For many people, economic history appears to begin with the New Deal, when FDR willed the middle class into existence with a chicken in every pot.
A moment's thought should convince you that commerce antedates redistribution, wage floors, etc. Prosperity doesn't require a collectivist thumb on the scales.
Re:CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better
by michaelmrose on Monday August 10, 2020 @02:35PM
(#24112497)
Can you point out the capitalist paradise where prosperity for the many doesn't require such a thumb on the scale?
It certainly isn't the US where in fact said thumb is presently pressed firmly on that scale via social security, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, tanif, section 8 and so forth.
You are right to point out that such places don't exist. But it's worth remembering that the US was wealthy (and increasingly so) long before Keynes dressed up playground fairness as an academic discipline. Rich societies enable the existence of big government, not the other way around.
Re:CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better
by nouveaux on Monday August 10, 2020 @06:22PM
(#24114759)
Prior to Keynes, the US built it's wealth on slave labor. The cost for human rights is high.
There is a strong consensus among economic historians that slavery didn't move the needle that much. Cotton production was perhaps 5% of GDP. The slave stock constituted perhaps 15% of national wealth.
Re:CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better
by michaelmrose on Monday August 10, 2020 @08:52PM
(#24116077)
Slavery wasn't an evenly distributed affair.
In the same fashion society needs people that make enough money to meet their basic needs like food and medicine so that they may spend their additional funds on higher margin items that actually keep Walmart afloat.
Businesses and the wealthy people that own them are vastly the beneficiaries of such policies as maintain a healthy functional society in the same way as they benefit from roads but for any given business if they can shirk their share they can keep the difference so they are incentivized to forget.
It is strange that you consider paying their share a gift rather than a due. It seems worshiping economics is a barrier to understanding it.