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[Robot Parade Leader]

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This union forcing management to do this is the best news I have heard in a long time.

It would be great if we lived in Star Trek. We don't, because they will not let us. The corporate BS "efficiency" will not benefit us. They will leave us to homelessness to die and then charge us with a crime for sleeping in the streets they forced us into. Yes, you. Everyone.

If these unions don't fight like this we are all screwed. Good faith, bad faith, and all that are all just words that mean nothing.
Management does not care. They will fire you in a second for any reason or no reason or a reason they made up and lied about.

The answer to the fact that we can't get a raise is not to deny everyone raises. The answer is to give everyone a raise without corporate greed raising prices and fake blaming "inflation."  This corporate lie should be a crime and the boards of directors and C suite CEO and all that should face jail / prison time for it. I don't care what the alleged cost will be. Don't tell us things won't be affordable, because things aren't affordable right now. No it won't get worse than it is already going to be getting worse as it is. Eggs should never have been $8 per dozen. The 2008 real estate and economic collapse happened with no one in charge getting any prison for any of it, and just tons of examples. I want high level executives in prison for this, and I mean the ones actually making the decision, not some scapegoat. We don't care anymore. The average person can be "held accountable" for anything but the CEO just walks on water while making all the bad decisions?

We gave them tons of tax breaks to be "job creators." Now they're automating it away? Imprison them. Seize their passports. Chain them to walls. As they like to say "everyone is fungible." Replace them with someone who will be scared enough not to run everything into the ground for short term profit.

***I will vote for this law and so will a LOT of other people. That's why they won't let that on the ballot. We would pass it.****

I just don't care anymore. I've heard every BS lie to justify this corporate fraud (it is all fraud).
Enshitification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification/
Planned obsolesce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Ah, corporate: "Making bad products; fighting regulations so we can make them worse, pay you less, and charge you more."

What these unions did is a good start.

The world economy is balanced on a knife's edge from complete systemic collapse. The reason we don't live in Star Trek is not "because they will not let us", but because the technology does not exist, because it's impossible and violates the laws of physics.

"Giving everyone a raise" is a child's idea of economics. You can't eat money. Giving everyone a raise is what inflation is. The problem is not one of having enough money, it's one of having enough stuff to go around. Give everyone more money, and they'll still be using it to chase after the same amount of stuff, and it will still be true that not everyone can get a piece.

Your example of the 2008 real estate crisis is perfectly spot-on. For what "bad decisions" do you want "high level executives" to be "held accountable"? The ultimate cause of the crisis was a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford to pay back in the long term, resulting in spates of defaults and the consequent devaluing of bank assets backed by those loans; I absolutely agree that allowing those mortgages to be made was a terrible decision, but do you really understand the economic background that led to them? The loosening of credit restrictions was pushed all the way from the federal level, and it was founded in reasons of equity - to "make sure everyone has access to housing". The alternative was that a huge number of people would not get mortgages and would be homeless or forced to rent, while ordinary homeowners still needing to sell their houses would have banks and rental property management companies coming in to fill the gap - just as we've seen since 2008. There are certainly other ways the real estate market could be structured that might result in better or worse performance, but do you have any specific ideas about them or any knowledge about what they would entail?

I can't begin to describe to you the dire straits the real estate market is in right now. How can you build homes for everyone when - the world is running out of sand suitable for making concrete and so far every other alternative has failed to meet requirements? When the Chinese steel industry which provides the majority of the world's structural steel has been faltering for years? Until recently, gypsum plaster, a crucial building material required by virtually all US fire codes, was produced as a byproduct of coal-fired power plants - now the world has been phasing out coal-fired power plants for a few years, so the growing demand for gypsum has to fall on not-particularly-environmentally-friendly gypsum mines. Mining by human labor is incredibly grueling; automated mining is inordinately energy-intensive. The growth in demand for gypsum outstrips any reasonable possibly growth in supply. Eventually, mines will start running out of gypsum, too, and we will have to spend even more effort and energy to get more. How can we afford to build homes for America's growing population under these circumstances, given that all buildings also require constant maintenance which consumes even more energy and material, and construction materials also have to be diverted to so many other necessary tasks nationwide, like repairing crumbling infrastructure?

Producing the things humans want and need is hard, and requires the investment of energy and human labor. (Almost everyone in the first world, even many of the homeless, has a smartphone - made possible only by third-world slavery.) Around the world, our ability to produce enough is failing. This is not a situation where Star Trek fantasies and "just give everyone a raise" are useful solutions.

"Child's Idea of Economics?"
That's one smart, intelligent, practical "kid" with all those degrees in economics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
"He is known as the "father of macroeconomics" and he was director of the Bank of England.

Just stop it. Just stop insulting everyone and writing off any idea you don't instantly agree with as having 0 worth.

We remember your prior trolling. Keep right on doing that thing where you call people names like childish and the rest of the stuff. More and more people will just chose to block you so no one will see the stuff you somehow put in text. Tons of people have tried to help you, but go ahead and do whatever.


I don't even know where to begin on the problems with this:

1.) ""Giving everyone a raise" is a child's idea of economics. You can't eat money. Giving everyone a raise is what inflation is"

Nope. See we have corporate greed, not inflation right now, and that's why it is so insanely higher than it has been in decades.

2.) "You can't eat Money"

Grocery stores take the money and give you food.

3.) Same amount of stuff......

Yeah, you're trying to say giving people more money won't matter without more production of stuff, right? The reason more stuff isn't made, is because sales of the stuff are down. Doesn't matter what stuff it is. The corporate(s) in charge decide they aren't meeting whatever ridiculous sales targets they dreamed up. Then they cut budgets and suddenly we have less of things. That's how it really works.

But, the reason the sales are down is because nobody can afford to buy it (or corporate quality sabatoge like planned obsolescence).

4.) "For what "bad decisions" do you want "high level executives" to be "held accountable"? The ultimate cause of the crisis was a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford to pay back in the long term, resulting ...."

Revisionist history?
No, "deregulation" caused this mess. Regulation good. Regulation  prevented "a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford." You couldn't get a mortgage before they toned those down.

