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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (364265)	12/24/2007 6:56:46 AM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575429

The only solution is to pay everyone the same rate for their labor. Or redistribute the income through taxes. Our comrade cannot come out and say it publicly.

To: Elroy who wrote (364265)	12/25/2007 10:54:35 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575429

What's wrong with one group accumulating wealth faster than another? The problem, and this is a problem with capitalism in general, is that the wealth often flows to someone who just happens to be at a choke point of the commerce process. There is a chain of people who produce the goods from A-->B-->C-->D but if one of those points is the one that realizes the cash, they will demand and get an inappropriate share of the profit. For example if in A-->B-->C-->D we find that person C is the one who actually sells the product made by A+B. That doesn't mean that person C worked harder or was more important, but only that he was at a chokepoint. A and B are so busy producing goods, and their intermediate products aren't worth much to anyone, so person C who actually sells it gets all the credit (or a big share of the profit) even though it took the whole team to even get it out. (Person D in this example might be after-sales service and get almost nothing even though they are required to know the most about the product). The problem with this scenario is that smart people want to move to position C, and this is probably not the position that would most benefit from some smarts. TP

To: Elroy who wrote (364265)	12/26/2007 4:13:01 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575429

My point is they are not paying enough and that allows them to accumulate wealth faster than the rest of the population. What's wrong with one group accumulating wealth faster than another? That seems to be the crux of your objection. We've been talking of wealth in terms of a pie.....which represents all the money and resources in this country. When one group acquires more wealth and resources of that pie at the expense of other groups, the other groups naturally suffer. In the past the accumulation of the richest was more in keeping with the rate the whole pie was expanding.....always faster but not that fast. In recent years, the rate of accumulation by the richest has accelerated considerably, meaning more wealth than normal has accrued to the elite and been taken from the lower classes....hurting them significantly in the process. This happens periodically, but its particularly bad right now. And keep in mind that over time, the wealthiest 1% have always been accumulating more and more of the nation's resources and their position vis a vis the other classes has always gotten better. However, its only when the accumulation rate speeds up does the disparity become noticeable. What's wrong with that? Well the more wealth in the hands of fewer people means we become less of a democracy. Fewer people control what's happening in the country. It becomes rarer and rarer for one of the non wealthy to get elected to national office. It still happens......see Bill Clinton. However, most people running for national offices......particularly the Senate and the presidency are millionaires. Unfortunately, in a capitalistic society, wealth equals smarts and competence.....which isn't necessarily true at all. As a strong proponent of democracy, this scenario is objectionable. There is more......once you see the weakness of what we are taught growing up, you begin to see more and more the flaws of our system, but the first step is seeing that capitalism is not as democratic as would appear at first blush.