2016 Presidential election

[Level 60 Dwarf Paladin]

Trump embodies the worst of America. He's like what people living in Peshawar imagine all Americans are like and it paints an even bigger target on our backs.

[TheFifthColumn]

I'm sure Richard Wolff is a smart man, but I don't really get the point he is trying to make at 10:30 when he talks about the workers not being able to buy the stuff from the capitalists with their wages. At my job, a hedge fund manager will pay up to $200,000 to speak to institutional investors at one of our conferences. I don't get enough money to buy this product, but my boss isn't worried about that because he understands I am not a hedge fund manager.

At my previous job at a fund-of-funds, the minimum capital commitment needed to buy into our product was $5 million. Same non-issue. Hedge funds generally can only sell their products to investors with at least $1 million in assets and $250,000 in yearly income, so they can't sell to the working class by law. Even if you are employed by the person you are buying something from, you are not going to pay more than you half to under the assumption that the money will get back into your pocket.

[NickDagger]

[brycickle]

Hillary is a money grubbing Jew?

[Alan]

Nice racism there...

[ChuckRamone]

looks like something from 4chan /pol/

[Tufty]

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[close]

I'm sure Richard Wolff is a smart man, but I don't really get the point he is trying to make at 10:30 when he talks about the workers not being able to buy the stuff from the capitalists with their wages. At my job, a hedge fund manager will pay up to $200,000 to speak to institutional investors at one of our conferences. I don't get enough money to buy this product, but my boss isn't worried about that because he understands I am not a hedge fund manager.

At my previous job at a fund-of-funds, the minimum capital commitment needed to buy into our product was $5 million. Same non-issue. Hedge funds generally can only sell their products to investors with at least $1 million in assets and $250,000 in yearly income, so they can't sell to the working class by law. Even if you are employed by the person you are buying something from, you are not going to pay more than you half to under the assumption that the money will get back into your pocket.

 Dude are you joking or you only grasp your own microcosm  of hedge fund world.

[Grampa]

Trump is flip-flopping on his tax plan. Now he proposes raising taxes on the wealthy and also supports a minimum wage increase. Thankfully he waited until Cruz was out of the picture to let it out. I'm eagerly awaiting for the "wait, you really thought I could build a wall??" revelation.

Trump is awesome. Most of us already knew that his supporters were idiots, but I believe there's actually a chance that he'll make his supporters realize how fucking stupid they actually are. Suckers who'll fall for anything.

[givecigstosurfgroms]

  ^Yah, he's SAYING that but he's fucking lying.  (

[TheFifthColumn]

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I'm sure Richard Wolff is a smart man, but I don't really get the point he is trying to make at 10:30 when he talks about the workers not being able to buy the stuff from the capitalists with their wages. At my job, a hedge fund manager will pay up to $200,000 to speak to institutional investors at one of our conferences. I don't get enough money to buy this product, but my boss isn't worried about that because he understands I am not a hedge fund manager.

At my previous job at a fund-of-funds, the minimum capital commitment needed to buy into our product was $5 million. Same non-issue. Hedge funds generally can only sell their products to investors with at least $1 million in assets and $250,000 in yearly income, so they can't sell to the working class by law. Even if you are employed by the person you are buying something from, you are not going to pay more than you half to under the assumption that the money will get back into your pocket.

[close]

 Dude are you joking or you only grasp your own microcosm  of hedge fund world.

I'm not joking. My point is that employees =/= customers. Saying that a capitalist doesn't pay his workers enough to buy back the products he sells is like saying that I'm not paying my landlord enough to get a raise.

If a capitalist has a problem selling his goods, he lowers the price or improves the product so that it commands a higher price. If the problem is that his workers can't buy his goods, he offers an employee discount. He's not going to pay his workers more and hope that they buy his product, because they may go to buy goods from a competing capitalist with their improved wages, and people that don't work for that capitalist will still have a problem buying his goods.

On a macroeconomic level, total goods and services sold equals total goods and services bought. Prices are flexible over the long run. I don't really get this argument at all, unless it's specifically referring to a factory town.

[Alan]

It's not an unheard of concept...