Business absolutely caused the 2008 financial crisis and anything else is not going to be debated by me. I lived through it.

5.) The loosening of credit restrictions was pushed all the way from the federal level, and it was founded in reasons of equity - to "make sure everyone has access to housing".

Wow, you really bought that huh? Let's be clear, that was corporate cover for large banks and businesses who wanted to issue more loans to sell them off. That last part is critical, because they would sell off those bundled loans to someone else and buy insurance on those loans. This is stacking the deck, because they would buy insurance policies paying out if the loans failed, but they made sure to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back. They got insurance payouts if the loans defaulted. It was corporate rigged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap

See this is why the insurance's insurance or a re-insurer went damn near belly up, you may have heard of AIG:

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/what-went-wrong-at-aig

6.) There are certainly other ways the real estate market could be structured that might result in better or worse performance, but do you have any specific ideas about them or any knowledge about what they would entail?

Yeah, actually I do. They could have kept doing what they were doing before they messed everything up with mortgage backed securities and just built more houses/living places. There's no reason we needed these complicated financial instrument crap. We don't need wall street getting richer. There are ways to fund construction without mortgage backed crap instruments that failed because they were too risky, like literally the way they were built before those things.

7.) How can you build homes for everyone when - the world is running out of sand suitable for making concrete and so far every other alternative has failed to meet requirements?

Are you talking about this ridiculous non story they're trying to make us believe?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand

So what's really going on is that there has not been innovation in concrete recently on a widespread basis, because some corporations want to sit back and keep sucking up profits like the vampires they are. There are absolutely other building materials we can use, but they just don't care. Christ, bamboo is pretty renewable, but even if you want to stick to just setting materials (that set like concrete does) the process is not impossible. https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/concrete-alternatives/ Hempcrete and other stuff aside they could make bricks. It is absolutely not impossible, but it might mean they make slightly less corporate profits, so I guess we'll all be homeless to keep the supply artificially constrained because we can't have nice things.

"You can't even begin to explain?" Really? More like it's not true and please don't do the usual exclaiming that happens when someone disagrees with you, but I know better than to expect that. I'm just childish like noted English Economists....

The "just give everyone a raise" is called a stimulus, and we get it by taxing the rich who said they would give us jobs for tax cuts but didn't/are taking them back. It absolutely can be this way. The things they should be held in prison for include intentionally destroying entire industries to make themselves a quick buck "venture capitalism," where they buy up a fully functional business and strip it bare to cannibalize it for quick cash, leaving everyone else that had anything to do with it screwed.

I'm getting sick of the rich claiming the high ground and acting like they are humanity's saviors. The government has done a better job in the failure of capitalism, and the misguided laughs of capitalists are just sad when the proof is so clearly evident and undeniably easy to find in history. We can do it without them, easily.

Edit because I didn't see the prior posts when I made this:

Another related thing - how would you ever prevent someone from bidding more for something they want, and so raise its price?  That is, are you advocating fixed arbitrary price setting? That just doesn't work.

I have to agree with the previous poster: the fundamental issue society is facing is that demand is higher than supply.  What is annoying is that the reasons for this are many: culture, weather, conflict, policy, disease. There is no magic bullet here.

What is clear, is that you can't directly increase supply by forcing companies to give more of their revenue to employees.  This is the same thing as trickle-down; what you're hoping is that if you give employees money, some of them will start their own companies to increase supply over what would be otherwise.  You could also try to tell people to get by with less - but then that will destroy jobs, because hey you're not buying the thing I need!  So there's more systematic change needed - make it so people don't need perpetual income to have a house (which will totally upend the entrenched status quo based on property taxes; trying to reform that would be quite difficult, because you'd want to avoid loopholes that make the situation worse. Maybe AI can come up with a scheme, eh?)

So if you want to "fix" the system, you need policies that make it easier to create competition for all the companies that are exercising enshittification.  Get rid of systematic issues which put too many middlemen between producers and consumers.  Incentivize activities that actually produce goods and transformative services - not sales, entertainment, and advertising.  Make it easier to enter various professions (basic health care does not need the kind of expense it has today; sure specialists and surgeons need a lot, but all the other stuff?)

If you want to take it out on CEOs, don't string them up - make them build houses.  I mean sure you can do stuff like put the marginal tax rate at say 90% on any income over $1M, but that won't actually be anything other than a token gesture that has no material effect on anything.

This is why some US policies (actual or proposed) make no sense; deporting millions of workers is not going to fix inflation; sure it will reduce some tax burden, but the best that can do is reduce the deficit slightly. It will reduce demand somewhat, sure, but it's very likely it will reduce supply faster than it will reduce demand (in aggregate; in some areas it will reduce demand for some things enough that supply is again in balance), exacerbating the situation.  Giving people $25k to make a home purchase is directionally not helpful.  However, some policies are helpful - $50k tax credit to start a new business for example, or tax incentives to build lower-cost housing. 

That's the thing with these recent union issues: they do nothing to address supply shortages in the places that really have supply shortages, often because they physically can't - such as things like the concrete sand, or food shortages, or any other raw material issue.  Physics is a pain like that.

See you are more reasonable in this for rejecting "trickledown." It's demand creation, however.

I don't think we need competition. We need production and I don't think those are the same. You get rid of "enshitification" not by competition but by strict regulation and actual criminal laws. If a company intentionally designs a bad product, then that should be a criminal offense. The person who has the final say should be in serious trouble, not the engineer who was told to do it. The engineer was just following orders. I want the moron making the big money and the decisions arrested and imprisoned and displayed openly for the rest of the corporate problem makers to see and realize that will be them if they make bad products. They get a trial to prove they didn't do it. If they did, straight to prison.

If you want to take it out on CEOs, don't string them up - make them build houses.  I mean sure you can do stuff like put the marginal tax rate at say 90% on any income over $1M, but that won't actually be anything other than a token gesture that has no material effect on anything.

