Privilege in the United States
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Saturday, July 26, 2025 06:23
VIEWED: 20076
PAGE 18 of 20
Quote:
SIGNYM:
I HAVE A MUCH BETTER IDEA.
What about if we take that $14 trillion and invest in ... steel mills? Textiles? Automobile manufacturing? Smaller farms? Machining?
Doesn't he think there's something more useful can be done with that money?
SECONDRATE: Rather than more of what corporations already profitably own, how about the Federal government building something that businesses won't pay for because it is not profitable? 100% clean energy economy and zero CO2 emissions? But the GOP blocks that Federal spending:
Because businesses "profitably own" those manufacturing plants IN CHINA, not here.
But I've got nothing against clean energy and infrastructure. Let's do those, too. But we can't forget manufacturing, farming, and intelligent forestry if we want to be economically independent. We should do all manufacturing here, at home
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:"We should do all manufacturing here, at home." Do you know any corporation that has the goal you stated? Do you know any American who has that goal and is in a position to make it happen? There might be a few. I've seen stuff with "Proudly Made In America" stickers, for example, this: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BR1BLHM/ My purchase price in June was $16.99 , but at this moment in July it is $33.99. I am unsure if that new price will remain that high, but if the price doubled to keep it "Proudly Made In America" then MaxPower won't be selling too many more lawnmower blades.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SIGNYM:
I HAVE A MUCH BETTER IDEA.
What about if we take that $14 trillion and invest in ... steel mills? Textiles? Automobile manufacturing? Smaller farms? Machining?
Doesn't he think there's something more useful can be done with that money?
SECONDRATE: Rather than more of what corporations already profitably own, how about the Federal government building something that businesses won't pay for because it is not profitable? 100% clean energy economy and zero CO2 emissions? But the GOP blocks that Federal spending:
Because businesses "profitably own" those manufacturing plants IN CHINA, not here.
But I've got nothing against clean energy and infrastructure. Let's do those, too. But we can't forget manufacturing, farming, and intelligent forestry if we want to be economically independent. We should do all manufacturing here, at home.
There is one American who is known for caring as much about his employees as himself: Dan Price. https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1365361283986575360
Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle
6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k. Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines.
https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1382018355985588228
Dan Price is very controversial because he highly pays his employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Price#References
"We should do all manufacturing here, at home." That will only happen if Corporations like PowerMax become commonplace. Until then the Federal government will have to pay corporations to do all manufacturing here. I think that is no more likely to pass Congress than paying reparations.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:No. The profit motive keeps it from happening. That's why it needs to be initiated by government.
SIGNYM:
I HAVE A MUCH BETTER IDEA.
What about if we take that $14 trillion and invest in ... steel mills? Textiles? Automobile manufacturing? Smaller farms? Machining?
Doesn't he think there's something more useful can be done with that money?
SECONDRATE: Rather than more of what corporations already profitably own, how about the Federal government building something that businesses won't pay for because it is not profitable? 100% clean energy economy and zero CO2 emissions? But the GOP blocks that Federal spending:
SIGNMYM: Because businesses "profitably own" those manufacturing plants IN CHINA, not here.
But I've got nothing against clean energy and infrastructure. Let's do those, too. But we can't forget manufacturing, farming, and intelligent forestry if we want to be economically independent. We should do all manufacturing here, at home.
SECONDRATE: "We should do all manufacturing here, at home." Do you know any corporation that has the goal you stated?
Quote:MAGA politicians, esp at the Presidential level.
Do you know any American who has that goal and is in a position to make it happen?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:Try harder, Signym. Your answers explain nothing about why American businesses are not run to create more and more jobs. If the Federal government pays business to create jobs, then it will happen but if government won't pay then American business will continue toward its much different goal of decreasing the number of jobs all the way to the minimum technologically possible. It happened in farming and continues. It happened in mining and continues. It happened in petrochemical manufacturing and continues. It happens wherever there are engineers building labor saving devices for industry.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
No. The profit motive keeps it from happening. That's why it needs to be initiated by government.
MAGA politicians, esp at the Presidential level.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Oh PUHLEEZ, SECONDRATE! As if this hasn't been hashed out a million times by now, EVEN BY YOU.
SIGNYM:
No. The profit motive keeps it from happening. That's why it needs to be initiated by government.
MAGA politicians, esp at the Presidential level.
SECONDRATE: Try harder, Signym. Your answers explain nothing about why American businesses are not run to create more and more jobs.
Weren't YOU the one who brought up Thorstein Veblen and the problem of rentier capitalism?
Stop being such a dick. If you can.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:Thorstein Veblen has nothing useful to say about productivity. He was writing sociology about rich people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Oh PUHLEEZ, SECONDRATE! As if this hasn't been hashed out a million times by now, EVEN BY YOU.
SIGNYM:
No. The profit motive keeps it from happening. That's why it needs to be initiated by government.
MAGA politicians, esp at the Presidential level.
SECONDRATE: Try harder, Signym. Your answers explain nothing about why American businesses are not run to create more and more jobs.
Weren't YOU the one who brought up Thorstein Veblen and the problem of rentier capitalism?
Stop being such a dick. If you can.
