RE: The New Panglossianism and Baby's bathwater

> Dear WSNers: Elson Boles wrote, in defense of Alan Spector, and apparently
> contrary to my post that:
> ...snip...
> On workers' wages approaching
> owners', I'm not sure
> I would regard that as a just outcome given that the owners must
> be compensated
> for the risks they take and for their initial and on-going
> investment. (I say
> this as a person who has been on strike within the last two
> years)Besides, who
> wants to go around and tell the local Coffee Shop owner he must pay his
> coffee-jocks roughly equal to what he or she makes?
...snip..
>Let's not throw out the baby [the market] with the bathwater [the
unfettered market?]
>
> Randy Groves

Capitalists and workers do not earn what they deserve and don't deserve what
they earn.   For instance, a Guatemalan coffee bean picker must work about 5
days and pick about 500 pounds of coffee to earn enough income to purchase
one pound of Starbucks coffee at US prices.   Of course, the worker's income
is spent in an region where prices are not as high on coffee, but it is
similar on the other goods that Guatemalans purchase, such as electronics,
autos, etc.  One could go on all day about these inequalities;  Bill Gates'
earns about as much as the lower 100 million people in the US earn COMBINED.
Meanwhile the number of children in the US living in poverty increased from
3.5 to 6.1 million between 1974 and 1996, and so on.

We don't need capitalists; we need to change the relations of the
political-economy.   Economic decision making should be democratic, such as
through cooperatives, not dictatorial.   And the wealth of factories, land,
etc. should not be held by a tiny minority of the population, but the entire
population, since after all, it is this population which did most of the
work in creating this wealth.  (The facts for the US are about the same for
the entire world-economy: 20% of the pop own 80% of wealth.  And it gets
more concentrated as one moves up.  Is this is not all quite old news?)

Capitalists' wealth and "their" associated risks have been accumulated on
the backs of the masses.  Indeed who frequently bails out capitalists?  Who
suffers when factories are closed down to protect profit rates?   I'm
reminded of a cartoon of a conversation between a bystander and a
capitalist:

Bystander: What did you tell those workers?
Cap: I told them to work faster.
By:  How much do you pay them?
Cap: 50$ a day.
By: Where'd you get the cash to pay them?
Cap: I sold products.
By: Who made the products?
Cap: They did.
By: How many do they make?
Cap. About $100 a day per worker.
By: Then actually, they're paying you 50$ a day.
Cap:  Well, I own the machines.
By: How did you get the machines?
Cap.  From the profits of products I sold.
By: And who made those products, and who made the machinery?
Cap: Shut up, they might hear you!

But of course, most aren't listening because they've been fed a load of crap
that capitalists have "risks" and deserve what they earn!  Poppycock!
Those who do most of the hard work get paid the least in part because of the
functioning of the market: competition among less-skilled workers, not to
mention political forces,  drives down their wages.   It's plain stupid and
immoral to let the capitalist market (the relations among commodities)
dictate our lives.