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Comment by lijogdfljk | Hacker News Reader

Conversely, it also seems to be how capitalist designs work.

I ask: What designs actually help the working class?

Democratic socialism seems to be the label for the best mix of elements we've founds so far.

"Capitalism" doesn't mean "anything to do with markets", and tells you exactly who it's for right there in the name. Capitalism vs. not letting free markets exist to any substantial degree, is a false choice. Relying on that label as if approaches that aren't at least pretty close to what the US does are all diametrically opposed to capitalism and necessarily share nothing with it, is a way to end up arguing over things that aren't real and don't matter.

None, because you can't get around markets even if you try to regulate them out of existence. As seen in the article countries with good unemployment benefits also have higher rates of unemployment during normal times. And don't forget every job being outsourced to China/Vietnam/Africa.

If you confiscated all of Jeff Bezos' net worth you'd get something like $1000 for each American, once.

The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.

> The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.

This is just trickle down economics. The same catchphrase as "grow the pie to share it".

It simply fuels money to the rich as well, in a larger proportion than to workers. We are actually experiencing the results of 40 years of that ideology and it doesn't look pretty.

Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization.

We haven't had real economic growth in the US since the 70's when deindustrialization first began. If you discount by the real estate market's return instead of CPI you have negative or flat real growth. CPI includes a lot of goods that are long run deflationary like TVs, food, and cars.

I'd point you to China for an example of what "rising tide lifts all boats" actually looks like. And to add to that - it matters a lot what kind of growth is driving GDP increases. If you're just powering growth by increasing immigration (aka working population) that's not increasing per-capita GDP.

> Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to support civilization.

Again, depends what kind of growth you're talking about.

> "grow the pie to share it"

Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war.

> Wealth redistribution has never worked in history. In every case where it has occurred there has been a flight of capital leading to underinvestment and poverty, or war.

What do you classify as wealth redistribution?

"Wealth redistribution has never worked in history."

Are you sure about that? Do we still have kings and barons owning entire states as personal property?

Maybe not, but we have no better a system than ancient Rome where votes were bought by wealthy politicians from the upper class. But even if you limit examination to recent history:

- apartheid South Africa land redistributions led to "most of the farms [failing]" [1]

- Great Leap Forward in China confiscated huge amounts of wealth from landowners, gave it to the government and peasants, and caused massive famine

- "There is no wealth to distribute" in Venezuela [2]

- USSR literally killed millions by forcing individual farmers to work in large scale collective farms

- socialist reforms in other Latin American states coincided with periods of economic stagnation

I will also leave you with this link [3] to a breakdown of Swedish government tax revenues. You'll see the majority comes from taxes on labor and products (VAT) rather than taxes on capital and corporate revenue. So even in so-called democratic socialist states there is not a lot of wealth redistribution happening.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-nov-21-la-fg-so... [2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/7/8/there-is-no-wealt... [3]: https://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-policy/revenue-statistics-swede...

One need only to look at san fransisco to see how a rising tide lifts some boats but drowns many because there is no incentive to lift all boats, and all the incentives in the world to make sure a favorable few boats are lifted so very high

You wouldn't even get $1000 per person because confiscating Bezos's wealth involves no significant re-allocation of actual resources.

You just bump inflation up for a quarter and then everything goes back to normal.

A rising tide may lift boats that were sound and seaworthy to begin with.

If your economic boat has holes in it then a rising tide will drown you.

There are always people left behind by the rising tide. Sometimes you have to focus on fixing the boat instead of waiting for the tide.

All designs help those in power

Universal Basic Income.

UBI has the potential to shift the cost of ubi into everything else, then you are back to the starting point

This is not very great logic. People try and argue the same about minimum wage and it falls in its face, because economists who practice critical thinking note that when minimum wage has been raised historically, inflation generally did not follow.

After reading about the history and impact of minimum wages it is a policy that I vehemently oppose. Minimum wage started in most places as a way to price a group of workers out of the market so some other group could keep their jobs at the pay they liked. Additionally, minimum wage fails to deliver on its promise of helping low income groups. It makes less jobs available to low skill workers making it more difficult to acquire skills that would increase the pay they could demand. Finally, as with any price fixing scheme a black market arises. This would be cash under the table type jobs. What is wrong with two people agreeing on a price for some work that is below what some far away bean counter thinks is acceptable?

I wonder what exactly you’ve been reading or get to this conclusion.

A few years ago I would have wondered the same thing. After reading Basic Economic by Thomas Sowell I searched for more information to counter the book's claims on minimum wage. In the end I came to the conclusion that Sowell is right. Minimum wage is a net negative in society. Minimum wage is harmful to the low income groups the policy is supposed to help.

Example of job protection origins:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriesheffield/2014/04/29/on-t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_193...

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl...

Australia protecting jobs from Chinese workers pg 17

British Columbia protecting jobs from "Asiatics" pg 68

South Africa protecting jobs from "colored" workers pg 74

Index it to inflation. Increase taxes on the rich to pay for it. Replace a ton of other costly-to-administer social programs too.

Available jobs with no unemployment recourse.

War (taking place somewhere else, that you're winning)

That seems like a zero sum game. For you to be winning there has to be an similar working class somewhere that is losing.

Outside the problem definition