Lately I have been thinking a lot about class warfare. It has long been noted that if all working class people voted in their own best economic interests it would produce an immediate and profound redistribution of wealth. The fact that poor people now vote for policies favoring the rich because they dislike homosexuals and agnostics is something to be pondered at and even admired; for we on the working class left needs to harbor this ruse to appease middle class liberals without giving into their rootless cosmopolitanism. I already find it particularly bothersome that people with annual net incomes above $40,000 now find themselves with center-left - or "liberal" in the asinine American political discourse - political positions, and they perform entry-ism into leftist institutions on behalf of the middle class. Does the labor-driven left have to brainwash our liberal "fellow travelers" in the way the right wing has coerced poor Christian retards into voting their way? I think so.
The problem with this is that despite gaining wealth redistribution, power structures don't change. Tax brackets change slightly, social works and programs gain funding, public employment skyrockets... But without vanguardism the original power structures remain the same. Take a look at the cyclical tax brackets we've seen in the last century alone. Despite the cycle of deregulation, market bubble, crash, regulation and redistribution, deregulation, market bubble, crash, etc. there has never been a systemic change in power structures and class demarcation. Watch "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtiss. The only reason this ruse is possible is because the concrete and immutable power structures in place already. The poor vote against their interests because money has been put into places to lubricate the idea that they will benefit from voting in that way. Competeing against the power elite under the framework of liberal democracy, as Erich Fromm was wont to say, is to fight steam with a knife. You'll do nothing but get burned. The center-left "liberals" you talk about have been brainwashed into that position by the actual liberals in this country: the elite, free-market fetishizing, multinational board members, etc. The middle class are worth more to them as vacillating hand-waving "liberals" than they are as conservatives/"red-staters". The 'green' movement is not a leftist movement. It's a smokescreen. Incrementalism can work... for a time. We've watched the cycle repeat over and over. Vanguardism ftw.
The amusing part is that anti-poverty programs only exacerbate the situation by hurting the poor. Take for instance the minimum wage and the Americans with Disability Act. It used to be that if someone with a disability to work, they could perhaps go to someone and say 'I can do X, would you be willing to give me a go for $Y/hr?'. Egalitarian rhetoric notwithstanding, they do not call them 'disabilities' for nothing and this often results in adding less value to an organisation, thus their services might command a lower salary. This is arguably discriminatory, and I could face costly lawsuits if I hired in such a manner, especially if Y is less than whatever hourly price floor the regime has implemented for labour. On the other end, with the termination of employment if work is simply not going to an employer's satisfaction, it used to be one could say 'you're fired'. This now often results in a lawsuit or some bureaucratic quagmire if someone is in a protected group, which includes the disabled and just about anything besides the much-maligned white male. In the specific case of the disabled, they could file suit for wrongful termination based upon AWDA and cost a business a tonne of money fighting it. Enter the HR department, whose main goal is to prevent such lawsuits. They have become crafty, so when someone who would have been better served without these two odious, meddlesome acts, they get 'not a fit' written on the back of their application. Looking at the minimum wage on its own, again, if someone adds X/hr worth of value to an organisation, it does not make sense to hire him for a higher wage, as that would be a net loss to the business. In the case of an agreed-upon wage of $3/hr, which would benefit both parties, the regime has prohibited this transaction, and thus has denied the employer a profit, and the labourer his wage. Disclaimer - worked for a few people who ignored minimum wages and labour laws and did OK.
The problem with your attempt to draw from economics to make your argument is that you don't understand them at a very basic level. Every person with a disability is going to cost government, tax payers, and the business sector money. The truth is by doing that they perform a giant favor for the economy, and the businesses that let people with disabilities function in society. Medical science keeps us safe more than anything on the planet, so each disabled person is a tiny stimulus package making me safer. If Hitler were alive today I doubt he would even target disabled people, because he'd realize they perpetuate the very system that empowers him at the most basic and important level. The world where nature determines who lives and dies has a scary resemblance to the one where we sleep in the cold and bury our shit in holes we just dug ourselves. Rich people constantly complain about government protections, but the government is the only reason I'm not sleeping in their mansion tonight need to their wife.
You have not remotely any semblance of a burden of proof in your assertions, nor have you supplied cogent counter-arguments to mine. Therefore, I decline to address your post.
I urge you to take a course in economics and we'll resume when you're intellectually capable of challenging my assertions.
I'd like to take this minute to bow our heads in reflection and remember the countless instances through history that show employers will screw their employees to the fuillest extent allowed legally and inot, in order to maximize profit. Ok, that being said, sure. Let's get rid of minimum wage. I think if someone adds X value to an organization, they should get paid X - 95% also!
No kidding, his example of minimum wage being broken read more like an example of how capitalism is an atrocity.
The most dumbfounding thing about his post is that he doesn't know disabled people get a cheque even if they don't work. So a disabled person would make more staying home than they would by taking $3/hour. Yet the government is "hurting the poor" by refusing to let them work for nothing? If my employer tried to cut my slower comrade's wages because he's not creating surplus value, he is going to lose several thousand dollars in coming months off all the extra goods and services I suddenly stop producing. I would find out exactly how much work covers my wage, and by next week nobody on the crew will produce even a penny more than that. If that's the way the company wants to play, then game on. No government legislation needed. This is why unions exist.
