7 ms·

Family businesses since markets inception 2k years ago and small-to-medium businesses in the late 20th century were the norm everywhere in Europe, that’s also w

by DrNuke 8y ago

Family businesses since markets inception 2k years ago and small-to-medium businesses in the late 20th century were the norm everywhere in Europe, that’s also why the EU started well as a common market. It is going tits up right now exactly because surrendering its roots to the US neo-liberist approach has killed the middle class. Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year, draining that money out to fiscal havens and employing a few elite thousands people with millions left unemployed and getting more and more angry.

friedman23 8y ago
This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. Meanwhile emerging markets all around the world are crumbling. Is there always a segment of the population that believe the economic apocalypse is about to happen (or in this case happening)? If you want me to believe your doom and gloom try providing actual statistics that back up your assertions instead of vague hand wavings. > Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people?
- coldtea 8y ago
  >This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. "The stock market, for example, has completely recovered from the financial crisis, and then some. Stocks are now worth almost 60 percent more than when the crisis began in 2007, according to a inflation-adjusted measure from Moody’s Analytics. But wealthy households own the bulk of stocks. Most Americans are much more dependent on their houses. That’s why the net worth of the median household is still about 20 percent lower than it was in early 2007. When television commentators drone on about the Dow, they’re not talking about a good measure of most people’s wealth. The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged. They are not working, not looking for work, not going to school and not taking care of children. Many of them would like to work, but they can’t find a decent-paying job and have given up looking. They are not counted in the official unemployment rate." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-recession-economy-gdp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-... >Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people? For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". Second because those local communities where the business is located are what should thrive first and foremost. You can't help "people" without first helping yourself.
  - friedman23 8y ago
    >That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. They are measured the same way they always have been >For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible >People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. >For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? Do you think they convert it all into gold coins and lock it into a scrooge mcduck style vault? It's reinvested, they purchase treasuries with it, they do research and development with it. Governments then use that money to build roads and pay employees. Those employees then go and eat out and buy cars.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >They are measured the same way they always have been As I explained in the very next paragraph the creativity is in determining which people are in the workforce and which are not. Measuring the "same way they always have been" when work today is unlike it has "always has been" is like measuring inflation by the cost of commonly bought 1940s items. >Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible A fact doesn't change based on what made it possible. >You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. You're aware that the officially circulating numbers (U3 et all) don't show the impact of the problem by a very large margin? And that those people who "are just not relevant to the market" still need to put food on the table, pay rents, and pay medical bills... >What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? It gets further removed from the communities that fostered the companies that made it and their control, and on to the company's (or private owner's) discretion.
- codethief 8y ago
  > This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. To the contrary: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...
  - adventured 8y ago
    How is that politically directed piece by the NY Times to the contrary? The U6 is back to where it was in 1999. Wages are growing at the fastest pace in a decade, with a labor market that keeps getting tighter, driving wage gains faster. The poverty rate and homelessness rate are both near record lows. The poverty rate has contracted rapidly in the last several years. That's due to the dramatic improvement in the job market over the past decade and a vast expansion over time in the US welfare state / social safety net, which is paid for by taxes from an aggressively expanding economy. Since January 2010, the US has added a Germany + France in terms of economic expansion ($6 trillion in GDP), while only adding 16m in population. US manufacturing, which is a critical supplier of decent blue collar jobs, has been persistently adding jobs for nearly a decade (1.3m manufacturing jobs added over that time). It's the first sustained period of manufacturing job growth since the late 1990s. It was widely proclaimed to be impossible that that could occur. If you want to bolster the conditions for the bottom 1/2, you do it with jobs, wage pressure through a tight labor market, and a strong social safety net paid for via taxes from a booming economy.
BuckRogers 8y ago
Correct, except markets have been around longer than 2,000 years ago in Europe and elsewhere. The answer to the economic problems you detail is worker owned cooperatives. The reason is that small business capitalists have too much incentive to being bought out by a larger conglomerate. They're also easy to run out of business with the Walmart model of running a loss for years. We won't all have or be able to bank on a capitalist coming in to give us all jobs. Keeping the money local is imperative as you said, especially for the majority of economic activity worldwide, which consists of guaranteed, proven business models. An example would be your local 7-Eleven, there's no reason all of these essential services should have a board of directors in Japan rather than every worker being the board. You might get better service too. I intend to turn my sole proprietorship into a worker owned co-op and at least coexist with Accenture if not run them out of the city with far more caring employees producing superior product. If you want a healthcare.gov debacle go with an inefficient capitalist enterprise, which has a singular goal of selling you the most expensive product made by the cheapest possible employees. Otherwise support your local worker owned co-ops.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  Please keep a blog of your efforts - would love to read it
  - BuckRogers 8y ago
    That's a great idea, when I get to that point, I'll do that. I've always wondered as a member of the working class on how I could make the world a better place (other than deeply devoting myself to my family), and I believe I've found it. We need more worker owned co-ops and less capitalist enterprises. The wonderful thing about it is that it can be done immediately, today, does not require waiting 50 or 100+ years for some major catastrophe like the Great Depression to enact positive change. Doesn't require a great leader to pass legislation granting equality. I hate that method of progress, and often I see it as laziness, corporate hand-waving. "Someday we'll have a fair and just system, but not today!" And once people see what economic democracy looks like, they'll demand it out of their governments. They'll go so far as to feign "diversity" efforts (in quotes because the only diversity corporations are interested in is diversity of wages). It'll be a lot of work as there are many details to work out but I've bookmarked your comment to let you know when the day comes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cycrutchfield 8y ago
>Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year So a cottage industry of small, inefficient businesses is preferable to a large, efficient corporation because...? They naturally employ a lot of redundant workers? If that’s the case just skip the middleman and go with UBI if you want to just give away money to people for adding nothing of value.
- checkyoursudo 8y ago
  Not everyone values efficiency above all else. Not everyone thinks corporations are a net-positive for societies.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - cycrutchfield 8y ago
    And now we have circled back to the question at hand: why does the European tech industry fail to innovate? This kind of attitude exhibited above.
    - checkyoursudo 8y ago
      > And now we have circled back to the question at hand: why does the European tech industry fail to innovate? This kind of attitude exhibited above. Uh, that wasn't the question?
      - cycrutchfield 8y ago
        I think it’s pretty central to the question of why there is no European Google or Facebook or Netflix, etc.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Probably because even Google isn't able to get searching in some EU languages right. People in Europe also have less money than people in the USA, most people still frown upon spending that money on Netflix or Spotify to this day.
ThePhysicist 8y ago
I think it's more about how the economic system is structured and how the government taxes corporations. In Germany for example there are a bunch of very large corporations that "dominate" their local communities in terms of employment (Bosch for example has 130.000 employees in Germany alone and 400.000 around the world!) and the regions where those companies are concentrated are among the wealthiest in Europe. Of course you need to make sure that companies don't privatize all the profits without giving back something to the community, but that's (IMHO) not an issue of company size but rather a taxation issue.

