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Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
WhiteLion wrote...
My ex works at IBM and earns $23/hr and earns less than that.
Did your ex graduate from a high level university with a 4 year degree in a relevant field(programming, math, physics, etc)? See what I am getting at?
Didn't even finish college. She attended a minor college for slightly over a year for photography or some other bullshit (can't remember) and still landed the job of a project lead at IBM. Basically, in the tech department if she gets one more promotion she'll earn 50,000+ a year
WhiteLion wrote...
Either the government decides to invest more in teacher salaries, or else they will be stuck with incompetents and firing these people will do nothing to improve quality on a large scale. We see this happening all the time. Bad teachers tend to get fired by good public schools that are desirable to teach at(fewer problem students, better environment) and all end up in the worst schools, ensuring that these schools stay bad. Plenty of programs have showed that putting good teachers in bad schools does make a difference, but the system we currently have in place assures that there are not enough good teachers to fill the jobs, and that bad schools are then forced to hire what is left: bad teachers, ensuring the preservation of mediocrity.The overall theme here is that, if one desires a better quality of education in this country, and most people do, there is no way to achieve this without paying teachers more, or improving the value of their jobs in some other way.
All I ever hear from teachers is bitching about how hard their jobs are. The only people preserving mediocrity are the teachers themselves. They choose to work for the government. They demand higher pay while their output is pathetic and that is being overly generous. Tell me why the pay should be raised when the majority of the schools are complete sinkholes for money and are terrible excuses for an education. If a private school educated its students so poorly then parents would immediately withdraw their children and resort to educating them at home.
Your solution of reward people first then expect them to perform on their end is simply utter nonsense. Offering higher pay won't draw more "dedicated" teachers. It'll just draw more fuck ups and more tax money will be pissed away on good for nothing jerk offs. This is why schools are now going by merit pay. If you don't perform then you don't get paid and that is how it should be. Those who perform will be rewarded with better pay while those screw ups won't perform and will have to find a new career.
The best solution is to privatize schools, give low and middle income families a tax break or a check worth roughly the amount of education a month (based on family income). While only giving the dirt poor a free ride and basically making low and middle class pay smaller portion of the "fees" or whatever to attend school. The only thing left up to the people is making sure their child behaves itself while in school. Schools would compete with one another to draw students and better teachers. More would be required from teachers but, the private sector would pay them a lot more than the government does and it wouldn't be at tax payers expense. If a school doesn't perform for the student then the parents can remove their child and send them to a different school. The tax payer would have it's taxes lowered. Everyone receives access to education, student receive better education than the pathetic government education, teachers are paid more and the demand for good teachers will increase thus drawing more people to the job since the pay will be good and the "problems" teachers currently face will be screened out before the child even steps foot in the classroom.
If you think about it. A shortage of fine teachers is the best thing for a teacher. As having so few around, a teacher can almost set their price. Schools will scramble to acquire the best teachers.
Though, this will never happen because the union members won't allow it to happen. They put themselves before the education of our youth.
Edit: Just to be clear. I think the level of education in public schools is so poor that I will never send my child (if I ever have any) to a public school even if they do reform the entire system.
Well, regarding the topic "teachers", I am currently studying German and English and I can tell that there are alot of differentials between countries when it comes to that topic. Now I won't judge on the teachers in the states, because I honestly don't have any personal first hand experience with it, but I do think that there are several factors that decide how good a teacher can be.
Of course everyone wants to be payed decently for his work, but the problem about it is, that everyone is always quick to blame the teachers for the educational state. Many things are influenced by the parents, friends and community, others are influenced by the amount of money the school has accessible and last but not least by the limits that are set by the government about taboo topics.
Regarding the workload, it can differ very much depending on the school system, the subjects, having special obligations e.g. being organizational head of the class projects, which grades you have, the amount of exams you need to prepare for and many other things.
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Eranikum wrote...
