Change My Mind: A Society Cannot "Work" Itself to Equality

That's because you believe in heirarchichal societies and the myth of meritocracy. And you live in a Country where Companies and ideas are regularly wrested away from innovators, the people who started them, by capitalists...or whose idea the corporate structure became entirely based off of, are buried in History in favor of people who solely pursued dominance of industry, and these people become idolized and celebrated in our society as exceptional, even when they've had repeated colossal failures that can be attributed to mismanagement, and lacks of long-term vision.

Throughout industrial History, oppressing the workforce because they're lesser has led to collapse time and time again. Treating them better at the cost of percentages of profit to already wealthy people, agreeing to their value when the labor is something you need for your business to function, has ZERO downside except to the egos of megalomaniacs who hoard wealth.

Look buddy, if some clown walks into our shop and demands a job that pays the same amount of money that I make, I'll tell him to go fuck himself.

If you think that clown should make what I make, then he can come and work at your circus.
 
I think everyone can own a home in this current economy. You just can't live in a desirable home in a highly desirable area. And you can't do it right away.


Work any job and do it well long enough and you can save a down payment. You might have to work from 18 to 38 to achieve it but if you are frugal than it's possible. You might even have to relocate to a cheaper area but it's possible.

I mean fast food is paying 20 bucks now. Go rent a room for 400 a month and work 50 hours a week and you'll save 10k a year. After 5 years, take your 50k and put it down on a 200k house somewhere. It's not that hard really
It is absolutely not the case that everyone can own a home in this society and you've got to be f****** high to think so man.....

There are a ton of full-time jobs that do not pay enough to get a home.
 
Lolwut?

Dumbass to homeless people: "Bruh, remaining eating out of dumpsters isnt really a risk, I mean it's not gonna get any WORSE for you."
Lolwut indeed.

Your brilliant advice to homeless people: "Bruh, don't eat that free steak. You're risking it all by eating that because they might not give you another one when you're done".

<mma2>
 
Look buddy, if some clown walks into our shop and demands a job that pays the same amount of money that I make, I'll tell him to go fuck himself.

If you think that clown should make what I make, then he can come and work at your circus.

Look pal, I work in a circus where nerds who never fought a day in their lives make their money selling the blood of braver men, and if those braver men are actually intelligent enough to understand their value, their earning ability, they're quickly labeled "difficult" by the existing power structure.

You can think as highly of yourself as you want, but if your argument is that you NEED to be making tens or hundreds of times more than the people you depend on, then you're a circus Ring-leader. You can argue about making more within reason, but the current climate of CEO pay vs worker pay is absurd, the wealth gap is incredibly wide, so wide its effecting both society and the environment, and the lengths capitalists are goi g to in order to avoid paying the market cost of labor are becoming more and more comically maniacal. The fastest growing workforce right now are seniors over 75. That's insane. And so is anyone applauding this bullsh*t.

You know it's funny how much "just start a business" nonsense is posted in here, and yet the moment a laborer thinks of themselves as a business and time the thing they're selling, and start to put pressure on the capitalist class to meet their needs to exchange their time and effort for worthy compensation, those same people cry foul.
 
Lolwut indeed.

Your brilliant advice to homeless people: "Bruh, don't eat that free steak. You're risking it all by eating that because they might not give you another one when you're done".

<mma2>

Screaming at clouds again.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought this was fairly common knowledge at this point? Owners would have to be willing to share more revenue or stake in the company, and currently there is no real incentive for them to do so. Quite the contrary actually, they are incentivized to hoard more and more. I read that sometime around 2030 we will see the world's first trillionaire.

Yes and no, most of them will only be so insulated from market collapse. This is the real reason theyre building stupidly elaborate doomsday bbunkers. When your wealth is based on "net worth" and is directly a measure of stock value, it's kind of a mirage. Like how could a guy legitimately hold the record of being the wealthiest person in the world and the person who has lost the most wealth? Because these arent hoardes of cash, and most of them hate the idea of selling stock when they need cash (because that's when they get taxed).

Mike Tyson once did an interview where the guy kept harping on about him "losing" $350m dollars (he didnt blow it, it was taken from him). He got irritated and explained to the guy that he had NEVER seen that number, or that much cash. Never saw a bank statement. He only ever knew that number because other people said it to him. He said all he knew was he could point at a car he said he wanted, and someone would go buy it. He could show up at a restaurant and theyd give him a table and a meal, and all theyd ask for was a photo they could put on a wall.

