See What Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Has Caused:

[Cammmpbell]

It began with Reagan's trillion's in cuts but look closely at the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and it's not rocket science....the wealthy no longer pay their fair share:

Their kids don't go 10,000 miles across the globe to fight and die in the wars they start either

What a bunch of bullshit.
Increasing productivity and reducing cost is a good thing.
Labor is a commodity. Labor is the largest cost of doing business. With profits being squeezed by an increasingly globalized marketplace and increased competition, labor is the first thing to be looked at for cost reductions.
For example....The CEO of American Airlines, one the legacy carriers saddled with very high labor costs due to labor unions told of a situation where the security of hangars was modified to reduce labor costs.
First the theft of tools and materials was deemed out of control. So the company placed security people. With the reduced thefts, the word was obviously out that it was unwise to steal. They reduced the number of people used for security.
Then the company brought in guard dogs and replaced the security people.
Then with even fewer thefts, they reduced the number of guard dogs then reduced the number of hours the dogs were present.
The cost of security went from thousands of dollars per week, to a few hundred. I call that good business.
Confiscating more money for government to spend has nothing to do with this.
Private and public sector expenses are mutually exclusive.

Anyone that does not know that when a company can increase productivity while firing employees at the same time it skyrockets stock prices is a fool.
Increases dividends to the middle class retirees, lowers interest rates of capital, frees up capital for invesment in growth-brick and mortar and raises salaries for those workers left in the company.
Basic Econ 101. Most high school grads can not even balance a check book.
Best thing for capitalism is to lower labor costs and raise productivity.
But the liberal is a damn fool and has no comprehension of the free market.
They want "what is fair" as the cry if Johnny gets a bigger cookie than they did.

Total U S Debt

09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accomodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38(Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

 

[Gadawg73]

Labor is not a commodity. Labor is people doing work. Labor includes CEOs and accountants and janitors and every other person who contributes something toward the production of goods and services.

Owners consider labor a "cost", because the income created by the workers is divided between them and the owners. The less that goes to salaries, the more more there is for profits. Their goal, therefore, is to get as much work as possible out of workers, while paying them as little as as they can. If they could reduce the income of ordinary Americans to the level of Chinese factory workers, that would be an advantage (to them).

So labor is a "cost", but only if you look at it purely from the point of view of people who own things, but don't work themselves.

When you look at it from the perspective of the interest of the country as a whole - rather than strictly from the perspective of the rich - a country with a healthy middle class is better than one where a tiny minority consume more and more, while the people who actually do the work struggle harder and harder for less and less.

There's the first indication that you're a moron. An effective argument doesn't start out by disputing the basic laws of economics.

If labor is not a cost, then where does an accountant note the figure the company pays you? Does he put it under charity? In your case, that's probably appropriate.

And he believes the workers created the profit!

 

[Gadawg73]

What a bunch of bullshit.
Increasing productivity and reducing cost is a good thing.
Labor is a commodity. Labor is the largest cost of doing business. With profits being squeezed by an increasingly globalized marketplace and increased competition, labor is the first thing to be looked at for cost reductions.
For example....The CEO of American Airlines, one the legacy carriers saddled with very high labor costs due to labor unions told of a situation where the security of hangars was modified to reduce labor costs.
First the theft of tools and materials was deemed out of control. So the company placed security people. With the reduced thefts, the word was obviously out that it was unwise to steal. They reduced the number of people used for security.
Then the company brought in guard dogs and replaced the security people.
Then with even fewer thefts, they reduced the number of guard dogs then reduced the number of hours the dogs were present.
The cost of security went from thousands of dollars per week, to a few hundred. I call that good business.
Confiscating more money for government to spend has nothing to do with this.
Private and public sector expenses are mutually exclusive.

Anyone that does not know that when a company can increase productivity while firing employees at the same time it skyrockets stock prices is a fool.
Increases dividends to the middle class retirees, lowers interest rates of capital, frees up capital for invesment in growth-brick and mortar and raises salaries for those workers left in the company.
Basic Econ 101. Most high school grads can not even balance a check book.
Best thing for capitalism is to lower labor costs and raise productivity.
But the liberal is a damn fool and has no comprehension of the free market.
They want "what is fair" as the cry if Johnny gets a bigger cookie than they did.

Total U S Debt

09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accomodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38(Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

No President has ever created any debt.
Hate to bust your bubble there Moe but ONLY Congress can spend or borrow $$ and pass tax cuts or increases.
How come you did not know that?

 

[Old Rocks]

The wealthy pay far more than their fair share.

