Bwahahaha! Progressives in EU try to tell Reality how it works

Posted by $ blarman 5 years, 1 month ago to Economics
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I wasn't sure whether to put this under humor or economics. Its hysterical that these people think that capitalism is the problem.

“If we don’t invent a new capitalism, absurd economic solutions will win over and sweep us straight into recession’’

What they should be realizing is that it isn't capitalism they are criticizing, but the social welfare state which is drowning them. This is evident because the goals are:

"His grand ambitions also involve combating income-inequality, empowering governments to intervene in the economy, and forcing companies to be socially responsible and share more of their profits with workers."

So your solution to the crapitalism you practice is to add more government crap to the equation? That sounds like a winning strategy - in your own mind. How about you try it while I pull up the popcorn and watch your nation melt down into another Venezuela!
SOURCE URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-17/france-s-message-for-capitalism-is-quite-simple-adapt-or-die?cmpid=BBD031819_BIZ


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  • 11
    Posted by TheOldMan 5 years, 1 month ago
    "income-inequality"
    There's that imbecilic phrase again. Please explain to me why a neuro-surgeon who put in over a decade of hard-core education and training should earn only as much as a retail clerk? Politics of envy all over again.
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 5 years, 1 month ago
      I wish you had used an example other than the self-legislated, self-aggrandizing, under-performing medial profession. Retail clerk is fine. A janitor actually has skills.
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      • Posted by TheOldMan 5 years, 1 month ago
        There's that imbecilic phrase again. Please explain to me why an engineer who put in four years of hard-core education should earn only as much as a retail clerk? Politics of envy all over again. (BTW as for neuro-surgeons, wait until you need one and you may agree that the surgeon was worth it.)
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        • Posted by $ Thoritsu 5 years, 1 month ago
          Which phrase set you off? I am an engineer, so certainly won’t argue that example.

          I understand your point, in general. I just note that doctors, more than others use government to establish a monopoly and inflate their wages. Doctors self accredit and self select how many there will be. Few other professions get away with that. Perhaps one can argue ASME boiler codes, civil engineering building codes and the NEC are similar for engineers, but they not self-regulated monopolies.

          With regard to “wait until I need one”, don’t go there with me. I had a bicuspid aortic valve, in my 30s, playing soccer competitively at any level. I was offered two options by a couple a cardiologists and surgeons. I didn’t like either, so I did my own research. After some evaluation, I found the Ross Procedure, developed for children. It looked perfect. My cardiologist had not heard of it. Found a doctor that did it and interviewed him (he was great). Interviewed a doctor (Cheif of Cardiac Surgery at Yale) recommending a mechanical valve (recommended for young patients). He tried to talk me out of it, but his reasons were not sound, just noise. I cross checked his arguments with the first guy, and found them very silly. I went with the Ross Proceedure. I was back playing soccer in 8 minutes weeks. I still play, 20 years later. No drugs, no reoperation, no issues. If I had left it to the great and powerful doctor government-forced monopoly, I would have a mechanical valve, and be a hemophiliac on Coumadin the rest of my life. (There are no hemophiliac “Thor’s”).
          Then I went through two hip surgeries, similar, but not as bad. (Of course now I have a nurse as a wife and an very successful orthopedic surgeon as my brother in-law to help advocate for me).
          Now I’m having a similar issue with a foot surgery to the heart surgery.

          Doctors are useful. There is no way it takes eight years plus residency to learn what most of them do. This is just professional hazing. Their AMA self certifying, monopoly is one problem with health care cost. They are NOT good critical thinkers.
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          • Posted by TheOldMan 5 years, 1 month ago
            Engineer here as well. AFAIK hemophiliacs do not use Warfarin, Warfarin is a VK antagonist that prevents clotting. I'll be on Warfarin for the next 40 yrs or I keel over, whichever comes first :-). My primary missed my gathering PE storm and I ER'd, then cardiac care for a while so some critical thinking would have been helpful. Yes the AMA is a guild and for many things, 6-8 yrs of ed are not necessary. You may note that there is a move towards allowing non-MDs to do more routine medical stuff (of course the AMA is against that just like the UAW requires a union electrician to change a light bulb). If a retail clerk drops a sweater on the floor, no big deal. If a ns is off by 1/8", you can lose the ability to create any new memories; happened to one of my uncles.
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            • Posted by $ Thoritsu 5 years, 1 month ago
              Perfect! So many engineers are Libertarians. My point about Coumadin was that I would have had to be on it, and that would give me have characteristics of a hemophiliac, which is really not good for a guy that smashes himself continuously.
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              • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                I have a buddy who is a natural hemophiliac and he's almost uninsurable. He has to be extremely careful in just about everything he loves to do - from hunting to amateur radio - because even the smallest scratch or scrape can be life-threatening to him. He has a couple of bags of clotting agent in his fridge and never goes far without one just in case.
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                • Posted by $ Thoritsu 5 years, 1 month ago
                  Definitely worse. Not intended to demean that condition.

                  I was just reading about AgNO3 as a cauterizing agent.
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                  • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
                    No intent inferred! I appreciate your lucid examples!

                    So is that silver nitrate or silver nitrite? I always forget which is NO2 and which is NO3... Chemistry was not my favorite subject...
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                    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 5 years, 1 month ago
                      Love chemistry. Yes silver nitrate. NO2 is really nitrous oxide (laughing gas and go-fast for cars).

