Taxes.

Permabear

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Karl Stein

Permabear wrote: »

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You do realise that employing people is the seeking of profit from their labour and not some sort of altruistic endeavour?

So you'll understand that the statement...

I wouldn't really consider employing people as giving something back to society.

.. is true?

Let's sum it up shall we? The employing of people is the buying of their labour not giving back to society.

Turtwig

Permabear wrote: »

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Employment is generally good but that's not really a business owner giving anything back. The business and its workers are almost like an exclusive symbiotic relationship. Without one you can't have the other. I don't consider the people who designed, implemented, tested and marketed ideas for the owner as being the benefits the owner contributes to society. They're very often a disproportionate byproduct.

Leaving aside that the rest of this actually isn't really related to the point I was making about a business owner contributing to society. Your correlations aren't by any means good ones.

First, anyone who has health problems is less likely to be able to work. It should immediately be obvious that a dead person can't work. If you take a person's quality of life on a scale from worse to better you'll see a correlation to their chances of employment. What you've done in your post is correlated sun cream to sun burn with the implied claim that sun burn is somehow causing sun cream.

Second, mental health problems are correlated with instances of something but what's important to understand is why is this instance important. For employment I believe you could simplify this into basic two factors:
i) Perception of self worth.
ii) Stress for maintaining a quality of living.

If the person perceives their self worth as being highly dependent on passing an exam or getting a job they're more likely to be depressed when they don't achieve those standards. Now, the question to consider here is why is there that perception in the first place? Why do people in our society frequently tie their self worth to external things like passing exams, getting a job, having a girlfriend? Correlating unemployment with their mental health issues is only the first step in addressing problem. Removing unemployment from society would be nothing more than a "cosmetic" fix. We are merely masking the symptoms. We need to understand why a person lets unemployment (and other stuff) knock their self esteem? This isn't obvious at all.

Everybody needs money. Without it we're basically f**ked. For some people the lack of money or struggle to maintain a consistent standard of living can create all sorts of problems. Stress hormones can serve to paralyse the body and when this happens the brain is more vulnerable to falling into a state of learned helplessness.

Of course, it goes without saying the above paragraph isn't the cause of mental health issues. It's more to do with the thought processes of individuals. The causes of mental issues are far more complex and varied. But suffice to say the way a person perceives something is important. (Though, from the stuff I've read not as much as we'd like to think either. Biology plays a massive role.)

Turtwig

bluewolf wrote: »

And business is a necessity for society. Businesses are only in business when they give people what they want or need. If society doesn't want or need your product, you don't have a business.
They exist to facilitate trade all over the place beyond what your neighbours have, there are plenty offering competition and options and products.

Completely disagree as outlined above.

In addition to the above, what else is a job to many people?
People "use" jobs they often don't give a damn about to get money. Businesses "use" employees to continue on. Both exchange their skill and money in a trade...



Firstly, it's not about pocket, it's about skill. It's about some of those things where you say "I could have done that", but you didn't take the time or effort or research to go and do it. Or maybe you couldn't have. Someone put in a lot of effort, innovation, skill, creativity to find out what the market wants or needs, or to make advancements, and went out and did it.
It's a different thing entirely to showing up and doing your 9-5 and switching off again.

Secondly, I'm sure plenty does from start up capital, personal liability backing, taxes, etc.

How would society have progressed with technological advancements, consumer products, and so on? How would we be having this discussion without those selfish business people? How long would it take to cook dinner, how would we be washing clothes, and so on and so forth?
Without business and innovation, we'd be way back.
We get a lot out of business. How is society not better as a result of all these products we have? This morning, I used a treadmill, listened to my ipod, drank an energy drink. Now I'm in work doing work I shudder to think how long it might have taken 100 years ago. What's not better about all these things?



And vice versa!

I hope you will find this an interesting read:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/


It's interesting we're having this discussion on a thread about taxes. A government uses the labour of people to take some of their income and spend it as it sees fit. It uses the people to keep it accustomed to its standard of living - making lots of money for itself - while claiming it knows best, and backs that up with power.
It barely keeps things running along using the fact these structures are already long in place and are almost never reformed.
Contrast that to a business which is very immediately answerable to the people: if we disagree, we will boycott, we will stop buying your product, and you will go out of business.