Yes, reeducation through forced labor on the bad CEOs. I am entirely for this. Excellent idea. Bad CEO does not employ people/layoffs and ruins the company/industry: forced labor to build houses to serve those he screwed. Armed law enforcement with shotguns and batons to beat him if he doesn't meet his productivity quota. Not joking. Will vote for.

deportation

I agree deportation isn't really going to fix things. We need to have a stable population accounting for replacement rate (those born compared to those dying) and some growth on top of that. This whole area is a mess, because humans just currently do not have systems in place to have a stable population. So without us keeping our own numbers in check, we overpopulate and nature will be terrible in how she checks our numbers, war, famine, disease, pollution. We need to get a hold on this so we as a species aren't just popping out kids we have no way to support. It's a mess and a tragedy. No one has a solution, but we either expand to habitats outside of earth, reach some stability or we implode.

[Maximum Spin]

1.) ""Giving everyone a raise" is a child's idea of economics. You can't eat money. Giving everyone a raise is what inflation is"

Nope. See we have corporate greed, not inflation right now, and that's why it is so insanely higher than it has been in decades.

This is simply a misunderstanding. Where's the evidence?

2.) "You can't eat Money"

Grocery stores take the money and give you food.

Giving people more money doesn't make more food magically appear in the grocery store. When people try to use more money to buy from the same amount of food, prices go up to absorb the extra money.

3.) Same amount of stuff......

Yeah, you're trying to say giving people more money won't matter without more production of stuff, right? The reason more stuff isn't made, is because sales of the stuff are down. Doesn't matter what stuff it is. The corporate(s) in charge decide they aren't meeting whatever ridiculous sales targets they dreamed up. Then they cut budgets and suddenly we have less of things. That's how it really works.

But, the reason the sales are down is because nobody can afford to buy it (or corporate quality sabatoge like planned obsolescence).

You realize that "sales are down because nobody can afford to buy anything" is completely at odds with your "prices are high because of corporate greed" explanation, right? The situation you're describing now is called a recession. Recessions are caused by systemic misallocation of resources, and the one we're probably in now has been building up for decades.

4.) "For what "bad decisions" do you want "high level executives" to be "held accountable"? The ultimate cause of the crisis was a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford to pay back in the long term, resulting ...."

Revisionist history?
No, "deregulation" caused this mess. Regulation good. Regulation  prevented "a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford." You couldn't get a mortgage before they toned those down.

Business absolutely caused the 2008 financial crisis and anything else is not going to be debated by me. I lived through it.

5.) The loosening of credit restrictions was pushed all the way from the federal level, and it was founded in reasons of equity - to "make sure everyone has access to housing".

Wow, you really bought that huh? Let's be clear, that was corporate cover for large banks and businesses who wanted to issue more loans to sell them off. That last part is critical, because they would sell off those bundled loans to someone else and buy insurance on those loans. This is stacking the deck, because they would buy insurance policies paying out if the loans failed, but they made sure to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back. They got insurance payouts if the loans defaulted. It was corporate rigged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap

See this is why the insurance's insurance or a re-insurer went damn near belly up, you may have heard of AIG:

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/what-went-wrong-at-aig

Duh, everything the federal government does is corporate cover for large banks and businesses.

6.) There are certainly other ways the real estate market could be structured that might result in better or worse performance, but do you have any specific ideas about them or any knowledge about what they would entail?

Yeah, actually I do. They could have kept doing what they were doing before they messed everything up with mortgage backed securities and just built more houses/living places. There's no reason we needed these complicated financial instrument crap. We don't need wall street getting richer. There are ways to fund construction without mortgage backed crap instruments that failed because they were too risky, like literally the way they were built before those things.

7.) How can you build homes for everyone when - the world is running out of sand suitable for making concrete and so far every other alternative has failed to meet requirements?

Are you talking about this ridiculous non story they're trying to make us believe?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand

So what's really going on is that there has not been innovation in concrete recently on a widespread basis, because some corporations want to sit back and keep sucking up profits like the vampires they are. There are absolutely other building materials we can use, but they just don't care. Christ, bamboo is pretty renewable, but even if you want to stick to just setting materials (that set like concrete does) the process is not impossible. https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/concrete-alternatives/ Hempcrete and other stuff aside they could make bricks. It is absolutely not impossible, but it might mean they make slightly less corporate profits, so I guess we'll all be homeless to keep the supply artificially constrained because we can't have nice things.

Let me know when you invent an alternative to concrete that can meet building code requirements, then. The truth is there's been a ton of desperate R&D on this, like sulfcrete, recycled old concrete, and yes, hempcrete, and none of it is GOOD ENOUGH. BTW they also tried growing bamboo in California for cheap building material once, now it's an invasive, oops. It also can't meet stringent US building codes anyway.

The "just give everyone a raise" is called a stimulus, and we get it by taxing the rich who said they would give us jobs for tax cuts but didn't/are taking them back. It absolutely can be this way. The things they should be held in prison for include intentionally destroying entire industries to make themselves a quick buck "venture capitalism," where they buy up a fully functional business and strip it bare to cannibalize it for quick cash, leaving everyone else that had anything to do with it screwed.

I'm getting sick of the rich claiming the high ground and acting like they are humanity's saviors. The government has done a better job in the failure of capitalism, and the misguided laughs of capitalists are just sad when the proof is so clearly evident and undeniably easy to find in history. We can do it without them, easily.

It's just funny because Keynesianism and socialism are in fact ways to defraud society that benefit the rich, but whatever. It's not like anything will actually change as a result of forum arguments anyway.

ETA: BTW. "a child's idea of economics" is not an insult. It's a characterization of a particular position. I just want to have a neutral, polite discussion about American politics and economics in the Ameripol thread. If you continue to try to pick fights about other things, I won't be baited, I'll just report you.

[McTraveller]

You can always take the pure economics parts to Armchair Economics and keep the focus here on policies.

Sadly I don't think either of our major candidates has policies to really fix anything, but one of them most likely will make things notably worse.

[Starver]

Sadly I don't think either of our major candidates has policies to really fix anything, but one of them most likely will make things notably worse.

Oh, I don't know. I think Vermin Supreme actually has some good ideas.

[Maximum Spin]

You can always take the pure economics parts to Armchair Economics and keep the focus here on policies.

