From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines
Subject: Re: Socialism, again
Date: 26 Aug 92 02:13:47 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <1992Aug25.071059.29449@meteor.wisc.edu> stvjas@meteor.wisc.edu (Stephen Jascourt) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.035503.26120@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:
>>sj> Stephen Jascourt
>>sj> In contrast, capitalism establishes an enslaved class out of whom the 
>>sj> maximum work is extracted without even enough compensation for the needs
>>sj> of food, clothing, and housing.
>>
>>  Bzzznt. I wonder how ones manages to sell all these goods from these exploi-
>>  ted workers when they don't earn enough to afford them. Unless one sells
>
>They don't. Most of the goods, in terms of dollar value, are sold to the
>affluent, mostly the top 5% in income. In terms of the mass or volume of goods,
>many basic consumer non-essentials like TV's and radios and many other such
>items most people take for granted but don't need, many people spend money
>they don't have and go into debt, buy less food and less nutritious food
>(though they could eat properly and cheaply, but that's another matter),
>skimp on insurance or other things that are of greater importance than the
>consumer good they so desire. The point is the majority manage with difficulty,
>while the wealthy do most of the economic exchange among themselves.

2% of American workers earn $100,000 a year or more. The majority, 57%, 
earn between $24,000 and $45,000, with the poor worker, $8,000 and under, 
making up 7%, and the rest earning between $45,000 and $100,000 or between
$8,000 and $24,000.  Now it's unlikely that the rich buy 10 Chevys a year. 
Instead they buy about the same number of cars and TVs and other consumer 
goods as other people, they just buy more expensive models. They don't
account for the output of the majority of workers, or even a sizable
minority of the output of other workers. The bulk of the money earned
by the rich is not spent on consumer goods. Instead it is *invested*
in stocks and bonds that finance the creation of jobs for other workers.

An interesting chart was posted a few months ago from census information
showing the migration of workers between different income groupings over
time. The chart was broken down in 10 percentile groupings from the lowest
to the highest income group. The interesting feature of the chart was the
extreme mobility of the workers. While there was a general trend upward,
mostly due to inflation, the striking fact was that few people at the
upper or the lower ends of the range remained in their groupings over
a ten year period while the majority of the people in the middle stayed
there. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty seem transitory for most workers.

>>  what one has produced, it's extremely difficult to make a living. That's
>
>What do you mean "one sells what one has produced"? Do you expect every
>individual (or household breadwinner or whatever) to be a personal
>enterpeneur including being the designer, manufacturer, retailer, and
>marketer for his/her own personal line of merchandise? Most people in this
>country are employees in some larger company in which the power and
>company earnings are disporportionately concentrated at the top, 
>disproportionate to the economic value of the contributions of those
>disenfranchised employees. There are many exceptions, but this is true for
>the majority. And given the economically more favorable situation to
>produce things in large quantities (more favorable from the corporation's
>standpoint or entrepeneur's standpoint), there will necessarily be more
>lower level employees than entrepeneurs in a capitalist society and 
>increasingly so with time.

Actually the census data does not bear this out either. The majority of
workers do *not* work for the Fortune 500 companies. Most workers are
employed by companies with work forces of 100 or less. Most *new* jobs
are created by small companies. Corporate CEOs and upper management
people in the Fortune 500 are paid very high wages. In many cases this 
is not warranted by their contribution to the success of the enterprise, 
but in other cases it is. I think there is little doubt that a CEO, such 
as Lee Iacoca, who turns a company around from near bankruptcy to good 
health is worth the $8 million dollars he commands. His contribution to 
the company is worth billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs. 
Joe Blow on the assembly line contributed to the company's success too, 
but in no way to the same degree.

You seem hung up on the glories of mass production. That type of old
line industrial thinking is passe. The world has changed, and business
has had to change with it. The bulk of economic activity no longer
focuses around the assembly line. Today it is the flexible company
with the flexible work force who can meet the rapidly changing demand
for products in the marketplace. Giants like IBM have been solidly
trounced by garage operations that can respond quickly to changing
demands. The institutional inertia of huge companies have made them
easy targets in today's market. It's the small firm that is enjoying
success today because it can react quickly to a changing market. The
old ways of the assembly line have given way to the work group. There's
no time to filter decisions through eight layers of management before
an enterprise can act. The security of lifetime employment and a slow
progression up the seniority ladder are gone. Today's worker has to
be adaptable and mobile to succeed, just like the companies he will
work for.

