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People can be categorized into two categories in economics , from a practical point of view.
• You either provide jobs
• You either do the jobs

The people who does provide the jobs , does have a store capital income that they are looking forward to multiply with passing time. Whereas the working class restlessly works day and night to reach even 1% of that capital class.

I did study about the theory of Marxism in civics but did not know that soon enough in 2020 we will be able to see a real life example of how big the river is between the two communities.

*When people were fighting over toilet papers there were some celebrities using it to prank their household members , this did not only receive a harsh backlash from the society but it also did prove that , as long as you have money, you can live peacefully even when the whole world is burning*

The system needs to be changed, but how ?
• How about , people who are extremely poor are not required to pay the electricity and gas bills for the time being since during pandemic , literally no one has a job , whereas the subsidised bills can be equally divided into the wealthiest class and they be required to pay the same conditioned that it does not take a toll on their monthly income in any way.
[ We are talking about the super poor families here ]
This I literally said is based on the experiment that went on in Delhi few years back , apparently a common man did the maths and literally cut the electricity bills of the people like crazy , some people don't even have to pay bills ! ! It was all based on very accurate calculations plus zero Corruption , thus we can do that ! https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/delhi-govt-free-electricity-scheme-example-smart-governance-arvind-kejriwal-1608003-2019-10-10 (https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/delhi-govt-free-electricity-scheme-example-smart-governance-arvind-kejriwal-1608003-2019-10-10)

Let us consider a developing country like India:
Reason I say this:
Basic necessities should not be paid by the people below the poverty line!!
• Government needs to standardize minimum income rule in all the regions , be it a small village or be it a big city , people work hard irrespective of the place they work in but there is a huge difference in the salaries.
Eg. A person I know works 9-5 job for sake of 40$ , it's a teaching job but considering the school is not in a good location they don't expect them to ask more than that .
- - government needs to make new set of rules where the person be paid at least 100-150$ .

•During a job interview priority must be given to person who is most eligible ofcourse but at the same time the next criterion needs to be the economic situation of the family.

There are a lot of things that can be done right now , we need to make sure that there is no bitter problems between the two classes since sooner or later the conflict might just be the last straw in the pandemic.

Do you think it is Worthy enough to be given a good thought?

- -

When we are talking about a ideal society in terms of capitalism what do you think might work ?
Is the government capable of providing more priority and rights for the working class , or will they just let it slide like that ?

- -

There are labour protection laws no doubt , but I do think their education should be mandatory in the schools . Personally I did not study much about it till college . Kids should be given indepth knowledge of what they should expect irrespective of the class they are going to be in .

Electricity and gas bills should be paid by every citizen whether rich or poor, as long as one uses those services it cannot be free and it's not possible for the wealthy to pay bills for everyone in the country, when they are in the minority. Also those bills are used by the country to raise revenues that will be put back into the economy for it's growth.
Only qualifications should matter in a job interview, the most qualified candidates should get the job.

---

The only way around this issue is taxation, citizens should be taxed based on their wealth and income, the wealthy and high income earners should have a heavier tax to pay, while the poor should pay little tax out of their little income, that way the rich will be contributing more to the overall benefit and development of the country, which will benefit all, including those who are not so rich (poor).

it would look like the wealthy class are the villain and the lower class the heros. No one wants to be poor everyone wants to be comfortable..

This pandemic is a sad event that has affected all class rich or poor it's unfair to force the solution out of them, rather the government can give loan/grant palliatives more to lower class citizens, also the wealthy can be obliged to do more humanitarian assistance.


Government allocation to a place are often based on revenue/returns they get from the place, in term of minimum wages for federal government workers -its similar to every places in my country- but the urban areas has more establishment than the rural areas, and also people move from rural areas to urban areas leaving the rural areas with less opportunity, and revenues. I would like to see more rural areas citizens going self employed and exploring there opportunity where they are.


There are other criteria after eligibility
+ Personal character
+ Experience and more.
 Poor economical situation of the family doesn't make the person the right man for the job, I don't think it should be brought up-its can even become faked/falsified-  

To alleviate poverty the Marxism group must abolish the plutocrat class, forbid private ownership, carry out a provocative investigation of the working class to attack the plutocrat class, create class warfare by spreading malice and hostility. Marx also regards religion and the state as a tool used by the plutocrat class to increase their profits.

When possessions are shared, the order of life will be chaotic. Everyone can just take it. Not caring about people's rights another, because there is no clear boundary between individual rights and collective rights. The state is one of the important institutions that must be involved in poverty alleviation. The state must ensure that agreed values are applied in the economy.


Capitalism will bring disaster because it places too much importance on the interests of individual citizens because it relies on individualism. Whereas collectivism which is the teaching of Marxism, will in fact eliminate the legal rights of individuals who are citizens of the community. People's rights and individual rights should be balanced. Both rely on materialism and use prosperity as an end rather than a tool.



I think as long as there is a misperception of the essence of wealth, the government will not be able to guarantee the welfare of the working class.

There is an economic system that has not yet been implemented, namely the Islamic economic system.

