Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by JimC » Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:06 am

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by rainbow » Fri Feb 21, 2020 7:05 am

laklak wrote:
Fri Feb 21, 2020 2:59 am
A manor house would be nice, I'll admit.
Marry a Swazi princess. I think the going rate is 200 head of cattle.
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by laklak » Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:46 pm

Not a bad gig if you can get it. Mrs. Lak hasn't quite bought into traditional polygamy yet, but she'll go along if I make her Number 1 Wife and she gets to boss the others around.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Feb 21, 2020 11:55 pm

Capitalism, you know it makes sense..
87219381_2588031644809334_2245372115953909760_n.jpg
87219381_2588031644809334_2245372115953909760_n.jpg (52.74 KiB) Viewed 3543 times
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by rainbow » Thu Feb 27, 2020 1:35 pm

laklak wrote:
Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:46 pm
Not a bad gig if you can get it. Mrs. Lak hasn't quite bought into traditional polygamy yet, but she'll go along if I make her Number 1 Wife and she gets to boss the others around.
Yes and she gets the biggest hut.
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by laklak » Thu Feb 27, 2020 2:30 pm

She gets the gogo hut at the center of the kraal.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by rainbow » Fri Feb 28, 2020 9:29 am

laklak wrote:
Thu Feb 27, 2020 2:30 pm
She gets the gogo hut at the center of the kraal.
:tup: As long as she brews a good Umqombothi. :td:
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Sun Mar 01, 2020 2:02 am

. Image
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Mon Mar 02, 2020 2:38 am

Because, you know, job creators, national economy, government interference, [fill in blanks as desired].

'Franchise Workers Lose Some Power to Challenge Labor Practices'
The National Labor Relations Board announced a new regulation on Tuesday that makes it harder to challenge companies over their labor practices, potentially affecting the rights of millions of workers.

The rule, which will take effect on April 27, scales back the responsibility of companies like McDonald’s for labor-law violations by their franchisees, such as firing workers in retaliation for attempts to unionize. The rule also applies to workers employed through contractors like staffing agencies or cleaning services.

That is a reversal of the doctrine that the board adopted late in the Obama administration, which had made it possible to deem a much wider range of parent companies to be so-called joint employers.

“This final rule gives our joint-employer standard the clarity, stability and predictability that is essential to any successful labor-management relationship and vital to our national economy,” John F. Ring, the board’s chairman, said in a statement.

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Tero » Mon Mar 02, 2020 2:32 pm

Let's look at the lives of poor folks


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Our case for survival before it's too late

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Cunt » Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:07 pm

American capitalism is the best capitalism, as pictured in the spoilered image.
(spoilered for non-Americans)
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Joe wrote:
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he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
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It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Svartalf » Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:23 pm

OK, I recognize ron mcD, I assume the character next to him to be a burger king mascot, but who is the woman?
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Cunt » Mon Mar 02, 2020 5:08 pm

Svartalf wrote:
Mon Mar 02, 2020 4:23 pm
OK, I recognize ron mcD, I assume the character next to him to be a burger king mascot, but who is the woman?
Wendys, who also have a reputibly funny twitter feed.
Image
Shit, Piss, Cock, Cunt, Motherfucker, Cocksucker and Tits.
-various artists


Joe wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2023 1:22 pm
he doesn't communicate

The 'Walsh Question' 'What Is A Woman?' I'll put an answer here when someone posts one that is clear and comprehensible, by apostates to the Faith.

Update: I've been offered one!
rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 06, 2023 9:23 pm
It is actually quite easy. A woman has at least one X chromosome.
Strong ideas don't require censorship to survive. Weak ideas cannot survive without it.

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:28 pm

Quite and interesting attempt at a hope-inspiring piece in The Economist entitled: Why America’s financial plumbing has seized up (in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic). It's behind a paywall, but I've reproduced it below with some comments inserted.

Spoilered to guard against RSI!
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Why America’s financial plumbing has seized up

Households are frantically stocking up on essentials such as loo roll. But in financial markets, the staple that no one can do without in times of stress is cash—the flushing mechanism of the world economy. In theory, it should never dry up; money can be printed. But when firms are desperate for cash it puts a potentially devastating strain on the plumbing of the global financial system. That is why in the past week America’s Federal Reserve has unleashed a huge amount of liquidity. Foreign central banks have joined in. Many face the additional challenge of a strengthening dollar (see article).

