Socialists do not want "free stuff" -- they want a humane society in which people ALL pay their fair share and in which a minority do not exploit the majority or abuse the weak and poor.
@Reason10 You appear to have a very simplistic understanding of the way in which economies work, possibly because you have only viewed the question from one perspective and have enjoyed sustained success and lack of want in your own life.
This is not the "way of the world". These are real problems that have to be dealt with, even though you don't like to think about them. Pursuit of unbridled capitalism has made some Americans prosperous. It has also made America one of the most unequal and dangerously divided countries in the world.
And before you tell me to f*** off, this thread is a general discussion of politics and nothing to do with America in particular.
It's all part of the manipulation of thought. Just think about the difference of mindset it brings to say "Our Leaders in Washington DC" vs. "Our Public Servants in Washington DC". By constitutional law, the latter is more correct. But because everyone speaks in the former, we grant them leeway to act superior and they take it. Claiming socialists want free stuff is just the way to mask that capitalists don't want to support society.
For anyone to think that in capitalism people are truly paid according to their worth, their value, is delusional. Smarter more ambitious, greedy and ruthless (not always true but often) keep far more than their worth. NOBODY is worth billions of dollars a year when others struggle just to meet basic needs while still working. Entertainers and athletes certainly are not often worth what they get...and nurses and policemen, firefighters and teachers are all undervalued
Life itself would collapse if you had to expend the same exact energy to acquire something that it gives you. Does that mean you can't critique socialists if you are alive?
@Jackaloftheazuresand I bet if the word Graham was changed to Lohan, suddenly it wouldn’t be sexual harrassment, #amiright? You are one of the funniest and most predictable trolls on here😂
@wishforthenight It's sexual harassment because he's targeting me for being gay and trying to use it to insult me. I don't know who Lohan is but it would be the exact same.
And you haven't even been here that long so unless you're an alt I highly doubt you know me
@missyann No he is not. He is being deliberately dishonest.
And you are being dishonest too. Slavery is not the only form of exploitation and you damn well know what. And most of the fortune 500 uses slave labour through for profit prisons so you are even objectively wrong on the slavery part too.
You just proved my point. Profit literally cannot exist if you pay workers fairly for their labour.
And quit pretending that the lowest wage they can legally offer is some form of saintly deed.
And please stop the bullshit about the owners taking all the risk. Losing a job for the works means potential homelessness and starvation.
The vast majority of businesses are started by people who came from wealth so at best for the owner losing the business is like losing a hobby that makes them money. This is never a case of survival.
Even during the great depression most business owners were not in a position of losing their very survival.
And great jobe proving you have no idea what socialism actually is. Nobody is promising equality of outcomes. And you even used the wrong word. Equity implies everyone starts from the same fair starting point. That is objectively false under capitalism.
Again, you are deliberately pretending socialism is something it is not.
And literally none of the people you are referring to are socialists in your hypothetical.
But those very people you describe are capitalists.
@AdriftLabor costs go up, and so do the costs to the customer. The world goes round and round.
It's all in the accounting. Costs went WAY up to the consumer thanks to the socialist policies of Pedo Hitler.
When you flood the money market with trillions of newly printed dollars, the value of those dollars tanks. Costs to the consumer go up because the dollar is not worth anything. THAT comes from DemoNazi policies.
To bring you up to speed with a concept you apparently never could understand, worker pay is based on a VOLUNTARY agreement between employer and employee.
Workers in America are PAID what they are worth. And they are only worth what some employer is willing to pay. And employers have to pay a certain minimum to get workers who will not work for less.
Workers ARE PAID WHAT THEY ARE WORTH.
In a hospital, a janitor is not worth as much as a heart surgeon.
Certain jobs are worth less than others. And NO worker is ENTITLED to anything other than what an employer is willing to pay.
If you think it's bad here, you are welcome to move to China, where most of the country is starving to death and working for ZERO wages. America's homeless are Elon Musk compared to workers on the other side of the world.
@Reason10 You are making ridiculous strawman statements and have lost sight of the original post. All workers are worth a salary that allows them to support themselves in a given locality. If the salary does not do this, it has to be subsidised by the taxpayer. It is economically inefficient and ethically indefensible for the taxpayer to be supporting low wage jobs. If the company really is not able to pay a living wage (and it is difficult to see which can or cannot as they are effectively shielded from the free market), then let those jobs disappear. It is not the role of government to shore up McDonalds balance sheet.
@Reason10 And apparently you don't understand basics like fiduciary laws which literally require by law publicly traded companies to exploit workers and only pay them the bare minimum they can get away with.
But you conveniently leave stuff like that out because it doesn't fit your grade school fairy tale.
Your example of capitalism is a fairytale they tell school children like Snow White.
It is a lie told to children so they believe they have a fair shot in life.
@Reason10 Withdraw all state benefits from low paid workers (an explicit subsidy to poorly paid jobs), then let us see if workers were being paid the full value of their labour as corporations desperately seek to retain their staff.
