Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Stossel: Inequality Myths" video.

100% agree. But that will never happen as long as the wealthy can buy the politicians, the law, and business.
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It absolutely DOES come at my expense past a certain point. If you manufacture something that costs 75 cents to manufacture, and you sell it for a dollar, that's fine. But if your shareholders demand 20% more profit, but the market will not allow you to charge more than a dollar, where do you think that profit comes from? the workers. Companies have squeezed their employeees to below a living wage, and now that they cannot extract any more from them, they are replacing them with foreign labour who will do more for less. And even as they are doing so, they are looking to replace THEM with robots. You are living in a fantasy world if you think a truly free market will ever be equitable. That's why all the advanced economies and intelligent nations on the planet limit corporate behaviour. It's also why America is a shithole of rampant greed and extreme poverty.
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SirVixIsVexed The poor ARE poorer because the rich have all the money. They get it by exploiting the poor and once they have it, they get to write the laws.
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Facile, simplistic, and trite. It has as much value as saying "The best way not to get shot is to not get shot."
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Rand was a fuckwit. Why would any intelligent person quote... Oh. I'm sorry.
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SirVixIsVexed Rand was the worst kind of Liberrtarian. Libertarianism is such an intellectually and morally bereft idology, that if you thinkone of its most famous proponents was wise, then you're pretty much beyond reason already.
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@jeffersonianideal You were the idiot who posted a facile Ayn Rand quote. It's not my job to explain it; merely to point out that it is as facile as Rand was selfish and ignorant.
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@destinal_in_reality I understood the sentiment. And it's still facile. It's like pointing to a man who has ALREADY been sentenced to life imprisonment and telling him that he should make something of his life.
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You're so full of shit Stossel. The wealthy get to control the destiny of the poor. The wealthy get opportunities that the poor don't get. They can bribe or buy their way out of trouble. They can avoid being held accountable. They can buy politicians. They can get laws made in their favour, and a medical disaster does not wipe their entire life savings out. Do you think the poor get to stash their money in offshore tax havens? Whilst the biggest companies can make billions, pay ZERO taxes and then get tax REFUNDS, the poor will be imprisoned if they don't pay THEIR taxes. And don't give me this shit about rising wealth for all. Amazon, Walmart and McDonalds are all wealthy by payng less than a living wage. Meanwhile the poor actually subsidise these companies. And so fucking what HOW Bezos or Zuckerburg got wealthy? Now they ARE, theyu game the system like the best of them. You and your type are a fucking plague and the sooner the planet is cured of you, the better off it will be.
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"Wealth justly acquired is not evil" No such thing. Show me a billionaire and I'll show you a sociopath who cheated and robbed and crushed his way to the top.
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@d4n4nable Sociopathy has nothing to do with envy idiot.
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@jfangm You use the word "deserving," leaning upon the idea of some kind of rights or natural law. Either people have rights or they do not. In your world view, they have no rights, and with no rights, they have no obligation, and no duty to comply with the social expectations that you would impose. Not really sure why you diverted into a discussion about your qualifications and technical skills. It certainly didn't help your point. You seem to think that ALL the power should lie in the hands of your employers, and that your track record of competence is what gives your employment value. That's naive. Don't believe me? Ask the thousands of other CAD experts who are out of work because their employers replaced them with cheap labour from India, Singapore and the Philippines. In your world view, that's 100% acceptable because the employer is the one with all the cards, and the fact that even THOSE low cost labourers will one day be replaced by AI computers is just fine. In your world view, eventually NOBODY will be in employment, and then what?
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SirVixIsVexed I shouldn't even need to explain to any intelligent person why libertarianism is a joke, but okay. Rand does not believe in the value of altruism and believes instead, contrary to the example of parents, the power of unions, and the collective defensive might of nation states, that selfishness is the only pure and sensible standard by which to live. She stupidly conflates biological or evolutionary selfishness with social selfishness. She believed that altruism was at odds with capitalism, and that the two could not coexist. She saw altruism as a constraint within which individuals were always sacrificed to the will of the collective, seeing collectivists as little more than drones within a termite nest. Most stupidly, she believed that altruism was the domain of societies too ignorant to exist without savagery, and that in higher societies we could exist without it because we somehow supressed the excesses of human nature, living selfishly, yet within self-imposed boundaries. This of all her pathetic, childish beliefs is the greatest weakness, reflected in modern Libertarianism - the belief that society will somehow self regulate both financially and in terms of the application of physical might, settling into a utopia in which anyone who wishes to work may arise and forge their future on an equal footing. All of history demonstrates that the less oversight, the greater the likelihood that the powerful will arise to take advantage of everyone beneath them to their own detriment. Rand died in poverty, an abject hypocrite, depending upon social security AND medicaid to provide for her treatment as she died of terminal lung cancer.
