You do realize, flu, that workers who do all the productive work in society, and who are taxed at far higher rates, have a much harder time “accumulating wealth” than the capitalist parasites who do nothing productive for society, right? Which should we incentivize more: productive work, or speculation?
No capital has ever created itself. ALL capital was first created by labor except for the rights to certain natural resources, but even those must be extracted or improved upon **by labor** if their full value is to be realized. Without labor, there is nothing for capital to trade or bet on.[/quote]This quote demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of industrial society. So lets pose a few questions:
Where did the money come from to pay the people working on the first Railroads? (the land was gov. granted right of way, but someone paid for the dynamite, rails, steam engines, surveyors etc.)
When a factory is built, the machining/manufacturing equipment is built.. who pays for the labor there? It is not yet producing goods to offset its cost, and will take years to do it.
The internet you are using today, who paid for the wires in the ground, the routers, undersea cables? Yes the original was a DARPA project between universities, literally on dialup – later leased lines.. but we are a way from that location right now.
What about all the power and gas lines that bring both light and heat to your homes. Have you ever tried to figure out how much cabling and piping is in the ground to provide this? Who paid for it? Not the government.
The answer to all of these is “someones capital”. Someone ponied up the money. The only way that someone will risk their capital is if the return from the capital justifies or offsets the risk. Otherwise it is better to keep it under the mattress, in a bunker– or somewhere safe. The way you get ‘capital’ is by spending less than you make (basically the only way. It does help to find a way to make more though).[/quote]
The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the “Pacific Railroad” and later as the “Overland Route”) was a railroad line built in the United States of America between 1863 and 1869 by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad that connected its statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska[1][2] (via Ogden, Utah, and Sacramento, California) with the Pacific Ocean at Oakland, California on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay opposite San Francisco. By linking with the existing railway network of the Eastern United States, the road thus connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States by rail for the first time. The line was popularly known as the Overland Route after the principal passenger rail service that operated over the length of the line through the end of 1962.[3]
The construction and operation of the line was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. Congress supported it with 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government-owned land.
A lot of the money used for initial infrastructure costs came from foreign governments, and later, our own government.
Who first created the capital owned by the capitalists that was used to build the factories, etc.? The money that came from private interests was initially made primarily by the exploitation of labor both here and overseas.
Sure, you can make a profit when you pay your workers next to nothing and force them to live in squalor (the most satisfied capitalist is one who manages to keep slaves to build his fortunes); but make no mistake, the capitalists are not the ones building or creating capital, those workers are. It’s time for workers to get a larger piece of what they create, and that’s what unions have always fought for.