>>sj> Unions are being busted and forced to make concessions,
>>
>>  Because they've failed to expand their power base from old industrial-age
>>  blue-collar workers. Their inability to keep up with the global market,
>>  just like corporations, has made them weak and ineffective. But, they have
>>  powerful political friends, just like corporations, and so they stick 
>>  around and make life hell for their political enemies (read economic com-
>>  petition.)
>
>No, rather because of a series of rulings and procedures the Bush 
>administration and previously the Reagan administration had put through at
>the behest of their corporate sponsors. Some of the unions have developed
>their own bureaucracies which undermine the best interests of the workers,
>but the ability of labor to effectively organize and make reasonable demands
>such as safe working conditions has been wrecked by corporate sponsored
>administrative rulings and some legislation corporate interests were able
>to ram through, all in the interest of protecting profits even at the cost
>of workers' safety.

As a member of two unions, I must respectfully say this is bull. The unions
have dug their own graves. They are stuck in a timewarp where miners and
company cops battle it out on the picket line. They expouse political
retoric from the 1930s and back causes that are totally bankrupt in the
eyes of the rank and file. They have totally failed to adapt to the reality 
of a mobile, educated workforce with aspirations of rising above the status 
of a cog in the machine in an era of global competition. Time to market, just 
in time manufacturing, flexible job assignment, flextime, and telecommuting 
are alien concepts to the dinosaurs running unions. They are vital concepts 
for a company that hopes to be competitive today, and to the worker who hopes
to have a job tommorrow. They confront in an era where they must consult.
They've lost relevance in their social posturing about the "poor" when
their rank and file have become the middle class. They are so corrupt that
there is little hope among the rank and file of displacing them. They are
so wedded to the Democratic Party that there is no hope of changing their
political actions by the rank and file who have by and large rejected the
policies of the tax and spend liberals controlling the Democratic Party.
Unions haven't been murdered, they've committed suicide.

>The farm subsidy program is very much a mess-- you have to let the Feds
>micromanage your farm in order to get subsidies; that program has to be
>completely reworked. But a more general word on regulations: most broad

The farm program is a corrupt mess indeed. The government pays farmers
to grow grain that is allowed to rot on the ground, or is sold to one
of the big three grain exporters at a deep discount. They pay farmers to
produce milk that is poured down the sewer. They erect tariffs protecting
inefficient sugar and peanut operators from foreign competition. The only
farm program that is run right is the tobacco program. The government sets
poundage allocations for each farm and won't let more than that amount of
tobacco be marketed. The government doesn't pay tobacco farmers a dime.
Instead it regulates production so that demand forces the prices to near
parity levels, the only crop that does approach parity levels. About half
the nation's small farmers would be bankrupt without the tobacco program.

>categories of regulations were created to deal with problems that resulted
>from an absence of there being rules-- people were being taken advantage of
>by profit-minded capitalists in every imagineable way and rules were created
>to protect the consumer and the worker. Nowadays, many of the rules have
>become very twisted, some to the point that they no longer server their
>purpose or are counterproductive, but to do away with them altogether would
>bring back the original problem. Instead, they need to be reworked.

Regulation has gotten totally out of hand. Each year Congress passes 
between two and three hundred new laws. Meanwhile the Federal bureaucracy
implements between 15 and 20 thousand new regulations. The regulations, if
placed in a single stack, would be taller than the Washington monument.
No business without a full time legal staff in Washington can hope to
keep track of all the regulations that apply to it's operations. So many
of the regulations conflict that no business can hope to operate without
violating one or more regulations. Everyone has been made a criminal, and
it is only on the whim of some faceless bureaucrat whether he will be
prosecuted or not. It's too late for reform. Every President since
Hoover has tried to reform the bureaucracy. None have succeeded. It's
time for revolutionary change. It must all be torn down and started
over with ironclad rules limiting the numbers and kinds of regulation
that can be done. Congress itself is in serious need of change. I'd
propose as a starting point a constitutional amendment that would
require Comgress to repeal three old laws for every new law it passes.
I'd also make it clear that just incorporating the old laws in the
new bill won't cut it. I'd also limit the size of permanent staff
available to Congress and limit Congressmen to one term. They're 
supposed to be citizen-legislators, not professional politicians
dependent on unelected permanent staff to handle their jobs. It's
time they returned to the real world and tried to live under the
system they've created.