Sadly I don't think either of our major candidates has policies to really fix anything, but one of them most likely will make things notably worse.

While that's fair I've always felt that economics is downstream of politics and it fits just fine. I guess it's a question for smjjames, the thread maker, though...?

[Robot Parade Leader]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1.) ""Giving everyone a raise" is a child's idea of economics. You can't eat money. Giving everyone a raise is what inflation is"

Nope. See we have corporate greed, not inflation right now, and that's why it is so insanely higher than it has been in decades.

This is simply a misunderstanding. Where's the evidence?

2.) "You can't eat Money"

Grocery stores take the money and give you food.

Giving people more money doesn't make more food magically appear in the grocery store. When people try to use more money to buy from the same amount of food, prices go up to absorb the extra money.

3.) Same amount of stuff......

Yeah, you're trying to say giving people more money won't matter without more production of stuff, right? The reason more stuff isn't made, is because sales of the stuff are down. Doesn't matter what stuff it is. The corporate(s) in charge decide they aren't meeting whatever ridiculous sales targets they dreamed up. Then they cut budgets and suddenly we have less of things. That's how it really works.

But, the reason the sales are down is because nobody can afford to buy it (or corporate quality sabatoge like planned obsolescence).

You realize that "sales are down because nobody can afford to buy anything" is completely at odds with your "prices are high because of corporate greed" explanation, right? The situation you're describing now is called a recession. Recessions are caused by systemic misallocation of resources, and the one we're probably in now has been building up for decades.

4.) "For what "bad decisions" do you want "high level executives" to be "held accountable"? The ultimate cause of the crisis was a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford to pay back in the long term, resulting ...."

Revisionist history?
No, "deregulation" caused this mess. Regulation good. Regulation  prevented "a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford." You couldn't get a mortgage before they toned those down.

Business absolutely caused the 2008 financial crisis and anything else is not going to be debated by me. I lived through it. This is just like January 6th insurrection. It happened. Trump caused it.

It's just funny because Keynesianism and socialism are in fact ways to defraud society that benefit the rich, but whatever. It's not like anything will actually change as a result of forum arguments anyway.

ETA: BTW. "a child's idea of economics" is not an insult. It's a characterization of a particular position. I just want to have a neutral, polite discussion about American politics and economics in the Ameripol thread. If you continue to try to pick fights about other things, I won't be baited, I'll just report you.

1.) ""Giving everyone a raise" is a child's idea of economics. You can't eat money. Giving everyone a raise is what inflation is"

Nope. See we have corporate greed, not inflation right now, and that's why it is so insanely higher than it has been in decades.

This is simply a misunderstanding. Where's the evidence?

There's tons. Really? Is it just a reflex to say anyone who doesn't agree has 0 proof? I don't ... really?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/09/04/why-a-price-gouging-ban-isnt-so-crazy-after-all/

"On the stand testifying under oath during their Albertsons merger FTC trial, Kroger executives admitted to raising milk and egg retail prices above the rate of cost inflation."

There's your evidence with testimony and everything.

2.) "You can't eat Money"

Grocery stores take the money and give you food.

Giving people more money doesn't make more food magically appear in the grocery store. When people try to use more money to buy from the same amount of food, prices go up to absorb the extra money.

You're so close to getting it, but you're not there yet. Think it out further. Come on. So once those prices go up, that should in theory make the market more attractive for new suppliers to enter the market or existing suppliers to expand operations to get more supply.
It's more enticing to potential or current suppliers to produce more to capture those higher prices, but then when the production ramps up that will equalize it out and lower the prices again. This is market equalization, or at least that's what the theory is.

Price go up. Producers produce more supply (for money). Production go up means more supply. More supply means lower price. This is how markets are supposed to grow in theory and then the price will go down once the market is saturated to avoid enticing more producers from entering the market. So the price will even out. [/quote]

"3.) Same amount of stuff......[/u]"

Yeah, you're trying to say giving people more money won't matter without more production of stuff, right? The reason more stuff isn't made, is because sales of the stuff are down. Doesn't matter what stuff it is. The corporate(s) in charge decide they aren't meeting whatever ridiculous sales targets they dreamed up. Then they cut budgets and suddenly we have less of things. That's how it really works.

But, the reason the sales are down is because nobody can afford to buy it (or corporate quality sabatoge like planned obsolescence).

You realize that "sales are down because nobody can afford to buy anything" is completely at odds with your "prices are high because of corporate greed" explanation, right? The situation you're describing now is called a recession. Recessions are caused by systemic misallocation of resources, and the one we're probably in now has been building up for decades.

No contradiction, at all. See that part where the corporate greed was testified to in court in the first part. Yeah, that. I am not describing a recession. This has nothing to do with that. The systemic misallocation of resources is from "trickle down" economics. The strike is fixing that by reallocating those resources back to where they belong: the workers. They will  buy things and allocate the resources properly, no rich morons needed. I would be delighted if the rich morons (the bad ones causing all the problems) would leave this world and let us salvage it; they truly are excess garbage for holding the rest of us back. I mean, poverty "doesn't matter" they say or "is deserved," but no, it isn't. No one deserves that, not me, not you.

4.) "For what "bad decisions" do you want "high level executives" to be "held accountable"? The ultimate cause of the crisis was a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford to pay back in the long term, resulting ...."

No, "deregulation" caused this mess. Regulation good. Regulation  prevented "a very large number of people being given mortgages they couldn't afford." You couldn't get a mortgage before they toned those down.

Duh, everything the federal government does is corporate cover for large banks and businesses.

Revisionist history? It didn't used to be that way and we need the corporates gone, like it used to be.

Business absolutely caused the 2008 financial crisis and anything else is not going to be debated by me. I lived through it. Just like January 6th, it happened. It was an insurrection.

