Seems to me that if we have an economy based on consumer spending, giving consumers more money to spend would be a good thing.
No no, see once the most super-rich person collects all the money they win the game, and then we all get to quit.
If by "quitting" you mean we all die, I think you just might be right.
New Game+ ?
Can I quit right now?
This is why I pray for there to be an afterlife, I would just love to sit in a Celestial break room sipping tea with a long dead friend with whom I've been reunited, and just thank God that it's all over.
We'll get there in our time, friend.
But before that we fight each other in a lawless starvation hellscape.
I legitimately don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp. I'd gladly buy your $thing if I could afford it
Because the way they see it, you’d have to take their money through wages in order to afford stuff. If their only liquidity is through perpetually revolving loans against the equity they hold, then their only job is to make that equity ever increase. The less those companies pay, the higher the profit. The higher the profit, the greater the dividends. They greater the dividends, the higher the stock price. The higher the stock price, the larger the valuation. Ever increasing collateral = perpetual revolving borrowing patterns = cheat code for unlimited money.
But if it ever falls apart they’ll be on the hook for a loan so big they might not be able to pay it back if they liquidate everything. So they MUST win at all costs. This is the deal with the devil. Ultimate power, but you must keep the plates spinning. One wrong move and you are collected.
A friend of mine had this saying, that if you know someone who is greedy, you don't really know someone who is greedy you know someone who is stupid.
If your company encourages a strong well paid Workforce that can afford to take their earnings and invest it back into the company, then you're going to be doing all right for yourself. But if you continuously try to squeeze blood from a Stone, everyone is going to hate you for it and no one is going to be able to afford your product.
Like seriously these businessmen need to look up Henry ford, and how he couldn't sell cars, he asked his employees why they weren't buying cars, when they told him that they couldn't afford cars he gave them raises and told them to buy cars. This actually worked because a consumer based economy can only work if the consumers can afford to consume.
Unfortunately it's a myth that Ford treated his employees well. Yes, he greatly raised pay, but that was to reduce employee turnover. For example, in 1913 Ford hired 52,000 people to keep a workforce of 14,000. Ford literally had his own secret police who would monitor employees and beat ones who were caught slacking. On top of that, the increase in pay was about half a bonus for meeting "character requirements" enforced by the Socialization Organization.
This was a committee that would visit the employees’ homes to ensure that they were doing things the “American way.” They were supposed to avoid social ills such as gambling and drinking. They were to learn English, and many (primarily the recent immigrants) had to attend classes to become “Americanized.” Women were not eligible for the bonus unless they were single and supporting the family. Also, men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home.
Jesus Christ
Now take that to the extreme and make it a worker-owned company, where everyone has a vested interest in the company succeeding and control over company decisions.
I will drink to that
Heck yeah! And of course, the companies will just eat that loss and not increase their products' price to cover higher wages.
They've increased costs without covering wages so that would be a refreshing change.
Eventually the system is going to come to a screeching halt
As I literally sit here in the cafeteria on my day off rallying for our upcoming union vote 💪
Hell ya! Go get'em tiger!
Its really fascinating to see how cyclical our culture is. Ive heard historians say that we are experiencing a very similar time period compared to the late 1800s and the early 1900s.
Lets hope that this trend doesn't lead to another world war and a depression. But I think what these experts have been trying to convey is its likely we will find ourselves in a new social revolution in the coming years. It happened back then, it will happen again.
Let's hope it's a social revolution that goes forward and not backward.
Is optimism just another way of saying someone's naive? Rhetorical.
I think the doomer mentality in the US has gotten out of hand.
Theory of alienation in action. Only solution is to get involved in the growing labor movement. A big reason my wife is adamant in organizing is setting the example for our kids, as they get closer to becoming teenagers, that you don't have to just become a doomer and act like there is nothing to be done.
I mean, it's not for no reason - if the system doesn't change, almost no one who doesn't have strong financial security already has a light at the end of the tunnel. And the system has only changed for the worse for most of us - less freedom, less protection for individuals, and no efforts to reign in corporations. Most young people aren't going to be able to retire, and most people are unable to get ahead at all
People can't imagine the structural changes we need to take back control of our democracy and make it work for us again, let alone how to get there... There's a lot of (designed) learned helplessness. It's hard for people to imagine things actually improving, we've had almost no wins in my lifetime - just going back and forth on social issues as worker rights backslide so far we've literally gone back to child labor
Honey we are already in the depression.
This is the only language the bastards who ruined our lives understand
There's another one, but we're trying not to talk about it until things get really serious.
not unless biden can help it, again.
I was mad about the Biden administration's approach to the rail strike too but you should know that the administration continued to negotiate after ending the strike to get workers the benefits they deserved while also avoiding the devastating impact of a strike.
There was clear damage resulting from the admin's actions.^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment] Did the rail workers ever have their demands met? /g
Wrongo! Strikes are bad for EVERYONE and should be ILLEGAL! Whenever I hear whispers of union stuff at my company I fire the guilty employee and I also call the cops on them and say I saw a drug deal happening at their house.
Bobby relogin
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