Well, if the workers owned the means of production...
I always want people to realize the true difference in communism and capitalism is that capitalism replaces “the people” with “the 1%” and then they’re interchangeable in everything else. Unfortunately it’s more like 0.01% if we’re being realistic.
The big difference is whether you believe some people are born to be less than others or not, that's literally the right vs left.
Capitalism is squarely a right wing economic system as there are people born with inherent advantages, more power, from the standpoint of capital simply better. The only reason capitalism affords some sort of upwards social mobility is because of leftist policies, laws, regulations.
I quit my job as a caregiver for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to make more money... working in retail.
My first job was in a nursing home. I lasted three weeks.
First let me say, the place was horrible and the state shut it down a week after I left, so my experiences tend to the dramatic.
I've worked Medical IT for a long time and I have to say, even in IT, patient care is a priority.
I've told a president of the company they can go fuck themselves because a patient needed assistance. Thankfully, they saw my point (this was not the nursing home)
All that said, this nursing home was awful. I washed dishes. That was it. I didn't have to bus trays, or any of it, it all got dumped on my sink and I washed it. I got paid minimum wage, and had difficulty with things like taking a state mandated lunch break. Yeah.
I got dishes back from both the lunch room and the guest rooms.
The stuff that came back from guest rooms haunted me.
We're talking about a person who has lost the plot, so to speak, and is not sensible; stuffing mashed potatoes and napkins into a cup and it festered. I don't mean like, it was room temperature and gross - thats whatever. The shit that came from their rooms was a biohazard.
Medical work is gross, and grueling, but at the end of the day, maybe you helped someone. I wasn't clinical, but I spent enough time in patient rooms fixing stuff to get to know a few.
I didn't cure their condition, but when a child wakes up screaming in a hospital bed, sometimes its just an IT guy who is there to calm them down, let them know their situation (as best you can, I don't have their medical info) so they stop freaking and pulling out IVs and sensors and shit.
Might of the middleman leads to the plight of the professionals.
My wife works in a higher-end memory care center as a caregiver, and I can confirm they don't pay nearly enough.
Finance
Insurance
Real
Estate...the moneyed class made sure that commerce always benefits their own rent-seeking intermediation first...
Capitalism is full of contradictions!? No way!! /s
In all of these examples the administrators make significantly more than the people doing the work, which is why things are so expensive. We're paying for hospital administrators, university boards, and all of the staff supporting them.
Yes, the famous oppression of roads, schools, non-for-profit admin, and health care.
The common denominator is taxes. There is this unit circle visual that shows half of your work value taken from you directly by taxes, and prices are twice what they want to be (indirectly paying others taxes)... so an individual "feels" only 1/4 economic effectiveness, or 3/4 oppressed.
*Half of what is left after the CEO and shareholders take their cut. Taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to the excess labor value that is extracted before you even see a penny.
Cool, now how much of your work value is taken by people who did nothing but invest the generational wealth they got from their great great grandad laying claim to common natural resources? Surely that's the bigger concern since it goes to rich peoples' yachts instead of public services.
Lmao, no. Not without sources.
Yes, the famous oppression of roads, schools, non-for-profit admin, and health care.
I would love to see the math behind that. Typically it's a case where someone is effectively paying 25% of their income to taxes, but because they are too lazy to actually understand how taxes work they are easily convinced it's well over 50%
I recall my first exposure to this idea was via L. Neal Smith, so I tried to coax a breakdown out of GPT. Keeping in mind it could be hallucinated (and not his actual position or sourced values and math), so minimally just for your entertainment...
Certainly! Here's a more detailed breakdown of how L. Neil Smith might conceptualize the distribution of value:
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12.5% Retained by the Individual: The portion of value that individuals actually keep for themselves after all deductions.
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20% Income Taxes: The portion of value lost to federal, state, and local income taxes.
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15% Social Security and Medicare Taxes: Contributions to social security and healthcare systems.
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10% Sales Taxes: Taxes added to purchases of goods and services.
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10% Property Taxes: Taxes on real estate and other property.
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15% Regulatory Compliance Costs: Expenses related to meeting government regulations, such as environmental standards, labor laws, and safety requirements.
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10% Corporate and Business Taxes: Taxes on business profits, which can indirectly affect individual income through reduced wages or higher prices.
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7.5% Miscellaneous Fees and Other Taxes: Including tariffs, licensing fees, and other smaller taxes.
This breakdown illustrates how various forms of taxation and regulation can consume a large portion of the value generated by individual effort, aligning with Smith's perspective on government intervention.
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