Labor built this country.

[txaslftist]

I'm sick of hearing how entrepreneurs and capital built this country. They helped, sure. But it was labor that built this country.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. My grandfather fought in WWII, got a battlefield commission, and a bunch of medals. He fought again in Korea. He was one heroic, smart, gentle and thoughtful son of a gun. He voted Democratic his entire life.

Why? Because he knew the Democratic Party was the party of the working man. I'm not talking about organized working men, I'm not talking about unions.

I'm talking about the guy (or gal) who gets up at 6 a.m., feeds his kids, gets them off to school, goes in to work at 7:30, early because he wants to get the jump on the day, skips lunch or eats at the job site, and stays until the work is done. He stays until the whistle blows or he works late into the night. Sometimes he takes a second job, because he has to in order to make the ends meet in the middle at the end of the month. He doesn't break the law and he doesn't have much patience for those who do.

His spouse probably has to work, too.

This is the guy who is taking a beating in this country. He's taking a beating because the party running things doesn't give a damn about him. The rich man keeps getting richer, the working man keeps getting the short end of the stick, even though he and his wife together are working harder today than at any time in history.

Capital could give a shit about him. So long as he keeps working, they'll keep making money. So long as he's satisfied putting his kids in Wal-Mart clothes made in China and so long as he doesn't make too much noise about how they're shipping jobs overseas, they'll feed him bullshit and keep ripping him off.

This is the guy the Democrats represent. This is the guy the Democrats have always been the only voice for. This is the guy the Democrats have to keep sticking up for if they ever want to return to power. And once they're in power, they better not forget him.

He doesn't want war, he doesn't want deficits, he doesn't want tax cuts at the expense of his kids. All he wants is a chance to get ahead and give his kids a better life.

He is the guy who built this country. No other country in the world has a guy who works as hard as this guy. Whether he works on a construction site, in a factory, or in a cubicle, no one can match him for sheer hard work.

We better remember this guy.

[Ready4Change]

1. Bravo.

Well said.

[Wallygagger]

2. How could your grandfather build this country

if there was no investment to pay for his labor?

it's a symbiotic relationship. Without labor, Capital is wasted, without Capital Labor can't feed its kids.

There are times where an advantage is held by one or the other...in the 90's Labor had the advantage.

Your grandfather and mine built this country...but they didn't just go out one day and decide to build a road or a bridge or a car. Somebody had to invest that money.

[_Loki_]

4. Indeed.

Labor would sit and do virtually nothing, if not given direction and means, just as investment and capitol would progress quite slowly without the simple resource of affordable labor.

[txaslftist]

6. Baloney.

My grandfather, and guys like him, never "sat and did nothing."

Sure, large capital invested in a lot of stuff. But on the other hand, after the Korean war he took money he'd saved and built a ski lodge. It was his own money and his own hands that built it, and if he hadn't had money, he would have gone in with a vet buddy and done something else.

He didn't need anyone's "direction". And there are a lot of guys and girls just like him today.

[_Loki_]

9. I didn't say..

...."nothing".

Your Grandfather, though, and indeed, anyone engaging in labor alone, would not build a Microsoft or a Starbuck's building without both capital and an entreprenuer.

If he provides either of those himself, well, he's not "labor" anymore, is he?

[txaslftist]

11. You're confusing "organized labor" or "labor as a market input" with...

... hard fugging work, which is what I'm talking about.

Bill Gates didn't start out as a billionaire. He started out working his ass off, and built something out of nothing. The guys who started Starbucks probably did the same thing. They were working men then, now they're rich men. They can take care of themselves.

Maybe I should have said, "The working man" instead of "labor". If I used the wrong terminology, that's my bad.

The point is that once a guy acheives a certain level of success, he stops being a working man and starts being a rich man. And rich men act differently than working men.

And those who've inherited huge wealth act differently altogether. I'm saying we have to be on the side of the guy who is trying to make it, not the guy who has made it, even if once they were the same guy.

[Wallygagger]

15. who is this mysterious "working man"

I keep hearing about?

There's hardly a successful person in this world who isn't a WORKING MAN.
Rich men are still working men, they just don't do heavy lifting and answer phones.

And what is it to you, really, if someone's parents gave them money or not? Does that hinder you from providing wealth to your family?

You can work 20 hour days and 7 day weeks...and there's not a rich person in the world who can stop you. you can come up with a better idea and profit from it and there's no one who can take it from you.

Are you saying that you no longer side with a guy once they reach a certain income level?

[kentuck]

20. Abraham Lincoln said "without labor, capital would not exist.."

If your were a capitalist with a barrel full of money, and there was no labor to increase that barrel, your money would turn to dust and blow away. It would be worthless without labor. Don't say you would invest it, because if there were no labor, there would be no investment either.

[Wallygagger]

21. thank you for repeating

what I've already said.

[kentuck]

23. No, I'm not repeating....

There is a difference in labor. Labor creates. Paper pushers and bureaucrats create nothing. They permit the transfer of wealth from the people who really create it. If you take your barrel of money and built a plant and put people to work, their labor in the other plant will create another barrel of money. Take away their labor and you have nothing.

[Wallygagger]

30. Labor doesn't create. Labor is a tool of

of investment.
Are you saying that an HR person in a corporation, who pays a mechanic isn't as important as that mechanic?

There is no transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The poor HAVE NO WEALTH.

you're making the common mistake of confusing wealth with income.

Without Labor, Capital would be worthless, you are correct...but without capital you have no labor.

think about it...every person, in a barter system is no longer labor. Each is their own entrepeneur...trading labor for money or products for products.

[kentuck]

41. If the mechanic doesn't fix the HR person's car, how do they get to work?

I'm saying there is a disproportionate amount of wealth given to the non-labor class in this country. Yes, I disagree that it is all labor. There is a distinction. Some workers shower when they get up in the morning and some shower when they get off work at night. They all work but they do not all create. Investment wouldn't exist without labor but labor could exist without investment. You are badly misinformed, in my humble opinion.

[_Loki_]

43. Wealth is "given" in exchange for the market value...

...of the work done. That value is determined by two things:

1: The availability of someone else to do the same work.
2: The demand of the employer for the work to be done

[kentuck]

47. Ah.. the magic "marketplace"....

It will determine everything, including what laws that will be passed to protect themselves from workers that might wish to organize because they think their labor is more valuable but those with money also have power and they can buy politicians and they can create laws. So it's not really about "market value" - it's about power and keeping power and he who has the most money has the most power. The "market" is a bunch of baloney.

[_Loki_]

79. Your argument is flawed

because you immediately begin talking about precisely what is NOT "of the market", that being, the passing of Law, or the invoking of force.

[kentuck]

80. So you think laws are not passed in favor of the market?

The law here in the state of Colorado requires 75% of workers to approve before a union can be organized. It's a law. Could you clarify further?

[_Loki_]

82. No, dammit

that isn't what I said.

Laws should NOT be passed in favor of particular sectors of the market. That is manipulation of the market, by certain sections of it, using Governemnt force as their tool.

If people want to organize in to a union, to use your example, that is their right. Government need not be inovlved for them to get together and say, "We'll work for these terms". They are, in that case, offering a price for their goods (their labor), which is, gasp, a free market action.

[kentuck]

86. That's wishful thinking...

Laws are made to benefit the wealthiest and to protect those people with wealth. They have no right to special protection either. That is also manipulation. And money is power. If I have a billion dollars and my neighbor has nothing, I have an advantage and I may use that advantage in a good way or a bad way. Capital must be regulated to some extent for the benefit of the whole, whether thru the tax system or other ways. People are greedy. Greed is not good.

[_Loki_]

102. If you insist that law must protect

the "little man", and that Government should have the power to put in place laws that tamper with the market to the extent which you detail, you should not be the least bit surprised Government then uses this same power to put in place Laws which protect the "big guys".

Both cases are the same, in principle.

[Wallygagger]

46. Sure, labor would exist without capital

if we were homeless people, who farmed whatever spot of land we slept on until we build our own homes and live on only what we needed to survive and could provide for everything we needed.

But couldn't do that without investment

[kentuck]

48. Why?

Couldn't that be done without investment? That's the way our nation started. People were independent and self-sufficient - not everyone was a capitalist.

[Wallygagger]

53. only if you think investment is limited to $$$$

and that your time is not valuable.

When you sell your services to an employer are you not a capitalist?

[kentuck]

57. No. you are a laborer.

When you buy labor, you are a "capitalist".

[The Magistrate]

52. The Point You Miss, Sir

Is that capital is nothing but the produce of labor in excess of the requirements of sustenance, stored in some manner or other, depending on the level of organization in the society. Labor is not and never has been dependent on labor; capital is and alays will be dependent on labor for its very existence.

"The laboring classes are of necessity the most numerous portion of society, and it is nonesense to maintain that what is beneficial to the greatest part is injurious to the whole."

[Wallygagger]

54. whose labor?

the entrepenuer uses his own labor.....or invests in other workers.

EVERYONE is in the laboring class...the benefits are just different

[kentuck]

58. Your premise is wrong.

All labor is not created equal. You can call a horse's ass a tail, but that doesn't make it so.

[The Magistrate]

59. That Is An Odd Question, Sir

Mr. Bertram Russell nailed it down pretty well a while ago: "Work comprises two sorts: one is the expending of energy to move and alter objects, the other is the telling of others to do so. For some reason the latter is valued more highly than the former."

Semantic subterfuge is an interesting technique of debate, but carries in the final analysis little weight.

[kentuck]

61. That is the question Sir...

Why "the latter is valued more highly than the former." Because capital is power. It has the power to enslave.

[The Magistrate]

65. Indeed, My Friend

And why people have given it that power is an enduring mystery.

My other quote above, by the way, concerning the greater number and good of the whole, is from Mr. Smith in "Wealth of Nations": he had no trouble discerning the difference between a laboring class and an employing group....

[kentuck]

67. And it seems we have "progressed" to the exact opposite point

...in our evolution? It is for the few, not the many.

[The Magistrate]

70. Things Have Not Changed, Sir

He was arguing several centuries ago for that proposition, against the general presumption that prosperity among laborers was damaging to society as a whole, the position urged by employers then as now....

From the first instance of people commandeering the produce in excess of subsistance contrived by others, society has been organized on that unhappy principle.

"There are two Spains: one that eats, and one that works."

[kentuck]

72. We should not forget...

how the railroads hired the Chinese (coolies) to work at slave wages to help build the railroads across this nation. Was that the "marketplace" or was that slavery? We tend to excuse a lot of evil shit, like 12-year olds making tennis shoes, as just the work of the "marketplace". The hand is not "invisible". It is very heavy and felt around the world now.

[mopinko]

148. built the railroads on free land, to boot

do you think a labor union could petition the government for a million acres of free land to build a railroad on? do you think a labor union could send the cavalry to oust the indiginous people who already won it?
wealth is power. the checks and balances of our form of government are designed to check that power. unfortunately, they are being overwhelmed by the greedy these days.

[_Loki_]

83. and thus

everyone is a laborer who accumulates capital, in whatever form, or amount.

[kentuck]

87. Only semantically.

In reality, you must separate the capitalist from the laborer. They are not the same.

[_Loki_]

104. Not at all.

Anyone doing work which results in earnings (capital) is by definition a capitalist and a laborer. Both.

This is not to say, though, that the terms are precisely interchangable.

If you take an isolated example, for isntance, a factory paid for with the capital of one man, he is, indeed, the capitalist who financed the project.

If that is as far as your thought goes, however, you are divorcing him from the labor which he put forth, in whatever form, to accumulate said capital in the first place.

Simultaneously, the brick layer who puts up walls in the factory, during construction, is, of course, the labor in the isolated example. He is paid, though, in capital, which he may use for his own ends.

[The Magistrate]

119. It Is Semantic Subterfuge, Sir

You know perfectly well that no one ever accumalated the capital to erect a factory through the proceeds of his own work at wages, nor even through the proceeds of his own work at a craft. Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will, return to a laborer such a sum. In all instances the capital sufficient to such a thing is accumulated from the labor of many persons, and represents the value of their labor over and above what they were paid for it: whether it was acquired by a person directly through employing those people, or by loan from others who have done so through various intermediaries does not change the case. Capital cannot be accumulated in any other way save by paying the persons who make a product for sale less than the price that product fetches in the marketplace. Whether that difference, in some particular instance, is a reasonable return on an investor's existing capital, already accumulated some other time in that manner, or is a reasonable insurance against the hazards attendant on the enterprise, or the risk of decline in the value of money over the time between its outlay for production and recoupment by sale, are seperate questions, but again, they do not alter the basic case. Nor does any of this address in any way the issue of who ought to enjoy the return on capital, and control its investment.

[_Loki_]

120. The VALUE of their labor....

__________________________________________________________________
represents the value of their labor over and above what they were paid for it:
__________________________________________________________________

The VALUE of their labor is determined by whether or not they can be replaced easily, and by the demand for their particular work. Contrary to that, it appears that you presuppose that the actual value of their labor is equal to the sum-total of the revenue generated by the enterprise as a whole.


__________________________________________________________________
In all instances the capital sufficient to such a thing is accumulated from the labor of many persons,
__________________________________________________________________

Those "many persons" are paid that which their labor is worth to the person who gets to decide that (the employer/investor/etc), and things are then even. Any revenue that the enterprise generates above that is at the disposal of said person.

[The Magistrate]

121. Of Course It Is, Sir

The standard you propose is nonesensical, and nothing but a recepie for slaveholding and other extremeties of exploitation. The value of a thing is what people will pay for it; there is no other standard possible: in a beseiged city, a two carat diamond may not be worth a couple of pouund of horsemeat, though on a glittering boulevard far away it might ciojmand many thousands of dollars. The thing that is sold in the market is the sum of all that went into it: materials, labor, the skill of the laborers, the skill of designers and directors, etc.. In all cases, the laborers receive less than the realized price of the increment their labor contributes to the price at which the product is sold: in some cases, where the designers and directors of the process and those who direct the labor are not also owners, these, two, receive a smaller increment than than their efforts contribute to the price.

[_Loki_]

124. Value.

_____________________________________________________________________
nothing but a recepie for slaveholding
_____________________________________________________________________

Slaves are not paid. Workers are.
Workers, too, are free to leave if they prefer.

_____________________________________________________________________
The value of a thing is what people will pay for it;
_____________________________________________________________________

Indeed, this included someone's labor.


_____________________________________________________________________
In all cases, the laborers receive less than the realized price of the increment their labor contributes to the price at which the product is sold: in some cases, where the designers and directors of the process and those who direct the labor are not also owners, these, two, receive a smaller increment than than their efforts contribute to the price.
_____________________________________________________________________

Of course. I haven't said otherwise.

[The Magistrate]

126. You Rather Miss The Point, Sir

Slaves are fed, otherwise they die. It can, in some situatuions, make better sense from an owner's point of view to feed them a diet will, in combination with the exertion of their labor, kill them in a few years: this was a fairly common calculation in mining and quarrying operations in ancient times when the article could be readily replenished. But the necessity of feeding and sheltering, etc., requires continual outlay, and is indistinguishable from a wage from the owner's point of view in any on-going enterprise. The costs of acquiring and keeping securely slaves are also outlays, indistinguishable from other outlays in an economic sense. There are one or two points of difference, but you have not pointed out any of the real ones.

[_Loki_]

128. Again,

Slaves are not paid. You are quite correct in that they are sustained, usually (representing an expense for the slaveholder---they're not entirely free labor), but being paid for your services implies that you give your services IN EXCHANGE for something. THAT, in and of itself, implies that you are FREE in the first place to make that exchange, of your own will.

The worker, therefore, is FREE to exchange his labor for the price that he can exact from the employer, or to take his labor elsewhere, including using it to produce his own sustinance. The slave has no such choice.

[The Magistrate]

130. Quite Beside The Point, Sir

What is at issue is the expense imposed on the person benefited by the labor, and whether or not this expense is commensurate with what the labor adds to the price obtained by that person, for what the labor produces. Whether the laborer is slave or free, happy or sad or otherwise, makes not one whit of difference to that consideration.

[_Loki_]

133. You're the one who brought up slavery.

______________________________________________________________________
and whether or not this expense is commensurate with what the labor adds to the price obtained by that person,
______________________________________________________________________

Quite irrelevant. The end price of the items being sold is not the determining factor for what the labor is paid. The market value of the labor in question is that factor.

[The Magistrate]

140. Not Really, Sir

In your No. 120 above, you introduced a line that, pressed to its logical conclusion, argues for slavery as a mode of employment.