by DrNuke 8y ago

friedman23 8y ago

This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. Meanwhile emerging markets all around the world are crumbling. Is there always a segment of the population that believe the economic apocalypse is about to happen (or in this case happening)? If you want me to believe your doom and gloom try providing actual statistics that back up your assertions instead of vague hand wavings. > Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people?

coldtea 8y ago
>This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. "The stock market, for example, has completely recovered from the financial crisis, and then some. Stocks are now worth almost 60 percent more than when the crisis began in 2007, according to a inflation-adjusted measure from Moody’s Analytics. But wealthy households own the bulk of stocks. Most Americans are much more dependent on their houses. That’s why the net worth of the median household is still about 20 percent lower than it was in early 2007. When television commentators drone on about the Dow, they’re not talking about a good measure of most people’s wealth. The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged. They are not working, not looking for work, not going to school and not taking care of children. Many of them would like to work, but they can’t find a decent-paying job and have given up looking. They are not counted in the official unemployment rate." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-recession-economy-gdp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-... >Do you have a citation for this claim? Also why should we be helping "local communities" and not simply helping people? For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". Second because those local communities where the business is located are what should thrive first and foremost. You can't help "people" without first helping yourself.
- friedman23 8y ago
  >That's because those things are increasingly more creatively measured to paint a nice picture. They are measured the same way they always have been >For example today any crap job regardless of quality/wages/precariousness etc is measured as "unemployment", whereas in the past you could have the same number of jobs but they would be much more solid (the "company man" and so on. Heck, a GM factory worker in the 50s could buy a house and raise 2 kids earning the only income in his family). Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible >People who given up looking for work, because they can't find any, are also not counted, while still unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. >For one, because tax havens (where that money go instead of local communities, e.g. Apple's Ireland's cash stock) aren't "people". What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? Do you think they convert it all into gold coins and lock it into a scrooge mcduck style vault? It's reinvested, they purchase treasuries with it, they do research and development with it. Governments then use that money to build roads and pay employees. Those employees then go and eat out and buy cars.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >They are measured the same way they always have been As I explained in the very next paragraph the creativity is in determining which people are in the workforce and which are not. Measuring the "same way they always have been" when work today is unlike it has "always has been" is like measuring inflation by the cost of commonly bought 1940s items. >Oh this talking point again. Never mind the two world wars that made it all possible A fact doesn't change based on what made it possible. >You are aware that there are multiple unemployment statistics that are tracked and that discouraged workers are included in some of them? Nobody is purposefully ignoring discouraged workers they are just not relevant to the market because they aren't participating in it. You're aware that the officially circulating numbers (U3 et all) don't show the impact of the problem by a very large margin? And that those people who "are just not relevant to the market" still need to put food on the table, pay rents, and pay medical bills... >What do you think happens to money in those tax havens? It gets further removed from the communities that fostered the companies that made it and their control, and on to the company's (or private owner's) discretion.
codethief 8y ago
> This comment is out of touch with the current economic reality in the US. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in decades and real wages are rising. To the contrary: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-p...
- adventured 8y ago
  How is that politically directed piece by the NY Times to the contrary? The U6 is back to where it was in 1999. Wages are growing at the fastest pace in a decade, with a labor market that keeps getting tighter, driving wage gains faster. The poverty rate and homelessness rate are both near record lows. The poverty rate has contracted rapidly in the last several years. That's due to the dramatic improvement in the job market over the past decade and a vast expansion over time in the US welfare state / social safety net, which is paid for by taxes from an aggressively expanding economy. Since January 2010, the US has added a Germany + France in terms of economic expansion ($6 trillion in GDP), while only adding 16m in population. US manufacturing, which is a critical supplier of decent blue collar jobs, has been persistently adding jobs for nearly a decade (1.3m manufacturing jobs added over that time). It's the first sustained period of manufacturing job growth since the late 1990s. It was widely proclaimed to be impossible that that could occur. If you want to bolster the conditions for the bottom 1/2, you do it with jobs, wage pressure through a tight labor market, and a strong social safety net paid for via taxes from a booming economy.

