[quote=SD Realtor]No way I am falling into that trap CAR.
Your Utopian society does not and never will exist. See you in the fiction section of the bookstore.[/quote]
First off, it’s no trap. Secondly, while my exact “Utiopian” society might not exist, there are plenty of societies/economies that are much closer to it than ours, and there have been quite a few throughout history as well.
You can study the history of civilizations throughout history yourself to see what happens when wage and income gaps become too great. You can also discover the ways and circumstances in which these gaps grow, and how they collapse. Trust me, you do not want to see this gap become too great; it has NEVER ended well. And these huge gaps have NEVER been the result of the rich “working harder.” It has always been because the rich use their power to obtain more power and control over resources. That is THE key to becoming part of the 1%; it is rarely about productivity or “job creation.”
[quote=SD Realtor]BTW CAR I do agree with your points about the country being at the mercy of capital and all that, corruption, etc etc…. No argument there. Nothing fictional about that.
However there are literally billions of bodies on this planet available for labor and fewer and fewer that have capital. Thus the value of labor is what drives wages down. Not the needs of those willing to do the labor. If you guys want to place a higher value on labor then what it should be then so be it, I simply disagree.[/quote]
Yes, there are billions of bodies willing to do the work, and there are also billions of bodies/millions of entities who would gladly compete with the existing corporate power (lowering prices for consumers and reducing profit margins)…but they are unable to because of IP laws, military threats, and legal restrictions on who can enter particular trades. Large corporate entities can tie up a small business in court with in IP or other types of cases (whether they have merit or not).
They also would have to contend with the sheer imbalance of power/money when competing with these entities. Large corporations can buy them out in friendly or unfriendly mergers or acquisitions; or a big box competitor can set up shop across the street from a successful business, using their ability to kill mom & pops’ margins because of the box stores’ economies of scale and marketing power.
Again, this is not a free market, and if capital deserves protection against competition (whether they do or not is another question altogether which I will not attempt to address here), then labor also deserves protection against competition. As it stands, the benefit of this huge imbalance of financial/political power clearly lies on the side of capital. If that’s how the game is played, then labor deserves the same protection.