Follow the lines of "The VALUE of their labor is determined by whether or not they can be replaced easily" and "Those "many persons" are paid that which their labor is worth to the person who gets to decide that (the employer/investor/etc), and things are then even. Any revenue that the enterprise generates above that is at the disposal of said person," and you have, as mentioned in my reply to those comments, the root arguments for exploitation at the limit of the will and capability of the employer to do so, and there is no essential difference between this and slavery, as a practical issue in a social system.

The idea you cling to, that what an employer chooses to pay for labor, or more to the point, can by hook or crook contrive to acquire the produce of labor for, is what that labor is worth, to the employer or to the laborer, is not a supportable one, and is a very pernicious one in practice. Labor at some task is worth what can be got for the product of that labor, less the cost of whatever the raw materials labored on amounted to. The aim of the employer is to get that labor at a price less than the value it brings to him by its exercise: this difference is profit. The fact that the laborer is never in a position to get the whole worth of his or her labor does not alter this. The fact is that the market is, in this instance, a rigged one. No employer will ever give what the work is worth; the entire system depends on this being so for its operation.




_________________

[_Loki_]

142. You Miss The Difference

______________________________________________________________________
the root arguments for exploitation at the limit of the will and capability of the employer to do so
______________________________________________________________________

It's very simple. One thing can trump the "will and capability" of the employer to "exploit". It's called the free will of the employee.

He can leave, if he chooses. Within a free market, he can go out and start his own business, if he does not care to work for someone else's.

This quite sets him apart from slavery.

[The Magistrate]

143. But It Is Not A Free Market, Sir

It is a circumstance rigged by an entire social order, and one that is no novelty, either, but that has existed throughout the history of human political organization. You may regurgitate idealist nostrums at me till the cows come home, but that is not the way the world works, and everyone but "free-marketeer" theorists knows that perfectly well. The economic theories you are arguing from exist solely in the minds of those who contrive them in their armchairs; they have no point of contact with the actual world of enterprise and work, except insofar as they provide a framework of justification for people who know full well what they are doing is using human beings as a means to their own ends, being resolved to extract the greatest possible gain while leaving to others the least that they can contrive to do.

[kentuck]

131. My grandfather worked in a coal mine for $1 a day...

and they paid him with scrip, which were pieces of brass about the size of a half-dollar, which he would then trade for corn meal, flour, beans, salt, or lard. It wasn't even money as we know it. Was he a slave or a laborer? Consider that there was no where else to take his labor. Survival from day to day has no "free will". There were times like that not that long ago. It is nonsense to suggest that working people today simply quit their job and go to another when they have children to feed and bills to pay. "Free will" sounds good as a theory but in reality, does not exist for many, many workers. It is not that he would not have liked to moved to another job but there was no other job. And not everyone has a special skill that they can incorporate themselves into their own business and thrive. That's a dream world. out of touch with reality. Republican, almost.

[The Magistrate]

132. People Need To Remember Things Like That, My Friend

Some of my ancestors hail from the coal country in West Virginia. Poeple have no idea how the thing is run without at minimum a balance between the elements of enterprise....

[_Loki_]

134. Did he have...

______________________________________________________________________
Was he a slave or a laborer?
______________________________________________________________________

....freedom to leave? In other words, was he being kept there under a gun?

[kentuck]

136. Can you conceive of not having any money at all, no car....

and children to feed and surviving from day to day off the land? Hunting, fishing, plowing, hoeing, cutting wood, and working wherever you might find a dime? Where woud he have gone? How would he have got there? Is that inconceivable to you? Many poor people are in that same boat today. Does that seem like another world to you. It exists.

[_Loki_]

137. Being able to concieve of it or not...

...has nothing to do with whether or not it makes you a slave. It does not.

[The Magistrate]

144. In TheCircumstances Of The Time, Sir

There was no other place to go. There certainly was no other place where a man with nothing but muscle-power and a certain craft knowledge of mining tasks would meet with treatment materially different from this. The response was eventually one of violence on a scale your are probably unaware of in thre coal-fields in the twenties and thirties. When it was sufficiently clear it was dangerous to treat men like this, the treatment was altered somewhat....

[EstimatedProphet]

145. I can't resist inserting a Grateful Dead quote here

"Make good money/five dollars a day
Made any more I might move away -"

Cumberland Blues-Robert Hunter

There's a lot of the US where this kind of life still exists. Myself, I can speak of the Mississippi Delta region, where farming still gets done much as it was in antebellum times. Lots of poor blacks to pick cotton and seine catfish abound, and they aren't paid enough to be able to leave. The system does work this way.

If your poor, and black, and live in the Mississippi Delta, it's a moot point as to whether you're a "slave".

[rateyes]

152. And, the scrip was only good

at the company store...which charged prices so high, they had to buy on credit...the longer they worked, the poorer they got--they literally "owed their souls to the company store." They were slaves.

[kentuck]

153. You are correct...

The scrip was only good at the company store. By coincidence, there was just enough to survive on from day to day on a minimal diet. Ant they would normally put up a litte shack on the side of the road where miners could stop and "trade" before going home. It was as close to slavery as anything since the slaves picked cotton, but nothing can be compared to what the American slaves went through on those plantations...

[rateyes]

154. Agreed! Thank God for unions.

I recommend the movie "Matewan," for all who don't understand.

[orwell]

55. Tripe

These are so many misconceptions on the thread it is appalling. No wonder we are at each others throats.

Yo state: "Without Labor, Capital would be worthless, you are correct...but without capital you have no labor."

Why not say without "Color" you have no "Red", but without "Red" you have no "Color". It is an equally useless statement.

Capital is a store of labor, nothing more or less. To see them as different is to lack a fundamental understanding of capital, which is quite shocking when we claim to live in a "Capitalist" system.

In fact, you can not have capital without "labor" or energy. Capital is accumulated energy. Labor or "energy" is the fundamental here, not a byproduct.

[kentuck]

60. "Capital is a store of labor"

unless you have your own printing presses and can make your own money. But only the government can do that, right? :)

You can have a barrel of money (capital) and set it out in the road. You wish to build a plant so you can make another barrel of money, because that is what capitalists do. But, if no one does the actual labor, builds the plant, your money(capital) will turn to dust and blow away. It is worthless without labor. So the question is: how much should the labor be worth to make another plant? Whatever the "market" will bear, they say? But is that fair or is that not important?

[orwell]

78. Labors Lost

"...unless you have your own printing presses and can make your own money. But only the government can do that, right? :)"

Fiat money is the bane of capitalism. It undermines the accumulated store of value (savings rate) and encourages inefficient consumption. That is at the heart of the long term economic woes of the so-called "Capitalist" United States. There is very little functional difference between the planned economy of the Politburo and the interest rate "fixing" of the Federal Reserve Bank.

"You can have a barrel of money (capital) and set it out in the road. You wish to build a plant so you can make another barrel of money, because that is what capitalists do."

Actually, what capitalists do is take their accumulated store of money (excess labor - savings rate) and attempt to leverage it through investment into a store of more excess labor. Think of it as "potential energy." The "profit" is the excess labor created through leveraged efficiencies (new labor hired, physical capital through plant, equipment, raw material utilization, new efficiency through invention). Unfortunately there is also "profit" created through cheating, lying, and stealing. This might be called, for lack of a better term "gaming the system". It represents inefficient mal-investment that over time will structurally weaken the social/economic environment.

But, if no one does the actual labor, builds the plant, your money(capital) will turn to dust and blow away.

Actually, the accumulated capital will not blow away. If it is in the form of money, it will exist as long as the state has the guns and bombs to enforce its value, or in less dire terms, as long as others imbue it with value by using it in transactions. If it is in the form of raw materials, it has value as long as those raw materials can be used to provide value to people (wood/skins for homes, rocks for arrowheads to hunt etc.). If it is in the form of plant and equipment, it will decay as the equipment becomes inefficient or the plant crumbles. If it is in the form of the most efficient capital (intellectual) it will have the most value of all, as it is fungible, mutable, and highly efficient.

"It is worthless without labor."

It is labor - accumulated labor.

So the question is: how much should the labor be worth to make another plant? Whatever the "market" will bear, they say? But is that fair or is that not important?

