Printable View
This doesn't fix everything either. You'd end up with a glut of basic laborers. 500 car mechanics in every small town. It would become harder to make a good living for those people because they'd all be racing to the bottom after there are more mechanics than broken cars.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Nothing fixes everything, but it would sure as hell be better than today.
You sure do worry about all those artists and lit majors.
I worry about subsidizing degrees that can't repay loans or pay taxes.
Plus automation (mechanical & software) is going to cut into all those basic laborer jobs more and more as time goes on. We are approaching a point where there will simply never be enough jobs (that pay something close to a living wage) for the number of people on the planet.
In the meantime we should drastically reduce current military spending and create a new branch of the military that does nothing but fix or build infrastructure. Our highway system is old and busted with little though how to maintain it long term, we teach/train them by improving our system. Then when we go into DurkaDurkaStan and bomb the hell out of them to take out small terrorist cells we can jump in and rebuild their infrastructure giving the people who live and work there a positive thing to associate with the United States.
Investing in infrastructure clearly makes sense, but there are 1,000 things I'd cut before military spending. I do like your underlying idea about having the military linked to the infrastructure projects though. It gives soldiers something to do in peace time while still having them at the ready without instituting a draft should the need for more arise.
Anybody may be able to do a job, but if a job pays peanuts then nobody will appreciate having that job. To borrow a Yoshism, minimum wage workers have no skin in the game. They can go anywhere to make nothing. Look up how much money businesses lose due to turnover. They'd save money in the long run if they paid a decent wage and retained the workforce. The workforce would give a shit about keeping their job and increase productivity. When productivity goes up so does profitability. If I can live a pretty good life on 1,000,000 a year (and I'd argue it could be done with half that), then why wouldn't I put any surplus towards improving the lives of the people that work for me? Could you in good conscience sit at a dinner table and eat caviar while the people that do the work for you have to eat McDonalds or worse? And let's look at the big picture, it's not like a person going from $9 an hour to $18 an hour is going to sit on that extra money. It's going to be spent. Businesses will get it all back through profitable sales. I don't believe inflation would outweigh the gains. If that's the theory behind earned income credit, then why can't anyone extend it to actual wages? It's because people are greedy, narcissistic fucks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drewbacca
This is where I moved to the left a little on that political compass site, since that scale is basically pro-corporatism. Everything you said is perfectly true of privately owned businesses, but publicly traded ones can get out of control. I have no doubt that aging senior execs at some publicly traded companies will intentionally make shot-term smart, long-term retarded decisions just to raise the stock price so they can retire and cash out. Somewhat ironically, the stock market really fucks with the free market.
edit: To take this in a tangential direction and one I've walked before, take the time to do some research on the companies you support with your money and make sure they're doing what you'd want them to do. Often times, that means going to the privately owned place, e.g. Toys R Us, over the publicly traded one, e.g. Walmart, even if their prices are 10% higher or whatever.
is anyone on this forum that worries about this an actual skilled or basic laborer? Not someone in the service industry, but someone that actually does shit like frame houses, lay brick, or work on cars? Or work in a factory? On an assembly line?Quote:
Originally Posted by Timber
This concern some of you have about this is needless. None of us will live to see it. Your children will not live to see it. And it will never happen in a capitalistic society with powerful corporations. Never. Ever.
There are a dozen reasons why it won't happen, but the simplest is that it doesn't fit into a business world that focuses on quarterly and yearly stock reports.
This kind of stuff takes a tremendous amount of capital. And for it to get approval, it would need to start paying for itself fast. It won't pay for itself fast, so it won't get approved. Mr. CEO isn't going to risk being fired for cash flows past his point of employment.
You guys think this shit is common sense, but American business isn't a world of common sense. It isn't. Its a world where it takes 18 months to replace a flow meter that is wasting $180,000 a year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timber
This is never going to happen if for the only fact that it would undercut privately own construction companies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi