• PortableHotpocket@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    That’s not an entirely accurate perspective, but you’re not far off. The problem is that fixing this requires hard decisions, and it requires people in power to act against their own interests.

    You want wealth inequality to get better? You need to increase the value of labor. You do that by eliminating free trade deals, bringing production back to the west, increasing prices on goods, and severely limiting immigration. Do that, and the value of labor will soar.

    You should also severely limit the ability for the wealthy to own properties to rent. One of the main reasons the middle class existed was that the family home was simultaneously shelter, and an investment vehicle.

    The whole structure of investment and shareholding has to be rethought as well. Its built of the concept of infinite growth, something that isn’t possible, and ends with businesses destroying themselves while trying to meet this impossible demand.

    • olibleu@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Interesting take. But the measures you suggest to increase the value of labor will also increase the costs of goods, which would impact the working class more than the wealthy, no?

      • Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Currently, very little of the cost of goods is actually being invested back into America; offshore production funnels money to other countries and price gouging by the rich funnels money into their own pockets. While the cost of goods may go up, that money is being spent paying for domestic labor and domestic production infrastructure, creating more jobs domestically. The more jobs that are available, the more valuable labor in America becomes, which we are seeing today in the post pandemic era as many businesses are forced to raise wages beyond minimum wage to hire employees

    • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You want wealth inequality to get better? You need to increase the value of labor. You do that by eliminating free trade deals, bringing production back to the west, increasing prices on goods, and severely limiting immigration. Do that, and the value of labor will soar.

      A measure that is never taught is teaching kids about how to pursue their own self-interest in the market. Everyone should know that they live in a system that incentivizes bosses to sweet-talk you while they underpay you, that offering too much to your company without clear effort-reward incentives is usually pointless, that if you’re a worker you can and should be unionized, how can an union actually pressure companies to give in to their demands.

      I live in a country where unions receive a lot of support from the government, but barely anyone ever engages in syndicalist action.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You know how Internet people always say that the older they get, the more they understand Al Bundy?

    I’m at the point where I understand the solitary curmudgeon old guy who never talked to anybody and lived in a small, but oddly well kept house. Then, when he passed, people were shocked to find out he had a million dollars in assets that he’d just casually socked away because he hated consumerism and didn’t trust the man.

    We thought that guy was crazy when we were kids.

    Now I’m becoming that guy, saving a ton of cash*, because I see the consumerism pyramid scheme and refuse to participate.

    *By cash, I have cash, precious metals, some bonds, my house, and a very few stocks that I bought many years ago, watching them return nothing to me. Now I’m much more concerned with principal protection and inflation hedging than capital growth. Cash in and of itself is a Ponzi scheme, so you don’t wanna have all your eggs in that basket.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      One day the people who live like you will turn out to be right and take over in the new society built out of the ashes.

      Unfortunately people have been thinking that way for centuries and it hasn’t happened yet.

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t consider myself a prepper at all. I don’t store that dried food crap, don’t own weapons, don’t have a bunker. I’m on the electric grid, pay my taxes, have a daily grind job. I just have found myself participating less and less in wanton consumerism merely for the sake of having a cache of shiny trinkets.

        I honestly had no idea regarding the connection between metals and preppers when I bought it. I merely saw something that would retain value more reliably than the latest fashionable IPO.

        Life has been hard and it has repeatedly taken from me. I’ll take the blame for some of that via stupid choices I’ve made over the years. Now I’m just trying to have enough so that I don’t have to work until I literally collapse and die at my desk.

        You live your life as you desire, and I’ll wish you well.

        I’ll do the same.

        When it comes to finances, no two people will ever come to the same conclusions as to what’s ideal.

    • AnonTwo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Almost like glorification of any economic system is bad, rather than using them for their actual purposes.

      People keep trying to use these systems forgetting human greed exists and will continue to exist

        • mimic_kry@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Capitalism will also always end in fascism because of greed. Greed is what motivates companies to beg for government handouts when the market deemed them unfit.

          Greed is what motivates them to influence politics via regulatory capture and lobbying.

          Greed is what moti ates them to push worse and worse quality products and services for higher and higher prices.

          Greed is what makes capital owners pay their employees wages insufficient to live on, while pocketing 90+% of the profit generated by the same employees. All while actually doing nothing of value.

          Yeah, the system is built on greed. This isn’t a good thing, and the fact that you think it is just boggles my mind. Are you being paid to push this? Do you really want to see your progeny enslaved that badly? What the fuck is the matter with you?

        • AnonTwo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Until capitalism gets so large and unregulated that they can fund and control the government, which is what led to many of those “winner” picks that you describe.

          It gets messed up both ways. We have many industries that are degrading because they’ve reached the limits of what they can innovate and instead are trying to find corners they can cut anywhere they can, while having the clout to get away with it.

        • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Making a better product is the least efficient way to make a profit in capitalism. You’d make far more by forming a cartel and price fixing, partnering with a capital management fund to undercut the market until you drive your competition out of business and become a monopoly or simply selling a shit product for a premium and using the extra revenue to suppress bad reviews and fabricate good social media buzz.

        • sarsaparilyptus@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Capitalism is the most useful economic system, but if you don’t regulate it, you just end up in the Gilded Age. You have to be able to yank the choke chain, because corporations can’t be trusted to behave right. It’s disingenuous to phrase that as the government picking “winners and losers”, the purpose of the market economy is to serve the well-being of the people and it must be forced to whether it wants to or not. That’s why America’s economy was strongest when our top marginal rate was over 90%, it’s why monopolies are illegal, and it’s why you aren’t allowed to pay your employees in Pullman Dollars. The idea of the unregulated capitalist economy being able to do the most good is as naïve a pipe dream as the idea of a fully centrally-planned economy ever working.

          • DeanFogg@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I’ve been saying this for years. Capitalism or communism makes no difference if you let your leaders do whatever they please. Most of the time it’s not benevolence they’re reaching for and the marginalized few that are become outcasts. If only conservatives and socialists knew how much power the middle class could have if we banded together

  • Something_Complex@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Ok yes, but it’s more complex then that. Would you be available to desvribe further into your suggestions on what changed you should make?