Believe it or not, this is a moral, social, and political question, not an economic one. The free market myth is just that, a myth. All systems operate within social/cultural frameworks. There are rules. There is no unseen hand of God. God, however defined, does not care about the price of gold in South Africa. We need to get beyond the myth if we are truly going to structure a system that is both sustainable and efficient for the good of ALL concerned. Right now we exist in a crony capitalist system, a far cry from the tripe being promulgated in the media, and unfortunately in debates like this thread as well.

What this thread illustrates is the profound lack of understanding of what capital is, due in no small part to the concentrated efforts by those in power to keep us at each others throats.

And unfortunately, they have done their labors well.

[_Loki_]

81. Your definition of capital

makes more sense now. I don't think that we disagree.

If your premise, though, is that the nature of capital cries out for an economic system that is planned from the top down by a Government force, I do disagree.

[orwell]

93. Not a Definition

Capital has become a buzzword pitting a subset of us against another subset. It is an emotionally charged term like "freedom", "the rich", "the poor", which has effectively been reduced to a caricature - the evidence of which is rich on this thread. The very word "capital" is (wrongly) linked to an economic/social/cultural arrangement like "Communism" or "Socialism", neither of which, it could be argued, have anything to do with "communion" or "society". All social systems are external cultural creations of enforced by the "benevolence"/tyranny" of the state.

Capital is not a system. It is a store of labor.

That being said, what we could be discussing is an effective way to socially organize for the good of all concerned, without the propaganda, bogus wordplay, spoon fed to us daily by the dominant culture.

"If your premise, though, is that the nature of capital cries out for an economic system that is planned from the top down by a Government force, I do disagree."

Premise 1: There is no "nature of capital."

Premise 2: You should be able to infer from my condemnation of fiat money and the interest rate fixing activities of our "sainted" Federal Reserve Central Bankers that top down planning is the furthest from my wants.

Premise 3: Government coercion is a functional reality, whether tacit or explicit. As I told a broker before the '87 crash, (which I correctly predicted a few months in advance,) "In the end, US economic hegemony comes down to the fact that we have the most bombs."

Premise 4: There is no level playing field and never will be. By and large, the rules are set by those in power to protect those in power, no matter what the system. Any claims to the contrary seem, at best, naive, at worst, propaganda.

I have traded markets for 25 years. If I approached any market with the delusions prevalent on this thread, I wouldn't have lasted 25 days. I have been on the other end of whispered tips from the highest levels of finance and government. I have seen how our "level playing field" works from the inside in all its glory.

It isn't pretty.

Horatio Alger indeed...

[EstimatedProphet]

146. I partially disagree with one point

"In the end, US economic hegemony comes down to the fact that we have the most bombs."

In actuality, I submit that it has more to do with the fact that we have the shiniest objects.
We have established an economic hegemony in the world through everyone else envying our lifestyle.

[kentuck]

84. And why do we have "excess labor" ?

And so much of it? And does not the tax system contribute to this unbalance? And how do you separate economic questions from political questions? The very air you breathe is directly related to your economic situation. And do you think we should go back to the "gold standard", rather than the "fiat" money?

I guess you could look at it as "accumulated labor"? After all, labor did create the profits. It is not a chicken or egg argument in my opinion.

[orwell]

98. E=MC2

If I need 10 bananas a day to exist and I pick eleven and save one for tomorrow, that is "excess labor". If I give the extra banana to you, it is still excess labor, labor greater than my immediate needs would dictate. The extra banana is savings, to be used as leisure (I only have to pick 9 bananas tomorrow, social mobility (you like me because I gave you a banana) or a myriad of other reasons (you and I could collaborate on a mechanized banana picker because I offer you the extra banana to help.)

The reason for the excess money in the system is directly due to excess money creation by the Federal Reserve. It wasn't always so. For the better part of US history, inflation (due to excess money creation or demand) was met soon after by a countervailing deflation as demand and supply adjusted. For example, wars were generally inflationary, followed by deflationary recession. But with the Federal Reserve act, that all changed. The money spigot was born.

The tax system is "rigged" by those with the political clout. In the robber baron era, that would be...uhhh...the robber barons. The Great Depression put the ball back in the court of those lower on the economic ladder, (or at least that is the cover story.) That (essentially) lasted until the Reagan Era where the elites were once again totally in charge, but this time with an important difference. This time they took complete control over the media as well. That led to the situation we are now in, where much is reduced to sound bites, foolishness, and mass stupidity, while wholesale war profiteering, looting, and environmental destruction threaten our very existence.

"And how do you separate economic questions from political questions?"

I don't. The basis of the word economics is the apportionment of resources ("the management of the household"). Of course this is political.

"The very air you breathe is directly related to your economic situation."

This is because the "externalities" of pollution have not been priced into the goods and services we buy. They have been externalized on the backs of the economically less fortunate as an "unseen tax" if you will. This is both economically inefficient and morally reprehensible.

"And do you think we should go back to the "gold standard", rather than the "fiat" money?"

No, although the market is currently pricing up gold in anticipation of the inflationary effects of excess trade and internal deficits from BushCorp's insane economic agenda. I believe that the rate of money creation should be determined by loan demand and real GDP. Short term interest rates should be set by interbank loan demands, not the Fed open market committee. If you want to have a Fed for international trade settlements or monitoring the health of the member banks, that is fine.

I also believe that only the Federal Government should be able to coin money, as the Constitution originally intended.

"I guess you could look at it as "accumulated labor"? After all, labor did create the profits. It is not a chicken or egg argument in my opinion."

Energy (Labor) and its efficiency is the only thing that can "create" anything. After all, matter is only energy in another state. It is not a chicken or egg argument. Energy is fundamental.

[kentuck]

99. So is the one banana what you pay in "labor" ?

and you keep nine? And you think that is fair? Since you got an extra one, you really didn't pay anything, did you? And so it is with capitalists. It was their tree. It was their property. Therefore they can give you half of a banana if they wish. And if you turn this into a million dollar business and you get a dozen people to pick your bananas, you will keep your million and still give them one banana each. That is the basic flaw in capitalism. There is no set standard that is considered fair or equitable. Even though, if the bananas weren't picked, they would have rotted and would have benefitted no one. But, still, those bananas are worth more than the labor of those that would make a million dollars off of them. We should say to take those bananas and stick them! :)

[orwell]

103. Going Bananas

This isn't new math. In my original example, I picked eleven, I needed ten, so the extra one was the one I didn't eat.

I "got" the extra one by picking it - so labor was involved. It was "excess labor" because I could not eat the banana today. It therefore became "savings." (Capital)

We have not entered money into this exercise for a reason. Money is external to this example as I don't want to confuse the issue.

This is pre-money "Bananaland" if you will.

In pre-money "Bananaland" nobody owns anything. Bananaland doesn't have a court to enforce ownership. There are no "specialized" Bananaland police to guard the tree. This example is used as a simplistic way to understand stored labor as capital. In this case, our capital is bananas. (Not too dissimilar to the current state of affairs with the monkey in the WH.)

Now, let us assume that I give you the banana, just so you won't

A: Stab me with the stick you have been sharpening on a stone.
B: Steal my extra banana when I'm not looking (crime wave in Bananaland
C: Get mad at me for talking to your sister with the nice set of coconuts.

Whatever. Maybe I'm just a nice guy. The point is, my extra banana, picked by me, gives me some economic (in terms of fruit) alternatives to just eating it. It has become a store of my labor.

Now it seems to me that this (store of labor) is neither bad nor good. What I do with my store could have negative or positive impacts on Bananaland, but the banana itself is just the store of labor.

In fact, I would argue that without some of Bananaland's inhabitants saving nuts, bananas, dried insects and the like, we may be in pretty bad shape if we have a bad banana year or we elect a tyrannical monkey as our titular head who takes all the bananas and hands them out to his crony friends. (Hmmmmmm)

In other words, stores of labor whether they be in grain bins, fruit baskets, or CD's are, on balance, probably good. What you are (rightfully I might add) railing against is something different. You are angered by things like bad labor laws, lack of corporate oversight, union busting, and a host of other structural maladies perpetrated by a growing list of elite cronies. You are railing at a system out of balance.

But that would never happen in Bananaland. In my Bananaland, everyone gets a nice fruit salad.

A monkey can dream - can't he?

[kentuck]

108. if you pick your own bananas, you can do with as you wish....

