tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post818327915705279597..comments2023-11-30T06:11:00.390-08:00Comments on UNDIEPUNDIT.COM: Why Socialism is Chic, and Capitalism is Not (ICYMI)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-84188344240127164102018-01-12T11:11:11.107-08:002018-01-12T11:11:11.107-08:00Excellent example if you wanted to prove that a pu...Excellent example if you wanted to prove that a public economy is NOT sustainable! #ExSovietUnion @RolandRock1234https://www.blogger.com/profile/07244448874857110149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-39403792848880879962018-01-07T05:20:58.850-08:002018-01-07T05:20:58.850-08:00The USSR had only public spending, so your ratio i...The USSR had only public spending, so your ratio is infinity. There's nothing "unsustainable" about a public economy, it can be sometimes inefficient that's all. Better a slightly inefficient economy than idiots like you dominating things.Ron Maimonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07091536472786521926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-47685630461801067732015-11-03T18:03:24.043-08:002015-11-03T18:03:24.043-08:00"Sweden or Denmark in which the public spendi..."Sweden or Denmark in which the public spending is high (~ 55% GDP versus 40% in the US), so the social rights (health care, pensions, etc) are excellent and public employment is almost twice than in the US (~ 27% against 15%), so the total employment rate is 6 percentage points larger than in the US is, so that salaries are much higher and everyone has access to decent housing, education (including day care from age 0 to college), health care, decent pensions, etc."<br /><br />That is completely false. Read about homelss in Scandinavia - Sweden etc -for example.<br /><br />And what you social rights are not social right are violent rights. They only exist because of a violent threat of the majority over the minority.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-87363847202529897342015-11-02T11:08:16.168-08:002015-11-02T11:08:16.168-08:00Not sure what this comment has to do with the post...Not sure what this comment has to do with the post, but I can address your misleading statistics. It is incorrect to use GDP when comparing public spending rates because public spending ends up in the numerator and the denominator. (GDP includes government spending). A better measure is private sector GDP (GDP minus government spending) divided by government spending, and in the all countries we must include state, local, and federal spending. When we do this, Sweden and Denmark are spending more than their private economies, 108% and 146% respectively. A situation which is demonstrably unsustainable regardless what you think of the benefits. @RolandRock1234https://www.blogger.com/profile/07244448874857110149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-24587817643220008722015-10-31T13:02:22.378-07:002015-10-31T13:02:22.378-07:00So you like countries like Sweden or Denmark in wh...So you like countries like Sweden or Denmark in which the public spending is high (~ 55% GDP versus 40% in the US), so the social rights (health care, pensions, etc) are excellent and public employment is almost twice than in the US (~ 27% against 15%), so the total employment rate is 6 percentage points larger than in the US is, so that salaries are much higher and everyone has access to decent housing, education (including day care from age 0 to college), health care, decent pensions, etc.<br /><br />Indeed, the rich do pay taxes in those countries . Diegonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-4371965049326104922015-10-22T12:24:41.312-07:002015-10-22T12:24:41.312-07:00You are very well versed in Marxism and have even ...You are very well versed in Marxism and have even managed to define Capitalism, Adam Smith, and Supply Side Economics from the Marxist perspective. You have proven my point perfectly! @RolandRock1234https://www.blogger.com/profile/07244448874857110149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-3182914861615230052015-10-20T19:47:34.436-07:002015-10-20T19:47:34.436-07:00The Keynsians accept that wages are too low to kee...The Keynsians accept that wages are too low to keep demand up, but they make up nonsense reasons that don't sound like Marx's. Marx is right here, not the Keynsians. But since Keynsians accept the main idea--- too low demand--- they propose a workaround which involves government taxation and spending, and production of money by central banks. This allows demand to be partially restored. But unless Keynsian policies make the unemployment go to 0%, or close to it, it never produces a real economic equilibrium, with the fair wages and low profits.<br /><br />Supply side economics simply rejects Marx entirely (and therefore Keynes too). Supply siders believe that the wage differentials in the economy are not due to failure to find an equilibrium, but due to some ridiculous idea that certain labor is simply not valuable. In a situation of full employment, finding someone to flip burgers requires you to pay quite a bit, because they would usually rather be doing something else, all labor, even unskilled labor, ends up driven by competition to roughly the GDP divided by the population, give or take a factor of 5.<br /><br />It is theoretically possible to achieve without great amounts of state meddling and top-down interference, because it is the situation of optimal use of resources (in this case labor), and it in theory emerges naturally from a market. But in reality, it doesn't. The fixes proposed by Bernie Sanders, higher tax rates on high incomes, subsidies for worker owned business, and so on, these get you closer to Pareto optimal equilibrium. I would prefer more radical left policies, but you take what you can get.<br />Ron Maimonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07091536472786521926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1111351358778990270.post-58744955805605279932015-10-20T19:46:06.841-07:002015-10-20T19:46:06.841-07:00What you call "demand side economics" is...What you call "demand side economics" is called "Keynsianism" by everyone else. What you call "Smithism" is what is called "microeconomics" by everyone else, and everyone learns about it. Hardly anyone learns about Marx. What you call "supply side economics" is also called "Chicago school economics", and it is simply incorrect. Any major recession or depression makes it obvious.<br /><br />The issue with microeconomics pointed out by Marx is that the wages of workers are only in classical equilibrium under conditions of full employment, when there is a significant cost to replacing lost labor. In this case, workers can demand higher wages simply by leaving, and wages go up to the maximum possible without making the company insolvent. The competition for workers under full employment is analogous to the competition for any other service in a market, and under perfect competitive equilibrium conditions you don't get an extra surplus profit, beyond what is required to replenish the capital stocks of the corporation, pay out dividends, and expand business when it requires expansion. There isn't anything left to line the pockets of individuals. This is true in classical equilibrium, and this constitutes the Pareto efficient optimal state, at which point the market is theoretically identical to a hypothetical infinitely wise socialist planning agency. This is the standard model of Capitalist theory since the early 1800s. This model predicts roughly equal compensation for all workers (despite what you see in reality).<br /><br />What Marx pointed out is that in REAL markets (as opposed to hypothetical equilibria with full employment) the existence of chronic unemployment wrecks equilibrium, by producing a race to the bottom in wages. This happens when large factories are set up, with tens of thousands of largely interchangeable commodity employees, and a tiny number of owners, who personally control the capital. Only the employees compete with the unemployed, the owners don't compete with anybody (they own the big company). So there is an instability: a slight unemployment problem leads the wages of those who compete with the unemployed to collapse to subsistence levels, leaving a large amount of profit in the hands of those who employ them. That's NOT Pareto optimal, but it IS what is observed in real markets--- aside from highly competitive small businesses, which generally reward the owners in a way commensurate with the amount of labor they put in, large businesses leave enormous amounts of profit to be shared among a capitalist class, a capitalist class which is renumerated without having to put in any useful labor at all, only maintaining their class status by relatively unproductive investment choices. <br /><br />This is not corrected by the market when all the companies are large. This situation is stable. The employees wages are driven down, the low wages lead to declining demand, as workers can't afford the products, all the demand comes from extremely wealthy owners of capital. This leads to lower production, and further layoffs of workers due to insufficient demand, producing more unemployment and lower wages, and so on, and so on. This is Marx's classical prediction of the collapse of Capitalism, and it is exactly what is observed in the early 1930s and in the post 2008 economy.<br />Ron Maimonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07091536472786521926noreply@blogger.com