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Perhaps the Danes don’t have enough disposable income to travel given their highest rate of taxation in the world?
Far too many Americans don’t understand the concept of disposable income. They seem to believe, at least indirectly or subconsciously, that it’s what you have left over after taxes.
No. It’s what you have left over after you’ve taken care of your tax commitments and your private sector commitments. Both. So if a society, via taxes, gives you far more for your tax dollars, so much more that your private sector transactions can be radically reduced, you end up with more disposable income, not less. And that is the case with Denmark and the Scandinavian countries. It costs them far less, between public and private outlays, to cover their necessities, and their necessities include things we Americans probably think of as luxuries: Universal health care, post-secondary education, paid leave out the ying yang, and so on.
In short, their standard of living, when you add public and private expenses, crushes ours, and they make more money on average than we do.
bnw, seriously. Do you really think that just because you and your wife didn’t bump into Danes that they don’t travel?
Wrong again. Feudalism drove people off the land and into the service of the nobility. When the Black Plague depopulated europe labor came at a premium and wages were paid for the first time. Specialization and the rise of guilds set the stage for capitalism with the onset of the industrial revolution.
My people were coal miners. If they weren’t then that was because they were forced into military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Time and time again until they could pay their way here. In their lifetime they bettered their life here and four generations later their family has further bettered their lives. Capitalism can work.
Please provide links for your assertions. I’ve provided books that show you’re wrong.
Feudal relations allowed direct producers to control their own production, set their own prices, keep their earnings. They had to tithe a percentage to their overlords, but, unlike the (unprecedented) legal structure of capitalism (which followed feudalism), their production was not owned by others. For the first time, with the advent of capitalism, a producer’s work was owned from the getgo by a new kind of overlord, the capitalist boss. A true revolution would have done away with any kind — feudal lord or capitalist.
Small farmers were driven off their lands to set the stage for capitalist ascendancy. Google “enclosures,” which got their start in Britain, as did capitalism. The British state also help capitalism work its way toward dominance by doing away with centuries of traditional holidays for “peasants,” block them from hunting and fishing rights, and then allow mass production to crush the life out of the rest of home industries and self-provisioning.
Prior to capitalism, a family could make it on their own, decide how much time to spend on work and play. With capitalism, they were forced to give up their relative independence, and work far more hours, without those Feudal holidays.
Not saying Feudalism was good, by any means. It was terrible for many. But in many ways, average Joes and Janes had it better than they did with the rise of capitalism. And capitalism itself was “tamed” somewhat due to massive anticapitalist agitation, strikes, protests and the like, wherein average Joes and Janes were beaten or killed by capitalists and “the state.” They died so we could have tolerable working conditions, which capitalists never would have provided if they hadn’t been forced to.
You need to read — at least — The Invention of Capitalism and The Origin of Capitalism, as already listed. I have yet to see you post any references at all.
I see a pattern post feudalism in which common people were paid wages for their hard work and enterprise and some were able to achieve greater wealth than the nobility. The rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them. It is called capitalism. At present no other system is poised to replace it.
They had to sell their labor power in the first place because the rise of capitalism destroyed their way of life, forced them off their small farms, crushed their ability to self-provide through their own home industries, their own artisanship or craftswork. They had no choice but to go into the factories where they made a fraction of what they used to make on their own, and had to work many, many more hours to get even that.
And I just gave you stats to disprove your theory that “the rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them.” No. They were far worse off than they were prior to the rise of capitalism, and in bad times, in much more dangerous straits. Now, they no longer can fall back on their own farms and small crafts. That’s almost all been destroyed by factory farms and mass production.
Did you know that more than 3 billion humans live on less than $2.00 a day around the world? Many tens of millions go to bed each night hungry, and several million die of starvation. Just 60 humans, worldwide, now hold as much wealth as the bottom 3.6 billion.
Seriously, how on earth can you continue to cheerlead for a system that produces such massive inequality, hunger, starvation, pollution and waste?
IMO, even those liberals who talked about the poor and wanted to do something about poverty (RFK), or did do something (LBJ), attacked it from the wrong angle. From “liberal” to “Social Democrat,” a bit to their left, the idea of the social safety net just adds another dimension of dependence. Not in the sense that conservatives say this, as a form of rebuke or a way to shame the poor. But as an indictment on the economic system itself which requires additional supplements.
I think it’s time to start looking directly at capitalism as a failed system, an epic failure, if for no other reason than the fact that it has never, ever sufficiently allocated resources broadly enough to avoid massive poverty. That, to me, is damning. It proves it doesn’t work. No economic system can be said to “work” if it leaves so many people behind in dire poverty, and the vast majority living week to week.
Public sector supplements aren’t the answer to this, and they just keep capitalism going long past its expired date. No social safety net, really, should be needed — except for the disabled and those who simply can’t work. A truly effective economic system, however, would be one wherein anyone who ever wanted to work could, and that no one who works can possibly be “poor,” or have to even struggle to get by. The proper functioning of an effective economy would mean that all workers make a wage that guarantees at least “comfortable,” and that means the ratio of top to bottom shouldn’t (or can’t) be more than 4 to 1, give or take.
In short, the key is income and compensation up front. We shouldn’t need to help out citizens on the back end. The economy should do the vast majority of the work all by itself — again, up front. That’s actually the least it should do.
Also:
Capitalism is the system in which anyone can achieve wealth.