]Well, regarding the topic "teachers", I am currently studying German and English and I can tell that there are alot of differentials between countries when it comes to that topic. Now I won't judge on the teachers in the states, because I honestly don't have any personal first hand experience with it, but I do think that there are several factors that decide how good a teacher can be.Of course everyone wants to be payed decently for his work, but the problem about it is, that everyone is always quick to blame the teachers for the educational state. Many things are influenced by the parents, friends and community, others are influenced by the amount of money the school has accessible and last but not least by the limits that are set by the government about taboo topics.
Regarding the workload, it can differ very much depending on the school system, the subjects, having special obligations e.g. being organizational head of the class projects, which grades you have, the amount of exams you need to prepare for and many other things.
Teachers here receive roughly 50,000 a year and get raises every year based on the amount they studied in college. The more certifications and education you have the more your raises are. 50,000 a year isn't a bad paycheck that is roughly $23/hr and you get pay raises every year. The only "downside" I can conceive of is the bad students (troublemakers) and the long hours(If there are others, please tell me). At the current standards, teachers are usually never fired unless they try to fuck the children or strike them. I want a job where I can basically do the bare minimum and don't have to worry about being fired.
I agree that there are several variables that affect the education of children. My understanding is the
*restriction on education on certain subjects (Evolution,etc)
*The lack of competition between schools and teachers
*the concentration more on obedience rather than education (Those who attend(ed) schools in Georgia will relate)
*the generally low standards for what is "acceptable" to pass
*Shorter school year with a large break for "summer" which lets children forget 20% of the previous years education. Thus making teachers have to reteach a lot.
All of these lower the quality of the education we give children
Basically, we lowered the bar for the idiots rather than making the idiots work harder to achieve. It's a terrible idea to teach children "You don't have to work as hard as the other children because your 'special'". On top of those reason if you can't afford a charter or another school you are basically forced with the pathetic excuse for an education that the government offers.
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As I stated in my previous post, paying a low wage(50k is low for someone with a graduate degree. This is especially problematic in the fields of math and science where applied jobs pay MUCH more. This is why we have so few math and science teachers.) and making the job difficult to fire isn't going to attract the ambitious and the high achievers.
I would support raising teacher salaries across the board, but in exchange, teachers should be able to be fired like regular employees. Maybe you reward the bad ones temporarily, but then you can fire them, and the higher salary will attract more qualified people who think they can do the job well(and thus not be fired for incompetence).
Another option is merit pay based on peer review(but not on test scores! Pay tied to test scores encourages narrow and bad teaching and teachers cheating on standardized tests. The (in)famous Steve Levitt confirmed this.)
I would support raising teacher salaries across the board, but in exchange, teachers should be able to be fired like regular employees. Maybe you reward the bad ones temporarily, but then you can fire them, and the higher salary will attract more qualified people who think they can do the job well(and thus not be fired for incompetence).
Another option is merit pay based on peer review(but not on test scores! Pay tied to test scores encourages narrow and bad teaching and teachers cheating on standardized tests. The (in)famous Steve Levitt confirmed this.)
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About a year ago, I talked in-depth to a professor at the college I was attending about what being a teacher at a college entails. Before that discussion, I was planning on becoming a college professor. After that discussion, I gave up on that idea. Of course, I'm not one of the people who really wants to teach, though I would have enjoyed it.
The reason I gave up the idea of teaching is one very important thing he said to me: He told a little story of how he had a Master's degree, and three years of experience. He and his wife moved and got new jobs. His wife just had a Bachelor's degree and no experience teaching. She got a job at an elementary school, and he got a job at a college. She made $50 more than he did a year. This may not seem like much, and it isn't much money, but it says a whole lot.
A person with no experience makes more than a person with experience? A person with a Bachelor's degree makes more than a person with a Master's degree? How does that make sense? Where's the incentive to work, to earn a Master's degree? I'll tell you what the incentive was - the incentive was the ability to teach higher-level things to people who were legally adults. Most colleges won't hire you unless you have a Master's degree, and understandably. You need more education, more experience, to be able to teach the tougher subjects. But it doesn't make sense how a person who spent less time in college, and with no experience, can earn more. There's no reason like, "Teaching kids is more important than teaching adults." That's bullshit. It may be more important, but we don't pay just on the basis of importance. If we did, policemen would get paid more than everyone else, except doctors. But, of course, we don't pay more because you went to school longer either, or else a college professor would earn more.
