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I also like the response “mfw I’m in a capitalist society and have to choose between shelter and food” when I hear that socialism joke.
The problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money
see: Nvidia-Oracle-OpenAI bubble
What we don’t seem to ever run out of is bullshit.
Giving away 40% of your salary to the state for healthcare and welfare -> Crazy crime incredible inhumane and brutal theft
Giving away 75% of your salary to private companies who do the same things but worse and that don’t even ensure you full coverage -> Amazing business Enterprise of freedom choice of Democratic democracy 💀
“If you’re unhappy, just work for a different company!!”
This needs that Drake meme.
The real problem with socialism is that it offends the CIA, and bad things happen to people who offend the CIA.
“Ask people what they hate about socialism/communism and they’ll describe capitalism.”
For anyone interested, here’ a short excerpt on this point from a socialism crash course:
Unlike workers, Capitalists make their living, not by clocking in and being paid a certain fixed wage per hour, but through absentee ownership. Their wealth is earned while sleeping, playing golf, or visiting the mailbox to collect pieces of this wage theft, often in the form of stock dividends. A worker’s wealth is dependent on the number of hours they can work; a Capitalist’s wealth is based on how much absentee property they can accumulate, and as such can multiply infinitely. Some Capitalists earn an average worker’s yearly salary in a single night’s sleep.
For example, a Copper mine owner neither physically mines the copper, and (living thousands of miles away) likely delegates day-to-day operations to a hired manager. Yet, because they have a piece of paper that says they own it, they get a large cut of everything that was mined: the ultimate free lunch.
A 1983 report by England national income and expenditures found that on average, 26 minutes of every hour worked (or 43% of labor value added) by English workers across a wide range of industries went to various exploiting or unproductive groups, with workers receiving only 57% of their pre-tax productive output as wages<sup>1</sup>. In other words, at least 40% of the work you do every day is stolen by Capitalists.
Funnily enough the problem with capitalism is actually that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Tap for spoiler
Capitalism inherently serves to concentrate wealth since the ones with the money make the rules. As wealth disparity increases and people get poorer they can’t buy as much stuff and growth dries up. Then the only way for the rich to keep getting richer is to degrade labour conditions, but that’s unpopular so you need to blame a scapegoat and enact a repressive regime to enforce it. That’s quite a problem, and it’s one which might feel familiar to the astute reader.
Hey I recognize this happening.
😱
Then the only way for the rich to keep getting richer is to degrade labour conditions, but that’s unpopular so you need to blame a scapegoat and enact a repressive regime to enforce it.
I didn’t get this part. Please explain?
The money they collect is the money we pay them minus the money they pay us. If we can’t pay them more the only way to get more is for them to pay us less. Gross simplification obviously. Then the typical strategy is to blame immigrants or Jews or whatever for the decrease in living standards, and crack down on anyone who tries to improve things.
Edit: this is sort of a meme-ified version of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall which is the real theory of how economic crises in capitalism come about and not really the same as what I’m describing here, but along some similar lines. It’s worth reading about from actual scholars in detail if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Honestly? Their real plan is to get us to kill each other, and the ones who remain will be kept as slaves (for… multiple purposes). That is why the cost of living keeps increasing; we are becoming more and more violent, and after a lot of deaths, they will “control” the “chaos”.
Imagine that the entire world is a 100 people neighbourhood and you start selling peanuts, at first you start growing by acquiring more clients but what happens when everyone is already your client? How do you grow at that point?
Man I hate it when socialism capitalisms.
Norway is classic example of how country should function. The pathetic excuse by most AmeriKans, the USA is too large. F-off, you have the money, but spend it on stupid policies and shit.
Lawmakers in the US had the option to spend $97B on something meaningful like addressing homelessness. That amount of money would cover housing and wrap around services for a significant portion of those affected for at least 5 years. Instead they chose to fund ICE to terrorize the US’s own communities, immigrants and citizens alike.
