Yes, but the fact that another system is doing badly, should NEVER be given as a reason why we should give up and keep defective elements of our own system in place, as is.

There are defective elements in any system, none are perfect. Capitalism
has worked in-spite of govt interference, some good, some bad. Tweaking, yes, but changing to collective socialism, no.

Well, feel okay then, because no one of consequence, and certainly no one in this thread, is even remotely suggesting that we do.

The article is kinda funny.
I liked this part:
"Usually we try to aim for 40 percent profit margin."

The average grocery store has a profit margin of about 1-3%
I know a few government contractors in the aerospace industry (guidance computers, software, for planes, drones) that are around 7%.
Insurance companies are around 5-7% profit margin.
(Big) Banks have huge profit margins in the double digits, like 20%.

Construction companies are usually pretty low, less than 10%.

Maybe it's a typo? Maybe it was supposed to be 4%.


Although it's been subverted over the years to be seen as a "system," it's not, and there is no way it's "supposed" to work.

"Capitalism" was more a philosophical attempt to categorize and quantify certain natural human behaviors, "rights."
No different than "psychology" or "sociology."

Human beings have a natural tendency to view things as private property. That's my knife. That's my foot. That's my baby.

"Capitalism" is a term for the natural occurrence of a bartering system of private property and freely chosen labor.
One person has private property, or they freely choose to work for another.
They exchange for something that fulfills self interest. Tools, labor, whatever, in exchange for other private property that someone else has, instead of resorting to war or murder or because a king threatened them.

There isn't a "SUPPOSED" to work, there's just what happens.

That's why it's not a "system."
A "system" is a top down chosen ideological enforcement. "I/we own all production methods, you may have what we/I dictate you to have, and you have to like it, because god told me so, now it's the law of the land, live it, love it, this is how we're going to behave, this is our constitution, here's our police force to enforce it."

"Capitalism" is based on human nature. "This is my knife. I made it. I could kill you and take your stuff. But then your friends would come kill me and take my stuff. Instead I will let you use it to kill that buffalo, or help you, if you give me 20 lbs of meat."
That freely entered transaction of goods and/or labor for mutual benefit towards self interest is "capitalism."

There may be a "SUPPOSED" to work in an artificial market, but artificial markets aren't really "capitalism."

People always go after what they want. If they can't get exactly what they want, or the cost is higher than they're willing to pay, they look for alternatives.
Legal, illegal, doesn't matter.

That is "capitalism" self correcting.
"Capitalism," markets, economies, are always self correcting.

Just not always in ways that are in the best interest of a particular arbitrary or artificially defined nation, laws, group, or individual.

There is no "SUPPOSED" to except in artificial markets which are usually dictated by a government.
Hows the drug trade the government is "SUPPOSED" to control working?


That would be true if you're in a high school introduction to economics class and are looking at extremely limited hypothetical examples in an absolutely controlled artificial market.


Only if there are absolutely no alternatives and what they want to buy is absolutely immediately necessary and you're in a frozen moment of time with absolutely no potential for future change in anything...conditions which pretty much only exist in high school introduction to economics class hypotheticals.


Again too simplistic.
A job not being done creates no value/wealth at all.
If "no one" is willing to work for the wages, then no work is getting done, at all.
No value or wealth or tax money is created.
Bringing in foreign workers would create some value, as the work is being done.
Money is flowing in as profit to a company, owner is using the money. Buying supplies. Living their non foreign life. Taxes are being collected and paid by the business, as potentially only wages are being paid under the table to avoid taxation and repatriated to foreign markets.

And that doesn't count the people that were roofless now having roofs so going back to work or increasing production because they don't have rain problems.

At best you can say "bringing in foreign workers, means that this economy is purposely directing part of it's wealth away from itself, into the economy of another country. Some wealth is being produced for the local economy, but not as much as there potentially could be. But the alternative is that no wealth would be produced at all since no one was willing to work for the wages."

Raising the minimum wage for the same amount of work wouldn't create any real value or wealth at all and probably hurt the economy by increasing costs.
It would simply shift money around as people diverted money from one thing in order to pay for higher costs in roofing, then demand more in compensation from their work/efforts to offset having to divert money towards roofing.
Not to mention it may cause people to leave just as high paying and potentially higher economic value/wealth creating jobs for "roofing."

So in actuality you at best discovered "An accidental argument in favor of" keeping minimum wage the same or lower for jobs no one is willing to take in order to entice foreign workers to take jobs, no one is willing to take, in order to avoid raising costs everywhere else, to create at least some new value/wealth as it wouldn't be created since no one was willing to take the jobs before, and to reduce job drift from high value/wealth jobs to lower value/wealth jobs just for the sake of "jobs."




And all of that screed doesn't even address the concept of innovation and stagnation based on government enforced wage protection.

Ciretom: you've posted some very good points, but you've made a few errors which I want to suggest you rethink.
Minor thing:


I guess you aren't aware of it, but most businesses other than the ones you list, do have much larger required profit margins, for good reasons. Most retail systems, for example, need at least a 35% profit margin in order to succeed. Grocery stores are the most unusual with their ultra-low single-digit margin, but that is because they are based on a HUGE STEADY VOLUME sales model. Most retailers and service businesses can't utilize that model, because they can't count on the non-stop steady income that grocery stores can.