Sorry I don't address everything. I'd also rather avoid dragging this into the wider libertarian argument.

You have made one massive assumption throughout your entire post and the article your linked to. That is that deserved vast majority of the wealth of the business actually produced the technology, innovations and ideas that benefit us. Generally this is true for start-ups and small business. So it goes without saying we're not discussing the same thing here. I guess you could consider me talking about the top 1% where the ideas, design and implementation usually have nothing to do with that 1%. You seem to be claiming that 1% is responsible for those great ideas and is getting the proportionate rewards.

Jobs are a mechanism of survival for some people. They very often take jobs they don't like out of necessity to afford a standard of living. In fact, in frequent studies researchers found that once you take the fear of money off an employees table they work autonomously. They'll work because they like what they're doing. Lots of code patches and updates, game mods, simple DIY fixes, come from people working in their own spare time. They like it. You don't need the lure of big money or profit to motivate people you just need to provide them with the comfort of being autonomous?
I'll see if I can dig up the studies it's a interesting question to ask.

Business aren't good for everyone. They rely on supply and demand and able employees. How are businesses benefiting people with disabilities or severe illnesses? (I seem to be using arthritis a lot lately. This better not jinx me. ) Consider a person with severe rheumatoid arthritis who is unable to work. How exactly does a business benefit them without providing services at a loss? The person is unable to work and has, if we remove taxes from society/business, no source of income other than charity. How is this subset of society going to be benefited by a business. Sure, they provide equipment and medical diagnostics but presumably these services aren't going to be provided for free. A similar line of reasoning could be used for people with little to no money. A business isn't really answerable to the sick and poor. The state however is - even the sick and poor get a vote. Taxes may be spent badly and inappropriately but that's not an argument against the idea of a state oversight it's only an argument against shoddy implementations.

Permabear

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Nodin

Permabear wrote: »

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Bees make honey, but they do it with an eye to their young, not to the market. While there are some companies that look after their employees and distribute reward and progress equitably, even that is done with self interest at the heart of it.

robindch

Charlie Rock wrote: »

I was wondering if this thread could escape turning into a libertarian circle jerk.

The forum's Atlas Shrugged appreciation thread is here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=66220634

Karl Stein

Permabear wrote: »

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'Create jobs'. Could you explain to me how jobs are 'created'. I'm interested in this job creationism.

Blowfish

Charlie Rock wrote: »

Let's sum it up shall we? The employing of people is the buying of their labour not giving back to society.

Why exactly can't it be both? This is one of the huge benefits of capitalism, namely that those most successful in seeking personal gain end up with the side effect of benefiting society as a whole.

Nodin wrote: »

Bees make honey, but they do it with an eye to their young, not to the market. While there are some companies that look after their employees and distribute reward and progress equitably, even that is done with self interest at the heart of it.

Indeed they do and bees in their pursuit of self interest cause pollination of flowers and plants, thus benefiting the ecosystem as a whole.

Self interest and benefiting society are by no means mutually exclusive, they go hand in hand in capitalist societies.

Karl Stein

Blowfish wrote: »

Why exactly can't it be both?

Asks question...

This is one of the huge benefits of capitalism, namely that those most successful in seeking personal gain end up with the side effect of benefiting society as a whole.

... isn't interested in answer and instead reverts to propaganda.

the richest Americans aren't entrepreneurs. Based on U.S. tax return data, only 3% of the wealthiest 130,000 Americans are entrepreneurs. Most are in management or finance.

www.commondreams.org

Wealth doesn't trickle down. Wealth gets squeezed up. If wealth trickled down there wouldn't be tens of millions of unemployed people in the US and Europe. But hey, just keep chanting your 'job creationist' mantra in the face of all the hard evidence.

jank

Charlie Rock wrote: »

Asks question...



... isn't interested in answer and instead reverts to propaganda.



Wealth doesn't trickle down. Wealth gets squeezed up. If wealth trickled down there wouldn't be tens of millions of unemployed people in the US and Europe. But hey, just keep chanting your 'job creationist' mantra in the face of all the hard evidence.