For all the fear of "cashless society"...wealthy people have pretty much always lived that way. Either they live like thos when they're famous, or they take out loans banks are happy to give them because of their net worth.
 
So your wife is in a position to pay more than she brings home in a year? That is most unusual. She has multiple engineers making say $100-150k yet generates less profit than that at the end of the year? Hmmm....

Of course a cashier makes that much money, unless you think only the absolute lowest employee "makes" things, in which case none of us have real jobs we all mooch off some farmer or factory worker in Bangladesh. They work harder than all of us.

Theyl cashiers aren't "making money" they are generating revenue. In total a Walmart probably makes well north of $100 millions a year. Possibly $500M. You are VASTLY underestimating how much money a Walmart pulls in. The workers together run the business, the business generates billions and billions. It's not all profit but a lot is.

"Walmart's revenue is $611.3 billion.
Walmart has 2,300,000 employees, and the revenue per employee ratio is $265,778. Walmart's peak quarterly revenue was $164.0B in 2022(q4). Walmart peak revenue was $611.3B in 2022. Walmart annual revenue for 2021 was 572.8B, 2.43% growth from 2020."

Easy algebra. Each employee generates $265,000. Every single one.

Walmart gross profit for the quarter ending October 31, 2023 was $39.621B, a 6.51% increase year-over-year.


Walmart gross profit for the twelve months ending October 31, 2023 was $155.045B, a 5.98% increase year-over-year.
Walmart annual gross profit for 2023 was $147.568B, a 2.65% increase from 2022.
Walmart annual gross profit for 2022 was $143.754B, a 3.54% increase from 2021.
Walmart annual gross profit for 2021 was $138.836B, a 7.33% increase from 2020.

They made $155 BILLION in pure profit last year. They have 2.3 million employees.


Average - $70,000 in profit last year.
So the average Walmart worker generates $250,000 a year for Walmart and the company profits $70,000 off their labor. This is public info lol, they're a publicly traded company it's no secret
I don't know where you found the WalMart profit figures you are using in this post, but the FY2023 number reported by the company, globally, is $12 billion.

Sources:
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/02/21/walmart-releases-q4-and-fy23-earnings

https://www.forrester.com/blogs/walmart-sales-and-profits-analysis-for-fy-2023-top-10-insights/#:~:text=The operating profit margin declined,net profit margin of 2%.

That results in $5,217.39 per employee (using your 2.3 million count), worldwide, and that number includes executive staff.

That is $2.51/hr from full-time staff.

The average WalMart salary, in the US, is scheduled at ~$17.50/hr.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bu...aise-hourly-wage-how-much-and-where-rcna67213

So that means they earn about 14% on what they pay, on average.

It also means if they raised average pay to $20/hr, they would earn effectively no profit at all.
 
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Yes and many businesses fail but people don't need owners to do work. Owners need workers to make money and if their business succeeds they continue to make lots of money while doing a smaller and smaller share of the labor. That is a pyramid distribution and in the US at least it's been increasing for several decades. I've never worked anywhere where the owner/managers were wholly necessary for the day-to-day. Not to say there aren't decisions don't that need to be make nor logistics to take care of but no one gets exorbitantly wealthy purely of their own accord and when you dig into say, the Bezos' and Musk's of the world there's often a lot of favorable circumstance and family money that went into them even being able to take such risks. Once that ship is off the ground the income distribution keeps going to the top regardless of amount of work those folks are actually doing at that point (which isn't to say none of them work hard, some definitely do, but when you look at the income gaps between say, CEOs and their workers it reeeaaally makes you start to ask a few questions).

When the layoffs occurred in 2008 it was the people doing the work who lost their jobs, and yes, that has consequences, there is great risk in being working class. The, we'll call it, "managerial class" was largely unaffected. Where's all the risk besides the initial investment? It's all upside after that. All the richest people got richer in the last three years and when their business/bank is big enough, they can be, "too big to fail", meanwhile Debbie and Jimmy maybe get unemployment and people bitching that they're entitled. When there's hardship it's the workers who sufferh; owners, capitalists, don't typically lay themselves off. It's like a casino, the house always wins. Once you get to a certain level of money and power the risk for your actions diminishes the higher up the pyramid you go. And, of course, the oligarchs deflect to those with no money and no power and we complain about welfare queens or whatever.