But, the controversy arises when you get someone else to pick the bananas and the labor that is involved. How much should that labor be worth compared to the value that is attained from the bananas. How much is labor -the labor that created the product - worth, is the basic question.
If you sell the extra bananas and make a million, do you reward the labor relative in any way to your reward?

[orwell]

115. Banana Republic

I've got to do a major computer upgrade (converting to a RAID array) so I may be gone for awhile but I'll quickly try to respond.

First of all I don't see a controversy. I don't know what something is worth to someone else and I can't know. I am not them. All I know is that I need 10 bananas a day to survive. If others want to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship, (I pick your bananas for you but you get some insects for me and we swap,) we would have to come to terms as to how many bananas are worth how many insects. That would constitute a "transaction."

In simplistic terms, all "transactional" goods and services are worth whatever the parties agree upon. Of course, this can be a highly complex decision as more and more parties become involved. That is why I tend to look unfavorably upon coercive systems where transactions are determined by cartels (OPEC for example). I tend to favor agreements freely entered into by all the parties involved because only they know what they want/need out of the transaction.

That being said, we are nowhere near our Bananaland example in so called "free-market" USA. There are many coercive elements that determine the parameters of the transaction, the Federal Reserve being the prime offender. You have rightly identified the favoring of certain types of capital and economic transactions in our current tax code and societal organization. We have certain cartels (energy, medical, financial, media to name a few) that operate with little effective oversight and skew the transactions in their favor.

As far as rewarding labor, especially for productivity, I am a firm believer in employee stock ownership and profit sharing. I even think it is worth codifying into social legal frameworks. This form of "labor banking" would not only blur the "perceived" line between labor and capital (one that I claim should not exist), but it would radically transform most corporations into more than simple economic units.

Got to go bang my head into my computer. Maybe a banana would help.

[txaslftist]

89. That is exactly what this post was NOT supposed to be about.

Arcane theories of economics like what is capital and what is labor and is labor capital and to workman isn't his labor his capital and all that. It's also not supposed to be about who are the good guys, the capitalists or the entrepreneurs or the laborers...

I think it was an unfortunate choice of words on my part that lead to this degeneration into economic fluff.

The point of the OP was that the Democratic Party is at its very heart a party dedicated to supporting the guy (or girl) who is stretched thin right now, and to whom a one point inflation bump makes a serious difference. The guy or girl who is looking at gasoline prices right now and thinking, "well, there goes that Disney trip."

The fact of the matter is that the wealthy have plenty of representation in the other party. They don't really need our help, do they? Can one seriously look at the economic situation in our country and come to the conclusion that the playing field needs to be leveled in their favor?

The Republicans have done a great job of selling the illusion that working folks are next year's millionaires, and that you will probably be on the recieving end of all those great tax breaks and incentives they get one day. The reality of their politics is geared to virtually guarantee that won't happen.

We need to be the party that challenges that myth, that secures the future of ordinary folks. That may be my inartful way of saying what I mean, but there it is.

[orwell]

100. Two Words

Words mean something. They tell us about our assumptions and expose the propaganda apparatus that fuels them. By asserting that the words capital and labor are somehow different, you empower those who you decry. You are unwittingly pushing the Republican "divide and conquer" agenda. (I realize this is a difficult concept to understand, but it is not arcane I assure you. It is fundamental.)

This is not economic fluff. It is critical.

Of course the system is skewed toward the wealthy. They write the rules. And then they break them with impunity. If I had my wish, the quickest way to begin rectify the situation would be to make political parties (mob rule) illegal and make all campaign financing public. But that has very little chance of happening as long as we continue to fracture among ourselves, unable to see the forrest for the trees.

Republicans have to sell an illusion. They have morphed into the party of the global transnational and the religious fundamentalists, both of which are rooted in totalitarianism and blind allegiance. It is a perfect vehicle to construct the modern fascist state.

The Democrats on the other hand, while claiming to be the party of "the little guy" have wed themselves to a different set of power brokers, while paying perfunctory lip-service to the downtrodden. It is all a sign of a dysfunctional culture raised on misinformation, propaganda, and lies.

How can we claim to be a capitalist system when we don't understand what capital is.

How can we claim to stand for freedom when we are rapidly embracing totalitarianism.

Why do we continue to promulgate the myths of "the level playing field", "the rugged individual", the "free market".

We need to be the party that speaks the truth, that stands for systemic structural reform, that addresses the ties that bind us, not that which separates into chaos.

I would reduce it all to two words, the foundation of the enlightenment.

Those two words are Liberty and Justice. Those two words are simple, elegant, and universally understood.

How's that for a catchy slogan...

BTW: I am not beating up on you. Thanks for starting a provocative thread.

[kentuck]

101. People tend to distrust any theory that is not stated more simply...

Perhaps that means we are all stupid? But people do see a difference in capital and labor. Labor is sweat and toil. Capital is what is created from that sweat and toil. It needs to be stated as something other than "excess labor". They are not the same. That doesn't do it justice. It sounds too contrived and elitist, if I may say? Although you define the results of the system as being skewed to the wealthy, that alone shows there is not equality between the two. One is more favored or more powerful. It seems to me an injustice to put them in the same basket as jsut "excess labor" with a simple formula, with no human quality to it at all...

[orwell]

106. Go Go Gaia

It is my contention that when people see a difference between capital and labor, it is in the best interest of the elites, not the so-called worker. To a certain extent, there is also probably some jealousy involved that someone is able to defer gratification through savings while some can't. But that gets to a deeper psychological issue.

I will give you a concrete example. My mother worked as a "lowly" secretary for her whole life. She raised 5 kids without a husband in a time when that was almost impossible to do without assistance. She will retire this year with enough money to live the rest of her life in relative comfort.

Why.

She saved her money and invested it. She deferred gratification through savings. Now is she labor or capital? The short answer is she is both. Because there is no distinction. The sooner people understand this, the sooner you demystify "capital."

Labor isn't always sweat. This is obvious. You can work your ass off without "sweating." Capital is just the store of this labor. If you don't like the word excess, so be it. I don't really care. As long as you understand that capital is a store of labor. What sounds elitist to me are nonsensical differentiations like capital and labor.

Now, your other point is well taken. The fact that the system is skewed is a difference in arbitrary systemic functional efficiency of labor. (Boy that's a lot of elitist words). In other words, the game is rigged. The so-called invisible hand of God has a glass of Dom Perignon in it. I would agree whole heartedly with that. That is what I rail against as well.

I only care about the "human qualities" of these so-called elitist abstractions. And not only the "human qualities" but the energetic life affirming qualities as well (Oh, here I go getting all "Gaiian" on you.) What I am trying to do is inform a movement along new paradigms. To do that, we must face our own deeply rooted prejudices.

Or at the very least, get people to think.

BTW: Thanks for the discussion...

[Bridget Burke]

37. There are also "working women"

And some of them have been quite successful.

What do you think of the Inheritance Tax?

[_Loki_]

39. I'm sure that "man"

is being applied in the "mankind" sense, here.

[Wallygagger]

40. I think its been taxed once already

And though it won't come into play for most families, I don't believe we should tax estates that were paid for with after tax dollars.

if you become a billionaire and leave it to your kids, good for you.

If being rich was a bad thing the lottery and books on how to become wealthy wouldn't be so popular.

I believe more wealthy liberals should stop telling us they dont' need a tax cut while they take every deduction available to them.

If you don't need it, take the standard deduction. Stop acting like greedy republicans while you tell us who deserves to keep the money they earn and who doesn't.

[kentuck]

51. Most of it hasn't been taxed already..

It has been sheltered. That's why tax laws are written - not to protect the little working guy but to protect those with the wealth. If John Wayne Gacy's Daddy had been a billionaire, you think John Wayne would have been deserving of the wealth his father made?

[Bridget Burke]

69. Gosh, I am SO not surprised!

The old "it's been taxed once" whine... Why should I pay sales tax when taxes were deducted from my paycheck before it was deposited?

How many jobs do the neurotic kids of billionaires create?

You didn't call it the "Death Tax"! You're slipping!

[_Loki_]

77. Well,

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Why should I pay sales tax when taxes were deducted from my paycheck before it was deposited?
---------------------------------------------------------------------

The fact that you DO doesn't mean that you SHOULD.....

[Bridget Burke]

85. I don't mind paying the sales tax.

And I don't think the trust fundies should bitch because they lose a few hundred thousand dollars to Inheritance Tax.