Simple question so, how does one create wealth?

Karl Stein

jank wrote: »

Simple question so, how does one create wealth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-KUbflnMEs

Nodin

Blowfish wrote: »

Why exactly can't it be both? This is one of the huge benefits of capitalism, namely that those most successful in seeking personal gain end up with the side effect of benefiting society as a whole.
Indeed they do and bees in their pursuit of self interest cause pollination of flowers and plants, thus benefiting the ecosystem as a whole.

Self interest and benefiting society are by no means mutually exclusive, they go hand in hand in capitalist societies.

Ideally. However over a quarter century involved in the non-union private sector has shown me that without a good eye kept on them, some folk will fuck over their fellow man, society and anything else that comes their way, given the chance.

Karl Stein

Freedom for the shark is tyranny for the sardine ⇧⇧

KyussBishop

Jobs are not a 'creation', they are a way of allocating labour/effort, where the person who controls the money paid for wages, gets to control the allocation of labour/effort (thus the business is taking labour/resources from the economy, making them unavailable to others - not giving).

Money is in a sense, societies debt to you, and when you spend your money in exchange for something, you're cashing in that debt - not giving back to society (not unless you literally give the money away, e.g. to charity).

The 'job creator' myth, is the idea that there is nothing else useful to be done with a persons labour, if it were not for the people who have money, who decide where that labour gets allocated.
That idea that there is nothing else useful to do with that labour, is false.


The purpose of the job creator myth, is to inflate the importance of management/directors and the bankers/financiers/investors who fund them, so that they can take inflated credit for the benefits business give to society through production (when the vast vast majority of that benefit is down to efforts of the workers).

It's all about who controls the flow of money, not even about who owns it either, since a lot of the loans that businesses depend upon, is created out of nothing (a privilege granted by the state to private banks).

Permabear

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Karl Stein

Permabear wrote: »

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That's not unique to the public sector and well you know it.

People like doctors will form professional unions that make sure the supply of trained people never meets demand so they can keep fleecing the public.

Permabear

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Nodin

Permabear wrote: »

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However unionisation works to a collective goal, which raises it rather above the dog eat dog. Certainly there is self interest amongst these groupings, but its an advance on the laissez faire nonsense that marked earlier centuries.

KyussBishop

The argument over self-interest is (and take this in the context of what's below, not taken out of context) largely irrelevant.

You can have a society of self-interested individuals, giving back to society (in effort/production) as much as they take away (in money and using that to put demands on societies resources), and still have rapacious profit-seekers, who try to inflate the worth/credit due for their efforts, to gain money/power over society, beyond what they contributed.

As a society, we can agree (as a matter of mutual self-interest), that it's bad when people can inflate the appearance of their worth/contribution to society, beyond their real contribution, in order to take more from society than they have really contributed.

Permabear

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Nodin

Permabear wrote: »

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The usual "no true Scotsman" line.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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My argument/logic doesn't distinguish between the public and private sectors.

If a business is badly managed, the workers don't get the blame for that bad management and it doesn't minimize the efforts/contribution those workers gave - it means the management/directors should be blamed for doing a bad job - same with a badly managed educational system, the blame doesn't just suddenly fall on the teachers, it falls on those who are supposed to be managing it correctly.

Along with inflating the credit due to someone for their work, I think minimizing and/or shifting the blame for someones (or some groups) faults onto others, we can agree is also a universally bad thing.

Permabear

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Karl Stein

I wonder* will the 'job creators' create some jobs for the tens of millions of people who are unemployed in the US and EU?

Maybe these mysterious, lesser spotted, 'job creators' should live up to their title? Let the wealth trickle down, show us sceptics how wrong we were...





*I don't really wonder, I'm using rhetoric to expose bullshit.

Lucy8080

Charlie Rock wrote: »

I wonder* will the 'job creators' create some jobs for the tens of millions of people who are unemployed in the US and EU?

Maybe these mysterious, lesser spotted, 'job creators' should live up to their title? Let the wealth trickle down, show us sceptics how wrong we were...





*I don't really wonder, I'm using rhetoric to expose bullshit.