If the libs were to tell the truth, it's not that the wealthy don't pay a fair share, it's that they get to keep more than what the libs consider fair.

Keep kissing that ass, Katz, maybe someday they will throw you a dime.

 

[Old Rocks]

Labor is not a commodity. Labor is people doing work. Labor includes CEOs and accountants and janitors and every other person who contributes something toward the production of goods and services.

Owners consider labor a "cost", because the income created by the workers is divided between them and the owners. The less that goes to salaries, the more more there is for profits. Their goal, therefore, is to get as much work as possible out of workers, while paying them as little as as they can. If they could reduce the income of ordinary Americans to the level of Chinese factory workers, that would be an advantage (to them).

So labor is a "cost", but only if you look at it purely from the point of view of people who own things, but don't work themselves.

When you look at it from the perspective of the interest of the country as a whole - rather than strictly from the perspective of the rich - a country with a healthy middle class is better than one where a tiny minority consume more and more, while the people who actually do the work struggle harder and harder for less and less.

There's the first indication that you're a moron. An effective argument doesn't start out by disputing the basic laws of economics.

If labor is not a cost, then where does an accountant note the figure the company pays you? Does he put it under charity? In your case, that's probably appropriate.

And he believes the workers created the profit!

You mean a real business can create a profit without labor?

Adam Smith and the Division of Labor

The main focus of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations lies in the concept of economic growth. Growth, according to Smith, is rooted in the increasing division of labor. This idea relates primarily to the specialization of the labor force, essentially the breaking down of large jobs into many tiny components. Under this regime each worker becomes an expert in one isolated area of production, thus increasing his efficiency. The fact that laborers do not have to switch tasks during the day further saves time and money. Of course, this is exactly what allowed Victorian factories to grow throughout the nineteenth century. Assembly line technology made it necessary for a worker to focus his or her attention on one small part of the production process. Surprisingly, Smith recognized the potential problems of this development. He pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers. This sprung from the hope that education could combat the deleterious effects of factory life. Division of labor also implies assigning each worker to the job that suits him best. Productive labor, to Smith, fulfills two important requirements. First, it must "lead to the production of tangible objects." Second, labor must "create a surplus" which can be reinvested into production.

Another main concern for Smith involved tracing the roots of value. He identified two different kinds of value, "use value" and "exchange value." The concept of exchange value interested Smith considerably. The diamond-water paradox, in particular, proved puzzling to him: Why is it that diamonds, which have very little practical use, command a higher price than water which is indispensable to life? By discovering the true source of value Smith hoped to find a benchmark for measuring economic growth. Eventually Smith settled on labor as the source of value: The number of hours labor that a good can be exchanged for constitutes its inherent worth. (Note, this is not the same as saying that a good is worth the number of hours spent in its production.) The value of a good can also be referred to as the "natural price." The natural price need not function as the actual cost of a good in the marketplace. Competition, however, was expected to push the market price towards the natural price.

 

[Sundial]

What a bunch of bullshit.
Increasing productivity and reducing cost is a good thing.
Labor is a commodity. Labor is the largest cost of doing business. With profits being squeezed by an increasingly globalized marketplace and increased competition, labor is the first thing to be looked at for cost reductions.
For example....The CEO of American Airlines, one the legacy carriers saddled with very high labor costs due to labor unions told of a situation where the security of hangars was modified to reduce labor costs.
First the theft of tools and materials was deemed out of control. So the company placed security people. With the reduced thefts, the word was obviously out that it was unwise to steal. They reduced the number of people used for security.
Then the company brought in guard dogs and replaced the security people.
Then with even fewer thefts, they reduced the number of guard dogs then reduced the number of hours the dogs were present.
The cost of security went from thousands of dollars per week, to a few hundred. I call that good business.
Confiscating more money for government to spend has nothing to do with this.
Private and public sector expenses are mutually exclusive.

Labor is not a commodity. Labor is people doing work. Labor includes CEOs and accountants and janitors and every other person who contributes something toward the production of goods and services.

Owners consider labor a "cost", because the income created by the workers is divided between them and the owners. The less that goes to salaries, the more more there is for profits. Their goal, therefore, is to get as much work as possible out of workers, while paying them as little as as they can. If they could reduce the income of ordinary Americans to the level of Chinese factory workers, that would be an advantage (to them).

So labor is a "cost", but only if you look at it purely from the point of view of people who own things, but don't work themselves.

When you look at it from the perspective of the interest of the country as a whole - rather than strictly from the perspective of the rich - a country with a healthy middle class is better than one where a tiny minority consume more and more, while the people who actually do the work struggle harder and harder for less and less.

