Do you not see the difference between us right in this post?
Here's your "evidence":
"My arguments" are not mine. They are founded on the basis of research. You act like your empathic claims are true because you said it. We all know everyone is prone to error. Perhaps we are both in error.
Can you tell the difference between what your saying and that reality might be entirely different? In other words, do you admit it's possible be drawling erroneous conclusions?
I cannot find any evidence that you care much about this difference. At this point, debate becomes pointless. For some reason I knew you don't listen well to opposite viewpoints and yet I still engaged with you. The only way we could have productive discussion is if I admitted everything you say is the truth. But what's the point then? There still isn't one. I am well aware that it's natural to think you are right. But there is quite a difference between that and what you engage in. I fully admit I am fallible and am open to being wrong. Self-reflection and internal honesty are crucial for human interaction. If you fail to think you might be wrong, then you will only amplify those claims leading to more and more unfalsifiable claims.
I think you claim that financial institution bring only good to society is approaching this unfalsifiable status. You admit the bailout was decisive harm on society. But did you know it benefited the institutions that helped inflame the crisis? They became stronger in some respects and certainly bigger. So indeed, no matter what happens, there is a benefit from financial institutions, regardless of what's going on in society.
There is profit in time of crisis. That's because if your a CEO, you externalize the costs, and suddenly, poof, the costs disappear. But do the costs really disappear? I know you think they do and that means you are committed to avoiding thinking about a different perspective. Namely, the costs do not disappear but are transferred.
Every working class American inherently knows--they don't disappear--they are shifted on the public and the environment. Privatization does not reduces costs, instead it shifts the burden from internal to the company or system to outside it. Since you would never acknowledge this in a million years, it was pointless of me to tell you. It's not like financial institutions do not bring grave harm and systemic risk, you just refuse to think about this--and I've provided three renowned economists who say exactly what I am; namely that it's likely that overall, the net effect of financial institutions are harmful (meaning they do benefit but the benefit is overshadowed by the grave risk and loss that is inevitable when costs are externalized).
To cast your argument in a different light, its like your using an argument that was more like a tactic in the 80s and before. A rising tide lifts all boats. In your context this means financial institutions generate profit and this trickles down, lifting up society. First off, we all know it does not trickle, if it does anything at all. Wages have virtually stagnated or declined since the big trickle down days. But let's take the other side that says innovation benefits society. It does on the face value but does it really?
Lot's of talk, lot's of opinion, zero direct evidence.
Here is my evidence:
Financial Information | United Way
2012 Consolidated Financial Statements
Page 8, Investments, Custodial Funds, Truist Asset Management.
Direct undisputed proof that the United Way that helps hundreds of thousands of Americans, and Millions world wide, use financial institutions to do it.
Then you hilliarously say"
""My arguments" are not mine. They are founded on the basis of research. You act like your empathic claims are true because you said it."
Really? Because I just posted direct facts. You just posted opinion. What I said isn't true because I said it, it's true because you can look at the evidence, and see that it is in fact true.
You claim that I said all financial institutions are beneficial, but then point out that I said the bailouts of bad institutions was bad. You contradicted yourself in two sentences.
You claimed that the bailouts benefited institutions that "inflamed" the crisis. That is not only irrelevant, but false. It's irrelevant because I already said I was against the bailout. But it's also false, because it didn't benefit the companies the inflamed the crisis. Countrywide did not get a bailout. Bank of American got a bailout, in order to buy Countrywide. Bank of American was not dealing in sub-prime loans. Countrywide was. The primary beneficiaries of the bailout, were the bond holders of the companies. The Bond holders were pensions, foundations, and foreign investors, and foriegn governments. Those were the main beneficiaries of the bailout. Not the institutions that inflamed the crisis.
You claim CEO's externalize costs. While I'm sympathetic to that claim, the people arguing from your perspective, rarely if ever, have direct evidence of this. When my next door neighbor opens a pig farm next to my home, I can point to direct evidence of externalized costs, namely the decrease in my property value. I can say that my property was worth X, and now is worth Y, and the drop between is the externalized cost of the pig farm operations. But most of what the left refers to as externalize costs, are merely made up, fictional fabrications, built on estimates on estimates, to come up with some magic number of externalized costs. If you want to show me direct evidence of externalized costs, related to the topic at hand, by all means. But saying blaw blaw blaw, is not evidence. That's opinion.
You claim privatizing does not reduce costs, but shifts cost somewhere else. Yet there are millions of examples where that is not true. Again, making the claim, and proving it are two different things. Ironically you mentioned Chile. Did you know that Chile, the pension system is privatized? And there system costs a fraction as much as our Social Security, which is going broke, and their system is not. Where is the externalized costs there, given you are the one who brought up Chile?
