Capitalism in one picture

[UncleTomFord15]

What does that have to do with capitalism

 

[UncleTomFord15]

The scary thing is how close some people are to being there.



A lot of people were giving her shyt acting like $200 left is a lot, but not when you get surprised by life.

I completely agree with her and I brought it up numerous times on here, especially for us here living in Cali. We didn't get these kinds of degrees to penny pinch, but when you have engineers struggling to find salary that keeps up, then there's a big problem. So I imagine many others are struggling far worse.

First off, the taxes here are bullshyt (that seemingly are being pocketed and not being distributed back to the people in better services). Healthcare not free, shyt getting expensive everywhere, etc.

Spoiler

Another one of the biggest problems is that many salaries aren't scaling.

When A.I really hits though that'll be a brand new set of problems for our generation and those that come after.
Think of your younger family members, shyt is going to suck for them unless they're in something like healthcare (which is highly stressful).

If you're white and broke in America it's your own fault

 

[Godless Socialist CEO]

If you're white and broke in America it's your own fault

This might apply to Gen x and boomers but it’s an absurd statement to make for millennials and Gen Z

 

[the elastic]

Capitalism in one picture

 

[NoirDynosaur]

The government are the biggest pimps the workers and consumers are the biggest hoes. What is your role, the pimp or the hoe?

One of the benefits of capitalism is encourages competition, innovation, and economic growth. It also provides individuals with the opportunity to accumulate wealth and be rewarded for hard work and entrepreneurial spirit.

The digital era is the best era to become a self made boss. Find a niche that isn't oversaturated or unknown, find sources that caters to that niche and market towards that particular niche.

Black people need to start capitalizing on capitalism. The areas where we spend on our money can be used to triple profits in our community - Cosmetics, Hair, Fashion, Food etc.

Mastering economics is power and without a mastering of economics, we're left behind

 

[IIVI]

This might apply to Gen x and boomers but it’s an absurd statement to make for millennials and Gen Z

Yup. Someone put it great here:

It's a system wide problem that's nor unique to engineering.

An engineer today will get paid about the same dollars as they would have gotten 10 years ago.

But it's worse than this.

I worked as a general laborer in a factory 20 years ago and made as much as being am engineer. I didn't exceed the actual dollar wages of a general labor job until a few years ago.

But it gets worse.

That exact general labor job today pays 2/3rds actual wage dollars today than it did 20 years ago.

But...it gets worse.

The buying power of the dollar is about half of what it was 20 years ago. This means that general labor job actually pays 1/3 the wage it did 20 years ago from a buying power standpoint. It also means that even today, after going to college, after getting a high skill engineering job, after working a decade in my career, and after being promoted up to management, after all the work to position myself so much better, I STILL don't have a much buying power as I did just 20 years ago as a general laborer in a factory. And considering I actually did both and lived with the income of both, I can state this is true. I feel more poor now than I did 20 years ago.

Yet, it's still worse.

Everyone growing up into today's work force and value of the dollar has the same problem, and they don't have the advantage of 20 years of prep. They're stuck with this garbage right at the start and have to live in it. Many of the people I work with have two or three jobs. That's how they're coping with modern life. Even myself, I rent with others to keep living expenses reasonable, and I don't know if I'll ever own a home. The modern world is crazy expensive. 20 years ago, I could buy a house and completely pay it off in around 5 years with the extra money I had. That's how cash rich I was back then.

The issue isn't the price of north American labour imo. Take my opinion with a grain of salt as it's definitely uninformed and will reflect my leftist beliefs, and I welcome criticism, but I reckon it's a combination of a few factors.

The costs of goods from Asia have gone up with the increased standards of living and income in China, products have become increasingly complex and the supply chain bloated, fuel costs have increased exorbitantly, and the finance and marketing industries have grown a lot.

The sweatshops of China have become automated factories and machine shops and (quite reasonably so) their income has increased, which costs us more. Same kind of progress Japan saw, originally people bought only American because japanese products were junk, then China made the junk and Japanese was quality, now Chinese products are increasingly of higher quality and more products will be made in places like Bangladesh to drive costs down. But manufacturing has already gone overseas, so prices keep going up without a correlating increase in income. The only upside being that, at this point, outsourcing has somewhat stabilized so we're not likely to lose an obscene amount more domestic jobs - if it's not already happened, it's not going to get cheaper to outsource.
(Keep in mind this post was from 2 years ago, before A.I)

This has happened while products get more complex and fuel costs have increased. Consequently, we're spending more on foreign salaries than ever. This is not a "boo china" thing - we've lived luxuriously on the backs of cheap foreign labor for years. There could come a time a thousand years in the future when the entire world has gone through the same development China has, everyone country is somewhat "first world", and we see this "problem" at it's worst. It sucks compared to the deal we had, but it's not unfair, realistically speaking.

As we've lost domestic production, a lot of industries like finance and marketing which, to a degree, "skim some off the top" rather than purely increase domestic production have gained a lot. There was no equivalent to Google before Google, and advertising is the reason they're such a juggernaut. Consequently everything we buy has a much larger margin for those sorts of things.