Norway relies on imperialism to subsidize its safety nets.
❤️ so concise and to the point
♥️
Ask Rosa Luxembourg about Social Democrats
I wish the watermark said “made with beer” at the bottom left.
itt people who don’t know who Margret Thatcher was enough to have seen this misattributed/misquoted from her before.
Well yes, the rich are running out of their worker’s money after a while and that totally is an issue for them. Isn’t that exactly what they say all the time? I don’t get it.
I get that it’s a meme but 85% is delusional. If you think under socialism we could work 15% as much as we do now and maintain the same standard of living then lol, lmao, etc.
*online leftists coping and seething after food and housing don’t just magically spring forth from the earth when you abolish rent-seeking
If you have a Real Job where you interact with the material world it is impossible to believe that 85% of the things you physically make or do are consumed by capitalists.
If you have a Real Job where you interact with the material world it is impossible to believe that 85% of the things you physically make or do are consumed by capitalists.
See, once I started working a “Real Job” I saw just how much surplus value was stolen, and turned to Marxist theory to make cohesive sense of it. 85% isn’t an over-estimation, especially if we factor in imperialism. Workers in the imperial core are paid more and exploited less than workers in the periphery.
If you think under socialism we could work 15% as much as we do now and maintain the same standard of living then lol, lmao, etc.
We will probably all work 30-40 hours a week for the next great length of time even in socialism, but with far greater societal guarantees and a less predatory system of distribution.
85% is a bit of an overestimate, but not by all that much. For the United States, total wages paid by companies to employees are about 11 trillion, out of a GDP of 29 trillion (stats from a year or two ago). This doesn’t count sole proprietorships and partnerships, but the high-end estimate is 62%.
@draco_aeneus@mander.xyz’s implication that wealth follows linearly from income isn’t super rigorous, but it does match up closely enough in this case.
If you have a Materially Productive Job and you have the ability + information required to calculate how much revenue a worker contributes to the company, you’ll know that this checks out. I wouldn’t expect everyone to be adequately positioned and also care enough in order to have that insight though.
Nitpicking whether the executive and shareholders appropriate 85% or 50% of value is pointless. It’s a huge amount, it’s far more than income taxes, and it is the most important dynamic of the capitalist economy. And it is further corroborated with reports (from mainstream/orthodox sources) over the past year of how the majority of consumer spending is done by the rich.
85% vs 50% is a massive difference. It would be the difference between a 20 hour work week and a 6 hour work week.
Both those possibilities (20h work week and 6h work week) sound great. The prospect is either working less, or working the same amount and keeping the monetary value of your labor, as opposed to working full-time just to pay 3/4 of your income just sustaining your existence, which goes straight to landlords or bigger companies.
And if you can arrange a living that avoids the most common money traps, you can easily get by with 20 hours of work per week or less. I’ve certainly done enough juggling of part-time jobs to know this.
The top 10% of households hold 67% of all wealth. If we assume that every worker produces roughly the same value, that implies ⅔ of value produced by the average worker is being taken.
Of course, 33% is not 15%, but I’d say it’s roughly in the ballpark. And in certain cases, there are definitely workers who are exploited to that level.
Wealth is not income. You can’t derive the rate of exploitation from wealth inequality.
If we assume that every worker produces roughly the same value
I mean lol again. Especially if you need to stretch as far as the top 10%. Doctors, surgeons, electricians, linemen, plumbers, veterinarians, dentists, engineers, etc are all going to be producing more than double the value of your average retail worker.
The only way to create wealth is via work, e.g., income. It’s not a perfect measure, I concede, since wealth is static and can accumulate over time. However, I think we can still use it as a rough estimation of stolen income over time.
However, this source claims there is a 70% gap between wages and produced value. That roughly matches the number I gave.
That is not what that data is or says.
158 is not 30% of 285 for starters.