Now, my professor didn't tell me exactly how much he and his wife made per year (and it would have been rude to ask), but I did some research and found that rarely does a grade school teacher starting out make $40,000. Also, a lot of teachers, more than half of the ones I ever had, spent money out of their own pockets to provide things for the students, that the school either couldn't or wouldn't provide.
I echo WhiteLion's statement that teaching is not easy work at all. Of course, it varies in difficult depending on which subject you're teaching, but it's never easy.
If you have 25 students in your class, you're going to have a handful, even if they're all well-behaved. That's 25 homework assignments to grade, and if you want to be a really good teacher, you won't just give easy-to-answer multiple choice homework; you'll give them stuff that forces them to think, and you'll have to see what the results, and that's a lot harder than making a question wrong if a person put "B" instead of "A." Also, you can't just give homework once a week. It doesn't work that way. And you have to come up with your lesson plans, and revise them as the days go by. Your lesson plan will never go as smoothly as you'd like; you'll either end up behind, having to try to cram things together, or ahead, and trying to find more things to say. Plus, you'll never teach just one class. You'll have four classes to deal with, or more, and that means four sets of homework, with 25 papers in each set. And you have to grade them all in one night, so you can turn them all back.
Teachers don't have it easy. Not one bit. That's part of the reason people don't want to be teachers, unless they really, really want to teach and help the growing world. Teachers simply don't get paid enough to do all the work they do. Hell, if a cop gets shot, at least he'll get full medical care and won't have to lift a finger for the rest of his life. And he'll be praised as a hero by the whole fucking town. Even if cops and teachers made the exact same amount of money, it's clear which one more people would choose to be.
The reason I gave up the idea of teaching is one very important thing he said to me: He told a little story of how he had a Master's degree, and three years of experience. He and his wife moved and got new jobs. His wife just had a Bachelor's degree and no experience teaching. She got a job at an elementary school, and he got a job at a college. She made $50 more than he did a year. This may not seem like much, and it isn't much money, but it says a whole lot.
A person with no experience makes more than a person with experience? A person with a Bachelor's degree makes more than a person with a Master's degree? How does that make sense? Where's the incentive to work, to earn a Master's degree? I'll tell you what the incentive was - the incentive was the ability to teach higher-level things to people who were legally adults. Most colleges won't hire you unless you have a Master's degree, and understandably. You need more education, more experience, to be able to teach the tougher subjects. But it doesn't make sense how a person who spent less time in college, and with no experience, can earn more. There's no reason like, "Teaching kids is more important than teaching adults." That's bullshit. It may be more important, but we don't pay just on the basis of importance. If we did, policemen would get paid more than everyone else, except doctors. But, of course, we don't pay more because you went to school longer either, or else a college professor would earn more.
Now, my professor didn't tell me exactly how much he and his wife made per year (and it would have been rude to ask), but I did some research and found that rarely does a grade school teacher starting out make $40,000. Also, a lot of teachers, more than half of the ones I ever had, spent money out of their own pockets to provide things for the students, that the school either couldn't or wouldn't provide.
I echo WhiteLion's statement that teaching is not easy work at all. Of course, it varies in difficult depending on which subject you're teaching, but it's never easy.
If you have 25 students in your class, you're going to have a handful, even if they're all well-behaved. That's 25 homework assignments to grade, and if you want to be a really good teacher, you won't just give easy-to-answer multiple choice homework; you'll give them stuff that forces them to think, and you'll have to see what the results, and that's a lot harder than making a question wrong if a person put "B" instead of "A." Also, you can't just give homework once a week. It doesn't work that way. And you have to come up with your lesson plans, and revise them as the days go by. Your lesson plan will never go as smoothly as you'd like; you'll either end up behind, having to try to cram things together, or ahead, and trying to find more things to say. Plus, you'll never teach just one class. You'll have four classes to deal with, or more, and that means four sets of homework, with 25 papers in each set. And you have to grade them all in one night, so you can turn them all back.
