Give 'Em Hell, Bernie

[IATIA]

The rich ARE NOT what keeps the economy going, workers are.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Workers may do the actual work, but workers can be easily replaced. The infrastructure of a thriving economy is a different story. That is not easily replaced.

[nihilistcat]

The rich ARE NOT what keeps the economy going, workers are.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  Workers may do the actual work, but workers can be easily replaced.  The infrastructure of a thriving economy is a different story.  That is not easily replaced.

This is a question of obvious moral significance, and how we answer this question relies almost entirely on our ethical perspective. Workers are only easily replaced if the society they work in views human beings as expendable. This is where economics and morality intersect. 

Moreover, it also requires a certain type of economy. Capitalism benefits from surplus labor, because it makes it easier to bargain down the cost of labor. Workers have less leverage, and thus, they're forced to take what they can get. On the other hand, command and control socialism has been an abysmal failure (lacking the ability to efficiently allocate resources and perform adequate economic calculation), and in the US, what passes for social democracy is usually debt financed spending to support our bloated bureaucracy to compensate for the jobs we keep bleeding because of all the horrible trade deals our plutocrats keep force feeding down our throats. 

We need something new, and it won't come from democrats or republicans. I suppose regardless of how job creation is done, someone has to do it. However, there's certainly no law of nature that says it must be rich people. It could be communities, we could have public banking (ran at the local level) to finance local projects that put people to work, we could care more about our workers and increase the minimum wage, provide for ways for employees to buy out their employers (rather than allowing these jobs to go overseas), we could have border adjustable taxes for carbon, to compensate for the weak worker protections of many of our trading partners, etc. 

Moreover, products need customers. So one could argue that it is indeed the worker who creates jobs, by creating the demand that precedes most investments in productive resources. Sometimes innovators create the demand, but this is a special case (the exception, not the norm). 

[Polaris]

I would vote for him, but he'd never get past primaries. The primaries are the establishments way of choosing the leaders they want.

My suspicious nature as me wondering if they just pay the ones who lose in the primaries just to run so that there is an semblance of free elections.

[A Theist]

I would vote for him, but he'd never get past primaries.

I don't see him winning the primaries either. Although he could make a difference if the primary race was tight between two front runners like Hillary and Warren, i.e.

My bet's on the Republicans taking the White House and retaining both Houses of Congress in 2016. democrats got clobbered in the mid-terms and they'll get clobbered again in 2016.

[bennyboy]

The rich ARE NOT what keeps the economy going, workers are.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  Workers may do the actual work, but workers can be easily replaced.  The infrastructure of a thriving economy is a different story.  That is not easily replaced.

You're all wrong.  It is the relationship between the employers and workers that drives the economy, not the influence of either one in particular.

Don't believe me?  See what happens if a factory full of workers just walk off the job.  One worker can be replaced, because their skilled coworkers can pick up the slack, and help the new people during training.  But a whole system-- no.

Same thing for management.  You could fire any CEO, and replace him/her with someone else, and the company would still run.  But you fire all of management and execute the visionary who started the company, and you're likely to see a sinking ship.

[Brian37]

The rich ARE NOT what keeps the economy going, workers are.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  Workers may do the actual work, but workers can be easily replaced.  The infrastructure of a thriving economy is a different story.  That is not easily replaced.

The same bullshit argument of "If atheists say there is no god that makes humans gods". 

Nope the third option is "If there is no god then humans cant be gods either". 

Congratulations, all you are doing is justifying might makes right and money equals power. Humans are not property for the rich to use. Humans are not mere numbers on a page. FUCK YOU, seriously. The rich are only ONE aspect of society and not even the bulk of society. This is a fucking piss poor attitude on your part.

NO one is advocating, or should advocate the end of the private sector But the bullshit of blame the poor "fuck you I got mine" isn't going to work anymore. 

Now since you don't want to listen to me, you don't have to. A university professor of economics  and a billionaire might be worthy of listening to.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22...html#.VUgC

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_b...anguage=en

[nihilistcat]

Sorry, but you are wrong.  Workers may do the actual work, but workers can be easily replaced.  The infrastructure of a thriving economy is a different story.  That is not easily replaced.

You're all wrong.  It is the relationship between the employers and workers that drives the economy, not the influence of either one in particular.

Don't believe me?  See what happens if a factory full of workers just walk off the job.  One worker can be replaced, because their skilled coworkers can pick up the slack, and help the new people during training.  But a whole system-- no.