Unlike the 2007-09 financial crisis, when problems in the financial system caused an economic meltdown, the spread of the covid-19 disease has caused a health and economic crisis that has caught banks, financial markets and business in its wake. Big and small firms realise that they are facing— at the least—months of scant revenues, yet still have bills and debts to pay.
  • (BP: To some extent what we see in the financial sector is merely a consequence or continuation of the 2008 meltdown. The lack of resilience in our economic systems stem from the political choices made at the time, to simply patch the wound inflicted by 2007/8 and carry on a usual rather than dealing with the underlying systemic infirmity.)
Some are better equipped than others. The operating expenses (opex), like wages and rent, of all nonbank s&p 500 companies in 2019 amounted to $2.6trn. The same firms held $1.7trn in cash and liquid securities at the end of that year. On average, that was about seven months of opex. But this cash is unevenly distributed. Apple could pay for six years of opex with its $200bn war chest. Many big utilities, such as Edison International, carry only enough cash to cover a week’s worth.

The quickest way for investors, firms and banks to raise cash is to sell liquid assets. Investors moved first. Their priority was to liquidate holdings of risky assets, like stocks and high-yield bonds, and buy safe assets like Treasuries. Markets moved accordingly: the s&p 500 has sold off hard and fast and bond yields rallied. But companies and banks tend to hold their liquid assets in Treasuries. When their need for cash became dire, they dumped even these.

Asset sales help reallocate the stock of existing cash. For every investor selling stocks or bonds to raise cash, there are those willing to take the other side—like Warren Buffett, the fabled “be greedy only when others are fearful” investor, who held $125bn in “dry-powder” at Berkshire Hathaway, his investment firm, at the end of 2019. He has already snapped up shares in Delta, an American airline. But reallocation can only do so much. When all firms face the same economic shock, they need a vast increase in the supply of credit.

Unfortunately, credit is not readily available. Funding strains have emerged across markets globally. In January American firms that issued risky high-yield debt paid around 3.5 percentage points more to issue a bond than the government did. This spread is now above 8 percentage points. But even if firms did want to issue bonds at such rates, they cannot. Corporate debt markets are virtually shut in America and Europe.
  • (BP: It's worth noting that before the pandemic unsecured corporate and household indebtedness was at a higher rate than in 2007/8 such that the ratio of debt:GDP is roughly 2x what it was before 2007/8. It's only been the cheapness of the money supply as controlled by central bank interest rates that has even made borrowing a practicality - for business and households alike. In the cash-strapped years after the crash corporate interests borrowed against central bank guarantees to support share dividends and boardroom remunerations - and with the post-crash trend of systematically tying top-level pay to stock options it's no surprise that boardrooms have used their powers and the cheapness of money, a long with one-off boosts like governmental corporate tax cuts, in buy-backs which inflate their incomes along with the share price and returns to shareholders. [1] In a way the corporate sector has been systematically hoarding against a economic pandemic long before the coronavirus arrived.)
If bonds are unavailable, firms turn to banks. Many have credit lines enabling them to borrow whenever they need, up to a certain limit (akin to a credit card). Last week Boeing, an aircraft manufacturer, drew down its entire $13.8bn line in order to stockpile cash. In America, there have been reports of firms of all stripes—from chipmakers to casino and cruise operators—doing the same. In Europe Aercap Holdings, an aircraft-leasing firm, said it was drawing down its $4bn credit line.
  • (BP: And why do corporations like Boeing need cash? To pay for the borrowing which supports their share prices, share returns, and their top-level pay. It certainly isn't to pay their works, many of whom have been, and are now likely to be, let go.)
But banks have problems of their own. The first is that the thicket of global bank regulations imposed on them since the financial crisis may be exacerbating the funding crunch. Take regulations concerning “risk-weighted assets”. Banks must hold a certain amount of capital relative to the size and riskiness of the assets, such as loans, they have on their books. But as volatility in the value of the assets rises, they become more risky, forcing banks to shrink their balance-sheets. Another example is the new Current Expected Credit Losses rule, which came into effect for public companies in January. It forces banks to provision for bad loans as the probability of default rises, rather than waiting until counterparties start missing payments before booking losses.

(BP: Bollocks! Households have borne the brunt and suffered the consequence of the global banking sector collectively owing more than it could pay back during the 2007/8 crash. The regulations that 'may be exacerbating the funding crunch' were put in place by governments who wanted some small guarantees that their financial sectors support measure weren't going to result in an endless stream of money being poured down the drain. What the author argues here is that having to act responsibly is holding business back.)

The second problem banks have is their own scramble for cash. As lenders make loans, their balance-sheets grow. But balance-sheet is a scarce resource, especially in the current climate. In order to issue more loans banks must either shrink other assets, or find extra capital and funding. They are doing both. Banks have pulled back from market-making activity, as evidenced by the stubbornly high interest rates in the “repo” market, where firms and banks can swap cash overnight in exchange for posting Treasuries as collateral. Ordinarily banks might jump at the opportunity to arbitrage the difference away by hoovering up Treasuries. Yet intermediating in the repo market is something they can ill afford at present. Banks are also retaining more of their profits in order to build up capital. On March 15th America’s six largest banks announced they were halting share buybacks for three months.