Teachers don't have it easy. Not one bit. That's part of the reason people don't want to be teachers, unless they really, really want to teach and help the growing world. Teachers simply don't get paid enough to do all the work they do. Hell, if a cop gets shot, at least he'll get full medical care and won't have to lift a finger for the rest of his life. And he'll be praised as a hero by the whole fucking town. Even if cops and teachers made the exact same amount of money, it's clear which one more people would choose to be.
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The amount of money a person makes compared to their education and other factors can be debated to eternity, but it is proving the point that the capitalist system is broken. Instead of saying teachers complain about only getting paid 50K a year, the question that needs asking is why are they complaining about only getting 50K a year. 100 years ago 50K a year would make a person rich beyond dreams, whereas today it is around middle of the pack depending on locale. Market prices have gone up and up constantly whereas incomes have not followed suit. Example: Why is gas over $3 a galleon in the States, whereas in South America it is around 30c a galleon? In theory we should be getting the same stock market reports, and all the worldly crap should be affecting both areas. So why the difference? It could logically be summed up as simple as price to wage ration. In South America the majority of people are dirt poor, and therefore they cannot afford high prices for everything. So what does a good capitalist do??? Put the price at a rate where people can afford it, so they can make money.
The disconnect is in North America big business believes, and rightly so, that they can get away with anything and everything. OBVIOUSLY we have been gouged on gas for the past 5+ years, but they do not fear the people doing anything about it. Now I am not saying that South America is any better off, or the businesses have more morality towards the common man, but the only logical explaination is the difference in the wage structure. Discussing supply and demand does not work anymore because it is not followed anymore by big business. It all revolves around the wage structure. In Alberta they produce tons of barrels of oil for gas everyday, but yet I do not hear many Albertans making fun of the rest of Canada because they get 30c a galleon gas prices, while the rest of us are at around $1 a litre. But yet those prices can be achieved in countries like Eucador and Venazuala. The reason? In those two countries $15 a day might be the going rate for a job, if a person even has a job, while in Alberta the going rate is around $20. Gas companies can afford to gouge us more here because we get paid more. If we were radically getting paid 1940s wages I can guarentee that gas would not be as high as it is now in North America.
The same reasoning can be applied to any type of product in which you need to exchange money for the goods or services. I only picked gas because everyone likes to complain about it now.
Capitalism will eventually implode on itself because the sole purpose of capitalism will force itself to stop fuctioning. Capitalism, by its very nature, wants to buy low and sell high. In order to do so it wants to save every penny possible at every juncture. Lower wages means more profits. But eventually people will stop bying item X because they do not have enough money to buy it, thus forcing changes to be made. GM is the prime example of this deterministic theory-based approach. It wanted to cut costs, and thus make more profits, by shipping good paying American jobs to Mexico, where people were paid at a fraction of the price. As GM was cutting those American jobs, it was finding out that business was suddenly not as good. The reason??? Less people were buying GM because they did not have the money to buy a 20K car, when they are only getting paid $5 an hour. So to raise profits again they close down more American plants and send them to Mexico. This then forces more people to stop buying new GM cars, and thus the cycle repeats itself until GM goes bust. As said by a news report last week GM is now either going to merge with Chrysler, or be bought outright by Chrysler. Capitalism at its finest and worst.
It does not take a genius to figure out that in the future capitalism will eventually turn into some form of quasi-communism/socialism, since the inherient nature of capitalism is to destory itself. It might not happen in 10 years, or 100 years, but it will happen.
The disconnect is in North America big business believes, and rightly so, that they can get away with anything and everything. OBVIOUSLY we have been gouged on gas for the past 5+ years, but they do not fear the people doing anything about it. Now I am not saying that South America is any better off, or the businesses have more morality towards the common man, but the only logical explaination is the difference in the wage structure. Discussing supply and demand does not work anymore because it is not followed anymore by big business. It all revolves around the wage structure. In Alberta they produce tons of barrels of oil for gas everyday, but yet I do not hear many Albertans making fun of the rest of Canada because they get 30c a galleon gas prices, while the rest of us are at around $1 a litre. But yet those prices can be achieved in countries like Eucador and Venazuala. The reason? In those two countries $15 a day might be the going rate for a job, if a person even has a job, while in Alberta the going rate is around $20. Gas companies can afford to gouge us more here because we get paid more. If we were radically getting paid 1940s wages I can guarentee that gas would not be as high as it is now in North America.