There's some videos where billionaires admit the grift and say the quiet part out loud, like how there needs to be a certain amount of unemployment to keep a level of desperation among the working class so they can suppress wages, because, ya know, they don't have enough goddamn money.

But, it's fine. Greed eventually eats itself and as the working class deteriorates we'll see where this little experiment goes. When things get lopsided enough society destabilizes. We have enough distractions and just enough comfort and division. For meow.

All that said, I don't hate all business owners nor think they're lazy, many are very industrious, at least to a point, but employees absolutely do take risks working for them. We see it every time the economy tanks or someone comes home crying cuz they're burned out but need the benefits of their job but work in hell.
Of course they need a business to exist to do work, or at least to get paid for it. If they didn't, and could make more money doing it on their own, then they would be doing that already. If you don't have the equipment, customers, tax compliance and regulations, building, supplies, marketing, then your work is useless. If you started frying up hamburgers in your kitchen and put a sign up in front of your house selling them, how much money do you think you'd be raking in? You'd end up in the negative because you'd buy the ground beef, buns, condiments etc, then find out nobody's knocking on some rando's door to buy a hamburger out of his kitchen, and you're better off making the burgers at a place that already has customers where they buy the ingredients and equipment, and if nobody buys them, you still get paid and your boss is the one who doesn't.

People did used buy a used car, paint "taxi" on the side and offer their own taxi service, but the government stepped in and required taxi medallions that cost as much as $1 million until tech companies started paying politcians too, and now I think a NYC medallion is like $140k, and even then, if you don't drive for uber and are just asking strangers to get into your car, it's probably not going to go well.

Who are we talking about? What percent of businesses are "too big to fail"? Bank bailouts aren't capitalism, it's taxpayer money, but even then the banks had to pay it back, while you do not have to pay back unemployemnt, but we're not even talking about those, the TS was talking about a machine shop with 4 people, which clearly is not "too big to fail"

More businesses is obviously better, and nobody's making a billion dollars off a local business with 1 location, which is why more people go to big chain stores over local businesses, because they can 7 cents profit selling something, but sell a billion of them while the local business has to make $5 on it because they're only selling 50 of them, and consumers are short sighted. Individual consumers spending their own money will generally go for whatever's cheaper, while institutions and government contracts are more willing to overpay for things.
 
The problem much of the time is also that our current business models are often based on having to provide extremely cheap consumables to a population which has become relatively poorer.

You increase the wealth of most of the population and their spending power increases as well meaning margins do not need to be pushed as tightly.
 
Of course they need a business to exist to do work, or at least to get paid for it. If they didn't, and could make more money doing it on their own, then they would be doing that already. If you don't have the equipment, customers, tax compliance and regulations, building, supplies, marketing, then your work is useless. If you started frying up hamburgers in your kitchen and put a sign up in front of your house selling them, how much money do you think you'd be raking in? You'd end up in the negative because you'd buy the ground beef, buns, condiments etc, then find out nobody's knocking on some rando's door to buy a hamburger out of his kitchen, and you're better off making the burgers at a place that already has customers where they buy the ingredients and equipment, and if nobody buys them, you still get paid and your boss is the one who doesn't.
When I said you don't need a business to do work, I meant literally work can be done without a business, nothing more, I can see why that may have been confusing. The employee/employer relationship is relatively new (on a large scale at least) and has always been exploitative, that's why so many regulations have formed and why labor began organizing. It always took conflict to achieve these things for the majority. The hamburger/boss example I don't quite get though.
People did used buy a used car, paint "taxi" on the side and offer their own taxi service, but the government stepped in and required taxi medallions that cost as much as $1 million until tech companies started paying politcians too, and now I think a NYC medallion is like $140k, and even then, if you don't drive for uber and are just asking strangers to get into your car, it's probably not going to go well.