This board has a massive problem with creationism ( except when it comes to job "creators") there seems to be some "creator " of jobs out there!

The guy that puts the money in the till may be just as crucial as the guy who takes it out...maybe more-so....as there seems to be more who put in than take out.

What will we ever do if the guy who fills the till doesn't want to play the game any more?

It may expose our notions of who we believe creates wealth or jobs.

Creationists eh!

Karl Stein

I wonder if I can subvert the free market and use the state to enforce a copyright around the term 'Job Creationism'.

Na, 'Job Creationism', as a true believer of free markets, is my gift to the world to expose the propaganda we're subject to from useful idiots.

gaynorvader

Lucy8080 wrote: »

This board has a massive problem with creationism ( except when it comes to job "creators") there seems to be some "creator " of jobs out there!

The guy that puts the money in the till may be just as crucial as the guy who takes it out...maybe more-so....as there seems to be more who put in than take out.

What will we ever do if the guy who fills the till doesn't want to play the game any more?

It may expose our notions of who we believe creates wealth or jobs.

Creationists eh!

I don't understand your point here, could you explain? It seems like you're equating believing that the earth is 6000 years old and made by god with believing that someone is capable of creating jobs.

Karl Stein

gaynorvader wrote: »

I don't understand your point here, could you explain? It seems like you're equating believing that the earth is 6000 years old and made by god with believing that someone is capable of creating jobs.

Don't mistake creating jobs with creating work. I could create work for a poor 3rd world child by paying him to clean my ass after I go for a shit. Not something I'd consider doing but, nevertheless, my privileged westerner status would allow me to adopt the title of 'a job creator' in the minds of morons.

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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I think that falls foul of what I said at the end of my last post:
"...I think minimizing and/or shifting the blame for someones (or some groups) faults onto others, we can agree is also a universally bad thing."

The 'reforms' you speak of, primarily seem to consist of general budget cuts - something that isn't going to help improve the problems with the quality of education that you speak of.

Are there any reforms, aimed at boosting teacher qualifications, boosting the quality/reach of our maths education, or boosting the quality/reach of education surrounding literacy?

Pursuing this is a job for 'management' (and failure to do so, lays fault on them), and I don't think the unions or teachers would oppose this kind of positive reform.

gaynorvader

Charlie Rock wrote: »

Don't mistake creating jobs with creating work. I could create work for a poor 3rd world child by paying him to clean my ass after I go for a shit. Not something I'd consider doing but, nevertheless, my privileged westerner status would allow me to adopt the title of 'a job creator' in the minds of morons.

job
/jäb/
Noun
A paid position of regular employment.

If you create a paid position of regular employment you create a job. I don't see where the problem is or what it has to do with privileged westerner status.

jank

Charlie Rock wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-KUbflnMEs

So your point is that slavery creates wealth? Seeing how slavery in the western world has been outlawed for the best part for 150 years if not more in most countries, we must be a lot poorer now!

jank

gaynorvader wrote: »

If you create a paid position of regular employment you create a job. I don't see where the problem is or what it has to do with privileged westerner status.

Progressive/liberal guilt replaces catholic/religious guilt.

joseph brand

Just discovered this: (the word Libertarian has popped up a couple of times)



I'm surprised they didn't put Hospitals and Charities on that list.

jank

jank wrote: »

So your point is that slavery creates wealth? Seeing how slavery in the western world has been outlawed for the best part for 150 years if not more in most countries, we must be a lot poorer now!

Mod edited: <Take issues with moderation to PM or feedback. Ta,>
Can Charlie Rock answer my question?

sephir0th

joseph brand wrote: »

I'm surprised they didn't put Hospitals and Charities on that list.

They wouldn't be abolished, just privately run.

robindch

sephir0th wrote: »

They wouldn't be abolished, just privately run.

Yes. But without universal regulation, you'd end up with the US's diploma-mill industry and the weird, parallel universe that is the religiously-controlled "education" industry where sexism, authoritarianism, creationism, climate-change denialism and much similar nonsense are de rigeur.

Libertarians may disagree (they may even be happy with it), but the problem with a consumer-based society is that many consumers aren't competent to judge the quality of what they consume.

jank

I fail to see anywhere libertarians wanting to hand over education to religious authorities. If one wanted to create an atheist based secular chain of private schools, one may.