You are a gross ignoramus.
Labor is a commodity. Just like raw materials. If owners can lower their cost of raw materials, they will and save money. If they can lower their cost of labor, they will. US workers make more than CHinese workers not because owners were somehow more beneficient but because they are more productive. Low wages equate universally with low productivity.

American workers make more not only because we're more productive, but because the US has better and fairer laws.

Plus, we have unions.

Workers are not "just like raw materials". Raw materials don't do anything. They just sit there. They don't create, or build, or manufacture. Raw materials are more like the leisure class.

Except that raw materials don't have families. And they're not people.

 

[bripat9643]

Adam Smith is not the final authority on all economic issues. The theory of value, in particular, has undergone an extensive evolution. That labor theory of value has been utterly discredited. Karl Marx was the last major economic figure to endorse it.

It's hardly a shock that you endorse a theory espoused by Karl Marx.

Today we know that price is where the supply and demand curves intersect. If you don't know that basic fact of economics, then you should keep your mouth shut, lest you make an utter fool of yourself.

Whoops, too late!

Another main concern for Smith involved tracing the roots of value. He identified two different kinds of value, "use value" and "exchange value." The concept of exchange value interested Smith considerably. The diamond-water paradox, in particular, proved puzzling to him: Why is it that diamonds, which have very little practical use, command a higher price than water which is indispensable to life? By discovering the true source of value Smith hoped to find a benchmark for measuring economic growth. Eventually Smith settled on labor as the source of value: The number of hours labor that a good can be exchanged for constitutes its inherent worth. (Note, this is not the same as saying that a good is worth the number of hours spent in its production.) The value of a good can also be referred to as the "natural price." The natural price need not function as the actual cost of a good in the marketplace. Competition, however, was expected to push the market price towards the natural price.

 

[Sundial]

Labor is not a commodity. Labor is people doing work. Labor includes CEOs and accountants and janitors and every other person who contributes something toward the production of goods and services.

Owners consider labor a "cost", because the income created by the workers is divided between them and the owners. The less that goes to salaries, the more more there is for profits. Their goal, therefore, is to get as much work as possible out of workers, while paying them as little as as they can. If they could reduce the income of ordinary Americans to the level of Chinese factory workers, that would be an advantage (to them).

So labor is a "cost", but only if you look at it purely from the point of view of people who own things, but don't work themselves.

When you look at it from the perspective of the interest of the country as a whole - rather than strictly from the perspective of the rich - a country with a healthy middle class is better than one where a tiny minority consume more and more, while the people who actually do the work struggle harder and harder for less and less.

There's the first indication that you're a moron. An effective argument doesn't start out by disputing the basic laws of economics.

If labor is not a cost, then where does an accountant note the figure the company pays you? Does he put it under charity? In your case, that's probably appropriate.

And he believes the workers created the profit!

Where do profits come from?

 

[Sundial]

Anyone that does not know that when a company can increase productivity while firing employees at the same time it skyrockets stock prices is a fool.
Increases dividends to the middle class retirees, lowers interest rates of capital, frees up capital for invesment in growth-brick and mortar and raises salaries for those workers left in the company.
Basic Econ 101. Most high school grads can not even balance a check book.
Best thing for capitalism is to lower labor costs and raise productivity.
But the liberal is a damn fool and has no comprehension of the free market.
They want "what is fair" as the cry if Johnny gets a bigger cookie than they did.

Total U S Debt

09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accomodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38(Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)

09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

No President has ever created any debt.
Hate to bust your bubble there Moe but ONLY Congress can spend or borrow $$ and pass tax cuts or increases.
How come you did not know that?

So - according to you - Obama hasn't increased the debt?

 

[daveman]

OMG The RED SCARE Be scared, be very scared the commies are out to get you.

Communists have killed a hundred million people. People who whitewash that history (you know, leftists) can't be trusted. At all.

How many American citizen have been killed while living and working in the United States by communists?
How many Americans have been killed or injured by faulty products, unsafe meat or produce, or tobacco?

It's easy to win if you stack the deck.

But it's cheating. Guess you don't think you can win otherwise.

 

[Sundial]

There's the first indication that you're a moron. An effective argument doesn't start out by disputing the basic laws of economics.

If labor is not a cost, then where does an accountant note the figure the company pays you? Does he put it under charity? In your case, that's probably appropriate.

And he believes the workers created the profit!

You mean a real business can create a profit without labor?

