When, exactly, was American capitalism about anything other than extracting maximal value from labor?
1. pay workers extra (ie. above the market rate)
2. workers are richer now
3. they use that money to buy the stuff you make
4. ???
5. profit!
Has this actually been studied empirically? If you had to choose between paying your workers $1000 more and pocketing it, surely the latter option is the better one? Sure, they might use some of that money to buy your product, but they're not going to spend all of it, and after your own costs (eg. cost of goods sold), you're going to end up with less than $1000? How is that extracting "maximum value from said labor"?
We’re going to lose this fight to these countries because our country cannot for a second think outside of squeezing the living hell out of a stagnantly growing 350 million person population. That’s why they squeeze you on home mortgages, rent, cars, salary, everything. They are squeezing because they see no fucking growth and that’s all these people understand. If the population isn’t scaling horizontally, they have no other creative ideas. It is unimaginable to them that an enriched 350 million Americans is as potent as a billion person population. We will actually go to your stupid diner and drop 50+ every week. Why are these people so fucking scared?
And how did they achieve it? By paying workers luxurious wages? The whole reason they're successful was that they industrialized and offered labor cheaper than the west, and the west outsourced labor to them. "Henry Ford, capitalist extraordinaire, famously paid his workers $5 a day, double the average automaker's wage at the time" has nothing to do with that's happening there.
My wife just left a manufacturing company because of the latter attitude, and they're fucked, because she was the only person left who could operate a 50s era prototype machine (that happens to make the only dry test slides in the world).
I'm fully aware this is anecdotal, but if that company had treated workers well, they wouldn't have to be asking people to come out of retirement to operate a machine. That's a loss of value for them.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...
Capitalism as a zero-sum game is myopic at best. Based on your comment I wouldn't be totally surprised to hear some esoteric argument to support the economic wisdom behind chattel slavery.
Civilization was created by people working together to survive, and then thrive. Throughout history it has been captured by strongmen annd enabled by fear. The US forgot the face of its father and started to concentrate on "Shareholder Value" insanity after Marshall Plan.
Pirate Equity firms swoop in and start dismantling all that was built for quick profits, not only destroying communities, but eliminating proficiency in all types of industry.
Do you think that pattern is valid, moral and what you'd want to achieve as an entrepreneur? I am curious and not trying to attack, is this the kind of idea you'd want promulgated into the future? How can that lead somewhere positive?
Very civilized era.