Products are also not built to last. While advancements in engineering and the state of technology mean we could build cars that last decades until they're totalled, and computers/phones are fast enough to run literally anything we need, they're not designed to do so for more than a few years. They're not designed to be upgraded to catch up, or repaired to extend their life. So instead of buying a car to last 30 years and spending money domestically to fix it, we buy a new car after 6 years. A Mercedes is not designed to be easy to fix if you get a serious engine problem. But if you open up a 95 Civic it's almost a home garage job to replace the engine. Instead of designing software to be more efficient, we let it bloat freely and replace the computer to catch up.

We're also taking better care of the planet, which meant ditching some terrible practices that saved money. Resource scarcity has had an effect on this, too, with recycling becoming not only the "right thing to do" but also financially prudent.

So, all in all, it's largely an unavoidable (and reasonable) result of not getting shyt for dirt cheap anymore, and somewhat a result of consumerism becoming more ridiculous than ever. If we want to improve things, "buy domestic" and "purchase serviceable products" needs to be the mantra. We need to build cities smaller and not just sprawling suburbs.

And, to answer your question more directly, increasing national wages would drive up income more than it would drive up costs - if you spend 100% of your income on stuff, and stuff is 50% foreign resources and salaries, 50% domestic, then a doubled salary would only increase product costs 50%. Very incomplete picture, but explains well why minimum wage increases are entirely reasonable give the obscene costs of living nowadays.

EDIT: since someone reminded me, corporate/executive greed is also at an all-time high. Big ol rich-off between Bezos and Musk. And I'm sure y'all have seen the graphs showing executive compensation vs worker compensation. Unfortunately it's the people hit the worst by this greed that tend to be most against limiting that greed. I'd love to see numbers on what the average worker salary would be if every CEOs bank was drained of any cash above $50M and distributed evenly.

Legit engineers talking by the way, not simply speaking out their ass: especially about the part where products aren't built to last. The other part where foreigners are charging more for their work as well now. Combined with the rise of "bloat" jobs like finance and marketing that don't really produce anything in the real world.


Easily one of the best breakdowns I've read, and by smart people who aren't trying to push any propaganda.

 

[Second Chance Lance]

Serta sleep number concrete

 

[DEAD7]

people don’t even know what capitalism is.

 

[IIVI]

Man, read the replies. It's exactly like that post I mentioned ago where the engineer said:

EDIT: since someone reminded me, corporate/executive greed is also at an all-time high. Big ol rich-off between Bezos and Musk. And I'm sure y'all have seen the graphs showing executive compensation vs worker compensation. Unfortunately it's the people hit the worst by this greed that tend to be most against limiting that greed. I'd love to see numbers on what the average worker salary would be if every CEOs bank was drained of any cash above $50M and distributed evenly.

Those people in that reddit thread defending the obscenely rich will never ever be that rich while those rich people are making their lives tougher, yet they defend it.

Like someone else said:

You know that the richest 8 people earn more than half of all people right? I’m not really sure what good it does to society for them to hoard that much wealth

That's why we're screwed. Yet people are defending them and all the other people who are literally thousands of tiers above them financially per year.

You got somebody making $100k thinking they're ballin defending someone who makes $14 BILLION that year acting like "that'll be me someday, don't stand in my way!"

What funny is it's like they're unaware of the fact that those billionaires are the reason why that $100k really is really like $60k after costs, taxes, etc So after taxes that $100k is really like $65k and that $65k is really like $45k because shyt has got so expensive.

Not to mention they acting like they're the same tier but $14 Billion/year is a 140,000 times the amount compared to $100k/year.
That's one year, you know how many lifetimes you'd have to live at $100k/year to make the $14 billion someone did in a single year?

Again, then the next year while someone makes $100k, the billionaire makes another $14 billion.

Bootlickers are hilarious man. Ya'll look so stupid.

 

[Da King]

Ask those Russian fakkits how good communism works

 

[Scustin Bieburr]

Was expecting this

 

[2 Up 2 Down]

no, i think he was referring to the daily lives of the populace. for example, the fact that people are willing to float 80 miles across the ocean in a car tire, to get out of cuba and into florida

That link that was posted had a direct result to the autocrats, dictators, and poverty in South America today.

 

[IIVI]

As we've lost domestic production, a lot of industries like finance and marketing which, to a degree, "skim some off the top" rather than purely increase domestic production have gained a lot.

Read about this recent story earlier today

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart.
..
The unusual flow of electric current through a strange class of metals challenges our textbook understanding of charge-carrying particles — because whatever is shuttling current through these metals looks nothing like electrons.

Meet Strange Metals: Where Electricity May Flow Without Electrons | Quanta Magazine

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart.

www.quantamagazine.org

So many brilliant scientists and mathematicians basically went to chase the money.

 

[DaHNIC82]

Oh there's a lot of people that feel that way. Look at TLR, social media, Bob the cac at the work, Dre the aspiring entrepreneur.

"These McDonald's workers want a higher wage?

"These homeless people need to stop begging and work three jobs if they want to survive"

Vs.

"Damn Elon Musk just received (x) amount of money in forms tax payers money? He getting the bag! Capitalism!"

"Why are y'all mad the banks are getting bailed out? Stop hating "

But yet pro black

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Posted from the comfort of your own home and smart phone/computer

What, do you seriously think we wouldn't have homes or technology without capitalism?


Capitalist booklickers have plot armor for all of life. Everything good happened because of capitalism, everything bad happened because we haven't done capitalism perfectly enough yet.