My issue with capitalism

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Polak said:
A business shouldn’t get to pay tax or not based on whole many people it employs.
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I don’t know how it works in the UK, but in the US, businesses pay taxes on the amount of taxable income they generate. If they don’t generate taxable income, they don’t pay taxes.
Polak said:
Do they pay that fine though? As for abatements, what’s the point of having tax thresholds if big companies can ignore them every year and just pay a government negotiated lower fee based on ‘the benefits it brings to the community’ as you put it.
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Has Amazon done this? Is it not on government to administer and enforce its taxation policy?
 
Given how often the media reports how much tax big companies are avoiding paying in the UK, I’d they think they probably do avoid it or at least a lot of it.

There was a story a few months ago about how the UK government were going to press Google and a few other big American companies to pay up the tax they owe, because they needed more money during the Covid crisis, but decided against it because they thought it might affect a future trade deal the UK could strike with the US post Brexit. That shows you just how much government influence some of these big companies have in the US if the UK didn’t want to rattle the cage with them. Heck some people say it’s they who run things really, not the politicians.
 
Because the US government as one example loves bailing out our “too big to fail” companies.
 
Polak said:
I think it would be a better system than what we currently have.
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Assuming you’re a US citizen, our system is a mixed economy, i.e., regulated capitalism, limited socialism (government owned production facilities) wtih welfare transfers for those in need.
  1. Most doctors make more money than most models.
    Physicians and Surgeons : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Wages for physicians and surgeons are among the highest of all occupations, with a median wage equal to or greater than $208,000 per year.
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  1. In our economic system, entrepreneurs do not exploit either workers or customers. Business owners that make things nobody wants are quickly and efficiently are separated from their capital.
  2. Our system does not reward lazy people. Capital is just money. Money is generated by labor. If you own capital, it represents the past labor of you or yours.
If your argument is that our system is not utopia then no one can argue the opposite. If your argument is that there is a better dystopia than our then let’s hear it.
 
RhodesianSon said:
Because the US government as one example loves bailing out our “too big to fail” companies.
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Like banks for example. Why would the US Government want to “bail out” banks? What could create a situation where banks need bailouts?
 
Ask your congressman because he likely voted for the bail outs.
 
If it hadn’t passed the banks and the auto industry would have collapsed. Which would have been a good thing
 
Don’t get me started on banks @RhodesianSon. I’m sure @TULIPed thinks they’re wonderful.

What interest are they paying in most banks to be able to invest your money? 1%, if that.

How much interest do we have to pay if we want a loan? Oh, right, quite a bit more. Sounds fair.
 
I’m not saying we should be abolishing them, but I do think it’s a rigged game always in favour of them. What do we really get out of banks right now? We pretty much have to use them if we have a job and also with cash looking like it’s being phased out slowly. We don’t have a choice.
 
That’s why my savings are all in the stock market in a total market etf. I’ve averaged 14% returns over the last ten years with passive investing.
 
Polak said:
Before anyone tries to make the claim, no, I am not arguing for communism, nor do I think it would be a better system than what we currently have. I am aware of how much heartache communism has caused in the world and it still causing.

There are of course a lot of reasons communism is so despised by people, but one key reason in relations to earnings, is that people get paid the same, no matter how hard they work and how much work they do. It basically rewards lazy people by allowing them to make the same as those who work much harder than them. This isn’t a fair system obviously.

The trouble with capitalism is, it doesn’t straighten that out. Yes sure, in some cases if you work a lot harder in life (study and get a good job) or put more works in at work, you’ll get paid more. The problem is, the very notion of capitalism isn’t based on ‘work harder to have more’, it’s based on, try to be clever and think of some way you can capitalise on a situation and make a ton of money from that, even at the expense of others. Thanks to this, we have doctors who have gone through years of medical studies and now work long hours, which include nights and working during festive holidays, to actually help people and in many cases save lives, making less than a model, who just poses in front of cameras with very little on, to name one example.

In some ways, capitalism also seems to reward lazy people just like communism. It is also the case in capitalism that some people need to be exploited in order for others to make a lot of money, at their expense.
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I would argue that the issues you describe are not issues with Capitalism, itself. They are issues regarding an unevangelized & non-Catechised society, plus the Fall of Adam & Eve.

Sloth is one of the 7 deadly sins. And while we do, mostly focus on it being spiritual sloth, being lazy in general is not good.

Well evangelized and catechised believers know that we should put God before work, and that we should have a balanced work life. Also, an evangelized and catechised society is going to appreciate that people need time for God, family, etc.

Finally, regarding the doctor vs the model, we have to remember that the Church teaches that there is a dignity in work. A doctor in a state of grace, has a far more efficacious job, and (assuming that the doctor’s motivation is good) has a career that is pleasing to God.

The model, most likely, doesn’t have an efficacious job. The model might be someone living in a state of grace, however, after hearing Leah Darrow’s (former contestant on America’s Next Top Model) testimony about her re-version, I think we need to pray hard for models.

We need to pray for doctors too, but my point is that a good doctor is pleasing to God. A good model most likely isn’t winning any points in heaven for her career path.

I pray I’m making sense.
 
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How much risk have you taken being in the stock market vs. in a bank?
 
Quite a bit. But that’s not relevant to banks being bailed out when they make bad decisions. I wouldn’t get bailed out.
 
What do the people who don’t want to take as much risk as you - say older people who depend on the cash that they have in the bank - what do they do when the banks are insolvent?
 
I don’t have a problem with local banks. It’s the multinational/corporate banks that are the issue. They get to take huge risks and the government shields them from the consequences. That isn’t free markers. That’s state subsidy of an industry.
 
StudentMI said:
Which free markets were those?
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The entire western world? US, Europe, . . .

Look at Ford doubling the wage, in particular. And, no, it wasn’t largess, nor the urban legend about being so that its workers could afford to buy cars in order to increase the size of the market (the math doesn’t work on that any more than any other version of losing money on every transaction and making up in volume.). It was about employee turnover, and keeping the now trained employees.

The general wages in the US that reached the point that a high school graduate could afford to buy a house and support a wife and family.
 
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