The same reasoning can be applied to any type of product in which you need to exchange money for the goods or services. I only picked gas because everyone likes to complain about it now.
Capitalism will eventually implode on itself because the sole purpose of capitalism will force itself to stop fuctioning. Capitalism, by its very nature, wants to buy low and sell high. In order to do so it wants to save every penny possible at every juncture. Lower wages means more profits. But eventually people will stop bying item X because they do not have enough money to buy it, thus forcing changes to be made. GM is the prime example of this deterministic theory-based approach. It wanted to cut costs, and thus make more profits, by shipping good paying American jobs to Mexico, where people were paid at a fraction of the price. As GM was cutting those American jobs, it was finding out that business was suddenly not as good. The reason??? Less people were buying GM because they did not have the money to buy a 20K car, when they are only getting paid $5 an hour. So to raise profits again they close down more American plants and send them to Mexico. This then forces more people to stop buying new GM cars, and thus the cycle repeats itself until GM goes bust. As said by a news report last week GM is now either going to merge with Chrysler, or be bought outright by Chrysler. Capitalism at its finest and worst.
It does not take a genius to figure out that in the future capitalism will eventually turn into some form of quasi-communism/socialism, since the inherient nature of capitalism is to destory itself. It might not happen in 10 years, or 100 years, but it will happen.
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Bloodbane wrote...
Spoiler:
I agree with you oh-so very much.
The real question is though, is there a system that works?
I like the idea of the Venus Project, but I am afraid of the transition to it. That people who are used to this style of economy will be greedy and take advantage of the system.
So, what system do you propose?
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Bloodbane wrote...
The amount of money a person makes compared to their education and other factors can be debated to eternity, but it is proving the point that the capitalist system is broken. Instead of saying teachers complain about only getting paid 50K a year, the question that needs asking is why are they complaining about only getting 50K a year. 100 years ago 50K a year would make a person rich beyond dreams, whereas today it is around middle of the pack depending on locale. Market prices have gone up and up constantly whereas incomes have not followed suit. Example: Why is gas over $3 a galleon in the States, whereas in South America it is around 30c a galleon? In theory we should be getting the same stock market reports, and all the worldly crap should be affecting both areas. So why the difference? It could logically be summed up as simple as price to wage ration. In South America the majority of people are dirt poor, and therefore they cannot afford high prices for everything. So what does a good capitalist do??? Put the price at a rate where people can afford it, so they can make money.The disconnect is in North America big business believes, and rightly so, that they can get away with anything and everything. OBVIOUSLY we have been gouged on gas for the past 5+ years, but they do not fear the people doing anything about it. Now I am not saying that South America is any better off, or the businesses have more morality towards the common man, but the only logical explaination is the difference in the wage structure. Discussing supply and demand does not work anymore because it is not followed anymore by big business. It all revolves around the wage structure. In Alberta they produce tons of barrels of oil for gas everyday, but yet I do not hear many Albertans making fun of the rest of Canada because they get 30c a galleon gas prices, while the rest of us are at around $1 a litre. But yet those prices can be achieved in countries like Eucador and Venazuala. The reason? In those two countries $15 a day might be the going rate for a job, if a person even has a job, while in Alberta the going rate is around $20. Gas companies can afford to gouge us more here because we get paid more. If we were radically getting paid 1940s wages I can guarentee that gas would not be as high as it is now in North America.
The same reasoning can be applied to any type of product in which you need to exchange money for the goods or services. I only picked gas because everyone likes to complain about it now.