                      I have a theif swiping quarters (for soda) from my office. I was looking to get some indelible evidence who it is. Silver Nitrate causes the fats in your skin to turn black, and they can’t be removed. Just have to wait for skin to wear off.
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  • 10
    Posted by Lucky 5 years, 1 month ago
    France-
    The nation that gave us the word entrepreneur and Frédéric Bastiat, author of
    the broken window fallacy, and candlemakers seek protection against the sun.
    etc.

    File under- Tragedy.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 5 years, 1 month ago
    And Bloomberg is the mouthpiece for socialist, statist rubbish - as usual.
    He became a billionaire by capitalizing on his "pull" in the carefully constructed bankster cartel. Of course, Bloomberg preaches ways to destroy any semblance of free market competition. Only his godly kind can make decisions for everyone else, and impoverish everyone else with every decision.
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  • Posted by mshupe 5 years, 1 month ago
    The best quote was "absurd economic solutions will win over and sweep us straight into recession." This little turd doesn't know he's condemning himself because all of their economic solutions are by definition absurd and fail.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      That's because he sees himself as an elite and therefore not subject to the same rules as everyone else. It's self-delusion that somehow begins to affect people who acquire political power.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 5 years, 1 month ago
    We Need to get GOVERNMENT and POLITICS OUT of Business! Businesses need to compete!!!
    NO MORE LOBBIES...NO MORE UNIONS...NO MORE POLITICAL COLLUSION'S!

    As for inequality...Mark Hamilton had a plan that would make every employee an entrepeneur and take a share of the profits...the business would be divided up into profit making units and the CEO's would be required to know all parts of the business and create value as well.

    The other problem is Education...kids have No skills, no knowledge and no ambition...that Has to Change.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      I saw this work to tremendously profitable effect at Hewlett-Packard. When Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were running the show, every employee of the company was entitled to a profit-sharing check every quarter based on company earnings. It was also no small surprise that their stock was splitting every other year. That profit-sharing went to everyone - even down to a janitor who was a friend of the family.

      Then management changed hands and one of the first things that went out the door was profit sharing for the peons. Only managers were eligible and the overall payout was much smaller. Only a couple of years later and it was further restricted just to Vice Presidents and up. And during this time we began to see productivity at HP decrease. Ingenuity also decreased because the new management changed the rules on how IP worked and fewer engineers were getting credit for their patented work (another family friend had nine patent plaques on his office wall). And pretty soon, instead of being ranked the best place in the world to work, they weren't on the top 100.

      I'm a big believer that if you want a company with great employees who are willing to push business forward, incentivize them based on overall profitability. When employees are putting green in their pockets, they'll also be putting money in yours as the owner. You can also bet that they won't put up with safety violations, crude language toward co-workers, harassment, or anything else because they will have a personal stake in the outcome. And its amazing what that little something can do.
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  • Posted by MikePusatera 5 years, 1 month ago
    Where is the logic in blaming Capitalism for their problems. Capitalism is barely practiced in America. The American government has watered it down so much with 75 years of socialist laws. It is practiced no where else in the world. Yet somehow it has caused all of these countries their problems. Wouldn't make sense for a country to blame it's own current economic system if it is unhappy with it's economic situation?
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      Its because they have intentionally redefined capitalism to be something more convenient for them to argue against. It is the quintessential straw man argument.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 5 years, 1 month ago
    The absurd thing is that the ideas to supposedly "fix" capitalism are a result of class envy, but not of the lower class/upper class kind. It's the greedy rich who have already made it to the top, and have anointed themselves as the new nobility. These elites want to make sure that none who are presently beneath them rise in the ranks. That is the obscene smear on capitalism as they want it practiced, because class mobility is the strength of the free market. Those who innovate and produce efficiently are rewarded by a natural progression up the ranks of wealth, and those who lose interest or don't put enough effort into their practice are penalized by dropping down the ladder of prosperity.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      Yes. It is the socialist mentality of everything being a zero-sum game. The capitalist rejects the notion of the zero-sum game and looks for win-win scenarios rather than only win-lose ones.
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  • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
    What is "new capitalism"?

    "France is sounding an alarm for the world’s advanced economies": capitalism is tearing them apart.

    President Emmanuel Macron and his Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire are using France’s presidency of the Group of Seven to argue that the system fuels inequality, destroys the planet and is ineffective at delivering goals in the public interest. The country has already experienced some of the fallout firsthand in the Yellow Vest movement that erupted late last year."

    Macron is the worst puppet to deliver on his masters' edict. Which is globalism. He loved Obama now in a bind to find a way out of destruction.

    He thinks he can sell that it is capitalism which is at fault not the ingrained socialist rules France is well known for.
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    • Posted by $ 5 years, 1 month ago
      That's because France hasn't ever really been a capitalist nation. They were a monarchy until the revolution, a socialist state until WW II, an occupied nation until the end of WW II, then right back to socialism. If they were to really give capitalism a shot, I think they'd find that they liked it.
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      • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
        "If they were to really give capitalism a shot, I think they'd find that they liked it."

        Macron will make sure it's never going to happen.

        Thinking of it: the French have been electing these nitwits like Holland and Macron. They have to eat the cake they wanted.
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  • Posted by exceller 5 years, 1 month ago
    It is very simple, and I am sure everyone who has an independent mind sees it.

    Macron does not fit.

    The European elite was attempting to pull an Obama in France.

    Same global backing. except that the US had the buffer to tolerate a Marxist nitwit which apparently is too much of a strain for a country like France.

    Macron will disappear in the archives of history, but for the time being he serves the EU bureaucrats like the drunken Juncker well.
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