Then you talk about rising tide lifts all boats, and trickle down, as if it's not true. But it is true. Trickle down isn't something that happened in the 1980s. It's happening, now. It's happening all over the world. It has happened all throughout history. Trickle down is how the world works. Everything works from trickle down. Every job that exists, exists because of trickle down. Even self employed people, generally only have jobs because of trickle down. That self employed auto mechanic, where do you think he got the tools, or the parts, to fix your car? From some rich guy, who had them built. If you are a free-lance accountant, where do you think you got the computer, printer, ink paper, and software to do your accounting? Trickle down. Some rich guy somewhere, had all of that made, which allows you to have a job. Trickle down is how the world works.
And lastly, you claimed wages have stagnated, and I already said, they have not. The only wages that have stagnated, have been "household income", and that's because of divorce, and college students moving out on their own.
There is quality observation that shows more consumer choice does not always imply better for consumers. (see
Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice | Talk Video | TED or his
book, which I read.
Yes I am aware of this. So, what exactly does this have to do with anything we're discussing here? Minimum wage? Banks? Capitalism?
You can't seriously suggest that people in the Soviet Union were better off without choice?
A report published in January by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights and the Center for Studies and Support for Local Development (CEADEL) offers a detailed case study of the corruption, abuse and shameless profiteering that often exemplify the global supply chain, demonstrating that globalization and "free trade" do not "lift all boats" but instead build more yachts for the 1%.
Here's the report:
http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports/document/1401-alianzaguatemala.pdf
Back in the 1990s, they pushed a yacht tax, which killed the American Yacht industry, leaving over a thousand lower and middle income employees unemployed and jobless. It's ironic that people complain about rich people having yachts, yet claim to care about the lower and middle class, as if they were better off unemployed.
Similarly, Walmart pays more wages for jobs, than nearly any other company with similar positions, yet here you are posting a link attacking them.
It reminds me of the screaming over Nikey Shoe Factory in Malaysia. Oh how horrible that they were paying people so little. Then you look at the actual facts, and find that Nikey was paying those people more money than they could earn anywhere else in Malaysia. That for ever one positions open, they had over 500 applications, because the Malaysians knew there was no better position. But the people on the left screamed and yelled, until Nikey agreed to pay more. Of course in order to pay employees more money in wages, they had to lay off other workers to free up that wage money. Hundreds of Malaysians lost their jobs, and ended up worse off, unemployed, or employed somewhere else earning much less.
But the left never cares. They harm people over and over, and as long as they "feel good" about it, they don't give a crap what happens to those poor people.
Similarly, I wager you have never been to Guatemala, nor know anything about it. I have supported several mission trips to Guatemala, and talked with the people who want there. These people in Guatemala, have little hope for a job at all. Their system is so screwed up, that just opening a business alone, is like pulling teeth, and thus finding a job in itself is near impossible. They have no education, no skills, no abilities, and are desperate for anything. So Walmart comes in, and offers thousands of jobs, to desperate people, all of which pay far more than anything they could get elsewhere, and here you are trying to tell me that Free trade hasn't lifted all boats? You think those Guatemalans would be better off starving with no job?
Nah, you are wrong. Tons of opinion, very little fact.
So the benefits of the wealthy do not simply benefit society. This as not an axiom like you keep repeating. Maybe the best we can do is say financial institutions bring grave harm and risk AS WELL AS stark benefits. That's the best compromise I can come up with. But like I said, those three renowned economists think there is greater harm than good produced--the net result.
Tell that to the Chinese that before were earning $2 a week. 63% of China was living below the poverty line, without those harmful wealthy people screwing them over.
Tell that to the Malaysians whose jobs you eliminated by attacking Nikey. Tell them how much better off they are earning less, if anything, now that you eliminated their jobs.
Tell that to the Guatemalans, who have jobs working for Walmart, earning more than they could have ever earned anywhere else.
You have the right to be wrong.
Steering it back to some semblance of minimum wage debate, I would like to comment that money should not be the only incentive to work. Many of us know this in our own lives but given capitalism has treated work as drudgery and therefore you've gotta pay people to do it has been a real sham. Human beings are by nature creative and expressive, those who love their work would do and and indeed do it even when they aren't being paid. So capitalism has missed out on developing full human potential by a massive scale. People could be productive just as easily without the money incentive, it's just a matter of what you like and what you do and beginning to think outside of the money-ist world and work era we live in.
In pre-78 China, if you were born to a chinese impoverished farmer, you were required by the communist government to work on the farm, and remain poor. You would grow up poor and impoverished. You would live poor and impoverished. You would die poor and impoverished, working every day of your life, until you died. Didn't matter if you liked your job. Didn't matter if you enjoyed your work. Nothing mattered. The communist government gave you this as your lot, and that was your lot in life.
Capitalism gives people freedom. You can work at Wendy's until you die, or move on. You can Remain a warehouse worker, or start your own company. You can be a drunk guy, whittling duck callers on your back porch, and end up a multi-millionaire with a TV show on A&E.
Under Communism, and Socialism, "drudgery" is a law.
Under Free-market Capitalism, "drudgery" is a choice.
If you are miserable in your job, the only one keeping you there, is you. A few years back I had a very bad year. I decided I didn't like my job. So I quit. No one came and stopped me. I got another job, at someplace better, and life went on.