Capitalism will eventually implode on itself because the sole purpose of capitalism will force itself to stop fuctioning. Capitalism, by its very nature, wants to buy low and sell high. In order to do so it wants to save every penny possible at every juncture. Lower wages means more profits. But eventually people will stop bying item X because they do not have enough money to buy it, thus forcing changes to be made. GM is the prime example of this deterministic theory-based approach. It wanted to cut costs, and thus make more profits, by shipping good paying American jobs to Mexico, where people were paid at a fraction of the price. As GM was cutting those American jobs, it was finding out that business was suddenly not as good. The reason??? Less people were buying GM because they did not have the money to buy a 20K car, when they are only getting paid $5 an hour. So to raise profits again they close down more American plants and send them to Mexico. This then forces more people to stop buying new GM cars, and thus the cycle repeats itself until GM goes bust. As said by a news report last week GM is now either going to merge with Chrysler, or be bought outright by Chrysler. Capitalism at its finest and worst.
It does not take a genius to figure out that in the future capitalism will eventually turn into some form of quasi-communism/socialism, since the inherient nature of capitalism is to destory itself. It might not happen in 10 years, or 100 years, but it will happen.
So where does Europe figure into you "America is getting gouged by the evil gas companies because their rich" idea. Europeans have been paying 5$ a gallon gas since Americans were paying $3.00 (orginally). Are the "evil" gas companies gouging all of Europe too?
If I remember my conversions right 3 liters is roughly 1 gal +/- correct (go with a ball park figure)? So at $1 a liter and 3 liters equals a gallon..you are paying about $3 a gallon. Are Canadians getting gouged?
On top of just the price of the oil itself, you have to figure in refinement, overhead(businesses have expenses), the the value of the currencies, then taxes, few cents added on by the gas station, various other price influences. After all that you finally get your price at the pump.
Capitalism may be "broken" but, it's the fairest thing we have that works. You can try your welfare states, your tired socialism, your failed communism, your out dated barter system. They will all fail or never work in the first place. So do you want "fairish" and mildly broken or do you want something that won't work to begin with?
Though I do agree the future will be a quasi-socialism or outright socialism. A dystopian society where the government uses the military and police to force "equal and fair" distribution of resources and wealth to everyone. Everyone has to have the same cookie cutter house otherwise its "not fair". All housing, businesses, schools, hospitals, products,etc are all collectively owned by the politicians (it's suppose to be the people but, you know so was America and we see how much the people really matter). Nobody earns a wage because that would be "unfair" for some people to earn more than someone else. So we all receiving what we need and nothing else but, we won't need anything else! The government will provide me with a car, a house, a job, meals, health care, education and a T.v.! All from my standardize paycheck that I receive from the government. Because if we were paid in any other way, it wouldn't be "fair". I work just as hard as the next guy so why should he get less or more than I do?
Such a wonderful place. Everyone "does their part" and we all receive a "fair" wage. Burger flipper, janitor or a brain surgeon. We can all be poor together.
(Oh god kill me now)
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Bloodbane wrote...
The amount of money a person makes compared to their education and other factors can be debated to eternity, but it is proving the point that the capitalist system is broken. Instead of saying teachers complain about only getting paid 50K a year, the question that needs asking is why are they complaining about only getting 50K a year. 100 years ago 50K a year would make a person rich beyond dreams, whereas today it is around middle of the pack depending on locale. Market prices have gone up and up constantly whereas incomes have not followed suit. Example: Why is gas over $3 a galleon in the States, whereas in South America it is around 30c a galleon? In theory we should be getting the same stock market reports, and all the worldly crap should be affecting both areas. So why the difference? It could logically be summed up as simple as price to wage ration. In South America the majority of people are dirt poor, and therefore they cannot afford high prices for everything. So what does a good capitalist do??? Put the price at a rate where people can afford it, so they can make money.The disconnect is in North America big business believes, and rightly so, that they can get away with anything and everything. OBVIOUSLY we have been gouged on gas for the past 5+ years, but they do not fear the people doing anything about it. Now I am not saying that South America is any better off, or the businesses have more morality towards the common man, but the only logical explaination is the difference in the wage structure. Discussing supply and demand does not work anymore because it is not followed anymore by big business. It all revolves around the wage structure. In Alberta they produce tons of barrels of oil for gas everyday, but yet I do not hear many Albertans making fun of the rest of Canada because they get 30c a galleon gas prices, while the rest of us are at around $1 a litre. But yet those prices can be achieved in countries like Eucador and Venazuala. The reason? In those two countries $15 a day might be the going rate for a job, if a person even has a job, while in Alberta the going rate is around $20. Gas companies can afford to gouge us more here because we get paid more. If we were radically getting paid 1940s wages I can guarentee that gas would not be as high as it is now in North America.
