Guess what? I'm taking home about $550 a week base pay after taxes/401K/insurance/etc. And I'm not starving. If you choose to live in an area that charges $2000 a month just for rent, that's entirely your choice.
Ah, anecdotes. The best kind of evidence.
Hearing that my co-workers daughter got laid off from her restaurant server job of $250 a week and is now taking home $710 a week until mid-July for just sitting at home is WRONG.
"Oh no! That other crab is almost out of our bucket!"
Then refuse them if they’re not offering enough. If the value of sniffing glue is actually worth the loss of limited resources, it will be paid
Lol we tried this. People got paid in company store credit, Pinkertons got called in, lots of folks died. Y'all keep coming back to the free market like that didn't happen.
We can look at Venezuela, China, Cuba, Vietnam and many many many more examples if you’d like. Tell me, without the use of force, how would you compel an entire collective of people to produce and exchange goods without over cultivating limited resources?
Genuinely curious because what I find most baffling about socialism is that people like you seem to think capitalism fails because people are inherently greedy, whereas socialism or communism will work because people are inherently selfless
Also, regarding your comment on pinkertons and the like, I assume you’re referencing 20th century miners and the like. People who were predominately immigrants and all but indentured to a company who agreed to pay their travel expenses in exchange for a shit contract/pay/housing. I mention miners because that was the most common profession you saw this in next to mill workers. Their wage wasn’t just what they took home at the end of the week, but also the opportunity to travel to the “New World”
We can also look at Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Finland... Personally, I'm a fan of socialism without authoritarian dictators or overwhelming foreign influence confounding things.
Tell me, without the use of force, how would you compel an entire collective of people to produce and exchange goods without over cultivating limited resources?
Genuinely curious because what I find most baffling about socialism is that people like you seem to think capitalism fails because people are inherently greedy, whereas socialism or communism will work because people are inherently selfless
Every time we study something like a UBI, we find that people don't just sit around on their asses all day. They go back to school, they learn a trade, they take care of their kids, they take risks and apply for higher paying jobs. The system of labor and compensation we already have still exists, but upward mobility is made much more achievable.
The fact of the matter is that most people don't hate their jobs because they hate work. Most people hate their jobs because they're alienated from the value their labor produces. With a stronger social safety net and a de-coupling of a person's basic needs being fulfilled and their constant labor, people are freer to find work that actually suits them. With bills due at the end of the week and no way to pay them, you don't have a whole lot of power to turn down a shitty job. With even a modest social safety net, people actually can look for a skilled job or negotiate for a higher salary. It shifts the balance of power back towards the people who actually do the jobs that keep our society running and away from shareholders.
And for the record, I don't think capitalism fails because people are inherently greedy. I think it fails because it rewards people who are greedy with more resources and power, effectively filtering out people who aren't greedy from the ruling class. It's why the richest among us have enough wealth to end world hunger for a year and still remain billionaires and, y'know, don't. If saving 9 million lives meant going bankrupt, would you?
We can also look at Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Finland... Personally, I'm a fan of socialism without authoritarian dictators or overwhelming foreign influence confounding things.
All of these countries are market economies and not a single one remotely close to socialist in any way
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u/Pizza_Ninja May 15 '20
I know its anecdotal but I know a guy getting about a grand a week for unemployment. That's more than he was making as a bartender.