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@jabibgalt5551 I've just typed a long post in this thread that does exactly that.
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@jfangm The only people who believe such things are selfish children who think that they can somehow exist entirely on the merits of their own labour, taking nothing, nor needing anything beyond that which they can personally earn. Mankind's greatest achievement was to rise beyond such savage, child-reasoning, towards communal living that amplified the power of each member beyond the labours of his own hands. Ironically, the poster child for libertarianism, Ayn Rand, herself died in poverty and squallor.
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@jfangm "nor have any any need for anything I cannot earn." Not yet you don't. Wait till your business fails, or goes out of fashion, or you become too sick or old to work. "savings" you'll doubtless retort. Health insurance will only take you so far, and those bastards are constantly working to limit the return on your investment. Try a long term condition, or a preexisting condition when you get kicked off your plan, or having to support your parents. There's a million ways the carefully managed financial future you think you have can disappear in a heartbeat thanks to circumstances beyond your control. I'm not sure why you threw objectivism into the mix. I'm not sure what it has to do with our discussion. But I don't care if 90% of the planet embraced libertarianism. I have absolute contempt for the rationality of the masses so why would I care about something simply because lots of people embraced it? Lots of people embrace bigotry - does that make it right?
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@artemiasalina1860 The people who create wealth are the workers. The company owners are simply the conductors. Yes, they often invest as well, and for that reason, they are entitled to a much larger share of the pie, but not as much as they take at the expense of those who do the real work. "The poorest people in the US live like royalty compared to any socialist country" Nonsense. Most of Europe is socialist by the US definition, and at least half of us has a higher standard of living, score higher on the happiness index, and get to keep more of their money than America's middle class, let alone its poor. America is ALREADY a third world shithole. Any country where the life expectancy is falling, wages in real terms are falling, political system is totally in the pay of corporations and special interests, and where more than half of you would not be able to cope with a $400 emergency, is not somewhere any civilised person would want to live. But you're like frogs in a slowly heating pan. You're utterly delusional. Your view of socialism just does not comprt with reality.
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@destinal_in_reality Hmmm, so near yet so far. The libertarian fantasy of a free market where market forces are the only control has failed time and again and has NEVER once been demonstrably successful. America right now is as close as it gets in western civilisation, and everywhere that capitalism is allowed to take control, things turn to shit: the environment, business, worker wages, banking. It's literally insane to think taht no regulation whatsoever will somehow produce positive outcomes. The powerfi get more powerful and everybody else gets trampled underfoot for a few hundred years until the poor get sick of it and rise up. Then the cycle repeats.
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@SheevPalpatine66420 Oh the irony.
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SirVixIsVexed No, that's not true simply because it's nonsense. It's the long ago disproven lie of trickle down economics. What happens is, the wealthy feed upon the poor like vampires, extracting as much labour and resources from them and providing as little value as possible. That is the exact nature of corporate capitalism. That value is then extracted from the system and hoarded where it does not value the poor.
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@jfangm "How is that facile, simplistic, and trite? If you don't want to be poor, then stop being poor" Oh my god, you can't SERIOUSLY be this delusional right? How did the rich become successful? Trump inherited millions, Musk came from a massively wealthy family, Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg had the right ideas at the right time. World defining ideas are rare. For most people, simply making rent and/or repaying college loans is financially all-encompassing. income inequality is at all time high. In one city recently highly qualified essential care workers had to live in a tent city because the megawealthy had made it impossible to afford rent in the city where they cared for people. Employment protection laws have been corrupted, and unions actively worked against by employers. Even in those places that HAVE a minimum wage law, the wage is not REMOTELY enough to pay rent, let alone anything else. But yeah "Just stop being poor." SMH.
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@trillianmcmillian2660 I hope so! :D
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@jamiestromberg8671 The fact that you think "free market economics" is in any way dissociated from the rich is laughable. Free market economics is raising prices because you can, just as the fuel and power companies are doing. That is the rich stealing from everybody else. And yeah, landlords quadruple the rents? Just move, and move, and move, and move again, because the people who actually keep the country running and generate all the wealth have no right to live within 500 miles of the jobs they do to make parasites wealthy. And then when the parasites start buying ALL the properties - entire communities, then what? "You have no right to live in any particular state, or in America." Trickle down economics is a fantasy, that has been disproven time and time again. THe acquisition of wealth is a sickness, and once they get it, they don't want to share or pass it on, or let it feed back into the economy. They use it to buy politicians who will enable them to abuse their workers, pay lower taxes, and pay less. And uncle Tom's like you are saying "Yes massa" and voting for the very people who would look at your meagre wealth and take it from you in an instant if they could do so. You've clearly never given 3 second's thought to the garbage you just spouted.