>>sj> Many of the homeless have jobs of 20+ hours per week, some full time.
>>
>>  Of those 20-40 hours/week, they spend between ~10 and ~20 working just to
>>  pay the taxes they're supposed to pay. What a bargain! They get to keep
>>  about *half* their money! Such generosity is unbelievable!
>
>If we had a more progressive taxation system, this would not be the case. But
>those greedy corporate sponsors of politicians will see to it that taxation
>is as flat as they can get. Yet again the profit motive interferes with
>fair government-- a product of a capitalist society.

"Progressive" taxation is a misnomer if I ever heard one. Every time a
person tries to make progress, he gets taxed more heavily. According to
the Constitution and tradition, we are supposed to be equal under the
law, but the tax code is anything but equal. A person's tax bill should
reflect the level of service he demands from the government, nothing less,
nothing more. An income tax has no place in a system that proclaims equality
under the law. It should be replaced with a system of user fees that place
the burden of taxation squarely on the people who benefit from the taxes.

>>  "Everyone" meaning "group of a few hundred or less", since this about the
>>  only scale where "decentralized socialism" can work. No society is built
>>  upon this idea, rather, capitalism is used for production and wealth cre-
>>  ation, socialistic ideals are used for redistribution of that wealth. To
>>  put it blunty, capitalism is the life, socialism the parasite.
>
>And a hell of a life that capitalism gives the majority! Capitalism by its
>very nature concentrates the wealth at the top. Socialism may be a
>parasite but at least it lets everyone live a decent life-- yes, at the
>expense of not letting a few live a lavish life.

Capitalism by it's very nature rewards the productive and penalizes the
slothful. Would that there were a capitalist nation somewhere on this
Earth. The mixed economy in the US does at least allow the majority of
workers a disposable income higher than that of any other large diverse 
nation. It's socialistic aspects do rob the successful to pay the slacker,
but at least most are modestly successful and some can do better if they
try, and can dodge the taxman. Much too much of the income of workers goes
to support non-productive government bureaucracy, and much too much goes
for political bread and circuses, but it could be worse. It is worse in
much of the world.

>>  Capitalism does this already. Sam Walton sure did benefit a lot of people.
>
>I think some people who know more specifics about his treatment of labor
>would argue with that, but, for the moment, let's suppose Sam Walton was in
>a net sense a great benefit to "the people". Some others will be too. But
>many are not and they have enough influence by their accumulated wealth to
>not only exploit their workers and/or the environment and their communities
>but squash attempts to change their corporate behavior. Dupont, Dow, and 
>RJR just to name a few, and the list is plentiful. There are some caring
>corporations, but there are enough simply motivated by capitalism to extract
>as much as they can regardless of how they do it and they have enough power
>that life is made unnecessarily difficult for a large percentage of the 
>country and those suffering are deprived of the power to change it, all in
>the name of profits.

There are a very large number of Walmart associates who would dispute
your view of Sam Walton. And there are a very large number of customers
of Walmart who are glad it's there with it's buy American policies and
it's deep discounts. Great companies like Dupont, Dow, and RJR have made
life better for lots of people. Their actions, like those of any large
group of people, have not always been the best, and sometimes they have
done illegal or unethical things (see regulation for reasons why no
company can operate totally legally), but the benefits they have brought
to the public through their products, and the jobs they have created,
outweigh any transgressions they might have committed. Only a fanatic
doesn't love Teflon and Saran Wrap. Dupont explosives are the best in
the world. I like Velveta. And Dow's medical advancements are responsible
for many people being alive today who would have otherwise perished.
Tobacco may be an unheathy vice, but it's a legal vice freely chosen
by millions, and it paid my way through school. I like Old Joe. One
of the things I like best about a free society is that you can chose
to go to hell in your own way. That seems to be changing in America,
but perhaps it's not to late to undo the damage done to the American
spirit by the safety at any price fanatics who want to swath us in
protective cotton from cradle to grave. A life without risk is not
worth living.

Gary