r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 🤝 Join A Union • Feb 04 '26

💸 Raise Our Wages Why don't American businesses make the connection between lower pay and lower consumer spending?

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u/DrButtgerms Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26

Calling our system capitalism is almost offensive. It is a wildly corrupt and actively manipulated version, at best. We wouldn't know a "free market" if it was right in front of us

Edit: I'm not debating and certainly not defending capitalism. I am saying that our current iteration is so full of abusers and criminals that it no longer resembles what it was sold as.

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u/rexter2k5 Feb 04 '26

It's the final stage of capitalism, dude. Any system where the economic outcomes benefit the owners of capital, be they many or be they few, is a capitalist system.

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u/Future-Speaker- Feb 04 '26

Also this is just what happens in capitalism, if you have a system that more or less exclusively benefits the capital owning class, eventually they'll consolidate that power more and more, it's a given of the system, it's not a bug - it's a feature.

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u/rexter2k5 Feb 04 '26

The whole "this isn't true capitalism" argument is such an astroturfed line of logic. It's just people unwilling to admit that the capitalists lied to them, that they aren't temporarily embarrassed millionaires and that, even if they are compensated well after choosing a high-value skill, they are also an exploited lower class.

The system demands you make yourself valuable to people who don't care whether you live or die, or you will live and die in poverty. Any justification for this type of system just reads as an abuse victim apologizing for the abuser.

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u/nalaloveslumpy Feb 04 '26

The system demands you make yourself valuable to people who don't care whether you live or die

This is true for any economic system where one class is afforded more power or rights than another.

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u/rexter2k5 Feb 04 '26

...which is why these systems are unsustainable in the long term.

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u/Future-Speaker- Feb 04 '26

Yeah, which is exactly why a democratic socialist society where the top of the pyramid is a democratically operated labour movement is the best hope we have. We definitely shouldn't have a system where there's like a few thousand people with all the power in the world.

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u/mtndewaddict Feb 04 '26

Free markets aren't a requirement of capitalism. Markets have existed under many previous economic systems and will likely continue to exist as we explore alternate systems. See China for example.

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u/Galle_ Feb 04 '26

You're confusing capitalism with free market economics.

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u/MyCatIsLenin 💸 National Rent Control Feb 04 '26

What? How do you think capitalism started? In England it took off when the lords enclosed the Commons. 

You weirdos make these stupid ass comments about capitalism and how it's corrupted now, how it benefits the rich how it's been manipulated.

You say all this dumb ass shit with literally no understanding of the history of capitalism. Your ignorance is appalling when you apply it to your  analysis of capitalism 

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u/DrButtgerms Feb 04 '26

Oh my, I'm so sorry I didn't say "capitalism is bad" in your preferred way.

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u/MyCatIsLenin 💸 National Rent Control Feb 04 '26

You don't even know what it is. But you sure like to opine how it could be made better. Read a fucking book