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@allananderson949 "Corporate law is written by government, which is socialist by nature" You can't be serious? Even if government operated as it was intended, under ideal circumstances, it was NEVER socialist in that it never took care of the best interests of all the people. The fact that the US government has been utterly corrupted thanks to Citizens United and big money interests only makes your assertion even less true.
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@jms1963 Big on sarcasm, tiny on counter arguments. Just what I'd expect.
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@macsnafu There is a wealth of evidence to prove the case. Jeff Bezos pays such a low wage to his employees that they require the working class to supplement them in the form of welfare. Same with McDonalds and Walmart. The banks gambled with our money, lost devaluing our saving and homes, and were STILL bailed out with yet more of OUR money and then STILL went on to reward the CEOs with massive bonuses. Big pharma lobbies congress so that politicians make it illegal to buy drugs on the open market. As a result the drug companies gouge the US public so badly that a single medical disaster can permanently reduce an entuire family to poverty. Jeffrey Epstein used his wealth and influence to get child abuse and traffickling charges against him dropped. What working class person has that capacity? Of COURSE wealth is the problem; or rather the influence and power it gets you. Look only at the way that GOP politicians are kneeling to suck Trump's cock simply because he appears to have wealth. That wealth gives him power and he is totally fearless about weilding it, even to subvert the legitimate will of congress. In a rarified, idealised world, the fact that John earns a million dollars a year and his employee Martin earns 25k is not morally or legally wrong so long as Martin can afford to live after doing an honest week's work. But in the real world, far more often than not, one comes at the expense of the other.
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@macsnafu How is there an act of coercion in Bezos refusing to pay his workers? That is HIS choice specifically. Whether his workers are then paid by the state or their family members to make up the deficit the end result is the same. Maybe THAT is where you see the coercion? Do you really believe that the kind of people who work at Amazon are socially mobile and have employment choices? That without state support, they would then find a way to be BETTER off? How would that happen? Of course money is not evil. It's just numbers on a computer, but it's the things that money enables you to do, and the things people are willing to do to acquire excessive amounts of it that are evil. I feel as though yu believe that somehow without a giovernment to corrupt or redistribute the money of the working clas that this evil would somehow cease to exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. In EVERY case that I know of where deregulation has occurred, things have worsened, and why wouldn't they? Why would a sociopath care MORE about the workers if he was not compelled to do so?
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@jfangm "Workers are not entitled to a wage their employer does not think their labor is worth. Simple as that. The employer should be setting the wage, not the government." Workers are entitled to a wage that enables them to pay their bills. Employers almost always tend towards exploitation, not equity. If the workers have invested in their education for a specific trade, they are entitled to recompense for that cost AND effort as well.
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@jfangm I would add, those same employers are now whining that millions of their staff chose NOT to return after covid, when they suddenly realised how much they hated being exploited. The employment market is a balance between how much employers are willing to pay, how desperate they are for labour, how much staff are willing to work for, and how desperate they are for jobs. I couldn't be happier that low income staff are giving their employers the middle finger in unprecedented numbers.
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@jfangm Your second post was so irrational and poorly constructed, I wonder if you even thought about it before typing. "You do not have a right to a wage that is more than what your employer thinks your labor is worth." What if my employer thinks my labour is worth 10 cents an hour? Rights are only grants given by the government - there's no object right to anything, but every 1st world society on the planet (including America largely) has decided that people have a right to a living wage. No, just because lots of people think something doesn't make it right, but you're going to bring more than "Nu uhh" if you want to refute that one. Ultimately, if an employer does not want to value his employees' labour and they are unwilling to work for what he offers, then he has two choices - pay more, or do without labour. No, there is no cognitive dissonance; you simply don't understand nuance and complex propositions. The only time I supported the government paying people not to work was to save lives. Whether those lives are threatened by covid or starvation, is irrelevant. You dishonestly imply that I support the government encouraging dependence, while nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that workers place a value upon their labour which at least enough to cover their bills is not cognitive dissonance, but YOU seem to be confusing work and slavery. Why would ANY person labour when they are financially worse off for doing so? To climb a ladder that doesn't exist?
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Except that 741 people living in Europe huh?
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