Nope. Not at all. We are miles and miles part. Regulation and government action saved the free world and has been the only system that has ever worked in the United States. Capitalism completely and utterly failed in every single sense of the word, but the capitalism propaganda machine has been working overtime convincing people the wonders of socialism are bad. Socialism saved America under what may be one of if not its greatest Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

Let's look at some accomplishments:
1.) Solved capitalism's economic madness of the Great Depression.
2.) Won World War II and literally defeated Hitler.
3.) One of the unquestionably most effective and popular presidents in history and the republicans had to limit a present to 2 terms after him to have a chance. Had FDR not died, he would have gotten a 5th term as president, because he was awesome.

The U.S federal government took full control of the economy on a war footing and told the capitalists to go screw off if they didn't like it. Factories were told they were now producing tanks and planes, and anything else the war effort needed. They were told how to do everything by government control and it worked. The Allies had an industrial powerhouse making more of everything needed for war.

Also, it was a massive step forward for equality, because the capitalists were informed that all of their employees would be drafted and they would have to use women as employees. They did not want to use women to make factory items, but they were forced to and it worked. Turns out women are great at things, unlike what the old timey capitalists wanted you to believe.
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-l71eudan7b/images/stencil/2560w/products/1378/2544/51pIwVkhl0L__63999.1580912000.jpg?c=2

Rosie The Riveter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

That's the policies of President Hoover, the capitalist failed and made the Great Depression worse. The policies of President FDR,the new dealer socialist worked and everyone loved him for it, because it worked. Regulation good. Deregulation bad.

Socialism is what capitalist turn to when they screw up. That's the bailouts for the corporates in 2008, and all the other times. Don't worry, we'll be here to pick up the pieces when the capitalistic lie fails, as it always has and does. Hopefully this time we jail a few of the capitalists who intentionally cause the next horrid crash. They called the slums "Hoovervilles."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville

I say again, FDR's socialist policies were so wildly effective and popular that republicans had to limit the President of the United States to two terms because otherwise FDR would have been in office forever (that is until he sadly passed away).

As for other building materials not being good enough, that's what research is for and the rich diverting our money and resources from science to their pocketbooks through tax cuts to the rich is the reason we haven't found a better building material. If they hadn't budget cutted NASA down / stopped going to the moon, we'd be on Mars by now and probably sooner with better building techniques.

It's just funny because Keynesianism and socialism are in fact ways to defraud society that benefit the rich, but whatever. It's not like anything will actually change as a result of forum arguments anyway.

ETA: BTW. "a child's idea of economics" is not an insult. It's a characterization of a particular position. I just want to have a neutral, polite discussion about American politics and economics in the Ameripol thread. If you continue to try to pick fights about other things, I won't be baited, I'll just report you.

That's funny, because Keynesianism is a well developed theory with multiple generations of research behind it, but go ahead and just brush it off if you like.

People have differences of opinion and they can be very different than yours.

You try to say it wasn't an insult but a characterization....? Whatever. Once again, no one is baiting you. it is a difference of opinion that you improperly regard as a personal attack, which it is not. Multiple people have tried to help you and I've been convinced not to report you in the past. You chased away the person who convinced others not to report you. Multiple people are actually trying to help you. Agitating like you're doing now doesn't help anything. If you actually want a neutral polite conversation, then please do.

[Maximum Spin]

There's tons. Really? Is it just a reflex to say anyone who doesn't agree has 0 proof? I don't ... really?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/09/04/why-a-price-gouging-ban-isnt-so-crazy-after-all/

"On the stand testifying under oath during their Albertsons merger FTC trial, Kroger executives admitted to raising milk and egg retail prices above the rate of cost inflation."

There's your evidence with testimony and everything.

That's not evidence of what you said at all... you can't think of any possible reason for that price increase other than "just being greedy bastards"?

You're so close to getting it, but you're not there yet. Think it out further. Come on. So once those prices go up, that should in theory make the market more attractive for new suppliers to enter the market or existing suppliers to expand operations to get more supply.
It's more enticing to potential or current suppliers to produce more to capture those higher prices, but then when the production ramps up that will equalize it out and lower the prices again. This is market equalization, or at least that's what the theory is.

Price go up. Producers produce more supply (for money). Production go up means more supply. More supply means lower price. This is how markets are supposed to grow in theory and then the price will go down once the market is saturated to avoid enticing more producers from entering the market. So the price will even out.

That won't work in this case for the exact same reason that you haven't gone out to buy some chickens to take advantage of the $8 egg cartons. Real prices, not nominal prices, define the relationship between supply and demand.

When, like now, only nominal prices have risen, expanding production is just as expensive proportional to benefit as it was before, so the incentive to expand hasn't changed.

No contradiction, at all. See that part where the corporate greed was testified to in court in the first part. Yeah, that. I am not describing a recession. This has nothing to do with that. The systemic misallocation of resources is from "trickle down" economics. The strike is fixing that by reallocating those resources back to where they belong: the workers. They will  buy things and allocate the resources properly, no rich morons needed. I would be delighted if the rich would leave this world and let us salvage it; they truly are excess garbage for holding the rest of us back. I mean, poverty "doesn't matter" they say or "is deserved," but no, it isn't. No one deserves that, not me, not you.

Which resources?

Honestly, I like distributionism, even if I don't think it's the most efficient. But you have to know that there are serious problems with any practical implementation.

That's funny, because Keynesianism is a well developed theory with multiple generations of research behind it, but go ahead and just brush it off if you like.

FDR and Keynesianism are, in a very real sense, the reason our economy is so top-heavy and misallocated that we are in this mess today. Of course, I won't deny that some of FDR's policies produced meaningful benefits, nor that those who came afterward didn't contribute to the problem in important ways. Trust me, if you want to start a new TVA using forced labor from Rockefellers, you won't hear much resistance from me. With that said, allocating the assets constructed using that labor is something that demands attention - otherwise it will just become another vector of control by regulatory capture, just like the TVA did.

I would like to acknowledge that I appreciate you sticking to the topic, though. pffft never mind, hadn't seen the edit. So much for that hope.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's tons. Really? Is it just a reflex to say anyone who doesn't agree has 0 proof? I don't ... really?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/09/04/why-a-price-gouging-ban-isnt-so-crazy-after-all/

"On the stand testifying under oath during their Albertsons merger FTC trial, Kroger executives admitted to raising milk and egg retail prices above the rate of cost inflation."