Total wages paid are a bit over half of gdp. 55% is notably quite a bit more than 15%.Think I had gdp from a different year than wages, still closer to accurate than 85%*the fact that somebody completely misreading a graph and claiming it as a source is getting upvoted is about to turn me into a liberal out of embarrassment. Like damn, I guess there was negative exploitation in 1970. Neoliberals might be evil but at least they usually appreciate nuance and factuality more than ideological improv. The online left can never settle for reality, everything has to be embellished. Every injustice has to be 'yes, and’ed until society would actually fluorish under a new golden age where we all work 10 seconds per week if you just got rid of landlords.
literally feelings over facts.
Let me guess OP, you got a C- in Economics?
What makes you say that?
Because OP knows big words but doesn’t understand economics.
Can you explain?
On the hopes that you’re not just being sarcastic,
Socialism fundamentally works by creating a system that taxes those who have more than others and goes to those who have less than others. Theoretically this can work forever because the tax revenue is being spent on the betterment of the society and as long as the majority of people are giving more than they receive. The problems arise when people start to take more than they give. This can happen from a number of factors like someone who pays $15,000/year into the system but then takes $1,000,000 for cancer treatment or someone who can contribute chooses not to and still receives the benefits.
In relation to the last panel, they are saying that they are giving 85% of their labor value to their boss who doesn’t work. There’s multiple problems with this way of thinking. The first and most obvious one is the 85%, which is just an arbitrarily large number to make it feel scary. Second is the claim that the boss (and one can assume owner) doesn’t do any work. That’s obviously not true because 99.99% (I’m being dramatic) of owners work an equal or greater number of hours per week than the rest of the employees. And there’s also the fact that while needing to know how every aspect of the company operates the owner is the one who takes the biggest risks and has the most at stake so it makes sense that they make more than the new hire who has no work experience. Yes, you’ll have owners who take more than they “need” but you also have to remember that technically all costs of the company can and are taken out of the owners paycheck because the lower profit the company makes the lower the owners paycheck can be.
Hope this helps.
Cancer treatments wouldn’t cost 1 million a year under a better system
The problems arise when people start to take more than they give. (…) or someone who can contribute chooses not to and still receives the benefits.
Not a problem exclusive to socialism. Capitalism has plenty of very obvious such examples. Amazon is clearly taking in a lot more money than it is giving its workers or the govt. Bezos and others of his ilk can contribute more to taxes, but don’t, they evade them all thanks to legal loopholes and still receive govt benefits.
That’s obviously not true because 99.99% (I’m being dramatic) of owners work an equal or greater number of hours per week than the rest of the employees.
Maybe true for smaller companies. I doubt Musk, Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Zuckerberg or similars even work 40h a week. MAYBE they did, many years ago. Nowadays? Doubtful.
And there’s also the fact that while needing to know how every aspect of the company operates the owner is the one who takes the biggest risks and has the most at stake so it makes sense that they make more than the new hire who has no work experience.
Do you really think that a single person’s work can be worth more than 1000x the work of someone else? To put some perspective: someone who earns 20 million a year is the equivalent of having a hourly salary of ~10,500. What kind of miraculous, one-of-a-kind work is worth that? Bezos doesn’t know how “every aspect of the company operates”, nor do any CEO of any megacorp. Or, to give a better example, no general or field marshal knows “every aspect” of the platoons and soldiers under his command, they rely almost entirely on his subordinates’ reports, which may embellish or hide details.
technically all costs of the company can and are taken out of the owners paycheck because the lower profit the company makes the lower the owners paycheck can be
Except when it’s taken out of the workers’ paycheck who get fired to ensure those above don’t lose their bonuses
They arent really loopholes though are they, Musk for instance is taking a risk to avoid taxes, and someone else with a low time preference is benefiting by accruing interest by lending him money.
They still pay taxes in the end, and it will be far higher than it would be if we plucked the fruit of their labor now. Except the IRA thing but that cant be terribly common, and again Thiel took a massive risk by not diversifying. But sure go ahead and write a law to take a chunk of that unicorn whenever it is he decided to realize it, it will fund a few hours of government spending.