Who are we talking about? What percent of businesses are "too big to fail"? Bank bailouts aren't capitalism, it's taxpayer money, but even then the banks had to pay it back, while you do not have to pay back unemployemnt, but we're not even talking about those, the TS was talking about a machine shop with 4 people, which clearly is not "too big to fail"

More businesses is obviously better, and nobody's making a billion dollars off a local business with 1 location, which is why more people go to big chain stores over local businesses, because they can 7 cents profit selling something, but sell a billion of them while the local business has to make $5 on it because they're only selling 50 of them, and consumers are short sighted. Individual consumers spending their own money will generally go for whatever's cheaper, while institutions and government contracts are more willing to overpay for things.
Bank bailouts are socialism for capitalists. Privatize the gains, socialize the losses, and yes, there's quite a difference between small businesses and say, Microsoft. The overwhelming majority are not "too big to fail", but that also lies in keeping with what I was saying about the pyramid nature of the system, but this hierarchy really doesn't resemble a meritocracy. Meanwhile, what, zero people were prosecuted after 2008. Predatory Capitalist practices are also involved in keeping mass produced goods cheap, in fact I don't think Capitalism has ever shown it can exist without slavery or not-slavery-but-basically-slavery somewhere to keep goods cheap and people consuming. Shit, there's probably conflict minerals in the machine I'm using to type this, but I digress, I'm getting off course.

That's interesting about taxis though, I didn't know that, and I agree with your last point there.

I'm not saying I've all the answers - I sure as shit don't - but this system has all the makings of a Ponzi Scheme.
 
The strange situation to me seems to be that a lot of conservatives look back to the post war era as a golden time yet there idea of what the economic situation of this time was is total fantasy.

The reality is this was an era of stronger unions, stronger market regulation, stronger social spending, etc and the result was it had very high social mobility compared to today.
 
The problem much of the time is also that our current business models are often based on having to provide extremely cheap consumables to a population which has become relatively poorer.

You increase the wealth of most of the population and their spending power increases as well meaning margins do not need to be pushed as tightly.

The supporters of capitalism here have already claimed that if people make more money, corporations will merely adjust cost to grab more of their cash. This argument was made as if thats not a problem, but rather a symptom of the problem that people have too much buying g power lol

The brain rot of consumerism:

 
Yes and no, most of them will only be so insulated from market collapse. This is the real reason theyre building stupidly elaborate doomsday bbunkers. When your wealth is based on "net worth" and is directly a measure of stock value, it's kind of a mirage. Like how could a guy legitimately hold the record of being the wealthiest person in the world and the person who has lost the most wealth? Because these arent hoardes of cash, and most of them hate the idea of selling stock when they need cash (because that's when they get taxed).

Mike Tyson once did an interview where the guy kept harping on about him "losing" $350m dollars (he didnt blow it, it was taken from him). He got irritated and explained to the guy that he had NEVER seen that number, or that much cash. Never saw a bank statement. He only ever knew that number because other people said it to him. He said all he knew was he could point at a car he said he wanted, and someone would go buy it. He could show up at a restaurant and theyd give him a table and a meal, and all theyd ask for was a photo they could put on a wall.

For all the fear of "cashless society"...wealthy people have pretty much always lived that way. Either they live like thos when they're famous, or they take out loans banks are happy to give them because of their net worth.
Yes I understand that rich people don't swim around in their money Scrooge McDuck style lol. I was referring to the distribution; like in the case of large corporations it can be something like employee stock options. There is no incentive for them to do anything more than pay the bare minimum they can get away with, typically. I understand that to a certain degree when you're trying to build or you're first starting out, but at a certain point the disparity grows so much it becomes ludicrous. Also I wouldn't equate a "cashless" society to a rich person willingly hiding their money in assets, tax free. No one is forcing that, rather they are incentivized to do so by tax breaks that they themselves likely lobbied for.
 
Yes and many businesses fail but people don't need owners to do work. Owners need workers to make money and if their business succeeds they continue to make lots of money while doing a smaller and smaller share of the labor. That is a pyramid distribution and in the US at least it's been increasing for several decades. I've never worked anywhere where the owner/managers were wholly necessary for the day-to-day. Not to say there aren't decisions don't that need to be make nor logistics to take care of but no one gets exorbitantly wealthy purely of their own accord and when you dig into say, the Bezos' and Musk's of the world there's often a lot of favorable circumstance and family money that went into them even being able to take such risks. Once that ship is off the ground the income distribution keeps going to the top regardless of amount of work those folks are actually doing at that point (which isn't to say none of them work hard, some definitely do, but when you look at the income gaps between say, CEOs and their workers it reeeaaally makes you start to ask a few questions).