There's your evidence with testimony and everything.

That's not evidence of what you said at all... you can't think of any possible reason for that price increase other than "just being greedy bastards"?

You're so close to getting it, but you're not there yet. Think it out further. Come on. So once those prices go up, that should in theory make the market more attractive for new suppliers to enter the market or existing suppliers to expand operations to get more supply.
It's more enticing to potential or current suppliers to produce more to capture those higher prices, but then when the production ramps up that will equalize it out and lower the prices again. This is market equalization, or at least that's what the theory is.

Price go up. Producers produce more supply (for money). Production go up means more supply. More supply means lower price. This is how markets are supposed to grow in theory and then the price will go down once the market is saturated to avoid enticing more producers from entering the market. So the price will even out.

That won't work in this case for the exact same reason that you haven't gone out to buy some chickens to take advantage of the $8 egg cartons. Real prices, not nominal prices, define the relationship between supply and demand.

When, like now, only nominal prices have risen, expanding production is just as expensive proportional to benefit as it was before, so the incentive to expand hasn't changed.

No contradiction, at all. See that part where the corporate greed was testified to in court in the first part. Yeah, that. I am not describing a recession. This has nothing to do with that. The systemic misallocation of resources is from "trickle down" economics. The strike is fixing that by reallocating those resources back to where they belong: the workers. They will  buy things and allocate the resources properly, no rich morons needed. I would be delighted if the rich would leave this world and let us salvage it; they truly are excess garbage for holding the rest of us back. I mean, poverty "doesn't matter" they say or "is deserved," but no, it isn't. No one deserves that, not me, not you.

Which resources?

Honestly, I like distributionism, even if I don't think it's the most efficient. But you have to know that there are serious problems with any practical implementation.

That's funny, because Keynesianism is a well developed theory with multiple generations of research behind it, but go ahead and just brush it off if you like.

FDR and Keynesianism are, in a very real sense, the reason our economy is so top-heavy and misallocated that we are in this mess today. Of course, I won't deny that some of FDR's policies produced meaningful benefits, nor that those who came afterward didn't contribute to the problem in important ways. Trust me, if you want to start a new TVA using forced labor from Rockefellers, you won't hear much resistance from me. With that said, allocating the assets constructed using that labor is something that demands attention - otherwise it will just become another vector of control by regulatory capture, just like the TVA did.

I would like to acknowledge that I appreciate you sticking to the topic, though. pffft never mind, hadn't seen the edit. So much for that hope.

If the CEO testifying in court isn't evidence, then I don't know what is. The whole thing is about that and the link goes to the issue of them charging too much/that the merger would be bad because of it. Testimony in court featured in a business friendly publication like Forbes isn't good enough
https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/09/04/why-a-price-gouging-ban-isnt-so-crazy-after-all/
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-27/kroger-hiked-milk-egg-prices-above-inflation-merger-judge-told

So even evidence from courts and business friendly sources isn't good enough? Ok..... Yup, this isn't workable discussion I guess.

Real verses Nominal? What are you ....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_and_nominal_value

What makes anyone think economists don't take that into account? I'm pretty sure Keynesian Economists know that. I'm pretty sure the people who wrote those articles knew that and I'm sure the court people in that court case thing with the testimony know that. 

The incentive to expand does change. The idea of a business becoming more profitable from higher prices is real. People go into a business to make money and making more money draws more of them in / increases the chances they will go into that business.

As for "which resources?" The ones we were talking about including housing and all the stuff that makes it up, but also all the other ones.

FDR and Keynesianism are, in a very real sense, the reason our economy is so top-heavy and misallocated that we are in this mess today. Of course, I won't deny that some of FDR's policies produced meaningful benefits, nor that those who came afterward didn't contribute to the problem in important ways. Trust me, if you want to start a new TVA using forced labor from Rockefellers, you won't hear much resistance from me. With that said, allocating the assets constructed using that labor is something that demands attention - otherwise it will just become another vector of control by regulatory capture, just like the TVA did.

FDR and Keynesianism are the only reason we have an economy or a country at all. That "Top Heavy" stuff is the only thing stabilizing anything and keeping the capitalists from charging us for renting out cardboard boxes to live in. They called the Slums Hoovervilles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville Hoover was the failed capitalist. FDR was the wildly successful socialist.  Hoover's "free" capitalism failed. TVA like that sounds great because it was and could be again. It would be wonderful, if a large government did that and "regulatory captured" or really "properly allocated the resources" which should have been the case all along. The bad rich hold society hostage and make themselves small kings. The government should hold it all and when they did it worked, under the greatest stresses possible (World War II, the Great Depression) and producing results beyond any compare (understanding and  application of atomic energy/weapons and vast innovation).

[McTraveller]

The strike is fixing that by reallocating those resources back to where they belong: the workers. They will  buy things and allocate the resources properly,

That's a very broad, absolute statement.

I'd love for some discussion about how resources belong with workers (as opposed to anyone else) and how workers (but nobody else) can allocate resources "properly."  As much as I've studied economics, I haven't found a satisfying definition for that; the closest is probably something like "people have access to the things they want, when they want them, in exchange for a good or service that they feel is a fair exchange."  Trouble is that's a massively subjective definition, so there is no "absolute" definition for "proper" resource allocation.

Even if you had a definition, I don't see how "workers" are any better at efficient allocation of resources compared to other collectives.  In fact, individuals are usually really quite inefficient at resource management.  As soon as "workers" get together into a collective you are basically back at corporations... but just with "workers" as owners.

I guess personally I think it'd be interesting if all corporations had to be at least 50% owned by workers.  This might stop the most obvious abuse of "capitalism" from those investment groups that just buy up companies and gut them.

Regarding the Kroger testimony:  My personal wage has gone up faster than the rate of inflation over the course of my career. Am I price gouging my employers for labor?  Prices going up faster than inflation doesn't only mean gouging, it can also mean improved productivity.  What did they do with the price increase? Did they increase wages? Did they repair old stores? Did they build new stores?  One data point is not enough information.  And even if that one company did in fact just raise their prices as high as they could, why didn't customers start going to the competitive stores in the area? If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store? Put another way - who do you want to be opening these new competitive stores? How do "workers" decide when a new store gets opened?  When "workers" don't decide to pool their resources, why blame the people who are actually providing goods and services, presently?

