I will never understand where you're coming from CWT and I have tried.

I think what he is saying ('scuse the paraphrasing CWT) is that if an operator is prepared to walk away from the American market rather than play by the rules then it's their loss not yours.

It's simple really: If you believe in a free market, then you believe that everyone must pay their taxes and everyone must pay a fair market wage. A company that wants to sell at first world prices but pay for labor at third world rates is cheating, just as a company that doesn't pay taxes is cheating. Cheaters should not be allowed to prosper, because they threaten any system, including the free market system.

I understand that. What I don't see is how a fair market wage is to be established and by whom. Labor is a market too; one in which you don't have to take a job whose salary or hourly rate you don't like.

I do understand that. What you don't understand is that cheating corporations are able to manipulate that market. That means that it is not a free market. While you don't technically "have to take job whose salary or hourly rate you don't like," for many (and a rapidly increasing number of) people the reality is that they do have to take one that they don't like. That's because the market is rigged in favor of these cheating corporations.

How is it rigged? A checkout clerk in a grocery chain isn't worth much to the store, so they pay minimum wage or close to it and have a waiting list of people wanting to do it. How did the store rig that given that MacDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot, Office Depot, Wendys, Target, etc. are paying the same wage for the same job. We both know that's not a living wage, but it's what that market will bear.

Didn't you answer your own question? If the only job you can get is checkout clerk and they're all paying the same wages what choice do you have?

First, you're looking at the wrong jobs. Look at what's happening to skilled labor rates. You know it's rigged for example, when a publisher is getting away with paying writers $7.50 for a thousand words, and no benefits.

Second, in a free market, no job would pay less than a living wage because that would destroy the market. You can't have a market without trade, and you can't have trade with a massive group that can't afford to trade! The fact that there are so many jobs that don't pay a living wage is in itself evidence that the market is not free.

You're forgetting that families do survive and trade by combining the wages from several workers; by living at home, perhaps; by rooming with others in their boat; etc. Even folks on welfare trade. I understand that the distribution of wealth is screwed up, so don't go there, but you make it sound like a conspiracy that so many are not paid much. The people we're talking about can't even make change without the cash register. Pay scales are based to a large extent on skills and education.

For much too long now we've been content to dumb down what a high school diploma means and have let kids matriculate who can't read, write, or do arithmetic -- can't hurt their little psyches after all. They don't know a damned thing and feel good about it, and what's worse, it's not their fault -- but it is still the case.

Ouch.

There is truth though in these (harsh) words. There is a pervasive PC culture that means a lot of these sort of realities are ignored or glossed over, and not just in education.

But there is the problem! And once again, I'm not talking about the uneducated masses. I made $35/hour programming while still in college, 20+ years ago. Show me a part time programming job for some one with no experience and no degree that pays even that much today, and even without adjusting the rate for inflation.

Meanwhile, we have bank CEOs still making fortunes after running their banks into the ground. How can there not be a conspiracy???

Not sure how a Ponzi scheme got into wages, but here we are.

A capitalistic system is all about competition. Businesses who can compete survive and thrive. Those which cannot compete fail. This is an efficient way to distribute resources to the most productive and efficient. And the same is true with labor.

Workers are not all equal. Like most things in this world, we find a distribution of talent from the extremely gifted to the marginally productive. Obviously, this system rewards the gifted and is most punitive to the those without the tools (whether born that way, failed to develop skills, or otherwise challenged) are punished.

The system is stacked against those who cannot compete. We do, to a degree, compensate for the fixed system by setting a minimum wage, providing food stamps and health care to the poor, and not requiring them to pay taxes. If the poor work, we even provide a negative income tax for them where they can get a refund much larger than what the paid in. Still, it is pretty much guaranteed poverty and a minimal existence. Often, the marginal workers place in life was dictated at birth.

It is not a conspiracy, unless you consider Capitalism a conspiracy.

Have you been sleeping for the past eight years? The system is stacked in favor of those who cannot compete! Unless you think Bank CEOs really compete, in which case this discussion is pointless.
:eek::eek:
Holy ______! Bank CEOs conspired with Congress to get themselves big fat paychecks despite doing terrible jobs. The fact that they did it openly does not make it less of a conspiracy.


Edit: It baffles me that you still have this idea that we live in a Capitalist system. Do you think for one example, that Five Brothers spaghetti sauce really competes with Ragu spaghetti sauce?

conspiracy |kənˈspirəsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful : a conspiracy to destroy the government.

It may have been evil, but it wasn't a conspiracy.

Yes, ceo's compete... you're using a couple bad (really, really bad) examples to paint the whole system. Overwhelming percentage of banks are solvent. Just a couple of really big ones went nuts.

Pfft. From OS X's dictionary:No need to be secret. That they managed to pull it off in front of everyone makes it somewhat impressive though.

I've given you two examples of conspiracies to manipulate the markets. One large: the Banks, and one small: spaghetti sauce. We could spend years going over the multitude of other examples.

Oh, and the number of solvent banks is irrelevant because most of the money is controlled by the large ones.

Even the poor have advocates who go to Congress and lobby for better/more assistance for the poor. That does not make a conspiracy as it is neither secret nor evil.

Not familiar with the spaghetti sauce issue, though obviously all businesses try to gain an advantage wherever they can. Again, this doesn't make a conspiracy and at some point the law will kick in to stop some unfair practices.

Being a crook doesn't necessarily mean there was a conspiracy... unless they all worked together to steal from the system. We don't know if that is the case. Same would apply to OPEC, right?

Both are owned by Unilever. By "at some point the law will kick in" you must mean anti trust laws. The same ones that have been ignored for nearly a decade.
Yes, the same would apply to OPEC, which also does not have to compete in the same sense that you use the word when applying it to labor.

I would claim that corporate crime always requires a conspiracy, because it cannot be accomplished by one person alone.

Sure they do, and when they use methods that have nothing to do with production/distribution or honest marketing, they are manipulating the market. When they are able to manipulate the market, there is no longer a free market. Capitalism is dead. It's being replaced by Feudalism marketing itself as Capitalism.

Oh, and here's your couple of big banks:
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost....47316859050979
More like 70.

Almost every human transaction involves some manipulation of the other by both parties. Everybody who sells something attempts to manipulate the market in their favor. It's human nature. Wikipedia gives as good a definition of Capitalism as any: Capitalism is an economic system in which land, capital goods, and other resources, are owned, operated and traded by private individuals or corporations for the purpose of profit.. How does manipulating a market (a universal practice) defeat Capitalism?

Manipulating a transaction is a far cry from manipulating the entire market by deception, for example. When you go to the store and see Five Brothers, Ragu, and several other sauces on the shelf, you only think that you have a choice. The fact is that several of them are made by Unilever, and several of the others are made by one or two other companies. There is very little competition, if any in the spaghetti sauce business. It's a charade perpetuated to defraud the customer. If you define fraud as being acceptable marketing in Capitalism, then I suppose we have Capitalism, or anything else you'd care to call it.