Same thing for management.  You could fire any CEO, and replace him/her with someone else, and the company would still run.  But you fire all of management and execute the visionary who started the company, and you're likely to see a sinking ship.

Agreed, but factories can be operated without bosses and without absentee owners (plenty of employee owned firms & worker cooperatives operating this way right now), but I suppose factories could be automated to the point where you barely need any workers (so the opposite is also true).

But, if all we have is an automated economy with no workers, who will buy the products? 

[Brian37]

I would vote for him, but he'd never get past primaries.

I don't see him winning the primaries either. Although he could make a difference if the primary race was tight between two front runners like Hillary and Warren, i.e.

My bet's on the Republicans taking the White House and retaining both Houses of Congress in 2016. democrats got clobbered in the mid-terms and they'll get clobbered again in 2016.

Cant win without Koch brother dick sucking corporate whore money can you? Keep reminding yourself that knowing Rove called it for Mittens on Fox and had their own Fox number crunchers said "nope". Think again asshole. The left is waking up, and long term one election will not stop us. The part you miss is fewer and fewer people long term are buying into right wing bigotry or their corporate whore economics.

---

You're all wrong.  It is the relationship between the employers and workers that drives the economy, not the influence of either one in particular.

Don't believe me?  See what happens if a factory full of workers just walk off the job.  One worker can be replaced, because their skilled coworkers can pick up the slack, and help the new people during training.  But a whole system-- no.

Same thing for management.  You could fire any CEO, and replace him/her with someone else, and the company would still run.  But you fire all of management and execute the visionary who started the company, and you're likely to see a sinking ship.

Agreed, but factories can be operated without bosses and without absentee owners (plenty of employee owned firms & worker cooperatives operating this way right now), but I suppose factories could be automated to the point where you barely need any workers (so the opposite is also true).

But, if all we have is an automated economy with no workers, who will buy the products? 

I have no problem with innovation making work easier, it is why we now drive modern cars and don't rely on horse and buggies. But every time you take a job and replace it with a machine, someone loses a job. And the more automated a system is you still are going to have humans who need to pay their bills. You cannot simply keep taking humans out of the picture without thinking long term about how a newer labor force will survive. 

I hate the cliche "hard work" bullshit, if business owners wanted to "work hard" they wouldn't own businesses. A better term is "productivity", not the amount of sweat one makes at work. If life was all about work being hard we never would invent things to make our lives easier.

Humans still are not tools, and they should not be treated as tools or mere numbers at a desk 5 states away.

[PäronMårts]

I had not heard of him until lately. Today I saw a clip of his interview on CNN, and he seems like the most reasonable and honest politician in the world. He proposed free college education that would cost apparently $80 billion per year for the state, which does not sound much at all when you think about the trillion dollar military budget. Has there been any polling on public opinion about this? Do Americans actually want tax money to be used for their benefit?

[Brakeman]

francismjenkins

Agreed, but factories can be operated without bosses and without absentee owners (plenty of employee owned firms & worker cooperatives operating this way right now), but I suppose factories could be automated to the point where you barely need any workers (so the opposite is also true).

But, if all we have is an automated economy with no workers, who will buy the products? 

I have no problem with innovation making work easier, it is why we now drive modern cars and don't rely on horse and buggies. But every time you take a job and replace it with a machine, someone loses a job. And the more automated a system is you still are going to have humans who need to pay their bills. You cannot simply keep taking humans out of the picture without thinking long term about how a newer labor force will survive. 

Actually, (Economics degree speaking here) with automation you are freeing up a worker and capital to do another job. We wouldn't have Iphones if everyone was digging their potatoes by hand. If automation makes a product cheaper it usually costs the country more to employ the manual laborer than it is worth.  Let's say $100 widget becomes 10 dollars on the market because a robot displaced 100 workers who made $50,000 a year.  Sales were 1,000,000 units/yr Thus it would cost the country $90,000,000 to employ 100 workers for a year. It would be cheaper for the country to pay the old workers $800,000 a year to play canasta for a living.

The pain to the economy is when automation does not lead to drastically better production and in reality doesn't do as well. When a factory displaces workers with robots that contantly break down and make more scrap costs because of it's high speed then it is a lose-lose situation for the country. Poor management costs way more jobs than automation. Too many bad economic decisions are made by people that got their positions by their skill at the golf course or from family connections.