Adam Smith and the Division of Labor

The main focus of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations lies in the concept of economic growth. Growth, according to Smith, is rooted in the increasing division of labor. This idea relates primarily to the specialization of the labor force, essentially the breaking down of large jobs into many tiny components. Under this regime each worker becomes an expert in one isolated area of production, thus increasing his efficiency. The fact that laborers do not have to switch tasks during the day further saves time and money. Of course, this is exactly what allowed Victorian factories to grow throughout the nineteenth century. Assembly line technology made it necessary for a worker to focus his or her attention on one small part of the production process. Surprisingly, Smith recognized the potential problems of this development. He pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers. This sprung from the hope that education could combat the deleterious effects of factory life. Division of labor also implies assigning each worker to the job that suits him best. Productive labor, to Smith, fulfills two important requirements. First, it must "lead to the production of tangible objects." Second, labor must "create a surplus" which can be reinvested into production.

Another main concern for Smith involved tracing the roots of value. He identified two different kinds of value, "use value" and "exchange value." The concept of exchange value interested Smith considerably. The diamond-water paradox, in particular, proved puzzling to him: Why is it that diamonds, which have very little practical use, command a higher price than water which is indispensable to life? By discovering the true source of value Smith hoped to find a benchmark for measuring economic growth. Eventually Smith settled on labor as the source of value: The number of hours labor that a good can be exchanged for constitutes its inherent worth. (Note, this is not the same as saying that a good is worth the number of hours spent in its production.) The value of a good can also be referred to as the "natural price." The natural price need not function as the actual cost of a good in the marketplace. Competition, however, was expected to push the market price towards the natural price.

Adam Smith obviously doesn't understand economics. He should have checked with Britpat before he wrote that.

 

[daveman]

51% of Americans pay NO income tax and 99% of them are NOT wealthy.
They are the ones that do not pay their fair share.
They DO NOT PAY ANY SHARE.
Slash entitlements immediately.
End Section 8 housing yesterday, cut food stamps in half, end the free lunch program at schools and let the states do it, do a total review of SS disability where half the recipients CAN WORK, end government unions yesterday, end the Dept. of education, vouchers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Do all that and next year we have a surplus.
Taxes now ARE TOO HIGH. Spending has and always be THE PROBLEM.

That violated Democrat special interest groups' civil rights. Or something. You racist.

Right, USMB lefties?

 

[bripat9643]

American workers make more not only because we're more productive, but because the US has better and fairer laws.

Plus, we have unions.

Horseshit. Higher productivity is the only reason Americans enjoy higher wages. In other words, they owe their high standard of living to those greedy 1% who provide all the capital they use to do their jobs. A man with a shovel can dig a small hole in a single day. A man with a D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer and dig a hole big enough to hold a large cruise ship in a single day. That extra productivity allows the corporation who employs him to pay him higher wages.

Any other claims about the cause of higher wages are pure propaganda.

Workers are not "just like raw materials". Raw materials don't do anything. They just sit there. They don't create, or build, or manufacture. Raw materials are more like the leisure class.

Except that raw materials don't have families. And they're not people.

Workers without capital produce almost nothing.

 

[daveman]

51% of Americans pay NO income tax and 99% of them are NOT wealthy.
They are the ones that do not pay their fair share.
They DO NOT PAY ANY SHARE.
Slash entitlements immediately.
End Section 8 housing yesterday, cut food stamps in half, end the free lunch program at schools and let the states do it, do a total review of SS disability where half the recipients CAN WORK, end government unions yesterday, end the Dept. of education, vouchers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Do all that and next year we have a surplus.
Taxes now ARE TOO HIGH. Spending has and always be THE PROBLEM.

Taxes are too high - most of them, anyway. Property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes - all too high.

The only tax that's not too high is the income tax on the rich. The tax rate on the richest Americans has declined to the lowest rate on record - 17% - if memory serves.

Taxes on capital gains need to be raised to the same level as taxes on earned income. Taxes on the richest Americans need to be raised - immediately.

Taxes on everyone else should be cut. Especially payroll taxes. Payroll taxes are a tax on work. We need more people working, and taking home more of their paychecks - now, more than ever.

Why should taxes on capital gains be raises to the same level as earned income? WHy don't we lower the tax on earned income to the same level as cap gains?

Lower taxes? You may as well be speaking a foreign language. Leftists don't think it's possible to lower taxes.

 

[thereisnospoon]

The wealthy pay far more than their fair share.

If the libs were to tell the truth, it's not that the wealthy don't pay a fair share, it's that they get to keep more than what the libs consider fair.

I don't really care what's "fair" - that's a matter of opinion. I'm more concerned with what's practical. Its impractical for the poor to shoulder the same burden as the wealthy - that should be obvious - yet it seems to be a major goal of the Republican party.