Their backstop is the Federal Reserve, America’s lender of last resort. (BP: the worlds ultimate lender of last resort.) It has gone out of its way to ease the blockages in the financial system by encouraging banks to lend. It started on March 12th when the New York Fed, a branch of the central bank, made $1.5trn (an ocean of cash) available for repo operations. In addition to cutting interest rates on March 15th the Fed announced it would buy up $500bn-worth of Treasuries and $200bn-worth of mortgage-backed securities. By taking assets off the banks’ hands, it enables them to expand lending. It cut the rate on the “discount window”, a tool for banks to borrow from the Fed, and encouraged them to use it freely. It suggested that banks could dip into their capital buffers, worth $1.9trn, and their liquidity buffers, another $2.7trn, to lend to firms and households, which helped ease their regulatory constraints. Then, on March 18th, the Fed announced it would start buying short-dated commercial paper, to provide direct support for big companies. It also relaunched a facility to lend directly to “primary dealers”, a group of financial firms that do not have direct access to typical Fed lending channels.
  • (BP: "repo operations" means "calling in debts")
These steps are the right ones. Other central banks are taking similar steps. For banks that promise to lend cash the European Central Bank has cut the rate at which banks can borrow from the central bank below the rate at which they are compensated for deposits (BP: and effective interest rate of -0.25%). It says it will also expand its bond-buying programme by a whopping €750bn ($818bn). The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, is buying up company shares directly, too.
  • (BP: Governments who are actively buying or supporting company shares are basically using the taxpayer to maintain the health and well-being of one patient (financial) by draining the blood from another (taxpayers, workers, public services etc)).
The scramble for cash will continue. If enough liquidity is created quickly, the long-term damage to the real economy will be minimised, though. And if firms know that they can get cash whenever they need it, they might not need quite so much in the first place. Rather like loo paper.
  • (BP: The problem here is demonstrated in the thinking that assumes that everything can get back to normal - with normal being the insecurely teetering post-crash financialised global economy which has seen real-terms wages for the vast majority devalued year-on-year while asset prices and top-level remunerations have rocketed. Personally, I think this is nice story for the banking and financial sector to tell itself. It keeps it from waking up in the night screaming, "FUCKING HELL!! WHAT HAVE WE DONE!!!?" but I don't post-pandemic-business-as-usual is going to happen. The system isn't up to it, and will be even less so as governments start printing money and transferring it directly to people to keep them alive. There's no going back now - and that might not be a bad thing in the long run, though no doubt it will be painful all round in the short- to medium-term.)
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-e ... -seized-up

----
[1] https://www.paygovernance.com/viewpoint ... -increases
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Mar 24, 2020 11:33 pm

So, one of the UK government's headline pandemic responses this week is the measure of, effectively, taking the rail network into public ownership. The reason for this is, as the government have pointed, the rail network is a vital part of the UK's transport infrastructure and must be kept running during the crisis to transfer freight and to get key-workers to and from work.

However, it turns out the real deal doesn't involve the government taking control of the system but undertaking to cover the operators' losses for the next six months to two years while paying the franchise holders back a fee to maintain a skeleton service.

The Trade Union Conference estimates that private rail franchises paid out around £1bn in dividends in the last 6 years (£200m+ last year) and receive around £5bn in government subsidies annually. Subsidies to the rail network have gone up by 200% since privatisation and ticket prices have risen by 20% in real terms (adjusting for inflation) over the same period. The cost of monthly season tickets has risen, on average, from around 2% to around 10% of medium monthly income during that time.

The free-market reasoning of uncle Milton et al maintains that markets are always more efficient and productive in providing services than the state; that markets are inherently more rational; that markets are the optimal way of allocating resources. But those who make strenuous arguments for 'the market' approach don't really seem to believe it - if they did they'd simply resign themselves to the bottom falling out of their business as the action of that unseen, rational, disinterested hand of the market. "Ho-hum," they'd say, "It was good while it lasted I guess, but the market has decided it's just not to be..."

According to free market principles, the rail operators going bust would simply allows another body to come in, buy the business at a knock-down price, renegotiate liabilities with creditor, and attempt to make a better fist of it than the previous owners. This is how the free market is supposed to operate. But what we have, and have had for the last 30 years, is a free market in name only: a free market when profits are guarenteed, but a market that must be bailed out when they aren't.

The government haven't actually taken the rail network or operating companies into public ownership. As with the financial sector after the 2007/8 crash, what it's done is bascially secured private profits and socialised private debts and liabilities against future tax income.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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