[_Loki_]

105. Whether or not you MIND paying

the sales tax, has nothing to do with wheter it is double taxation (as is, also, the inheritance tax).

The biggest problem with double taxation of this nature is the invisibility of it to the People in general. The mass of people will gladly suffer one small increase in the sales or income tax one year, then a small increase in the other, the next year, and so forth.

It is a system which preys upon the forgetfulness and ignorance of the general populace.

The net result is what we have now: Governemment revenue which approaches 25% of the GDP, and a cost of Government which, for the average household in the United States, approaches 50% of income (all taxation and fees included).

[The Magistrate]

127. The Concept Of "Double Taxation", Sir, Is A Silly Thing

Taxation generally occurs at a point of transfer of funds from one hand to another. This is an ancient practice, because it was only at such times money came out of hiding, and it was only at the point of transfer from one hand to another that a fixed value could be assigned to a property. We may leave out of the account the idea of rent to a proprietor where the proprietor is the Sovereign, which was the most solid footing of Sovereign revenues in the old imperiums, and the excise, in essence a lisence fee for use of something the Sovereign claims control over. Anything from the payment of a wage to the sale of an asset or the transfer of an asset from an estate to an heir is such an occassion, and the tax levied is always new and specific to that transaction.

[newspeak]

97. that's funny

I read a book called "Raw Deal," most labor and some inventors do tend to get screwed. Charles Goodyear died penniless, sold his second wife's ring so he could still invent because they stoled his inventions and made profits off of his creations without paying him. Hell, they even stoled his name! Edwin Drake invented the oil drill and found oil for such men as Rockefeller. In failing health, Drake asked the men he had made millions for to help--no they didn't believe in charity-died an embittered man. After his death, these same oilmen put together $100,000 to create a statue in his honor, but couldn't help him when he was alive! What mentality of some capitalists?

[rateyes]

151. The "working man" is the one...

who used to be paid in currency only good at the "company" store. Thank God for unions.

[_Loki_]

17. If your definition of Labor is...

...one who works, then there are no exceptions, even entreprenuers and investment capitalists (whose primary work, by the way, is to figure out if an investment is a GOOD one or not....not an easy thing to do)

------------------------------------------------------------------
he stops being a working man and starts being a rich man. And rich men act differently than working men.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, if you are implying that those with millions/billions do not work, you're simply mistaken. You can paint that broad brush, in the context of whether or not they MUST work, in order to survive, but not in the context of whether or not he, as you put it, gets up early and works his ass off.

------------------------------------------------------------------
They can take care of themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Are you implying, then, that the "working" men can not take care of themselves?

I believe that they can. I believe that they should. Hey, I'm one of them.

------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm saying we have to be on the side of the guy who is trying to make it, not the guy who has made it,
------------------------------------------------------------------

In order to make that statement, you have to have a preconception of what "made it" is, which is going to be nothing more than your subjective analysis of what "sufficient wealth" is.

To put this in prespective, if I had a million, I'd be out there trying to make it ten. I certainly haven't "made it" with one, or even the ten. I'm going for as much as I can accumulate with my talent.

What "we" should be on the side of, is achievement, at whatever level. Having exceeded someone's subjectively-arrived-at "making it" level should not exclude you from being left alone to arrive at whatever level you, yourself, deem is your maximum.

[txaslftist]

64. I laid it out for you.

If you can't see the difference between a guy struggling to make his monthly bills and a guy struggling to figure out where to put his next million dollars, I can't make it any clearer.

I can't make it any clearer why those guys should be treated differently, either.

[_Loki_]

76. Sure, there's a difference:

One is successful, the other is not.



Depending, of course, on his own personal meaning of success.

[txaslftist]

92. I'm sure that's a great comfort to him.

[orwell]

25. Oh Brother...

..."Capital" is accumulated labor.

This whole thread makes no sense, a distinction without a difference.

[_Loki_]

34. Capital

is the accumulation of what is exchanged for labor, be it money, or something else. Thus, even the "laborers" have capital.

[Wallygagger]

35. exactly

their capital is limited to what they can get per hour, day, month or year.

[_Loki_]

38. yes...

...and to what they can produce for themselves with what capital they have EARNED from someone else, in exchange fo their labor (be it physical or mental, who cares). I'd be willing to wager that more than a few "laborers" have investments of their own, going.....

[orwell]

49. Sorry

Capital is accumulated labor, whatever form the capital takes. There is no distinction.

Think of capital/labor as stored energy - whether actual or potential - instead of matter, and you will begin to see that there is no difference.

The fact that society perceives them as different is to its great disbenefit. No system exists without energy. It is fundamental. To quibble over its transient state is essentially meaningless.

We could be discussing its efficiency, which would be far more relevant.

If as you say capital "is the accumulation of what is exchanged for labor, be it money, or something else,", you have made my point. The next step is to realize that capital is accumulated labor. It is a store of labor (or "energy",) nothing more.

[newyawker99]

45. Hi _Loki_!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[_Loki_]

75. Thankee

While you probably won't find me to be a liberal in economic terms, you will certainly find me to be a to-the-death defender of personal freedoms. IE, you won't see me with a Big R registration....


I just very much enjoy discussions of a political or economic nature, whatever the form.

[TahitiNut]

7. The "pay for his labor" is the product of his labor.

Capital (the means of production) has no value without labor. The origin of 'capital' is the excess production (beyond immediate needs) created by labor. What to do with all that food? Store it. Sell it, and thus convert it to something with longer shelf life. Who shall do this? In other words, who's entrusted with handling the excess production and how does the WHOLE society benefit from the system?

Read John Locke.

[Wallygagger]

14. you miss the point

at the point you have excess production you have an entrepreneur. Capital expenditures to build a store, a silo, wagons or trucks to deal with the excess don't come from Labor.

there's no one entrusted with handling it except the person who owns the product and the only benefit to the whole society is the availability of the food and the ability for those who don't want to grow food to pursue other interests like build silos, work in stores or drive trucks.

I don't need to read John Locke to understand the Labor/Capital relationship.

[kentuck]

24. Who's going to build the store, the silo, the wagons or the trucks?

They don't appear out of thin air, you know?

[Wallygagger]

31. Entrepeneurs who invest capital

and pay labor.

Think about it. You need money, your neighbor needs the lawn mowed...are you labor or an entrepeneur.
You buy a mower...capital...you find another person to use the mower while you secure business.

Who is the more important person in this relationship?

[kentuck]

42. Who is the most important?

Is quite a Republican question I think. It is about the value of the labor - not the value of the person. Bottom line, if someone does not cut the grass, it does not get done, no matter if you have a billion dollars. It is worthless without labor.

[Wallygagger]

50. yeah, whatever...i believe the word WHO was

appropriate given the scenario..I guess WHICH JOB would be the best way to ask it.
And if you have no jobs for labor to work?


If you have no capital to fix the mower or hire a mechanic?

These aren't republican questions...they are the questions of a person who has own a business and worked for a business.

[kentuck]

63. No doubt capitalism is great for a consuming society....

that likes "things" and money and comfort. It may be the worst system in the world - except for all the others. That doesn't mean it is the perfect system or should not be changed once in a while.

[TahitiNut]

29. I just love to be told "you miss the point"

... by some clown who "don't need to read John Locke." :grr:

FOAD!

[Wallygagger]

32. locke is not the be all end all

if you've ever run a business you don't need to read locke.

[TahitiNut]

95. (RIP, Bushtard) No, people who "run a business" don't have to read

... anything. After all, the boss is always right. FAR right. I guess when you "run a business" you think abysmal ignorance is a virtue. (Fucking fascists!)

[txaslftist]

12. Sometimes they did...

...just decide to go out one day and build a road or a bridge. Or plow a field. Or build a cabin.

They used their own money. If they didn't have the money, they went and earned it, either working for someone else or working for themselves.

One thing they didn't do was sit on their hands.

[Wallygagger]

18. Why?

I could see building a bridge to serve a purpose for them...but they didn't just see a gully and build a bridge just for the heck of it.

They didn't find empty fields and plow them just for kicks and I'm sure they didn't build a cabin and leave it to the first person who came across it.

[kentuck]

26. Who's building all this stuff?

They may have built a bridge because they wanted to go west. They may have built it for no money. But still, the bridge would not have been built without physical labor, not mental labor, and not money that Daddy may have given you.

[Wallygagger]

33. so you'd just build a bridge, with your own money

and move on?