"It's widely believed that Henry Ford also upped wages to expand his market — paying employees enough to buy the cars they made. While that wasn't Ford's main motivation, it was a welcome byproduct, and a game changer, says University of California, Berkeley, labor economist Harley Shaiken.

"What that gave us was an industrial middle class, and an economy that was driven by consumer demand," Shaiken says."

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/267145552/the-middle-class-took-off-100-years-ago-thanks-to-henry-ford

[Tufty]

I'm not joking. My point is that employees =/= customers. Saying that a capitalist doesn't pay his workers enough to buy back the products he sells is like saying that I'm not paying my landlord enough to get a raise.

Wo0t? On a bigger picture were you team up capitalists as owners or part owners of means of production and employees as working class. Yes the 2nd team is customer and employee of the 1st team. Do that and watch the video again.

If a capitalist has a problem selling his goods, he lowers the price or improves the product so that it commands a higher price. If the problem is that his workers can't buy his goods, he offers an employee discount. He's not going to pay his workers more and hope that they buy his product, because they may go to buy goods from a competing capitalist with their improved wages, and people that don't work for that capitalist will still have a problem buying his goods.

yeah but lowering the price means lowering cost and wages are the biggest part of that cost. And of course you resort to this when you cant improve the product anymore.  This becomes a trend because of competition, if one lowers the price the next capitalist has to do the same. However when you think in a global manner as I pointed out in first quote, you have employees with crappier consumer capability and this creates more problems for capitalists as well as they dont see much profit in their endeavours and dont invest as much in consumer goods they prefer stocks, bonds and other bullshit that dont create jobs and wages for the working class team. This brings crisis, unemployment, poverty etc. Of course they cant raise wages because there would be much less profit for the capitalists and further reason to not invest. i acknowledge this I am not some bs social democrat with no clue in economics. This is one of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism when the inevitable fall in rate of profits happens as marx described in the fuckin 19th century and has happened a lot of times since then.

On a macroeconomic level, total goods and services sold equals total goods and services bought. Prices are flexible over the long run. I don't really get this argument at all, unless it's specifically referring to a factory town.

Yeah but that total is shrinking while population is getting bigger. Why? Because the wages got lower and now people cant buy services and goods as they used to so the capitalists prefer to invest in counter-productive economy than consumer goods.

[TheFifthColumn]

Capitalist don't have to sell to the lower or middle classes. My whole point is that who you are giving money to is not necessarily the same as who you are getting money from.

And capitalist profit ends up in corporate pension funds and public pension funds, since fiduciaries invest on behalf of the pensioners. Almost everybody with savings invests since you need a 3% rate of return (in the US) just to keep the money that you earned from being eroded by inflation, so it doesn't make much sense to keep your savings in cash. You don't have to start a business to earn a rate of return on your money, you can simply buy an index fund. I don't really get how stocks and bonds are "bullshit" because that's simply how growing companies finance themselves through equity and debt respectively. I also don't see a falling rate of profit at all.

And although the total has been shrinking in Greece:


On a global level the total has not been shrinking:



You claim the total amount of goods and services is shrinking on a global level, where are you getting your data from?

[Frank]

^^

EDIT: its GDP i see..... well that might be true but not for incomes. i live in germany and per capita income is on the rise, albeit because we have a lot of filthy rich motherfuckers here.
most people up to 35 y actually get less and less money. people that make filthy amounts of money make much more now, they just got better at fucking us over. the gains on the side of the rich fuckers actually counter out the losses on the side of the younger and poorer.
last time i read an article about it, it said our super rich got a lot more rich, while lots of more people have jobs now that get paid really shitty tho. the middle class in germany is going nowhere. you think you can make money here with a STEM degree good fucking luck, you will be a barista soon.