BuckRogers 8y ago

Correct, except markets have been around longer than 2,000 years ago in Europe and elsewhere. The answer to the economic problems you detail is worker owned cooperatives. The reason is that small business capitalists have too much incentive to being bought out by a larger conglomerate. They're also easy to run out of business with the Walmart model of running a loss for years. We won't all have or be able to bank on a capitalist coming in to give us all jobs. Keeping the money local is imperative as you said, especially for the majority of economic activity worldwide, which consists of guaranteed, proven business models. An example would be your local 7-Eleven, there's no reason all of these essential services should have a board of directors in Japan rather than every worker being the board. You might get better service too. I intend to turn my sole proprietorship into a worker owned co-op and at least coexist with Accenture if not run them out of the city with far more caring employees producing superior product. If you want a healthcare.gov debacle go with an inefficient capitalist enterprise, which has a singular goal of selling you the most expensive product made by the cheapest possible employees. Otherwise support your local worker owned co-ops.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
Please keep a blog of your efforts - would love to read it
- BuckRogers 8y ago
  That's a great idea, when I get to that point, I'll do that. I've always wondered as a member of the working class on how I could make the world a better place (other than deeply devoting myself to my family), and I believe I've found it. We need more worker owned co-ops and less capitalist enterprises. The wonderful thing about it is that it can be done immediately, today, does not require waiting 50 or 100+ years for some major catastrophe like the Great Depression to enact positive change. Doesn't require a great leader to pass legislation granting equality. I hate that method of progress, and often I see it as laziness, corporate hand-waving. "Someday we'll have a fair and just system, but not today!" And once people see what economic democracy looks like, they'll demand it out of their governments. They'll go so far as to feign "diversity" efforts (in quotes because the only diversity corporations are interested in is diversity of wages). It'll be a lot of work as there are many details to work out but I've bookmarked your comment to let you know when the day comes.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cycrutchfield 8y ago

>Many thousand businesses moving €500k/year and using money locally is much better for local communities than 5 unicorns moving €50b/year So a cottage industry of small, inefficient businesses is preferable to a large, efficient corporation because...? They naturally employ a lot of redundant workers? If that’s the case just skip the middleman and go with UBI if you want to just give away money to people for adding nothing of value.

checkyoursudo 8y ago
Not everyone values efficiency above all else. Not everyone thinks corporations are a net-positive for societies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  And now we have circled back to the question at hand: why does the European tech industry fail to innovate? This kind of attitude exhibited above.
  - checkyoursudo 8y ago
    > And now we have circled back to the question at hand: why does the European tech industry fail to innovate? This kind of attitude exhibited above. Uh, that wasn't the question?
    - cycrutchfield 8y ago
      I think it’s pretty central to the question of why there is no European Google or Facebook or Netflix, etc.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        Probably because even Google isn't able to get searching in some EU languages right. People in Europe also have less money than people in the USA, most people still frown upon spending that money on Netflix or Spotify to this day.

ThePhysicist 8y ago

I think it's more about how the economic system is structured and how the government taxes corporations. In Germany for example there are a bunch of very large corporations that "dominate" their local communities in terms of employment (Bosch for example has 130.000 employees in Germany alone and 400.000 around the world!) and the regions where those companies are concentrated are among the wealthiest in Europe. Of course you need to make sure that companies don't privatize all the profits without giving back something to the community, but that's (IMHO) not an issue of company size but rather a taxation issue.