[Lord Shonus]

If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store?

We've been over this more than once. "Pool your money and start a competitor" doesn't work when you're up against well-established companies that have massive resoures and existing logistical networks. Kroger can literally afford to put a new store on every approach to yours so that it will always be more convenient to stop there, and have enough supply strength to undercut any price you put up. That's exactly how they got so big in the first place.

[Maximum Spin]

If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store?

We've been over this more than once. "Pool your money and start a competitor" doesn't work when you're up against well-established companies that have massive resoures and existing logistical networks. Kroger can literally afford to put a new store on every approach to yours so that it will always be more convenient to stop there, and have enough supply strength to undercut any price you put up. That's exactly how they got so big in the first place.

Well, they can't price gouge and undercut you at the same time, so it still seems like it's worth it.

(It's also obviously false, since locally owned convenience and grocery stores still exist. I live just two roads from a particularly nice one myself.)

[Robot Parade Leader]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The strike is fixing that by reallocating those resources back to where they belong: the workers. They will  buy things and allocate the resources properly,

That's a very broad, absolute statement.

I'd love for some discussion about how resources belong with workers (as opposed to anyone else) and how workers (but nobody else) can allocate resources "properly."  As much as I've studied economics, I haven't found a satisfying definition for that; the closest is probably something like "people have access to the things they want, when they want them, in exchange for a good or service that they feel is a fair exchange."  Trouble is that's a massively subjective definition, so there is no "absolute" definition for "proper" resource allocation.

Even if you had a definition, I don't see how "workers" are any better at efficient allocation of resources compared to other collectives.  In fact, individuals are usually really quite inefficient at resource management.  As soon as "workers" get together into a collective you are basically back at corporations... but just with "workers" as owners.

I guess personally I think it'd be interesting if all corporations had to be at least 50% owned by workers.  This might stop the most obvious abuse of "capitalism" from those investment groups that just buy up companies and gut them.

Regarding the Kroger testimony:  My personal wage has gone up faster than the rate of inflation over the course of my career. Am I price gouging my employers for labor?  Prices going up faster than inflation doesn't only mean gouging, it can also mean improved productivity.  What did they do with the price increase? Did they increase wages? Did they repair old stores? Did they build new stores?  One data point is not enough information.  And even if that one company did in fact just raise their prices as high as they could, why didn't customers start going to the competitive stores in the area? If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store? Put another way - who do you want to be opening these new competitive stores? How do "workers" decide when a new store gets opened?  When "workers" don't decide to pool their resources, why blame the people who are actually providing goods and services, presently?

I actually might like that too if it's nice. I don't have a ton of time right now, but maybe later on if that's cool.

Here's some basics.

Workers: Look, I want the factory or whatever I work at to be BE THERE long term. I know that if the place I work at makes crap or is unsafe or whatever, then we got problems. Either we're gonna get shut down or sued or whatever. I want the job security and stuff.

So I and people like me care if things are done right and if it takes longer then o well. I want it done right and good and not quick and crappy and unsafe.

Corporations:  They don't care about you one bit. They don't care if the thing they make is safe or not as long as they get money. They don't care about you getting hurt or if you do get hurt they just don't wanna have to be responsible for it. That jerk with the MBA knows he can get another job being some other corporate executive C suite somewhere else, but where are the 5000 people who work with or around this factory going to go if it all goes to hell?

So the corporate will venture capitalism everything and buy it up to strip it down. They want it cheaper, faster, and that means worse and less quality and less safe.

The problem is that the corporates just want to squeeze every dime out of everything for the people at the top and that won't be you or me or any of us really. They want things created for them, luxury things like yachts and cars so expensive we would never afford one and homes costing enormous amounts of money and they'll do it by firing anyone and everyone they can for no reason or any reason they make up. The workers on the other hand, we want things created for people like us, which means you too. I know I'm not going to have a car that costs a whole ton, so I want better made cars I can actually afford, and I want you to be able to afford it too. If I'm driving it, I want it safe. I want yours safe too.

Workers spend their money locally and on goods and services you make. Rich corporates spend their money buying up the local real estate and buying so much you can't afford a home. This is why corporations are buying up single family homes and then renting them.

I even don't mind renting a place from a couple who are local and they own where I am. I know they care enough about the place that they keep it up and they don't like to raise the rend too much unless they can't avoid it like insurance going up. They show us why they raise it and attach a copy of the insurance paperwork. The corporate landlords who own places don't care and will not fix things up but will raise the rent any time they can. This is why rent has sky rocketed.

The same corporate jerks will go for "efficency" meaning eliminating any and every job they can even if things are going fine.

Making workers own 50% of a business sounds better in theory because they would have skin in the game. The big problem is the corporates have no issues buying up a perfectly good house, company or whatever just to loot it. They don't live here (wherever here is) and they don't care about it.

There is a huge different between even a company that is locally owned, verses one that is just from they don't care because they're somewhere else.

If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store?

We've been over this more than once. "Pool your money and start a competitor" doesn't work when you're up against well-established companies that have massive resoures and existing logistical networks. Kroger can literally afford to put a new store on every approach to yours so that it will always be more convenient to stop there, and have enough supply strength to undercut any price you put up. That's exactly how they got so big in the first place.

Yup, barriers to entry is what I think that is. And guess what else, the corporations who are dishonest and do stuff like that are undercutting the better ones. Shonus is pretty much right. You can't compete against Kroger easily. They're just getting bigger.

Back to the original post on it, you aren't "price gouging" your employer for making more. There's a massive power imbalance where your boss has it over you. You rarely if ever have it over them and even if you think you do, they can mess up your life pretty bad if they want to. The whole point of that court thing where they are trying to merge Kroger with another huge store called Albertson's is that they are trying to become a Monopoly. At least that's what I think it is. The part where they price gouged is showing they've done it before and they'll do it again. Kroger doesn't care and just says it won't hurt anybody, but the FTC seems to be saying it will hurt people and they gouged on all sorts of stuff before.