i have a lot of friends with degrees, finished apprenticeships, several years of professional experience, most of them struggle to find a job at all that pays adequately, in the city at least. i have managed several stores, i was several times the boss of different teams at different workplaces. i never made so much money that i think i could feed a family, no way. i couldn't buy a fucking car even if my damn life dependent on it. and i make more money than some of my friends. most of them have studied years and paid thousands for it and the best most of them can hope for is a 6 month contract. literally no one i know has plans to have a family, for most it's not financially possible. we all try to get better jobs and payment all the time. thing i hear the most is that the company just can't pay more. like impossible, no way never will we pay anyone, even the smartest man in the fucking universe, that much, even if he makes the best coffee, has the most handsome dick and shit, for that position. meanwhile these rich fuckers at VW and the like bust shit up and get payed out still... if i fuck up work i will get fired, and no one will give me shit else. that is screwed.

the only people i know making money are friends that went into finance to become accountants and analysts. and they are equally detached like you. one of them invited me to his 30th birthday. when he laid out the plan i had to say sorry, but i can't come. shit was too expensive. i would have had to spend close to 400,- to come to his fucking birthday. no fucking way. but that's how he rolls now. he didn't understand, asking how money could be an issue. 400,- is a shitload of money for me, that's almost a month of rent for my room. dude doesn't need to live for rent, he has his own bigass flat now. i'm not even envious about this, it's just that he and people like you don't really know how fucked people are. you whip out charts and numbers as if they were dicks in a measuring contest and you say, look, it's fine!! but these charts don't represent what "regular" people have.

MISSED TOPIC COMPLETELY, WHOOPS, BUT THERE YOU GO.

MAKE AFGHANISTAN GREAT AGAIN!

[Level 60 Dwarf Paladin]

So my plan to move to the Philippines got all fucked up with the election of Duterte. There's no way in fuck I'm heading there now. My wife has family in Winnipeg though, so that's our other option.

I just mailed in my ballot with the line connected for Bernie.

[Eric ricks]

So my plan to move to the Philippines got all fucked up with the election of Duterte. There's no way in fuck I'm heading there now. My wife has family in Winnipeg though, so that's our other option.

I just mailed in my ballot with the line connected for Bernie.

Hahaha winnipeg might be even shittier. Just kidding but its got a fuckin amazing skatepark in the forks.

US politics are fucked. I hope sanders wins, hillary goes to prison and trump just fuckin vanishes or some shit

[ChuckRamone]

This attack on a female Trump supporter was freaking brutal: https://twitter.com/SaraMurray/status/738559069737222144

Some people on the left are being counterproductive in their protests.

[chuck d]

This attack on a female Trump supporter was freaking brutal: https://twitter.com/SaraMurray/status/738559069737222144

Some people on the left are being counterproductive in their protests.

https://twitter.com/marcusdipaola/status/738572899808743424

[wallieD]

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This attack on a female Trump supporter was freaking brutal: https://twitter.com/SaraMurray/status/738559069737222144

Some people on the left are being counterproductive in their protests.

[close]

https://twitter.com/marcusdipaola/status/738572899808743424

so these violent criminals are offended that trump referred to them as violent criminals? protesters are the worst. they should just make it illegal. they're annoying and don't change anything

[Iceman]

while we're at it let's get rid of the other elements of democracy too.

[givecigstosurfgroms]

  Oh man WallieD might be a typical American .  I said it at the beginning of the thread trump is going to win.  I wish more democrats had gotten behind Bernie.

[Eric ricks]

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This attack on a female Trump supporter was freaking brutal: https://twitter.com/SaraMurray/status/738559069737222144

Some people on the left are being counterproductive in their protests.

[close]

https://twitter.com/marcusdipaola/status/738572899808743424

[close]

so these violent criminals are offended that trump referred to them as violent criminals? protesters are the worst. they should just make it illegal. they're annoying and don't change anything

I hope that was a joke???

[wallieD]

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This attack on a female Trump supporter was freaking brutal: https://twitter.com/SaraMurray/status/738559069737222144

Some people on the left are being counterproductive in their protests.

[close]

https://twitter.com/marcusdipaola/status/738572899808743424

[close]

so these violent criminals are offended that trump referred to them as violent criminals? protesters are the worst. they should just make it illegal. they're annoying and don't change anything

[close]

I hope that was a joke???

you like these pesty protesters that sucker punch people?

[perverted super otaku!]

dude... do you like skaters who punch people? no? want to ban skating?. To ban people from gathering and saying stuff you don't or maybe even do like is extremely fucked up(like China fucked up), and yes violent protesting is already illegal, but not because of the protesting part, but because assault and destruction of property are illegal in general.