When the layoffs occurred in 2008 it was the people doing the work who lost their jobs, and yes, that has consequences, there is great risk in being working class. The, we'll call it, "managerial class" was largely unaffected. Where's all the risk besides the initial investment? It's all upside after that. All the richest people got richer in the last three years and when their business/bank is big enough, they can be, "too big to fail", meanwhile Debbie and Jimmy maybe get unemployment and people bitching that they're entitled. When there's hardship it's the workers who sufferh; owners, capitalists, don't typically lay themselves off. It's like a casino, the house always wins. Once you get to a certain level of money and power the risk for your actions diminishes the higher up the pyramid you go. And, of course, the oligarchs deflect to those with no money and no power and we complain about welfare queens or whatever.

There's some videos where billionaires admit the grift and say the quiet part out loud, like how there needs to be a certain amount of unemployment to keep a level of desperation among the working class so they can suppress wages, because, ya know, they don't have enough goddamn money.

But, it's fine. Greed eventually eats itself and as the working class deteriorates we'll see where this little experiment goes. When things get lopsided enough society destabilizes. We have enough distractions and just enough comfort and division. For meow.

All that said, I don't hate all business owners nor think they're lazy, many are very industrious, at least to a point, but employees absolutely do take risks working for them. We see it every time the economy tanks or someone comes home crying cuz they're burned out but need the benefits of their job but work in hell.
Well said; and we can look to history to see what happens when the disparity becomes too much to reasonably endure. In fact we are well on our way, slowed somewhat by the trappings of distractive technology and consumerism, but at some point even that will fail to suppress the masses. In my lifetime? Probably not, I'm not smart enough to give a solid opinion on that but if you can't see where this path leads I really don't know what else to point to or say. Also I would like to add that time, opportunity, mental health..I consider these to be assets too. You can't hold them like money, but they absolutely hold value and shouldn't be dismissed so easily when talking about "regular" people.
 
It is absolutely not the case that everyone can own a home in this society and you've got to be f****** high to think so man.....

There are a ton of full-time jobs that do not pay enough to get a home.


If home ownership is ones primary goal and one is willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it then yes they can. Most people want a home but aren't willing to make the sacrifices.
 
If home ownership is ones primary goal and one is willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it then yes they can. Most people want a home but aren't willing to make the sacrifices.
lol... This is maybe the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time...

Lots of full-time jobs right now are paying about 30 grand a year. In many of those same areas rent is 1600 a month for the cheapest place you can get.... I'm not sure what you mean by proper sacrifices.... Two people I know are living in their vans in the back of my property so they can save forna house but not everyone has that luxury!!! And they make 80000 a year!!

This kind of argument seems to be a religious one where you just have to defend the market no matter what at all costs and everything must be people's fault. But the fact is it is absurdly difficult and nearly impossible to get into a home for people that make $50,000 a year in my area, let alone 30.


This whole talking point that it's still completely possible is maybe the most idiotic and irrational argument ive ever heard coming from the right.
 
If home ownership is ones primary goal and one is willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it then yes they can. Most people want a home but aren't willing to make the sacrifices.
getting to own a house shouldn't be about making all sorts of enormous sacrifices. a society where that is he case is a sick one.
 
lol... This is maybe the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time...

Lots of full-time jobs right now are paying about 30 grand a year. In many of those same areas rent is 1600 a month for the cheapest place you can get.... I'm not sure what you mean by proper sacrifices.... Two people I know are living in their vans in the back of my property so they can save forna house but not everyone has that luxury!!! And they make 80000 a year!!

This kind of argument seems to be a religious one where you just have to defend the market no matter what at all costs and everything must be people's fault. But the fact is it is absurdly difficult and nearly impossible to get into a home for people that make $50,000 a year in my area, let alone 30.


This whole talking point that it's still completely possible is maybe the most idiotic and irrational argument ive ever heard coming from the right.


I specifically stated that you may not get a home in an expensive region. If your primary goal is home ownership then yeh you're going to have to relocate. Very few people can afford a home in the richest areas of North America.
 
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