to not understand capitalism

[IceBeing]

Some people work hard (say 60 hours a week all year) and get paid about £20000 a year...and some people work hard and get paid 10 or even 100 times as much a year.

How can 60 hours a week of work from 1 person be worth 100 times as much as 60 hours a week of work from another person?

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

John Steinbeck

kim I would agree with that, I think that it is far too easy in this country to sit on your arse and let others fund your lifestyle. On the other side of the coin, I think it is far too difficult to get a helping hand when you've fallen on hard times (through no fault of your own) in the States.

I really really don't seen any evidence of capitalism delivering a level playing field in which any child has an equal opportunity to succeed.

At all.

Quite the opposite.

merry I like that quote...I also think americans are a bit like the crashed crew of middle management people that land on prehistoric earth in the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. They adopt the leaf as currency and wander around fondling their leaf stuffed jump suits and admiring how rich they have all suddenly become....then someone points out the inflation issue and they decide to start burning trees down to increase the value of the leaves in their pockets...

"merry there aren't any non-capilatist countries."

OK - I will open it up - which non-capitalist country in history treated poor and/or disabled people better, if you think capitalism does a bad job.

Capitalism in itself does not preclude high taxes and high levels of social care.

In fact I think that is an apt description for the whole of the financial sector. Making money without producing anything....kind of means you must be burning down someone else's tree somewhere along the line.

merry well that is what I was suggesting as the solution...massively higher levels of regulation on a broadly capitalist base. You can fix minimum and maximum incomes...leave the incentives to hard work without totally fucking over those with fewer skills.....

you can massively hike taxes so that everyone gets the same education and healthcare standard.

Deliver a genuine level playing field to children regardless of their parentage.

Interesting article re the Nordic economic model here

ahh yes the shoe catastrophe....

kim I can't really say much about Sweden. It's a very nice life there, and everyone has a good education, which is fantastic. But, the few Swedish people that I know can't seem to grasp the value of hard work. They work the bare minimum to get the best they can handed to them. Again, that's based off the very few people I know from there, so I don't know if that's an accurate representation of the country or not.

Ice I don't understand why you're finding this so difficult to understand. Capitalism favours everyone. If you get a job because of who your father is, great. It's still going to be up to you to prove yourself.
If your parents are "nobodies", great. You still have the opportunity to make a name for yourself.

I would like to leave a bit of money for my kids, but I won't be leaving them a trust fund by any means. My parents didn't set aside money for my university fees, and I worked my way through and paid my own tuition off by the time I was 24, and my tuition was £40,000. I never got a dime from my parents towards it.

so the nordic countries are lucky more than they are correct? Sounds like some CEOs we know....

reg you seem to be confusing 'possible' with 'probable'

In capitalism it is possible for anyone to do well but it is only probable if you have the right family, connections and some money to kick start your enterprise.

I don't want to settle for it being technically possible for a child from a disadvantaged background to succeed. I want it to be probable.

"Making money without producing anything"

A lot of them are - but many of them aren't. If I need somebody to fund my business and you put me in touch with somebody who wants to invest, then you are providing me with a service.

If you enable the investors to get their money back without pulling the money out of my business by selling the investment to somebody else, you are making the investment more attractive and increasing the likelihood that I will be able to make e.g. solar powered cars.

Clearly there comes a point in all this where you may be buying and selling shares in my company without knowing that I don't have the foggiest about how to make solar powered cars. I think that is why regulation is needed. However, I haven't seen any suggestions for a better way of doing things.

I was born into a lower-middle class family. My father had a college education, my mother did not. She had my (half)sister with another man that she wasn't married to, and my parents divorced when I was 5. I spent my entire childhood going through custody battles, moving from house to house, watching my father call the police on my mother and vice versa. I saw my sister drop out of high school and adopt a drug habit, which saw her land in jail many, many times. I had friends who were killed from drug and alcohol overdoses and drunk driving accidents. My grandparents divorced and remarried each other three times. My dad now has severe psychological problems after the divorce, and my mum is on her third marriage to a man who is on his 5th.

I don't come from a good background. But I've made a success of myself. I have no one to blame for my circumstances, and I have no one to thank for my successes. I did the work. I made the changes I wanted to see in my life.

Bit confused here.

Thought we agreed that both Sweden and the US are capitalist.

reg you are still confusing possible with probable.

Just because some people manage it doesn't make it likely....

In capitalism it is possible for anyone to do well but it is only probable if you have the right family, connections and some money to kick start your enterprise.

There's where you're wrong, Ice. My aunt, who never graduated from university and had an even more fucked up childhood than I did, who never had any formal business training, and who has spent the last 11 years of her life growing her business into a multi-million dollar international company, would beg to differ.

Just because you watch a film, or see a pretty graph, or read a nasty news story, please don't pretend like you understand what is or isn't probable, or possible. You seem to be quite content to sit back and moan that the world has it out for you and how it's not right that everyone else is luckier than you. You can't seem to comprehend that it has very little to do with luck, and everything to do with your attitude and your drive.

Ice It is likely. To be extremely cliche, if I can do it, anyone can do it. It's just up to them whether they want to or not.

I think it depends how you define capitalism. I think of it a means of funding any profit making activity that started with the joint stock companies in the 17th century.

I don't think it precludes regulation or social welfare.

To answer your original question, OP, are you being unreasonable for not understanding capitalism? Not at all.

Are you being unreasonable to insist, in your ignorance, that you are right, and everyone else is wrong? Yes. YABU.

Now, I have to get back to my well-paid job that I noticed the need for and created myself.

I think the OP understands capitalism perfectly well but thinks there should be more regulation around wages and increased social support.

oh so now you know two people who did it reg that must mean that everyone can.

What about people with all the desire to work in the world and insufficient IQ points? What if you only have a reading age of 7? What if you only get a few hours a day in which you can set your own agenda due to disability or illness?

Not everyone can start their own business. Knowing even two people who have doesn't change this.