No, not quite, and you actually contradict this yourself a little later on, though I'm sure you didn't realize you did. Capitalism is NOT an anthropological observation of natural human behavior. It IS a crafted conceptual approach to dealing with human interactions, which was fairly revolutionary in it's early days.



Absolutely false on more than one level. This is one of the places you contradicted your own earlier claim that capitalism is a name for a naturally occurring human behavior. It also contradicts what you claimed about it not having a "SUPPOSED TO" associated with it. If there is no SUPPOSED TO, there is no need for CORRECTION.

Most important, capitalism is not a THING. It is not a FORCE. It can't "self correct," because it depends on artificial structure and choices by the people participating in it, in order for it to take whatever form it does.

No, it was not "subverted over the years" into being a system, it was always an artificial system, although it is based on a non-real set of ideal elements. People who do claim that "capitalism is self-regulating and self correcting," ASSUME that ideal people are always controlling it. You gave a good description of such an IDEALIZED world, in your post. If indeed, all participants reasoned as you had them do in your example, then we would indeed have peace on earth, and maybe even plenty for all.

The thing is, capitalism was NOT modeled on the ENTIRETY of natural human behaviors, it was based extremely selectively on a very FEW behaviors. This is the reason why it did not spontaneously come into being by itself, in the depths of unrecorded human history.

From there you make a series of criticisms of my descriptions, and most of those "refutations" are just plain false. In particular, you claim that it is NOT a part of basic capitalism "self balancing" that when no one wants to do a job at the offered price, that the would be employer must offer something else. In fact, that IS a fundamental element in again, IDEAL capitalism, unfettered by either government OR individual powerful people's interference.

I wont bother with the rest of your errors, both because that's plenty to show that you are off course, and because this post is already getting too long.

You got that right, but that's what you get
from the liberal, socialist, capitalist hating
left.

I don't know who to believe, but I hear what they are saying about Obama care and it ain't workin.

The ACA and the yet to be announced Republican alternative aren't part of the subject matter here. Unless you can tie it in somehow?

Technically, IMO, if you look close enough, everything is tied to the economy. Anything that costs money directly relates to the minimum wage.

Well, yeah, but then technically, everything relates to everything, because we're all on this one planet.

Why not get the guy who wrote the ACA and have him unravel it.


and then kill him.

Quick answer Max Baucus

Full answer according to the finance committee's website. Present at those meetings were Democratic senators Max Baucus, Jeff Bingaman and Kent Conrad and Republican senators Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olimpia Snow, but there is no single author of the bill. It was a collaboration of Senate Democrats and Republicans, members of the house of representatives, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and other interested parties, indicates Johnathan Cohn of New Republic. ? " Citizen Cohn "
There's a reason why it keeps surviving?

Exactly!

And then there's politics

LOL

What has been purposely forgotten, especially by it's strongest political opponents, is that the ACA is the mess that it is precisely BECAUSE it was written to try to please Republicans and Democrats who disagreed about almost everything. Republicans and Democrats alike, purposely crippled it from the beginning, and now the Republicans are playing a game of refusing to repair or replace it, both because they have a well practiced knee jerk opposition to helping anyone who isn't rich (that's not actually an insult-accusation from me, there are complicated philosophical and historical reasons why the GOP purposely made itself this way), and because they genuinely think that by letting America and the American people suffer needlessly, they will gain more political power, and finally be able to alter the fundamental guidance of the United States in ways which they are not now openly talking about.

Very good observation Igor, people like to blame others because it makes their side look better. People like to blame the insurance companies for being greedy, but no one seems to be looking into the high cost of medical treatment and drugs. The government wants to make the insurance easier to pay for by giving people tax credits, but do people not understand where taxes come from? We all pay for it even if it comes in a different form. People often expect rich people to pay more taxes even tough they already pay a lot more than others and its often the poorest people who use the most government services. Employers blame the government for taxes and regulations that cause them to keep wages down. People blame their employers for how little they make but forget they have the ability to go work else where, or they can show the company how to make more money and move up in the ranks of the company. There will always be blame that the employer doesn't pay enough, the landlord charges too much rent, the government takes too much taxes, food is so expensive, and transportation cost too much. But if people learn to budget their money because they know these factors ahead of time they can put their priorities in order.

OMG! I forgot, it's the evil GOP's fault.

Not true, its the peoples fault for electing these politicians. Remember you got to pass the blame to someone else!

Taking your thinking here a bit further into the realities which are being overlooked..

Yes, lots of wealthy people pay more taxes. However, it is not true that more of the poor use more government services. It only seems that way to most people, because they haven't thought through what the government actually does.

In the United States especially, but really worldwide, governments were primarily constructed to help the already wealthy to live as they wish to.

Don't believe it? Think a little harder. Why do we have a very expensive navy? Is it because the lower classes had a hankering to go sailing, and couldn't afford their own yacht? No. It's because in order to have profitable overseas trade, merchants require safe and inexpensive transit of goods. Navies exist to make that possible, to protect merchant fleets from both pirates and other government attacks. Same thing with the rest of the military services.

Do the rest of us peasants benefit from it all? Of course. Without all that, the cost of imports would limit them to the top 1% of the top 1% who could either afford to lose two shipments out of three, or who could fund their own navies.

But the point is, the bulk of the cost of government SHOULD be born by the wealthiest, because they ARE the ones who derive the greatest benefits from it.

If you are serious about making everyone pay their own way, that is.