The rich presently have their lowest tax burden in nearly a life time - and the federal government has a massive deficit. It doesn't take a moron to see that we should make up part of that deficit by restoring taxation of the rich to levels that have worked well in the past.

The federal government has massive deficits because it spends far too much.
Should the federal government not have the ability to print money to cover deficit spending, obviously the government would be far less apt to over spend.

read this.....Class War -- The Calvin Coolidge Response | Fox News
Of course this an opinion piece. However it is a lucid and logical opinion.

 

[thereisnospoon]

the concentration of wealth will kill democracy AND capitalism

That is the kicker that the Cons just can't seem to figure out. They actually believe it is better for the country and themselves to have more and more of the wealth concentrated among a very small percentage of the population. It is just absolutely mind boggling that they can't see how this is such a big problem and where it will eventually lead us. And then they have the nerve to cry class warfare when in fact the class war has already been won by the very few at the top, with the help of the idiots at the bottom.

Unfortunately, once the masses figure out how badly they have been duped, then the class warfare will truly begin and the richest of the rich will see their stripped from them. Unfortunately, that will not be good for anyone either, but it will eventually happen if corrections are not made soon.

It is those on YOUR SIDE that started class war with your constant carping and moaning about how 'unfair' life in the US allegedly is...

 

[Gadawg73]

There's the first indication that you're a moron. An effective argument doesn't start out by disputing the basic laws of economics.

If labor is not a cost, then where does an accountant note the figure the company pays you? Does he put it under charity? In your case, that's probably appropriate.

And he believes the workers created the profit!

You mean a real business can create a profit without labor?

Adam Smith and the Division of Labor

The main focus of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations lies in the concept of economic growth. Growth, according to Smith, is rooted in the increasing division of labor. This idea relates primarily to the specialization of the labor force, essentially the breaking down of large jobs into many tiny components. Under this regime each worker becomes an expert in one isolated area of production, thus increasing his efficiency. The fact that laborers do not have to switch tasks during the day further saves time and money. Of course, this is exactly what allowed Victorian factories to grow throughout the nineteenth century. Assembly line technology made it necessary for a worker to focus his or her attention on one small part of the production process. Surprisingly, Smith recognized the potential problems of this development. He pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide education to workers. This sprung from the hope that education could combat the deleterious effects of factory life. Division of labor also implies assigning each worker to the job that suits him best. Productive labor, to Smith, fulfills two important requirements. First, it must "lead to the production of tangible objects." Second, labor must "create a surplus" which can be reinvested into production.

Another main concern for Smith involved tracing the roots of value. He identified two different kinds of value, "use value" and "exchange value." The concept of exchange value interested Smith considerably. The diamond-water paradox, in particular, proved puzzling to him: Why is it that diamonds, which have very little practical use, command a higher price than water which is indispensable to life? By discovering the true source of value Smith hoped to find a benchmark for measuring economic growth. Eventually Smith settled on labor as the source of value: The number of hours labor that a good can be exchanged for constitutes its inherent worth. (Note, this is not the same as saying that a good is worth the number of hours spent in its production.) The value of a good can also be referred to as the "natural price." The natural price need not function as the actual cost of a good in the marketplace. Competition, however, was expected to push the market price towards the natural price.

Explain to me how government workers create any profit.
Name a union employee that is interested in profit over his self interest.
Profit is created by the owners.

 

[Gadawg73]

If workers created profit then how come they demand double time today and time and half for any other overtime.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Republicans and their sheep will continue to ignore this...to their peril.

Remind me what the problem is.

Whether there's a problem depends on whether you care about your country.

If you don't ---> no problem.

yes nice rhetorical response. That was just chock full of substance.

 

[Sundial]

American workers make more not only because we're more productive, but because the US has better and fairer laws.

Plus, we have unions.

Horseshit. Higher productivity is the only reason Americans enjoy higher wages. In other words, they owe their high standard of living to those greedy 1% who provide all the capital they use to do their jobs. A man with a shovel can dig a small hole in a single day. A man with a D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer and dig a hole big enough to hold a large cruise ship in a single day. That extra productivity allows the corporation who employs him to pay him higher wages.

Any other claims about the cause of higher wages are pure propaganda.

Workers are not "just like raw materials". Raw materials don't do anything. They just sit there. They don't create, or build, or manufacture. Raw materials are more like the leisure class.

Except that raw materials don't have families. And they're not people.

Workers without capital produce almost nothing.

Who built the Caterpillar?

And

Where do profits come from, if not from people doing work?