What did they spend the money on? Looks like they are trying to spend it on eating up their competition by buying Albertson's.

I don't know everything about it and I admit it is pretty heady stuff. I'm just not a lawyer so some of it I don't get but I think that's the gist from what I read. I might be wrong.

Big point though is how they look at having skin in the game and who chooses who is in charge. If the workers get a say in who their boss is (because they own 50% like you said or whatever) then there will be a big difference. They won't chose a boss who is a looting venture capitalist. They also don't want a boss who is completely incompetent and will run the place into the ground for money or becuase he doesn't care.

[McTraveller]

I think you are being too generalized in your characterization of both workers and "companies."

There are absolutely a significant number of workers who don't give a care about the safety of their product or the long-term viability of the company they work for; they just want the largest paycheck they can get for the least work.

Similarly there are companies (mainly LLCs, but also true Corporations) that do care about their product and their employees.  In fact, by number, there are by far more companies that care about employees than don't; it's only that the big giant Fortune 500 ones that look Evil™, and only maybe a couple to few dozen of those are the really nasty ones in terms of their ruthless pursuit of returns.

I dunno; at the end of the day I guess my world view is that it's better to get ahead through work and strategy rather than to get something by punishing someone else, even if that someone else is acting terribly.  So I look for policies that help remove barriers to entry and reward neighborly behavior rather than policies that add barriers or just have punitive aspects.

[Robot Parade Leader]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think you are being too generalized in your characterization of both workers and "companies."

There are absolutely a significant number of workers who don't give a care about the safety of their product or the long-term viability of the company they work for; they just want the largest paycheck they can get for the least work.

Similarly there are companies (mainly LLCs, but also true Corporations) that do care about their product and their employees.  In fact, by number, there are by far more companies that care about employees than don't; it's only that the big giant Fortune 500 ones that look Evil™, and only maybe a couple to few dozen of those are the really nasty ones in terms of their ruthless pursuit of returns.

I dunno; at the end of the day I guess my world view is that it's better to get ahead through work and strategy rather than to get something by punishing someone else, even if that someone else is acting terribly.  So I look for policies that help remove barriers to entry and reward neighborly behavior rather than policies that add barriers or just have punitive aspects.

I am being precise. Corporations lead to workers not caring by abusing workers. Only the very small corporations are anywhere near ok and that's just because they are small and haven't got the full corporate BS. It's a lesser dose of poison and one you can survive, but it's still poison. There has to be a better structure out there.

The only reason workers don't care about the products they make is because they are abused by corporations.
When you are "disposable," "fungible," not  given the time to do the job right and called lazy for not half assing it to meet an insane corporate quota, then you don't care, because no one cares about you. You stop caring because the corporate overlords won't  let you care, consider you caring weak and unproductive and punish you / mark you down for it.

O there may be some companies who care, but the overwhelming majority do not. The companies that don't care will out  compete the companies that do care. The evil will rise to the top, because caring costs some money. Why would the company give you anything no matter how much you deserve it.

You will never get ahead if the person who wants to poison you is not punished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
You will never get ahead or it won't matter if you die of asbestos poisoning https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/asbestosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354637
You will never work hard enough and you should never have to in order to outrun evil.

Corporations are evil. There are other ways to do it. Corporations make it all but impossible to get at the people making the bad decisions. Nobody's responsible. They have all the same rights as people but none of the responsibilities. Corporations don't go to jail when they poison an entire town for money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal And the government has to save the day from corporate horror stories by what did it say 21 years of clean up? But the bad rich made their money and they didn't care if people died, horrible, painful deaths.

Corporations? Burn them all. See the world heal. The government made things work once and it could do it again if we eliminate the corporations with their corrupting money.

France is the world's sixth largest economy and they can do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3BhqJLpoYs
And it was the 5th largest until China shot up to number 2.

Your worldview about neighborly behavior sounds nice. It sounds like a lovely thing for a world I wish existed for me, but it doesn't. I would really like it if that sort of thing worked, and I really mean it. I've never seen it, not once. They only thing rich people who think they are better than us understand is being forced by authorities, because the rules don't apply to them. Trump is the prime example, but there are tons like him. If you or I or anyone here did half the crap he did, we'd be done for. "Grab 'em by the *****?" Are you kidding? We'd be fired and sued and HR would unload on us. One of the women who he did that to sued him in court and won and he's still saying the same terrible stuff about her. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/e-jean-carroll-trump-trial-verdict-05-09-23/index.html I mean pick a thing out of all the stuff he has totally done. The world is overflowing with examples of bad rich people just getting away with basically whatever and we just never could.... I really mean it when I say I would love for the world to have reasonable people in it who aren't just corrupted and corrupting by power. I want to see it but I really don't see it. I really don't mean this as an insult to you and I hope you don't take it that way. I honestly don't see anything good about corporations.

Government regulation is wonderful. I pray for more each and every day. It is the only thing that is effective. And deliver us from corporations, Amen.

[anewaname]

If there were no competitive stores, why didn't the customers pool together some of their money to start their own store?

We've been over this more than once. "Pool your money and start a competitor" doesn't work when you're up against well-established companies that have massive resoures and existing logistical networks. Kroger can literally afford to put a new store on every approach to yours so that it will always be more convenient to stop there, and have enough supply strength to undercut any price you put up. That's exactly how they got so big in the first place.

Well, they can't price gouge and undercut you at the same time, so it still seems like it's worth it.

(It's also obviously false, since locally owned convenience and grocery stores still exist. I live just two roads from a particularly nice one myself.)

It is not false. Kroger could do that and there is only one reason it hasn't happened to your local store, Kroger doesn't want to start that fight yet.

If you were to review your county-level data from the last 20 years, and compare how many locally owned stores opened or closed, to how many chain-stores opened or closed, you will see that the chain-stores are "winning". The bottom line is that chain-stores have leveraged supply chains and they have the war-chest to move into states or counties, but they only do it when the timing is right.