Fair Work cut penalty rates on Sundays

[Mugwump]

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^
1. Socialists always seem to find spending other people's money "small increments", (unless they have had to actually meet a payroll), while seemingly regarding any change in their working conditions or government funding as a very large decrement.

2. You seem confused between pretty standard first-year economic theory, on one hand, and "absolutism" on the other.

3, Nowhere did I argue for "low wages to build businesses". Being paid time and a half (and being sceptical that these could be raised to double time without causing unintended consequences) is not advocating "low wages".

4. I was indeed having a lend with Venezuela, but jokes like that only work if they have a germ of relevance and truth in them. The Goldman Sachs jibe lacked coherence and was a swing at fresh air.

[Culprit]

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/government-mps-could-lose-seats-unless-pm-intervenes-on-penalty-rates-new-polls-20170302-guovn0.html

Socialists? Like please, this sounds like the way they argue in the USA. What next? Reds under the bed? We are talking people on low incomes earning less. Put as much spin as you like on it and make it look so wonderful we should all ask for a pay cut. Maybe you should run to your employer and ask for a pay cut as you feel it's in the National interest.

[Mugwump]

[Culprit]

Apologies, I just think that term is way outdated these days.

Economic reality is we have sold the farm (along with everything else) and now we are heading down the track to being a service economy relying on tourism, coffee and Gym memberships.

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[Mugwump]

^ Socialist ? The cap fits. The "label" is a dictionary word for your general viewpoint, as far as I can see. but if you prefer "Leftist" that's fine by me. Neither are obfuscatory in the slightest. When you dislike an argument you declare it "simplistic" or "obfuscating". It would be better, albeit more difficult, perhaps, to explain how and why it is not true or apt.

Governments do indeed always use other peoples' money (OPM). Some governments, however, use more OPM than others. Those that use a lot of OPM start to see it as the state's (and politicians') money and so run out of OPM, in the end. That was Maggie's point, and there is a lot of evidence, in history and in human nature, to support it.

So do banks, by the way. Government and banks have a lot of the same problems - the capacity to create money and more-or-less extract it from their subject populations by force. Both are necessary institutions, but both tend to have little discipline and very poor management as a result of the magic money tree effect, and both should be kept on a very tight leash by a wise people.

Finally, "economic theory in a vacuum" ? If by "in a vacuum" you mean in general terms, how else would you use theory ? Theory tells you the general principles of something's operation without reference to specific cases. Your argument that higher wages "create demand" is also a general theoretical point - it's just one that doesn't make analytical sense.

Anyway, I'm done. You apply Sunday's double time rates to Saturday as you wish, and bring on the worker's utopia, comrade. We've seen the story before and we know how it ends (especially for the most vulnerable).

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[Mugwump]

^ sounds like more Humpty Dumpty definition to me, but one factual point should not go unrefuted. The exemption of the Soviet Union from the catalogue of Marxist states is quite silly. I know it's often used by those who want to keep the old tinpot Marxist religion going, but it's a classic religious evasion. It did not perfectly meet the template of Marx's predictions in that it did not come after advanced capitalism, but it called itself Communist/Socialist, it nationalized everything, its leaders styled themselves Marxist-Leninist, it professed dialectical materialism, abolished capitalist accumulation ....and it was one of the greatest economic and social failures ever to disgrace the planet. Denying that the Soviet Union was Marxist has about the same credibility as arguing that Hitler was not a true Fascist, so fascism could be ok, really, just strength through joy.

When the Soviet bus turned out to be a long journey through murder and immiseration, your mate Langer got onto the Mao bus. After a long ride of mass murder, that seems to have proven that .Marxism works in the wrong order - i.e. That Communism evolves naturally into ultra-capitalism and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Left needs a new hero, because its last one has been soiled as a device for Oppression and inhumanity. And all of the religious evasions in the world will not exonerate it.

[stui magpie]

Has there ever in modern history been a socialist/communist state by whatever name that produced a better standard of living for the average person than modern western 'capitalist' democracies?

[think positive]

Is anyone working tomorrow???!

[David]

[Mugwump]

Marxism was a speculative, predictive philosophy of history authored by an interesting and serious, if ultimately wrong-headed, German intellectual of the 19th Century. When that philosophy was enacted in practical politics, it was called (by Marx himself) "Communism". So Marxism is the philosophical and historical basis for Communism and the two are almost identical when one is discussing Communist states. Communism is the economic system, Marxism the ideology.

Communism and Marxism, in practice, have been grotesque failures resulting in dictatorship, oppression, impoverishment and collapse, usually in alliance with mass murder, famine and torture. If Adam Smith's philosophy had resulted in the same, it would have been laughed off the stage of history by now. Yet people inexplicably keep arguing that those who profess and enact it are not "real" Marxists, so Marxism is actually a benevolent force. That was the particular canard the WPT seemed to be indulging.

"Socialism" is the philosophy expressly espoused by the Labour Parties of Australia and the Uk for most of the 20th century. It's pretty much at home with the mixed economy, and when it was any good, it was rooted in the union movement and the fight of ordinary workers for a share of the returns to capital which were excessive at the start of the 20th Century but not very dramatic by the end of the 20th C.

I agree that some socialism is a good thing in an economy, and I think we all realise that the mixed economy is desirable. Our arguments are usually about which bits of economic life should be left to the market and which managed by government. However, modern socialism, which is pretty much built on taxing the populace to feed the ever-enlarging state (or promising people things from the government that others will mysteriously pay for), is a pretty poor thing when compared with the powerful historic mission of the union movement in the 1900-1960 period.

If you had to live in a pure capitalist or pure socialist state, neither would be comfortable. But history bears out the fact that in capitalist state, at least, you'd be allowed to organise to improve yourself. In a socialist state they'd lock you up because no system that demands monopoly ownership can tolerate a pluralism of power. That's why I think that the onus should always be on the state to prove market failure before it intervenes.

In any event, "socialist" is not a swear word at all, in my eyes - many of my best friends are avowed socialists. Communists are dangerous to liberty and happiness, and Marxism is an interesting philosophical relic if it is not put into use ; but a particularly ugly and putrid form of oppression when it is.