The same reasoning can be applied to any type of product in which you need to exchange money for the goods or services. I only picked gas because everyone likes to complain about it now.
Capitalism will eventually implode on itself because the sole purpose of capitalism will force itself to stop fuctioning. Capitalism, by its very nature, wants to buy low and sell high. In order to do so it wants to save every penny possible at every juncture. Lower wages means more profits. But eventually people will stop bying item X because they do not have enough money to buy it, thus forcing changes to be made. GM is the prime example of this deterministic theory-based approach. It wanted to cut costs, and thus make more profits, by shipping good paying American jobs to Mexico, where people were paid at a fraction of the price. As GM was cutting those American jobs, it was finding out that business was suddenly not as good. The reason??? Less people were buying GM because they did not have the money to buy a 20K car, when they are only getting paid $5 an hour. So to raise profits again they close down more American plants and send them to Mexico. This then forces more people to stop buying new GM cars, and thus the cycle repeats itself until GM goes bust. As said by a news report last week GM is now either going to merge with Chrysler, or be bought outright by Chrysler. Capitalism at its finest and worst.
It does not take a genius to figure out that in the future capitalism will eventually turn into some form of quasi-communism/socialism, since the inherient nature of capitalism is to destory itself. It might not happen in 10 years, or 100 years, but it will happen.
There are a lot of problems with your argument.
First off, you said you chose gas because people like to complain about it. However, gas is one of worst offenders for inflation and plays right into your argument. With the exception of food and gas, inflation has actually been very low for a long time. Even when we had amazingly high inflation in the great depression, it didn't cause the fall of global capitalism. Why would it now?
Example: Why is gas over $3 a galleon in the States, whereas in South America it is around 30c a galleon? In theory we should be getting the same stock market reports, and all the worldly crap should be affecting both areas. So why the difference? It could logically be summed up as simple as price to wage ration. In South America the majority of people are dirt poor, and therefore they cannot afford high prices for everything. So what does a good capitalist do??? Put the price at a rate where people can afford it, so they can make money.
The defies the basic idea of capitalism. Gas merchants would not jack the prices up in the US so they could sell gas at a loss in South America. Why would they? If they weren't making money with whatever price they offered in South America, they would be better off not selling gas there at all and so they wouldn't. After all, Dell doesn't sell $20 modern computers there just because people can only afford to pay $20 for a computer. They just don't get any up to date computers if they can't afford to pay a price on which Dell can make money. Gas is cheap in South America both because labor costs pennies in some of the country and some South American countries have their own oil. They might also have gas tax. You have to remember that a significant chunk of that $3 in the U.S. is paying for labor for service, transportation, etc, and going to gas tax.
I don't think it is accurate to say that the US has been gouged on gas for the last 5 years on a widespread scale. There is no nationwide oil conspiracy, and competing companies have incentives to offer lower prices than rivals. It is true that gas prices jump up immediately when oil goes up but fall gradually when oil goes down. No one is going to take a loss, but the low price wars happen in increments. There is no need to have the lowest possible price, simply one lower than competitors. However, that is the extent of gouging, if you can even call that gouging.
Your example model with GM might be accurate for GM, but you don't look at the larger picture at all. What happens to the money GM invests in Mexico by moving jobs there? Someone spends it somewhere, whether through consumption or investment. It doesn't just vanish. If your reasoning is correct in this particular case(and I tend to doubt your GM model, do you have any statistical evidence?), GM might have doomed itself, but there are plenty of other companies doing the same thing that are quite successful. Moving a number of the cheap labor jobs abroad doesn't hurt the global economy in the way you seem to indicate. In fact, by the theory of comparative advantage, outsourcing, as a general rule, actually increases the total amount of material wealth in the world.
Finally, you neglect the fact that the amount of material wealth in the world changes. Generally, it goes up, as we invent more efficient ways to do things and such, but a large natural disaster can destroy some wealth. Or, in the case of the current financial crisis, people might think they have more wealth than they actually do, and so the effect is similar. Capitalism doesn't necessarily need to implode, there is plenty of room to expand. If we keep going towards socialism, it is because of our social justice values, not because the entire system is in danger of collapsing.
