Some people on this forum have a strong anti-business and anti-rich focus. These are actually two different things, but they are linked.
It is understandable where this comes from. The rich and big business have had far too much power for too long. There is no doubt the power balance needs to shift.
That being said, in my opinion, many people take it way too far by assuming anyone running a business, or earning anything more than median income, is evil.
Of course, I have my own bias here as I run a business, have 50 employees, and make the most money of them.
In the end, I think the broad scale painting of everyone who has money or employs people as evil hurts our side and our ability to actually shift the power balance.
The following things should be our goals;
a complete restructuring of the tax system with much higher taxes on the rich and business,
complete removal of big money in politics,
new laws around how people move from private to public sector,
much tougher white-collar crime enforcement, and
a stronger social safety net, including a UBI.
Many people I know who own businesses, and or have high incomes, support these goals. Why would we reject their help?
Finally, part of the reason I am a supporter of the left is I strongly reject any notion of generalization when it comes to humans. People are diverse. Some are good, some bad. We don’t help our side when we adopt wholesale attacks at huge swaths of people based on average traits.
You don’t start a negotiation with a compromise. My opening position is to guillotine everybody who has more wealth than me and redistribute it all to the masses. Meet me halfway.
Of course not. They were not paid or free to leave.
This question does illustrate that nuance is important here.
Obviously not all employer employee relationships are good. In fact, they are inherently built on a power imbalance and we need norms and actual laws to protect the people in that relationship with less power.
I try to think about this imbalance all the time at my company. I think I do things to even it out when possible but there is nothing that can be done to eliminate it. The owner/boss will always have more power. I don’t think that is in and of itself bad.
I’m also a business owner, and have had employees, although never more than 3. I’ve always felt very uncomfortable with the employer/employee relationship honestly. At the same time I recognize that most people simply have zero interest in dealing with the headaches that come with owning a business, and really just want to go somewhere for a set amount of time in exchange for the money they need to fund their lifestyle.
I don’t buy that you’re a bad person simply because you’re rich or own a business. There are good business owners and bad business owners. The big problem is that the system has been heavily favoring the bad ones for some time. It’s a huge competitive advantage to be a piece of shit in 2019 in a lot of industries.
I don’t care, that’s not the point. The thing you’re doing here (and that you and many others frequently do in other arguments) is you put all the burden of debating responsibly and finding perfect solutions on your own team, while the other side gets a complete pass to be as disingenuous, wrong and illogical as it wants.
If you care about the massive inequality and worker exploitation running rampant in the world, don’t start the discussion by demanding concessions from me. It’s not my job to make billionaires feel better about being billionaires. It’s not my job to defend capitalism. It’s not my job to figure out how to pay for universal healthcare. It’s not my job to litigate the finer points of employee/employer relationships. And it’s not my job to assuage your hurt feelings every time you think you’ve been slighted by an overly broad brush.
My job is to demand guillotines, NOW. My job is to apply as much pressure from the left as I can to counteract the perpetual onslaught from the oligarchy. My job is to always continue fighting, because pretending there is some achievable end goal compromise is a sucker’s game that I eventually lose instead.
Businesses aren’t inherently bad and corporations aren’t inherently bad, I don’t think. But they are as bad as we as a society let them be. In the 1930s we put bankers who did the fraud at the public’s expense in jail after we bailed out their banks. In 2008 we did nothing. People take notice of such things and change their behaviour accordingly.
And maybe the biggest factor that we can do to decrease the exploitation of workers and decrease the control that corporate America has on working America is to institute universal health care. Everyone is afraid of losing their job, but the effect is doubled or more when you lose your health care as well. Maybe for your whole family. Talk about pressure. But with universal health care not only is it easier to open a business of your own, since you don’t also have to administer a health care plan for your employees, it’s easier for employees to switch jobs or careers. Which I think is a big reason we don’t have universal health care. Corporations understandably like the control providing health care gives over their workers. But it’s an insane system if you step back and look at it.
I should have added universal health care to my op list.
The connection between having healthcare insurance and a job in the US is one of the most bizarre features of American capitalism and likely one of the big causal factors in its inequality.