This, of course, tells us absolutely nothing about capitalism. It’s just someone’s fantasy brochure headline for the system, as if they were trying to sell it to easily led lemmings. No intelligent adult is going to be fooled by this.
And the data tells us even as a fantasy brochure, it’s nonsense. The median income in America for individuals is roughly 30K. The richest 1% hold as much wealth as the bottom 99% of the nation combined. The richest 0.1% as much as the bottom 90% combined. Just 20 Americans now hold as much as the bottom half of the country (roughly 158 million). Just the Walton family heirs alone hold as much as the bottom 40% of the nation combined — or roughly 130 million.
Noticing a pattern? Rather than “anyone” having the chance to be wealthy under capitalism, very few ever do gain wealth. The vast majority of Americans live day to day, week to week, and don’t even surpass a five-figure salary. Roughly 95% of individual Americans make five-figures or less. As in, only 5% make 100K or more.
Think about it. If the capitalist system is supposedly this amazingly bountiful opportunity for everyone, why do so few ever become wealthy?
The answer is pretty simple: In order for one person to be rich, others have to be poor or middling. There is no other way for the math to work.
bnw,
Of course endowments are private donations. Donations derived via CAPITALISM. 13.2% interest earned via CAPITALISM.
Indeed change is inevitable. Human nature is not. Capitalism has lasted as long and permeated the world because of it.
How long do you think capitalism has been around? Please be specific. And please describe what you think it actually is. Because in America, it wasn’t dominant until after the Civil War. More than 80% of American workers were self-employed, and not capitalists up until the late 1870s. We had thriving universities, with endowments, and “private donations” before it took control. Capitalism has never, ever been required for people to make those donations. People gave to the arts, to universities, to medical research, etc. etc. centuries upon centuries before its advent.
It is also the case that even under the capitalist system, the public sector has been responsible for the vast majority of all innovations we use on a day to day basis. Not capitalism. The Internet, touch screen technology, satellite tech, GPS, the computer — to name a few — all came from public sector research and development. The vast majority of new medical breakthroughs also come from the public sector, primarily NIH. We could easily do without the private sector and still fund all of our universities, research triangles and so on. The public sector could do everything done currently by the private sector, and better, and for far less costs to citizens. The private sector also routinely impedes progress, chiefly because it won’t move on innovations if they don’t produce immediate profits — and most great innovations don’t.
Read David Graeber’s excellent Of Flying cars and the declining rate of profit for a good break down of the above.
WV,
Again, good thoughts on your part. You’re still damn humble about this stuff, and I think that’s a help when it comes to communication with people in general, and the poor especially. One of the things they hate the most about “liberals,” for instance, is the sense they get from them that they’re all too dumb to “get it,” and the sense that they’ve been written off, especially if they’re poor and white. And, basically, they have been by the everyone from the right to the center-left. The Dems turned their backs on the poor after the 1960s, and the Republicans stopped caring after Lincoln.
That “dependence on capitalists” is a biggie for me. It’s one of the main reasons I despise capitalism so much, because it does create ginormous dependencies, and it came into existence, originally, by crushing small, independent farmers, artisans, craftpersons, etc. etc. A lot of people assume, for instance, that waves of immigrants left Europe and other countries to find a better life in America, because of something we were supposedly doing so much better than anyone else. That we were this amazingly free beacon of hope for all. In reality, we were forcing capitalism on the world, along with Britain, especially, to such a earth-shattering degree, those old world artisans, farmers, craftspersons and the like HAD to leave their homes. Capitalism had destroyed their way of life, which was, relatively speaking, “independent” of the competitive laws of motion foisted on the world with the rise of capitalism. They were forced to leave for the New World largely due to what the New World had done to them — again, with Britain once being the main pimp for capitalism before us.
In short, we need an economic system that has social justice and democracy baked in, and no longer forces dependencies on everyone. One that makes people independent to the degree possible. Ironically, if it’s a cooperative, instead of a competitive economic system, individuals are a thousand times more likely to forge that independence.
Waterfield,
Nader didn’t cost Gore the election. That would have been mathematically, physically and, due to the way we structure elections, impossible from an electoral point of view. Presidents win via a cumulative count in the Electoral college. No one state can possibly be “decisive” because of this. You need a lot of states to get to 270. Gore won 20. Bush won 30 and received 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. Take any of those 30 states for Gore, leave Florida in Bush’s column, and Gore wins.
It’s akin to saying that a missed field goal, in the last second of the last game of the season, cost some NFL team a chance to get to the playoffs. Wrong. If they had won another game prior to that last one, it wouldn’t have mattered, and if they had scored more points prior to that last-second field-goal attempt, it wouldn’t have mattered, etc. etc.
It’s become an article of faith among too many Democrats, but it’s really nothing more than a copout and a refusal to take responsibility for Gore’s terrible campaign, the lack of turnout among Dems, and the fact that more than 300,000 Democrats in Florida voted for Bush. Nader cost Gore roughly 27,000 likely votes there. If just 564 Democrats had stayed with their own candidate, instead of voting for Bush, Gore wins. And if the ballots hadn’t been so confusing to people in Palm Beach — even Buchanan said he believed at least 95% of his votes should have gone to Gore — Gore wins. And if Gore takes his own state of Tennessee, he wins, etc. etc.
If, if, if. Too many Democrats want to cherry pick just one possible counterfactual among a sea of them, while ignoring 99% of the rest. They need to do some real soul searching, or just let all of that go.
Nader had nothing to do with Bush’s victory. He couldn’t possibly.