Blowfish

robindch wrote: »

Libertarians may disagree (they may even be happy with it), but the problem with a consumer-based society is that many consumers aren't competent to judge the quality of what they consume.

They quite often don't need to be, industry standards organisations can (and do, even in our society) perform that role. ISO, IEEE, industry recognised qualifications etc.

A more relevant example for consumers would be the fact that a 5 year old in Gamestop is going to be refused if they try to buy GTA V. the video game industry is self regulating through things like PEGI and ESRB, despite the fact that there is actually no law against selling a 5 year old GTA V.

robindch

Blowfish wrote: »

robindch wrote: »

Libertarians may disagree [...] but the problem with a consumer-based society is that many consumers aren't competent to judge the quality of what they consume.

They quite often don't need to be, industry standards organisations can (and do, even in our society) perform that role.

Tell that to the people who were buying Tesco burgers earlier this year.

Regulatory capture is easier when the regulator is appointed by the industry, rather than independently.

robindch

robindch wrote: »

but the problem with a consumer-based society is that many consumers aren't competent to judge the quality of what they consume.

And yet we trust them to choose who runs the country ^^

Karl Stein

jank wrote: »

Mod edited: <Take issues with moderation to PM or feedback. Ta,>
Can Charlie Rock answer my question?

The 'slaves' clip was tongue-in-cheek.

robindch

bluewolf wrote: »

And yet we trust them to choose who runs the country ^^

Are you saying that consumers are always equipped adequately to judge the goods they consume?

Blowfish

robindch wrote: »

Tell that to the people who were buying Tesco burgers earlier this year.

Regulatory capture is easier when the regulator is appointed by the industry, rather than independently.

An interesting claim, given that every single example listed in that link (plus the Tesco horse burger fiasco) are of regulatory capture/failure by governments and not industry.

robindch

Blowfish wrote: »

An interesting claim, given that every single example listed in that link (plus the Tesco horse burger fiasco) are of regulatory capture/failure by governments and not industry.

An equally interesting claim, since I understood that - for example - the first corrective actions that happened during the tesco horse-meat problem occurred on account of state-level oversight, rather than industry-level oversight. And that's ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that players in the industry obviously knew exactly what was going on and chose to cover it up.

More generally, do you really believe that regulatory capture is more frequent in externally-regulated environments than in self-regulated environments?

Permabear

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joseph brand

Dirty little secret is that those at the top feel no pain.

"It is notable that the higher up you go, the greater the enthusiasm for the politics of austerity, writes Gene Kerrigan"

From the comfortable surroundings of their annual "think-in", in Portlaoise, fresh-faced young Fine Gael TDs earnestly told the TV cameras they want to inflict "a little more pain" (this is a genuine quote) on the citizens, in order to create long term gain for the country.

From the comfortable surroundings of their annual "think-in", in Meath, jowly faced elderly Labour TDs told the TV cameras they'd like to inflict slightly less, but still quite a hefty amount of pain, on the citizens. For their own good.

From the comfortable surroundings of their annual "think-in", in Waterford, surly eyed Fianna Fail TDs suggested slight variations in the methods that might be used to inflict pain on the citizens.

A confession: this recession has just about passed me by, so far. I have a job, with a comfortable wage. I'm not in debt. Not once since this recession began did I have to tot up the prices as I filled my supermarket basket – knowing that there would always be enough money to cover the daily needs.

Those of us who have jobs with comfortable wages have suffered income cuts, increased taxes and new levies and charges. We've cut back on holidays. We've considered replacing this or that and decided no – we'll get another year or two out of them. We have been inconvenienced, our aspirations have been trimmed – but we've never suffered the pain of refusing a child something they needed.

Some of the thicker elements amongst us regard social welfare as a form of charity. They see themselves as martyrs, paying exorbitant taxes, money that's then sprinkled into the laps of layabouts who thrive on "handouts".