The whole premise of this question is bullshit. Nobody says that anyone earning above median income is evil. Nobody, on this forum at least, says that employing people is by definition evil.
I don’t really have a full coherent worldview on this because there are too many variables and exceptions. But like, to answer the two main questions you posed:
I have a real problem with an employer who brings home a large amount of money in a business where the employees are paid very little and/or have bad benefits. I would rather see a law firm principal who pulls in 750k while employing 10 lawyers making 75k each than a 711 franchisee who pulls in 250k while employing 10 clerks making 25k each. Basically I think employers have a moral obligation to provide some minimum level of financial security to people they employ. The exact numbers will obviously vary based on locale and other details.
When it comes to wealth there are two kinds of wealthy we’re talking about. If you have more than, say, $200M, you and your kids and your grandkids and your great grandkids will already live comfortable lives without lifting a finger in perpetuity. I view amassing further wealth without simultaneously working on giving every cent away immediately (not in 45 years into a charitable trust with your name in it) as horrifyingly evil and immoral.
On a more micro level, once you’ve amassed enough wealth that you live a comfortable worry free life with like security in the event you have an emergency or whatever, I view a lot of decisions that are made to continue making money as immoral or just really shitty. Like. I’m not holding it against you if you have $2M to you name and you keep working to get to $10M to put your kids through college and buy them houses and travel the world when you retire at 55. But if you do so while whining about capital gains tax rates, or by working 60 hour weeks instead of spending time with your kids, or by having a business that nets you 500k/year while your employees are struggling, then I think you suck.
All of this is a separate question from what policies should we enact, and how much of what I personally find distasteful should be legislated. But like, the “woe is me I cannot make more than 50k/year without being labeled evil by Bernie bros” framing is really disingenuous.
Not the way you pretend, with carefully measured chin stroking radical centrist talking points. How the fuck should I know how to achieve your bullet points and where do you get off thinking you do? We’re the mob, dude. Pick up a pitchfork. That’s our job.
Politics is framing. Unfortunately, money also equates with power. Therefore, framing all people with money as bad has real consequences in the political arena.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about rhetorical name calling. I care about political ideas in action.
Yeah the culture of impunity at the top of American society is a huge problem. There are a ton of people who honestly would be in jail in a normally functioning society absolutely feasting in America right now. And when those tactics work a lot of people in the middle of the amoral-moral spectrum figure 'if you can’t beat 'em might as well join ‘em’ and it spreads like a virus.
I’m talking about YOUR framing. The part you just did here, except you moved off of “people making above median income” to a more nebulous “people with money”.
Like, can you provide an example of someone “with money” who is unfairly attacked by the left? Can you provide an example of the kind of argument you find problematic?
And like, not that this is a specific problem to you, but since you injected your personal experience into it: are you comfortable saying how much you are taking home from your job (including money you reinvest into the company that you own), and how much does your average employee make? If not I get it and wouldn’t expect you to disclose, but it might give us an idea of why you personally feel attacked by the left.
I agree with this. I’m kind of of the opinion that businesses that can’t justify a living wage for their lowest level employees aren’t really viable. If you depend on people living in poverty to make your numbers work your numbers don’t actually work IMO.
This is one positive thing about automation I guess. Sooner rather than later it’ll be possible to run a McDonald’s with employees who make 25 bucks an hour because there will only be 1-2 of them in the place.
The reality is that we can only do so much about inequality while there is still a lot of supply for a servant class that performs so called ‘menial’ tasks for tiny amounts of money. I don’t see that supply drying up until we get UBI that’s large enough to cover basic bills, because right now if that’s all you can do to get money you pretty much have to take what they’ll give you. It’s that or join the homeless camps if you don’t already live in one.
It comes down to incentives. The US has created a system of business with incentives that are completely out of touch with how a healthy system should function. The crazy part is it’s not hard to look around at most of the rest of the developed world and see how it can be done better.
Incentives should be realigned to foster economic growth for all members of a society and to measure more than just economics. Measures of happiness matter too.
A company making x dollars, with happy employees, is not doing worse than one making x+1 dollars, with all unhappy employees. Yet in America they would be measured as such. It’s nuts.