Socialism: What Has Gone Wrong?

[bobevenson]

Fair enough, Bob. You win. If a CEO can get 800 times the pay of their average worker without calling the police in to extort it out of the hands of investors who sign his pay check, then everything must be perfectly fine. No such thing as democracy in the work place either I suppose.

Gary, you seem to think CEOs really don't do anything at all except sit around and collect fat paychecks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I assume they work like everyone else does.

And one must further assume they are worth what they earn.

[Gary Childress]

Gary, you seem to think CEOs really don't do anything at all except sit around and collect fat paychecks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I assume they work like everyone else does.

And one must further assume they are worth what they earn.

Why "must" we assume that?

[Gary Childress]

A grim fact of the recession is that it pays to lay people off.


The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.


CEOs of the 50 U.S. firms that slashed the most jobs between November 2008 and April 2010 took in 42 percent more than the average CEO at an S&P 500 firm, according to the 17th annual Executive Excess study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington think tank.


The study (PDF) also found that 36 of the 50 layoff leaders “announced their mass layoffs at a time of positive earnings reports,” suggesting a trend of “squeezing workers to boost profits and maintain high CEO pay.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/0 ... 01908.html

[bobevenson]

And one must further assume they are worth what they earn.

Why "must" we assume that?

Because they aren't putting a gun to anybody's head.

[bobevenson]

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.

What are you suggesting, Gary, that the objective of companies should be to provide jobs instead of make profits?

[Gary Childress]

And one must further assume they are worth what they earn.

Why "must" we assume that?

Because they aren't putting a gun to anybody's head.

Do you currently pay your taxes? When was the last time anyone put a gun to your head and told you to pay taxes? If no one put a gun to your head to pay those taxes and you paid them, then those taxes must be justified. So don't complain anymore about taxes.

[Gary Childress]

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.

What are you suggesting, Gary, that the objective of companies should be to provide jobs instead of make profits?

Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't provide income for the many but rather simply create profit for the few?

[bobevenson]

Do you currently pay your taxes? When was the last time anyone put a gun to your head and told you to pay taxes? If no one put a gun to your head to pay those taxes and you paid them, then those taxes must be justified. So don't complain anymore about taxes.

Gary, please be serious. If you refuse to pay your taxes or evade them, the government won't put a gun to your head, but they'll certainly put you behind bars.

[Gary Childress]

Do you currently pay your taxes? When was the last time anyone put a gun to your head and told you to pay taxes? If no one put a gun to your head to pay those taxes and you paid them, then those taxes must be justified. So don't complain anymore about taxes.

Gary, please be serious. If you refuse to pay your taxes or evade them, the government won't put a gun to your head, but they'll certainly put you behind bars.

Suppose a CEO laid off 100 workers and they refused to leave their jobs, what do you think would happen to those workers?

[henry quirk]

"I've been addressing your issues."

I'm sure you think so. For me, the repetition of 'lil guys are safe, only the big ones are the target' is less than satisfying.

#

"This response above seems like an evasion to me."

I disagree. I was pretty clear, I'm not a fan of the current mish mash of economic systems. Again, this thread, your thread, supposedly is about what went wrong with socialism. I was tackling 'that'.

[bobevenson]

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.

What are you suggesting, Gary, that the objective of companies should be to provide jobs instead of make profits?

Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't provide income for the many but rather simply create profit for the few?

Gary, the function of a company is to maximize profits for its owners. A company is not some kind of soup kitchen or charity. Can't you understand that?

[bobevenson]

Do you currently pay your taxes? When was the last time anyone put a gun to your head and told you to pay taxes? If no one put a gun to your head to pay those taxes and you paid them, then those taxes must be justified. So don't complain anymore about taxes.

Gary, please be serious. If you refuse to pay your taxes or evade them, the government won't put a gun to your head, but they'll certainly put you behind bars.

Suppose a CEO laid off 100 workers and they refused to leave their jobs, what do you think would happen to those workers?

Gary, if the workers didn't receive a paycheck, I doubt they would refuse to leave their jobs.

[Gary Childress]

What are you suggesting, Gary, that the objective of companies should be to provide jobs instead of make profits?

Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't provide income for the many but rather simply create profit for the few?

Gary, the function of a company is to maximize profits for its owners. A company is not some kind of soup kitchen or charity. Can't you understand that?

Bob, the purpose of taxes are to fund government programs. Don't you understand that?

[Gary Childress]

Gary, please be serious. If you refuse to pay your taxes or evade them, the government won't put a gun to your head, but they'll certainly put you behind bars.

Suppose a CEO laid off 100 workers and they refused to leave their jobs, what do you think would happen to those workers?

Gary, if the workers didn't receive a paycheck, I doubt they would refuse to leave their jobs.

Have you ever heard of a "sit down" strike?

A sit-down strike is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or, in some cases, moving production to other locations.

Workers have used this technique since the beginning of the 20th century in countries such as United States, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, and France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitdown_strike

[henry quirk]

"Why would socialists want to take money out of my wallet (or yours for that matter) and give it to someone else(?)"

Let's widen the question a bit...

'Why would communitarians (among which you include the republicans) want to take money out of my wallet (or yours for that matter) and give it to someone else(?)'

For some, 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' is 'fair'. Such folks have eaten up and digested the idea of the powerless or impotent individual who only has direction when operating under the umbrella of democracy (mob rule). 'Adam has more...that's unfair...doesn't matter how he got more...the disparity is unacceptable...take his shit'.

For some, 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' is just a formula for acquiring power and keeping it. Such folks recognize the essential venality of the citizenry and they cater to it. 'My electorate, when fat and sedated, let's me do just about anything I like, so, of course, I'm gonna keep on (symbolically) jabbing away at BIG MONEY cuz it keeps me in-office, in power, in control'.

So: why?

Idealism and opportunism, mixed together, in a tasty gumbo.