the i dont care about politics anymore thread

[Basanos]

Originally Posted by unsunghero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Paid enough to want to work it

Just because you don’t think $16/hour picking fruit or cleaning toilets is enough, some poor black American might

Don’t twist my words to say “enough to live on”, that shit is a cop out I will never say this because everyone has different standards of living and most people who complain about jobs not paying “enough to live on” have terrible fucking budgeting

We are talking enough to entice an American to take the job. But it will never get that high because they can hire Jose to clean the toilet for $3/hour ILLEGALLY, thus screwing the poor black American citizen out of a chance to earn some income that isn’t welfare

And that’s assuming Jose can even get the job for $3/hour. Maybe he doesn’t and then his life is sitting in a sleeping bag (hopefully not outside your neighborhood right? NOT IN MY BACKYARD) waiting for his free church meal at 6pm every day for the rest of his life. What a great American Dream life. And yes probably still better than the shithole he came from, not arguing that

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[unsunghero]

^
It’s not capitalism when it’s illegal

That’s like saying de-frauding your customers is “just capitalism”

It’s illegal to hire non-citizens for pennies/hour borderline slave labor. Obviously if it had nothing but benefits it wouldn’t be illegal

And finding one benefit as an excuse to justify it to me seems like a cop out. “I throw my trash out the window of my car because it provides jobs for highway cleanup crews, I’m benefitting the economy”

[Basanos]

Originally Posted by unsunghero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^
It’s not capitalism when it’s illegal

That’s like saying de-frauding your customers is “just capitalism”

It’s illegal to hire non-citizens for pennies/hour borderline slave labor. Obviously if it had nothing but benefits it wouldn’t be illegal

And finding one benefit as an excuse to justify it to me seems like a cop out. “I throw my trash out the window of my car because it provides jobs for highway cleanup crews, I’m benefitting the economy”

Human slavery was legal, is that also not capitalism?

Yes, yes, I realize slavery existed well before Adam Smith and shit I just think "crony capitalism" is just capitalism

[Reiwa]

Originally Posted by unsunghero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^
It’s not capitalism when it’s illegal

That’s like saying de-frauding your customers is “just capitalism”

It’s illegal to hire non-citizens for pennies/hour borderline slave labor. Obviously if it had nothing but benefits it wouldn’t be illegal

And finding one benefit as an excuse to justify it to me seems like a cop out. “I throw my trash out the window of my car because it provides jobs for highway cleanup crews, I’m benefitting the economy”

Okay, we decide to pay more for the same banana but also harvest more banana than we can eat, but our banana is then too expensive for the global market to bear and goes to rot, so we make up the loss by increasing the price of our banana.

Something like that.

For the record, I don't even dislike nationalists. I would prefer if they were right. But that simply isn't so.

[Basanos]

It is perfectly legal for a company to build a factory in Indonesia and pay workers pennies on the dollar compared to an American worker. In fact, this sort of thing is why most of us can afford stuff.

Is that also not capitalism?

[Lune]

Originally Posted by unsunghero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^
It’s not capitalism when it’s illegal

That’s like saying de-frauding your customers is “just capitalism”

It’s illegal to hire non-citizens for pennies/hour borderline slave labor. Obviously if it had nothing but benefits it wouldn’t be illegal

And finding one benefit as an excuse to justify it to me seems like a cop out. “I throw my trash out the window of my car because it provides jobs for highway cleanup crews, I’m benefitting the economy”

Illegal immigration is illegal like weed is illegal.

Republicans could fix it today in their states today by creating and enforcing RealID employment laws. If they can't work, they won't come. However, corporations won't let them because they dramatically bring down the cost of labor. (Remember, this is largely what led to Brexit. Brits got sick of their corporations importing millions of third world Muslims and Poles.)

It's not that "Some poor black might work for that $16", it's that if there wasn't an immigrant around to work for pennies, they'd have to pay more than pennies.

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by Basanos [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Human slavery was legal, is that also not capitalism?

Yes, yes, I realize slavery existed well before Adam Smith and shit I just think "crony capitalism" is just capitalism

Was illegal yes

I don’t think it’s right to blame capitalism, I think the blame should be put on liars and hypocrites

The party of the working class doesn’t care when something causes a net negative to the American working class. And the SECURE TEH BORDER conservatives don’t care when they hire illegals for their companies to save a few bucks. The same hypocrites that rage about illegals bringing drugs over that end up either buying those drugs themselves or else their kids they are neglecting eventually do. Supporting cartels with their wallets

[Basanos]

'Workers of the world, unite!' has the word "world" in it for this very reason

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Reiwa [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

We grow more food than our farming labor can harvest.

What the hell else should we do to bring it in?

Realistically? Beyond a correction in the wage rates for agricultural labor you'd see some shift in the relative proportions of crops being grown. Some require a lot more manhours than others. Most of the major staples go well with mechanization but I suspect it'd reduce the variety of cheaply-available foods back to norms more typical of the 1940's or 50's when labor costs were a much more limiting factor than they are today. Might also see the U.S. exporting less foodstuffs with associated destabilization in some other regions of the world. It rapidly turns into a messy proposition.

Without going to that extreme, I'd like to see migrant or immigrant workers at least extended good labor protections. They're too often treated deplorably.

Danth

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Basanos [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is perfectly legal for a company to build a factory in Indonesia and pay workers pennies on the dollar compared to an American worker. In fact, this sort of thing is why most of us can afford stuff.

Is that also not capitalism?

Don't you know? Republicans don't actually like the free market, it's just rhetoric that helps them reconcile why they shouldn't have to pay taxes.