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There is not enough money for everyone to be rich. There is too little money for everyone to be poor. This is capitalism. This is its core. This is why it is unfair.
But it isn't unfair, is it? There isn't enough money for everyone to be rich, but there is enough money for everyone to be happy. That is, as long as each person's definition of happiness isn't reliant upon having three HD televisions in their house, two SUVs in their garage, and a three-story house with ten rooms for four people.
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.
But it isn't unfair, is it? There isn't enough money for everyone to be rich, but there is enough money for everyone to be happy. That is, as long as each person's definition of happiness isn't reliant upon having three HD televisions in their house, two SUVs in their garage, and a three-story house with ten rooms for four people.
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.
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ShaggyJebus wrote...
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.I agree, the system isn't evil by itself. Just like anything else can't be inherently evil. Just how it's used.
You get a rep.
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Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.I agree, the system isn't evil by itself. Just like anything else can't be inherently evil. Just how it's used.
You get a rep.
Thanks, man.
I'm kind of tired of people saying capitalism is bad. I agree that it has its problems, but ultimately, if people were good, the system would be good. We need to give credit where credit is due and blame the greedy bastards who fuck things up.
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ShaggyJebus wrote...
Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.I agree, the system isn't evil by itself. Just like anything else can't be inherently evil. Just how it's used.
You get a rep.
Thanks, man.
I'm kind of tired of people saying capitalism is bad. I agree that it has its problems, but ultimately, if people were good, the system would be good. We need to give credit where credit is due and blame the greedy bastards who fuck things up.
It's typical human behavior. Our brains are wired to remember the negative side of things more often than the positive side. That is usually a factor when relationships end because people only remember the fights instead of all the "good times".
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Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Capitalism isn't evil. It just allows the evil of people to be expressed.I agree, the system isn't evil by itself. Just like anything else can't be inherently evil. Just how it's used.
You get a rep.
Thanks, man.
I'm kind of tired of people saying capitalism is bad. I agree that it has its problems, but ultimately, if people were good, the system would be good. We need to give credit where credit is due and blame the greedy bastards who fuck things up.
It's typical human behavior. Our brains are wired to remember the negative side of things more often than the positive side. That is usually a factor when relationships end because people only remember the fights instead of all the "good times".
Really true on any scale. The order in which thigs are presented effects how we remember them too, and, in general, American society observes things negatively.
If I said to you, "that last bit was weak, but overall, it was very good," you would remember me saying,"it was very good." hoever, if I said, "what you said was great, only I think the last part was pretty weak," what you would remember me saying it, "I think the last part was pretty weak," and I feel that American society generally has this later mentallity. Even if we see something posative, we find negative within it, and focus more on that. I think this plays a large part in the diverse effects of things like capitalism for us. On the one hand, for some people, focusing on the parts in which you are weak will motivate you to allways be better and really never be satisfied, which means you will allways be working as hard as you can. On the other end, having it seem like you are never doing anything right can discourage you from even trying. So with the American mindset, it can seem like the best and only truly prosperous way to be, or it can seem like it's always kicking dirt in the eye of the poor man.
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Fiery_penguin_of_doom wrote...
Whitelion
This is our awesomeness if we were team venture.
High Five!
Interestingly enough, staunch conservative Christians who follow "humanity is inherently evil" view originating with the Calvinists(I believe, it may have been Luther though) often cite capitalism as evidence for the truth of their argument. Capitalism rewards greed. It's also pretty easy to be immoral if you can't see the immediate effects of your actions on a specific person. Stealing from a company? Who are you really hurting? Of course it's still immoral, but it grates less on the conscience than physically causing harm to someone.
I'm still a supporter of capitalism though. Regardless of the problems, it's still the best system we have. It generally encourages fair trade, competition, and give everyone some amount of chance. Regulation is necessary to fix some of the more dire problems, but comparative advantage and the basics of competition are pretty strong arguments in favor of free markets and regulated capitalism.