[wallieD]

dude... do you like skaters who punch people? no? want to ban skating?. To ban people from gathering and saying stuff you don't or maybe even do like is extremely fucked up(like China fucked up), and yes violent protesting is already illegal, but not because of the protesting part, but because assault and destruction of property are illegal in general.

just face it....protesters are normally lame ass hipsters trying to get on camera. then a bunch of reckless people decide to go just to have fun fucking things up. they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them at the new mexico rally. what have they done at  trump rallies besides make themselves look bad? when do they change anything? if they knew they could be arrested just for protesting most of this crap would be avoided

[perverted super otaku!]

Yeah and what often happens in those kind of authoritarian societies? massacres, death squads, secret police, gulags and often ultimately civil war, revolution or the collapse of the state. The right to protest is one of the pillars of modern democracy and it's that way for a reason. If you feel that way whatever, but it's not going to change anytime soon, and if you get into politics to try to change it I don't think you would have much success.

[chuck d]

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dude... do you like skaters who punch people? no? want to ban skating?. To ban people from gathering and saying stuff you don't or maybe even do like is extremely fucked up(like China fucked up), and yes violent protesting is already illegal, but not because of the protesting part, but because assault and destruction of property are illegal in general.

[close]

just face it....protesters are normally lame ass hipsters trying to get on camera. then a bunch of reckless people decide to go just to have fun fucking things up. they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them at the new mexico rally. what have they done at  trump rallies besides make themselves look bad? when do they change anything? if they knew they could be arrested just for protesting most of this crap would be avoided

So these people who went and broke laws (they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them), would not have broken these laws if we made another law that made them just being there a violation? Yeah, that's probably right, just like how trespassing laws stop criminals from breaking and entering, and burglarizing homes.

[wallieD]

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dude... do you like skaters who punch people? no? want to ban skating?. To ban people from gathering and saying stuff you don't or maybe even do like is extremely fucked up(like China fucked up), and yes violent protesting is already illegal, but not because of the protesting part, but because assault and destruction of property are illegal in general.

[close]

just face it....protesters are normally lame ass hipsters trying to get on camera. then a bunch of reckless people decide to go just to have fun fucking things up. they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them at the new mexico rally. what have they done at  trump rallies besides make themselves look bad? when do they change anything? if they knew they could be arrested just for protesting most of this crap would be avoided

[close]

So these people who went and broke laws (they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them), would not have broken these laws if we made another law that made them just being there a violation? Yeah, that's probably right, just like how trespassing laws stop criminals from breaking and entering, and burglarizing homes.

yeah those guys would casually push dumpsters in to horses and throw fire at them just walking down the street on a normal day....... they obviously feel safe in numbers. sometimes you guys side with the dumbest shit on here.

[chuck d]

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dude... do you like skaters who punch people? no? want to ban skating?. To ban people from gathering and saying stuff you don't or maybe even do like is extremely fucked up(like China fucked up), and yes violent protesting is already illegal, but not because of the protesting part, but because assault and destruction of property are illegal in general.

[close]

just face it....protesters are normally lame ass hipsters trying to get on camera. then a bunch of reckless people decide to go just to have fun fucking things up. they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them at the new mexico rally. what have they done at  trump rallies besides make themselves look bad? when do they change anything? if they knew they could be arrested just for protesting most of this crap would be avoided

[close]

So these people who went and broke laws (they threw fire at police horses, and pushed dumpsters in to them), would not have broken these laws if we made another law that made them just being there a violation? Yeah, that's probably right, just like how trespassing laws stop criminals from breaking and entering, and burglarizing homes.

[close]

yeah those guys would casually push dumpsters in to horses and throw fire at them just walking down the street on a normal day....... they obviously feel safe in numbers. sometimes you guys side with the dumbest shit on here.

The dumbest shit, like Amendment I [Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition (1791)]

You honestly think people willing to assault police officers would not assemble if assembly were illegal?

[Tracer]

The police frequently dress in all black and start burning cop cars/ provoking the crowd...Atleast in Canada that's how they do it