It is a fault of capitalism, not of the people, that there is unemployment, and homelessness.

[grahamhgreen]

How we can stop unemployment, and homelessness:

1) stop the wars
2) stop the bank bailouts
3) release non-violent drug users from prison
4) Return to the 94+% tax for the wealthy we had under Eisenhower

5) use the money to provide a stipend for all unemployed workers so they may have food, shelter, and medical care

It is a fault of capitalism, not of the people, that there is unemployment, and homelessness.

These unemployed workers should be compensated for the systems failures.

[Deja Q]

1. to argue

1. Not entirely sure. Properly withdrawl or proper continuing. At least we don't have people like Bush instigating such nonsense and President Obama still is worthy of being taken at face value.

2. AGREED. The double-standard is sickening, especially as our economy works as a trickle-up philosophy. People spending. The media will spin what they want and when, but don't let them turn anyone who makes less than a 6 digit salary into the perpetrators here.

3. Mostly agreed. Or, better yet, execute the multiple-offense murderers and rapists.

4. Well, even I will agree that's too high. But it should go up. The last 30 years have seen CEO wages rise, at the cost of the worker. They still promote media claiming we're all overpaid and other baseless drivel, often using wages that were normal in 1979 but forgetting to mention the cost of living IN 1979.

5. AGREED.


K&R, BTW. Great post!

[grasswire]

5. executing murderers and rapists v. freeing drug users?

You think those are parallel in costs to taxpapers? No. Our prisons are filled with people who have been caught with a small amount of dope. It costs about $40,000 to incarcerate someone for a year.

[cali]

7. wtf? more executions? sick.

[lunatica]

2. Why do you hate America

That's Socialism!!!

:sarcasm:

[RandomKoolzip]

3. At the risk of sounding like a freeper, I will add that "personal responsibilty"

does play a part in unemployment and homelessness - in some, not all cases. For instance, If you choose to become a meth addict or an alcoholic and refuse to admit you have a problem, the likelihood of becoming unemployed or homeless is heightened, and it's not the fault of capitalism if you lose your job under those circumstances. YOU have made bad decisions and will have to live with the consequences. In addition, there are several ways an individual can become unemployed or homeless that are the fault of the individual - bad financial decisions, willful ignorance about managing your money, intentional indolence, etc.

OKAY! HAVING SAID THAT (and please please notice that this is where the caveat is) - people who DO fall through the cracks and become homeless, even if it's their own fault, deserve a safety net, simply because they're human beings and everyone is entitled to some dignity. There SHOULD be government assistance to help those who've fallen on hard times, and programs designed to lift citizens out of those dire circumstances, no matter if they've done it to themsleves or not. People also become homeless or unmployed because of circumstances beyond their control: scizophrenia, mental disorders, etc. These poeple ought to be taken care of - they shouldn't just be thrown out on the street. I also belive that American corporate capitalism as it exists today is like a steroid-crazed, completely-out-of-control version of actual capitalism - and whoever's in charge should be taking measures right now to reinstate those regulatory practices that, in the past, held capitalism's worst excesses in check (progressive income tax, breaking up monopolies, etc) because this shit's out of hand.

[treestar]

12. You could get some debate on whether people "choose" alcoholism

and drug addiction - it runs in certain ethnic groups, so it could have genetic components. Also being poor in the first place one is at greater risk for looking for an escape of some kind.

It's too easy to be judgmental about that. There are rich alcoholics and drug addicts, from rock stars on down.

[still_one]

4. The problem isn't capitalism, the problem is both Democrats and republicans removed

most of the regulation that would have prevented the mess we got into. From the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was slowly repealed through the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act and Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, which allowed commercial, investment banks, as well as other financial institutions to merge.

The vote for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was 362-57 in favor in the house, and in the Senate the vote was 90 - 8 in favor.

As much as it would be nice to blame all our problems on captialism, the truth is it is captialism without regulation that was the problem, and that problem was a result of our elected representatives, which is a problem of "we the people", for maintaining our ignorance of what was happening.

You state we should have stopped the bank bilouts. If that wasn't done, it would have been far worse. The bailout wasn't the problem, the problem was not breaking these institutions up, and bringing back regulations, and the collapse.

[flamingdem]

6. Yes. I wondered why Michael Moore didn't point that out, instead he went after Geitner, Summers etc

And Dodd..

[stray cat]

8. Peace on earth good will toward men?

is it capitalisms fault worldwide as well?

[Igel]

9. However, find a system in which there isn't underemployment or unemployment.

Ignore personal responsibility: There are slackers, there are those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot or do not work. Focus on the rest.

The problem is that when there's insufficient resources or demand for something, you have two choices: You can concentrate the work or you can distribute the work. If you concentrate the work, you get some people fully employed and others unemployed. If you distribute, you get underemployment or the same effect--lowered standards of living for some and raised standards of living for others.

With specialization--and industrialization produced a lot of specialization--distributing the work gets harder. Granted, if there are enough unemployed programmers you could hire them all for 20 hours/week, but it's still inefficient. This, of course, is fair: You get what you earned, and what you don't earn goes to somebody else.

Even pre-industrialization you'd run into circumstances where the limiting factor was land: Then some would have enough land to work full time while others would have no land. The alternative would be to distribute land so that nobody needed full-time labor, and eventually nobody's land would be enough to support their families. Indeed, as it approached that limit people would send their kids away--to find their lot elsewhere (which drives a fair bit of Mexican immigration), or to be in the military, the great pre-industrial unlanded occupation with dignity.

The replacement strategy these days seems to be to have people work full time but to take what they earned and pay others to do nothing so that the first group can continue to have full employment. In pre-industrial times where property wasn't clearly possessed by individuals this would have been seen as criminal. It seems less criminal when they're paid to do grunt work, but that's also a throwback.

After all, if you're the lord of the manor and you have more mouths than you need to work your land, what do you do with the excess labor? Let them sit around and foment dissent? Of course not. Some you put in the army--sending them all off to fight from time to time. Others you put on public works--dig a ditch, fix the road, build the manor house. You might have all the men put in 10 hours for such projects, or just take 1/5 of the men and have them work full time on such projects. Same difference.

So what you're actually suggesting is feudalism. Ah.

[grahamhgreen]

11. Actually it's European, Australasian democratic socialism - works great!

Our big problem is that 1% of the people have stolen 95% of the wealth.

[anonymous171]

10. Some homeless people actually are unemployable

Usually because of mental health issues (which could be helped by a good public health system.)