Not sarcastic, just a communist.
Socialism fundamentally works by creating a system that taxes those who have more than others and goes to those who have less than others.
No, it doesn’t. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution based on public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes in control of the state. The rest of this paragraph isn’t worth responding to, because it’s based on a false premise.
In relation to the last panel, they are saying that they are giving 85% of their labor value to their boss who doesn’t work. There’s multiple problems with this way of thinking. The first and most obvious one is the 85%, which is just an arbitrarily large number to make it feel scary.
Capitalists fundamentally make profits by paying workers for less than the value their labor-power creates.
Second is the claim that the boss (and one can assume owner) doesn’t do any work. That’s obviously not true because 99.99% (I’m being dramatic) of owners work an equal or greater number of hours per week than the rest of the employees.
Nobody is saying owners do literally no labor, just that their obscene wealth comes from stealing from workers, not from their own labor. Otherwise their wages would be about the same as any other worker at that company.
And there’s also the fact that while needing to know how every aspect of the company operates the owner is the one who takes the biggest risks and has the most at stake so it makes sense that they make more than the new hire who has no work experience.
The biggest risk a capitalist takes is in becoming a worker. Workers risk their livelihood.
Yes, you’ll have owners who take more than they “need” but you also have to remember that technically all costs of the company can and are taken out of the owners paycheck because the lower profit the company makes the lower the owners paycheck can be.
Sure, but their paycheck is made up of stolen surplus value to begin with.
Hope this helps!
Nobody is saying owners do literally no labor
The OP literally says “doesn’t work”. Is “doesn’t work” not equivalent to “no labor”?
Owners do not work for a living, their incomes are not wages but a huge share of profit that comes from surplus value extraction. Doing some work here or there does not explain why their incomes are hundreds to thousands and even more times higher than workers, whose wages do vary but within a much more narrow band.
Removed by mod
I do, actually! Did fairly well in my economics classes, though bourgeois economics is bullshit. I have read the first 2 volumes of Capital, so I’m still no expert but certainly not a beginner.
Lol, this just gets better and better. The person you’re responding to and accusing of not understanding economics is someone who literally hosts the reading groups for books on economics, arguably the most definitive books on economics ever written, as well as scientific socialism and socioeconomic theory, who has read Kapital
multiple times, maintains the active reading list for multiple lemmy communities, and has doubtless read more about economics this year than you have read on any topic (from See Spot Run to Harry Potter), in your entire life. But you’re telling him he doesn’t understand basic economics.
Seriously, if you actually have any interest in pulling your head out of your ignorant ass and maybe growing the fuck up a little bit, go look at his reading course suggestions on economics, it’s section 3, and get to reading. Twerp.
Wait, is this a bit and someone is actually playing the role of dipshit liberal know-it-all? This must be a bit and I fell for it.
Mate I don’t think you understand them. There’s a reason economist either end up being hyper capitalists or communists
A BigBrain with a 5th grader’s (at best) understanding of economics who has never even been exposed to the labor theory of value and who literally doesn’t even know what Socialism is (confusing it with some form of Social Democracy) bursts into a room full of people who have been studying economics for years and starts explaining to them his ever so smart 5th grader’s version of economics. It’s so on the nose it’s like a badly put together meme.Removed by mod
And now an “I know you are what am I!” comeback attempt?
Are you actually in grade school?Also I’m a She not a he, “buddy.”
Socialism fundamentally works by creating a system that taxes those who have more than others and goes to those who have less than others.
Prager-U level definition that has nothing to do with socialism.
Here’s a concise definition:
Socialism : A range of social and economic systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production. It can also mean the transitional stage between capitalism and communism, sometimes referred to as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
That’s what I said. LOL
That’s the problem with a C- in economics. If you sit behind that person and decide you’re going to just try to write the opposite of what they do you’re going to get an F