Industry will NOT create more jobs because productivity is constantly rising. The number of jobs is always decreasing, unless there is a war or a climate change catastrophe to be averted or a government financed building boom or the rich decide they need bigger mansions, because engineers put their minds to do away with jobs. It's their job! Veblen knew nothing about that.
www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm
I'll show you how jobs are created: Cigar.com has 10 cigars for $49.99. If I buy 10 cigars a week, and smoke 'em, assuming I am crazy, within a few years I will have cancer/emphysema and will thus create jobs in the healthcare industry if I act irresponsibly enough. Alternatively, I could decide to enlarge my house, or build another, or remove carpets and replace the floors with wood, thus creating jobs. There are many ways to create jobs, and the creation starts with spending money wastefully without thinking very clearly. The Federal government is perfect for creating jobs. It can create money, as much as it wants, and spend it as stupidly and inefficiently to create many, many jobs, much like my cigar buying and smoking example.
On second thought, a less wasteful idea is spending trillions to halt climate change and, at the very same time, create millions of high paying and meaningful jobs.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Well, see?
SECONDRATE: Industry will NOT create more jobs because productivity is constantly rising. The number of jobs is always decreasing,
You knew what the problem was, all along! It's in the nature of capitalism. Which is why some decisions can't be left to business owners, like you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.
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Quote:Some decisions? It has always been completely obvious that no important decisions can be left to Capitalists to make since Capitalistic decisions are only about money, nothing more. If it was up to Capitalism, slavery would have never ended, at least nominally. Plenty of low paying jobs look to me exactly the same as slavery with the exception that the Capitalists don't care what happens to their slaves because they don't own the slaves and can't trade them for money.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Well, see?
SECONDRATE: Industry will NOT create more jobs because productivity is constantly rising. The number of jobs is always decreasing,
You knew what the problem was, all along! It's in the nature of capitalism. Which is why some decisions can't be left to business owners, like you.
Capitalists will never in a million years decide to stop climate change. The Federal government can pay Capitalists to stop climate change from killing off the Earth, but Capitalists would never do it for any other reason than money. Same with creating jobs. The Capitalists will do it only if you pay them. Capitalistic decision-making is robotic/mechanical. If you think it was human, you are sadly mistaken.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Even in so-called “Communist” China, Capitalism’s robot logic makes people unhappy:
www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/07/04/china-communist-party-chinese-
workers-leaving-careers/7859674002/
Money isn't everything. China's Communist Party isn't too chill about it
Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.”
Mr. Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.” That is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as it celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.
“Work was OK, but I didn’t like it much,” Mr. Guo said. “What is wrong with doing your own thing, not just looking at the money?”
“Lying flat” is a “resistance movement” to a “cycle of horror” from high-pressure Chinese schools to jobs with seemingly endless work hours, novelist Liao Zenghu wrote in Caixin, the country’s most prominent business magazine.
“In today’s society, our every move is monitored and every action criticized,” Mr. Liao wrote. “Is there any more rebellious act than to simply ‘lie flat?’”
It isn’t clear how many people have gone so far as to quit their jobs or move out of major cities. Judging by packed rush-hour subways in Beijing and Shanghai, most young Chinese slog away at the best jobs they can get.
Still, the ruling party is trying to discourage the trend. Beijing needs skilled professionals to develop technology and other industries. China’s population is getting older and the pool of working-age people has shrunk by about 5% from its 2011 peak.
“Struggle itself is a kind of happiness,” the newspaper Southern Daily, published by the party, said in a commentary. “Choosing to ‘lie flat’ in the face of pressure is not only unjust but also shameful.”
The trend echoes similar ones in Japan and other countries where young people have embraced anti-materialist lifestyles in response to bleak job prospects and bruising competition for shrinking economic rewards.
Official data show China’s economic output per person doubled over the past decade, but many complain the gains went mostly to a handful of tycoons and state-owned companies. Professionals say their incomes are failing to keep up with soaring housing, child care, and other costs.
In a sign of the issue’s political sensitivity, four professors who were quoted by the Chinese press talking about “lying flat” declined to discuss it with a foreign reporter.
Another possible sign of official displeasure: T-shirts, mobile phone cases, and other “Lie Flat”-themed products are disappearing from online sales platforms.
Urban employees complain that work hours have swelled to “9 9 6,” or 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
“We generally believe slavery has died away. In fact, it has only adapted to the new economic era,” a woman who writes under the name Xia Bingbao, or Summer Hailstones, said on the Douban social media service.
More at www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/07/04/china-communist-party-chinese-
workers-leaving-careers/7859674002/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.”
Mr. Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.” That is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as it celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.
Good man. Glad he figured it out too.
I'm curious, Second. Are you looking up to this man yourself?
I figured out that lesson at least a decade before you and I ever conversed, and no matter how many times you try to make me feel lousy about it, I'm proud of the fact that I can live comfortably on about $6,000 per year.
Fuck the rat race and keeping up with the joneses.
I've only been employed half of my adult working life, and I owe nobody a dime.
It's amazing how far you can make bullshit wages stretch if you save up for what you buy and never give the borrowers their interest.
Especially once you've learned how to distinguish Wants from Needs and you learn to Just Say No to buying all of the shit you don't need.
Most of it you really, really don't need.
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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