An entrpenuer would set up a toll, recoup his costs maybe profit and build more bridges.

[kentuck]

44. No, you build a bridge with your own labor.

Not with your own money. You need to get to the other side. You cut down the trees. You build the bridge and not one dollar is transferred. An "entrepreneur" may set up a stop sign and ask others for a fee to cross the bridge because he has figured out a way, either because he is more intelligent or more greedy, take your choice, because he wants money. Because money is power. But if someone blows up his bridge, what does he do? He hopes he can find "labor" to build it back so he can continue to increase his wealth and he pays "whatever the market allows" to get a person who needs money to re-build his bridge, right? And where is the value in the labor and where is the value in the "entreprenuer"? The value of labor is greatly undervalued in this country, in my opinion.

[txaslftist]

96. They built bridges to cross streams. fields to eat. cabins to live in.

[sandnsea]

16. Government subsidies

I can't think of a major industry that hasn't relied on the government for huge chunks of its capital. We'd probably been way ahead had we created non-profit corporations and sent much of this money straight into the hands of labor.

[SharonAnn]

107. It is Labor that Creates Capital. Labor comes first. The value is

created by labor, always.

Think about it. An able-bodied person can work and trade their work for something of value to them.

But capital has no value unless somebody, somewhere does some work for it. It just sits there until somebody works. It's the work that creates the value.

Large projects, such as highways and bridges, can be done effectively with the use of capital and labor. But remember, it's labor that actually does the building.

As Abraham Lincoln said, "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

[Leftest]

141. Question is

What is investment?

Your grandfather and mine built this country...but they didn't just go out one day and decide to build a road or a bridge or a car. Somebody had to invest that money -- Wallygagger

And where did that somebody get that money to invest? Money doesn't just grow on trees you know, it has to be produced, and its labor and only labor that produces it. That's because money is only a mutually agreed upon exchange medium for 'goods' and 'services'. And of course only labor produces goods and services. I have never once in my lifetime witnessed a dollar bill jump up and hold a welding torch or hammer, etc.

If someone who holds in their possession excess money that they wish to invest on creating a new business, that money is nothing else but a representation of past done labor - with the key word here being 'labor'.

Sorry for being hard on you Wallygagger. But I tend to agree txaslftist. "LABOR" built this country. It built all the roads, all the buildings, all the material things -AND- it built all the "Capital" of which you refer to.

[butterfly77]

157. Yeah how could he...

when black people built it for free.

[hogwyld]

3. The problem with this

Is that the working man you describe is not that vocal. We have all these groups ie Gay marriage, evangelical xtians, wingnuts, abortion rights, ACLU, anti war, etc all yelling at each other, that the little man cannot be heard. I wish I had an answer to bring him back to our fold.

[txaslftist]

10. You're right. He's not.

And he doesn't want to be. He will vote, however, if you can convince him its worth the time he'll lose. We gotta talk to him, not the other way around.

Right now he's probably listening to Rush Limbaugh, shaking his head from time to time at some of the stupid shit Rush says, but nodding his head at other times. He doesn't know Rush has been bought and sold, and he doesn't get why no one seems to be standing up for him.

We gotta talk to him.

[kentuck]

66. The little guy is simply trying to survive...

and each day gets more and more difficult. When was the last time the minimum wage was raised? How many of us could survive on such low wages. It evolves to that point. Money is power. Without you are powerless. And those with the money are not all Henry Fords. They do not give a damn if you make enugh money to buy the car you build or not. It's about the bottom line and the stockholders. That is where our capitalist system has advanced. The only way to negotiate is to withhold your labor, but if you withhold your labor, you cannot survive, because the "man" that pays you knows how much it takes to survive. One solution would be to have food warehouses and union funds to help those that must withhold their labor. That is the only way to fight the capitalist and he should be fought. With all our blood and sweat and heart and soul.

[txaslftist]

68. Well, it's one way to fight...

...another way to fight is to get the working folks to the ballot box and take away the special privileges the law gives to gazillionaires.

[kentuck]

73. Very true.

Educate.

[liberal N proud]

5. Right On

But Labor is going to have to get in the fight again to save and rebuild it.

[txaslftist]

13. We've got to bring him to the fight.

We have to make it clear, IMO, that although we are a party with many interests in many areas, at heart we are HIS/HER party.

[Wallygagger]

22. who is "labor"

exactly?

And who is the LABOR in our Party? All I see is rich white men on both sides telling us how they're going to help people they've only employed

[txaslftist]

62. I think I described who I'm talking about pretty well.

It's the guy or gal who gets up in the morning and works his ass off to make ends meet at the end of the month.

Sure, rich guys work, too. But the idea you can't build something without them is just plain false. You give me twenty guys with time on their hands, tools, a creek and a forest, I'll give you a bridge.

You give me a family in a wagon owning nothing but what they can carry with them, and I'll give you a homestead farm. That's how most of our country got built, at some point in its history. The vast majority of wealth in this country comes from someone's hard work.

When that guy is living in a double-wide and driving a doolie built in 1980 and still voting Republican, we have a communication problem, not a philosophical problem. That guy ought to be a Democrat, and the Democrats ought to be that guy.

Americans work harder than any other people in the world. I don't mean every single American, but I'm talking about on the whole. That guy is over-worked, under-represented and misrepresented. I believe we need to be, first and foremost, that guy's champion.

I'm not trying to get into a debate about Keynesian micronomics or Laissez-Faire capitalism. The reason that debate isn't important is because that guy doesn't understand it. What he understands is if you look him in the eye and tell him you're going to be on his side, no matter what. That you are going to do what it takes to make it easier for him to make his monthly car payment, his monthly utility bill and put his kids into college.

IMO, that guy IS America. The rest is window dressing.

[Bridget Burke]

71. But I thought you LIKED rich men!

And, by "men", do you mean men & women?

[pattim]

8. We built this country

on rock-and-roll
built this country
we built this country on rock-and-ro-oh-oll.

[Debi]

19. UGH!

Just kidding, Late welcome to DU :hi:

[Mr Rabble]

27. Slavery built this country.

Everyone else has been maintaining it for the last 150 years.

[_Loki_]

36. Bull.

I challenge you to defend the idea that the country has merely been "maintained" for the past 150 years. I further challenge you to logically discount all except for slaves, in the building-up of the country prior to 1865.

[Mr Rabble]

111. 58 posts. And you want to argue that slave labor didn't?

You are either looking to pick a fight, or you are woefully misinformed.

Either way, you can most likely use Google as well as I can, so have at it.

[_Loki_]

118. All I'm doing is

calling you out on your unsubstantiated and logically ridiculous claim.

[Mr Rabble]

122. Ok. Here you go.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2.html
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(1849-1865)
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/325.html
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_economic.cfm

Have fun!

[butterfly77]

158. your right

this country has been building and maintaining Iraq and other countries.

[kentuck]

28. It's also about the value of labor.

So Bill Gates is worth $60 billion or whatever? What did he really do to earn that? He sold a lot of computers. He bought an idea off a couple of college students for a $1000 or whatever, and became an entrepreneur. That's all fine and dandy. But, is there such a thing as too little for labor and too much for investment? Why is one so highly prized over the other? Because labor is clearly the superior or the two because capital would never have existed without lavor...

[kentuck]

56. Wealth is also power...

One person with a billion dollars has more power than 10,000 with 10 dollars each. In order to even the playing field, those 10,000 who only have their labor to exchange for the money, must get together. They must organize. Then the billionaire's power is lessened. If the billionaire wants a new casino built, then he would have to negotiate with them as a group, not individually, because he has an unfair advantage as the billionaire. But, that is what must be done if the laborer is to get the fair value for his labor. But that is much easier said than done, because in the capitalist system, many people do not make enough to survive for any length of time, so they are at the mercy of the "marketplace".

[kentuck]

74. We should recommend this page...

This is good arguments for Democrats to read, I think.

[txaslftist]

88. Thanks for understanding.

I did not mean for this to be flamebait in any sense. I meant it to be a reminder of who we, as Democrats, stand for in my opinion.

I talked to a deputy US marshal yesterday about politics (because I talk to EVERYONE about politics, ad nauseum). He said two things that I found illuminating. First of all, he said he was a Vietnam vet, and that "a lot of folks got really rich off that war. A lot of folks are getting rich off of this one, too."

He also said, "We stayed over there too damn long and we shouldn't have been there in the first place. This Iraq war is the same thing. We shouldn't have gone over there, and we shouldn't still be there. It's time to just bring our boys home."

This is a guy who is not rich, but he's not broke. He works every day of the week to pay his bills. He doesn't feel like anyone in Washington represents him, and he's as pissed at the Democrats who allowed Bush to go to Iraq as he is pissed at Bush. He feels like they just gave him a pass.

He's also pissed that his salary doesn't buy what it used to. He's looking for someone to support him. I say that ought to be us.

That is what this post is about, not whether rich people are bad or good (although I have strong opinions on this, too). I think the Democratic Party needs to be more populist in their approach.

[kentuck]

90. I agree.

this is the argument Democrats should be having. I do not think as a Party we can leave "capitalism" to its own devices. It will do away with the progressive tax. People will be without healthcare. Prices will go up and labor costs will stay low. When there are disasters, there will be nothing there for our people. It is the tax system I think that must be used to keep the capitalists from screwing the little guys.

I think about the people that are trying to survive right now and how difficult it is going to be this winter. I'm talking about so-called middle class, not just the working class. These are tough times. Many Americans are getting screwed by these capitalists, disguised as politicians.

What is the present minimum wage? Who the hell can live on that or even a few dollars more than that? What's the cheapest rent you can find? How much does it cost to eat? The entire system is totally out of kilter. I say screw the capitalists. They do not care about society. They care about wealth. That's why they are capitalists. Very few wish to do good things with their money. They are like cocaine addicts - they only want more cocaine. We need to monitor their cocaine.

[txaslftist]

91. The other problem with capitalists (or the investor class...

...if you prefer) is that investing is no longer about re-investing in the US economy. Portfolios have gone global, and so has capital. If the US economy tanks, those shares will just be invested in funds overseas. I don't think a guy with a large stock portfolio really cares about the problems his neighbor has meeting the monthly bills. I certainly don't think he invests that way. I think he invests based on where the returns are highest, period. If that means he invests in Daiwoo out of Japan, fine with him.

That's one of the problems with the whole trickle down idea. The investments/wealth may just trickle overseas.

[GrantDem]

94. Amen brother...

No argument from me.

[Metta]

109. Didn't Marx say labor is more important than capital?

I seem to remember he did.

[kentuck]

110. Groucho ?

:shrug:

[Joe Chi Minh]

113. Yep, it's all about the distribution of the country's income,

and the equal dignity of all its citizens.

Not equality of wealth for all citizens, but that the poorest should have sufficient means to live in modest comfort, and the richest, discouraged from the extremity of selfishness the Thatcher/Reagan years ushhered in.

[Joe Chi Minh]

112. I've just begun reading an autobiographical kind of

book called, "Making it Happen", by Sir John Harvey-Jones, the former CEO of ICI, a leading British multinational. Here is a paragraph which confirmed my impression that he must have been a pretty special kind of CEO:

"I had been greatly impressed by a number of experiences in my life. My time in submarines had brought me closer to people of a totally different background, and I had learnt a great deal from my sailors about their home circumstances before the war. I still number some of them among my personal friends all these years later, but at the time what struck me was their unbelievabe competence and sheer quality, compared with the wretchedly small scope they had been given in prewar Britain".

Seems the wheel's almost turned full circle, doesn't it? But, we could soon be on the up and up again, at last.

[mzmolly]

114. You are SO RIGHT!

Recommended.

[struggle4progress]

116. We won't build no more railroads for overalls and snuff (Joe Hill)

We have got to stick together, boys, and fight with all our might.
It's a case of no surrender: we have got to win this fight.
From these gunnysack contractors, we will take no more bluff;
and we won't build no more railroads for our overalls and snuff.
For our overalls and snuff, for our overalls and snuff.
We won't build no more railroads for our overalls and snuff.

http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/nomore.html

[David Zephyr]

117. Bravo from me, too.

Labor, not capital.

And let's not forget the free slave labor that African men, women and children provided to industry and agriculture and how their labor made a lot of families so wealthy that they are still passing the money down generation after generation.

Labor.

[Blue_Tires]

123. nominated/kicked n/t

[dretceterini]

125. What is fair?

If someone puts up $100,000 as capital, and I do all the labor, would a 50-50 split of profits between the capitalist and the laborer be fair (as an example, let's say the profit is 100% of capital, or $100,000)...should I get half, or $50,000?


Now lets enlarge this to a company exactly 10 times the size, and have everything be the same scenario. 1 capitalist and 10 laborers. $1,000,000 investment and $1,000,000 profit. Should the capitalist get $500,000 (half the profit) and the 10 laborers each get only $50,000 each?

Capital is like the chicken. Labor is the egg. The chicken has to exist first or there can be no eggs...


"Fairness" is like "God"...every person has their own belief about it...

It is my personal belief that capital should get 1/2 the profits, and the other half of the profits should be split between all the laborers.

[_Loki_]

138. Of course...

...if that is how you feel about it, you are free to run any business that you devise in that manner. Though that may not be how I would operate a business which I owned (or financed), the beauty of a "free" economic system is that you have the freedom to give it a go. If it works out for you, others will likely follow....

[lostinacause]

139. In a competitive market capital will only get it opportunity cost. That

is the cost associated with it. Given this and given the fact that a non competitive market is typically due increasing returns to scale. If the efficiency is due to something systematic in the organization structure should the firm still follow that criterion? That is should someone who works for a firm with market power make more then someone who works for a competitive firm who would presumably make nothing.

What if the firm is making a risky decision and the capitalist stands to take a loss if things don't work out? Should the workers be responsible for the loss? If they are part of the reason for the profits are they part of the reason why there is a loss.

What about workers who work less hard then their coworkers. Do they deserve the same pay given that one contributes more effort? What if an individual had to spend 10 years in post secondary to do the job should they get the same share of the profits as someone who did little training?

- "Fairness" is like "God"...every person has their own belief about it... -

That is so true. I usually keep it simple and say “fairness is subjective”. Given that it is subjective it plays a very important role in the behaviors of people.

[kentuck]

129. It should be the Labor Party vs the Capitalist Party, rather than....

liberal vs conservative or Democrat vs. Republican. Isn't this more of a determining characteristic between the two Parties than any other factor?

[lostinacause]

135. The idea of organized labour as many supporters of "labour" see it

will not lead to the ideal situation. The struggle that is perceived is in many ways irrational. The deviations from the perceived struggle are due to mutually beneficial decisions and choice. While there are some struggles at the institution level those should typically be decided through changing the institutions in a way that provides the right atmosphere.

A liberal vs. conservative definition of political parties gives the ability for the institutions to be adjusted. It also leaves room for optimization as there are compromises to be made by both parties. The labour vs. capitalist view does not leave room for optimization or compromise.

[eridani]

147. Capital contributes nothing--

--because its source is also labor. If someone with a lot of money wants to build a factory, I could put him up against a wall and take the money and direct it toward building the same factory. Neither of us would be in any way essential to the project, and there is no reason that those who have political and economic power should reserve those decisions for themselves alone.

[lumpy]

149. Originally pioneering

farmers built this country; cotton(using slavery), the agricultural breadbasket growing out of hard work farming, industrial invention. This country grew originally from the ground up, not by capital investment.

[DemBones DemBones]

150. Too bad this guy doesn't know

that incomes rose with the strength of unions, even for those outside the unions. In the Fifties and early Sixties, when unions were powerful, salaries and wages were high enough for one breadwinner to support a family. Since then, the right has succeeded in demonizing unions so that union membership has gone down and two breadwinners can be struggling to support a family.

But, yes, this guy is the one the Democrats need to reach out for again.

It's STILL the economy, stupid!

[The Magistrate]

155. Indeed, Ma'am

Even if one views the matter solely from the point of view of the interests of the possessors of great capital, and their desire to augment it, it remains the case the best way to benefit such persons and achieve that aim is a widespread prosperity among the laboring people, so that these latter can, in their great numbers, constitute a sizeable market for goods and services. If their purchases are limited to necessities by penury, there can be no profit gotten by supplying conveniences and even luxuries on any scale, and there is much more profit to be got in that matter than by the provison of mere necessities of subsistence. The policies dear to the present regime and its cronies are wrong, even on the terms of their own stated aims and evident desires....

"Can't nobody here play this game?"

[butterfly77]

156. Yeah...

Free black labor