We all pay taxes. Every time we buy a comb or a battery, a chair or a ticket to a concert we're paying taxes. We work, pay income tax, lose jobs, get the dole for a while, work again. And every time we pay an income or transaction tax we're laying aside a small amount for those days when we will need what civilised societies call "social protection". Over a lifetime, you pay for what you get – but, with the politics of austerity, you don't always get what you've paid for.

The austerity fans weave legends of social welfare schemers who suck the life from the economy. There's a small proportion of freeloaders, always was and always will be, but the vast majority of us pay our way. The politicians whip up a frenzy about alleged benefit cheats – costing, on official estimates, €20m a year. And that includes mostly payments in error, as well as fraud. Money that should be recovered, but a pinprick. They'd need to defraud the State of that amount for 3,200 years to catch up with what the politicians gave away to the bankers.

People think scumbags wear tracksuits and tuck their bottoms into their socks (many of them do). But the biggest leeches on our society wear Savile Row suits. The Vatican is criminal, the Queen and her incestual family are criminals and of course more pertinently, those well dressed, clean shaven, Brute wearing banksters. One example would be the money laundering of the profits from drug cartels.

In the US they're known as 'Too Big To Jail Fail'. Here they're known as 'Too Complicated To Prosecute'.

It's like something from Spinal Tap:

Nigel Tufnel: "Authorities said... best leave it... unsolved."

KyussBishop

Blowfish wrote: »

They quite often don't need to be, industry standards organisations can (and do, even in our society) perform that role. ISO, IEEE, industry recognised qualifications etc.

A more relevant example for consumers would be the fact that a 5 year old in Gamestop is going to be refused if they try to buy GTA V. the video game industry is self regulating through things like PEGI and ESRB, despite the fact that there is actually no law against selling a 5 year old GTA V.

Similarly, the Holywood film industry is self-regulated by the MPAA, who are known for being extremely inconsistent in how they apply film ratings to movies, leading to some arbitrarily getting certifications which make the films practically undistributable, massively harming their commercial performance (a softer form of censorship); there's a pretty fun documentary on this, This Film is Not Yet Rated.


Fact is, you can cherry pick any example of self-regulation working in action wherever you like, but to claim you can apply that to entire economies/countries, requires playing down all of the examples where it doesn't work; the above one appearing extremely benign compared to many of the other examples out there, which affect entire markets/economies in huge ways.

You see it right in this thread: No Libertarians care about where things might go wrong in their preferred system, and when shown examples of it, they just go "what about the government/public-sector", as if to say "Ignore that, lets concentrate on government faults exclusively instead".


I've never seen a Libertarian poster accept any kind of criticism of the private sector, or acknowledge the problems of fraud (one of the most important topics for showing limitations to self-regulation and Libertarianism), or gaining personal advantage through unethical acts, within the private sector; you just get the whataboutery in response to it, every time.

The closest you'll get to them acknowledging the true purpose of Libertarianism, is when they give a very implicit/limp-wristed statement, implying that fraud isn't so bad; that is a debate none of them will ever have in earnest though (only dancing around the topic), because they know it will look incredibly bad on them personally and collectively.

Then you get the problem, analogous to the one I described earlier, with managers/directors inflating credit due to them and their importance, while deflating credit due to workers and their importance:
You get the general inflation of credit due to the private sector, and general deflation of credit due to the public sector; goes right down to dismissing actual real world examples of private sector harm and public sector benefit, and inflating examples of public sector harm. Equally, you get blame shifting off of the private sector onto the public sector.

Reality is of course, far less black and white, with good and harm happening from both the public/private sectors, and it's very hard to trust any posters that insist on such consistently black and white narrative.


There are so many things to criticize and facets to the style of posting I encounter from Libertarians, that it's hard to sum them up succinctly, rather than turning into a huge post. A general lack of skepticism to their own views, I think would be one big way of summing it up.

joseph brand

Blowfish wrote: »

An interesting claim, given that every single example listed in that link (plus the Tesco horse burger fiasco) are of regulatory capture/failure by governments and not industry.

The industry had nothing to do with using horse meat? Somehow it was the governments fault. Regulation not stringent enough? Sounds like a vote for government.

"You [government] should have been more thorough. Why did you let us circumvent regulations and buy cheap horse bellies?"



"I begged you to look at mine first. Begged you!" Uter