performance bonuses or salary increases

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ramo
The PM doesn't have to be a socialist for there to exist socialist businesses. Parts of Italy have a fairly decent co-op movement.

And what does it matter if there isn't a significant amount of socialist computer companies at the moment?

The PM is a capitalist billionaire conglomerate mogul type. Hardly the type that would occur as a result of "economic democracy"

"isn't a significant amount" meaning "none"

GM isn't a computer company, either. It is, however, a large conglomerate with a lot of internal competition for internal and external resources. Intel is an R&D heavy heavy enterprise that has long, relatively high-risk development cycles and a mixed bag of products. Neither of these are types of enterprises that lend themselves well to meddling by the peasantry. If you have a 50 person weaving and clothesmaking enterprise, that's and all lovey-dovey granola-esque, so you do your democrating thing there, but it's hardly much impact on the economy.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Instead of employing workers at unproductive jobs just employ them in productive jobs and cut back the work week. You still have the same amount of man hours working productivily, and you still have the same output. As shortages are identified you move the work to where it is needed and increase the week apropriately.

This one was interesting. MTG has identified many productivity problems but even if that could be eliminated, there are still a number of problems.

Many of the unemployed don't have the skill sets to perform more difficult jobs so they could be " given" more basic work. Your choices are

1. pay them the same to work less with the result that the product or service costs more and is uncompetitive

2. Proportionally decrease salaries in line with the reduction in hours worked-- This would hurt their incomes.

THis suggestion only works if you have sufficient people that want to job-share and it does not hurt productivity too much. But the same concept works equally well in a capitalist system if there is both a supply and demand for part time workers.

You seem to think that workers are interchangeable and can go wherever needed, or that the state can figure that out. Interesting that even a resource rich state like the former Soviet UNion could never figure things out and avoid shortages of basic goods let alone of skilled personnell

[monkspider]

Kid makes some good points, I think that capitalism is, inescapably a form of theft. And it is a form of theft that is not long for this world, thankfully.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Oh, not much longer than the human species will be around.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Flubber



Well I DID read what you had to say and my conclusions were the same as a number of other readers/posters.

Lets clarify with a two very simple questions

In your system would it be permissible/accepted that some jobs such as doctor or CEO or airline pilot would be remunerated at a higher rate than others working other jobs such as dishwasher, janitorial and if so who would determine.

In your system could a worker earn additional income by choosing to work additional hours or by performing better and thereby earn performance bonuses or salary increases

There should be incentives for success in education and in work. Knowledgable and experienced workers are a benefit to society, and we need incentives to get benefits. Don't count on CEOs getting a raise though.