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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Henry Ford may have been a prick, but even he had the common sense to realize paying your workers enough to buy your products was mutually beneficial. All this wealth hoarding going on serves nobody but the ultra rich that are simply addicted to watching numbers go up.
Which is why I’m hesitant to actually call those greedy fucks “capitalists”, because they’re the very antithesis of capitalism. They literally break the system for their own benefit, and thanks to US politicians to being corrupt enough to allow themselves to be bought out for a few bucks from said greedy fucks, nobody in power is incentivized to actually do something.
Capitalism works with money flowing constantly, and it needs that to work well. When you have some Warren Buffet and Elongated Muskrat kind of people just hoarding wealth… well, you get the shitshow that is the the US today. $300B circulating in the system would be awesome, and I would think that is a good indicator of a healthy economy; but when $300B is pretty much tied to one person, then congrats, we missed the point of capitalism.
The only goal of capitalism is to raise capital. Any method that raises capital is as valid as any other. The working class people are essentially just a bank to draw capital from, nothing more. Not to them anyway.
Anything else they told you about capitalism in school was bullshit. It does one thing. Increase capital through any means.
There is a logical end point where the working class can keep no capital for themselves, and produce it until they die. And what happens when there's no more shareholder value to extract from the working class I wonder?
That's why we call it "late stage" capitalism.
This comment is so good that I want to bottle it, take it home, and bathe in it
No. He did it because turnover was so insane it was cheaper to raise pay.
It's a post hoc rationalization of why he paid more. He paid more because he literally couldn't staff his factory because the assembly line work was so dull.
Wasn't he the one that wanted to do full factory towns, not sure that money was ever going to leave him.
It doesn't, actually. You pay all of your workers more so some of them might buy your product, maybe?
The increase in wages for everyone will help, but then capitalists have no choice to attract labor. See: the wages now adjusted vs. the inflation
https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekly-earnings-over-time-total-men-women.htm#
This chart shows the median wage has gone up since the pandemic, even if using 2023 dollars
So the wages in the US are better than they have ever been, even inflation adjusted. You can go back as long as you want, they were not higher in the 50s, contrary to popular belief
That's just obviously false. Are you saying people who could pay for college by working summer jobs, and who could buy a car and house and raise a family on a single income were making less than people today who spend decades paying off student loans, and who can barely afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment?
https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-ownership-responsible.html
home ownership and car ownership is up since the 1950s
how come more people have those things that are hard to afford than before?
In part because black people can own those things more easily now.
Sure, but people pining for the lifestyle of the 50s forget they are looking at the top 10% of incomes. Life in the 50s wasn't that good compared to now for the AVERAGE person
Except they had things like the G.I. bill which gave them money to go to college or buy a house and improve their lives. Every man who was in the military in WWII had that as an option. Maybe some didn't utilize it, but that was by choice. If you include their spouses and children, that's way more than 10% of the population.
Wages were comparatively higher too.
But I don't know anyone on the left pining for the lifestyle of the 1950s, that's something conservatives want. I wouldn't mind the wages of the 1950s (adjusted for inflation) and I wouldn't mind taxing the rich at 90%, but I sure would mind the racism and the sexism.
Adjusted for inflation, much lower than today
There were loopholes that allowed most people to pay much less, so that's why they closed those loopholes later
Evidence please.
Remind me how much rich people pay in taxes now.
We don't have good WAGE data before 1964
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_real_wages_%28red,_in_constant_2017_dollars%29.png
but we also have household income data for earlier years
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/famincome.html
but it doesn't match 100% because what a household is differs (households used to be bigger in the 1950s)
but you can see that 1950-1964 the household incomes grew quickly, so the 1950s were a period of growth, you were a lot better off by 1970
You made a claim about 1950s income you now can't back up? Interesting.
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/famincome.html
Look at it, family income was lower
Yes, because women generally didn't work. That's a terrible metric.
But that's the argument people are making, that you could live better on one income in the 50s. But actually, not really. You would have less money, even if you include inflation. People these days have higher rates of home ownership, car ownership, TV ownership than people in the 50s.
Look at ANY metric of "having money or stuff" and people today are better off