In the Islamic economic system, wealth or wealth is not a goal, but rather a tool, so that the benchmark for the success of the economic system is not the wealth that is obtained but the extent to which the material possessed has benefits in the revolving economy. Islamic Economics encourages every economic actor to always make use of everything he has to fulfill his life's needs but with the values of noble character underlying it. In Islamic economics, resources related to the interests of the people are transferred to the state in order to avoid exploitative use of individuals. On the other hand, individual ownership of economic assets is also justified as long as ownership does not conflict with value. In Islam, everyone does not have to get the same results from one another. Someone who has a business is more justified to get more results as long as the business that is run is still in accordance with the corridor of values not intended for exploitation. But there are zakat instruments in Islam so that the greater the wealth, the greater the value of zakat. It aims to sustain and eliminate poverty and as a form of equity of wealth.

Your thread title is wrong.Marxism theory about capitalism had always made sense.Marx is one of the biggest
minds of the economic theory.What doesn't make sense is the ideology of communism...
OP,you are suggesting the same old socialist policy of "taking from the rich and giving to the poor".It doesn't matter if it's about electricity bills or wealth.Redistribution makes sense,but the rich people can easily avoid paying taxes and move their business overseas.
A job interview is only about the skills of the candidate.Companies are not charity organizations.They should care about the families of their employees,but providing help should be voluntary and not forced by the government.

There are not enough resources on this planet earth that can be equally distributed without making everyone equally poor. Even with socialism, we will find the rich and the poor, and the bad thing is, the work does not determine the distribution, but the society, a.k.a the government.

Whenever I heard Marxism, I'm always thinking about beta males who don't want to compete.

In capitalism, most people are also born without wealth (inheritance), but only a small portion of them can be at the top, and the majority will be poor. It's a combination of hard work, smart work, and luck. It's the distribution of resources based on the competition, and the competition will push civilization forward with the new technology and stuff.

Perhaps I'm more in favor of 99% inheritance tax (than socialism), so the sons of the bitches riches, can only inherit 1% of their father's wealth. It's pure competition with a level playing field.

Minimum wage: it's a bad idea because businesses cannot employ more people into the workforce. Assumed without a minimum wage, a firm can employ two new workers with half of the salary, both will get job training (new skills), and both will get the money, compared to only accept one and leave the other one unemployed.
Job discrimination: it's a bad idea because the fittest should get the job, so productivity will increase.

There are a few theories out there that sounded like some utopian world but the problem is how having the power and control in your hands might make the utopian theory turn into a nightmare as at one point you might be following more of your own ideas than what you initially planned to, and part of the community may not agree with it. There have been some attempts to create utopic societies/communities before but most of them ended up as a failure.

Some of these still existing utopic communities have quite interesting concepts. Nucla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucla#Gun_Laws) has made gun ownership mandatory, for example. Twin Oaks Community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia#Community_businesses) and the East Wind Community (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Wind_Community#Overview) have a pretty interesting way of the community's selection of new members. These are all still alive communities, and they do manage to do the right thing apparently. Only if the entire world agreed to put greed aside and do the same.

When you get the taste of power, there's a quite good probability that you'll only want to earn more power than you already have. Wealth inequality will always exist especially because of this crave for power/control the human mind has. Give a little more wealth to the poor than and they'll almost always be hungry for more. The average person will not understand that if the rich and poor were fair to each other, it would've been much better than 95% working like slaves for the 5%.

The sad thing is, when a real leader comes up with really good ideas, they usually end up shot or assassinated in some other way. Come up as a leader of your country with this kind of mindset and it won't take long before you get taken down through a coup/assassination/whatever else. The poor may be happier with this mindset, but the 5-10% won't and although they're a minority as a number of people, they own the majority of the country's wealth so they are basically under control. They can easily change the real narrative and call you a dictator willing to destroy a country. This is the weak point of the poor.

For example, we had communism in Romania. Although we did go through hard times during the communism, one of the main plans Ceausescu had right before he was killed was to get Romania's debt down to zero. And he managed to do so, 9 months before he.. was taken down from the leadership and killed.

Yes, we had $11B of external debt and he was able to wipe it all. There obviously were a lot of things he did that I would not agree to submit to today, but if one thing was sure, it's that Romania did manage to get their debt all the way to zero and we did have a lot of development.

If at the time our country produced almost anything, today probably >90% of these factories have been either demolished or bought by foreigners. Today we have more freedom, but we do not achieve the things we used to achieve back when communism was here anymore. Probably not even 10% of that. Now we basically only have corruption and the false sense of choice when voting for and electing a new leader.

It honestly feels like we aren't even advancing anymore as a human race. It's mostly just new technology and more poor caused by the small percentage sucking all the wealth out of the middle/lower class. Other than that, remove the technology and you'd find that our society has been stuck at the same level for many decades - or maybe has even regressed, considering my second argument from this paragraph.

Maybe you're living in a country where taxes really are used for the good of the population/country. Give Romania 99% inheritance tax and all you'd really be doing is putting 99% of everyone's wealth in the leaders' pockets with every new generation; I wouldn't mind that much only if at least a part of that money turned into resources to be used for development. But that's surely not the case here.

For god, why did you bring this here? Please stop you make yourself look mentally retarded.
Any left-wing economy is a defective product of the darkness that has emerged from the thoughts of a person who has never worked in his life and lived at someone else's expense.
No one owes you anything just because you exist. The employer should not hire you just because you are POOR or some "oppressed minority" - they need a person who will do well the work for which they are willing to pay. Leave all your Marxist habits for your mother when she refuses to give you pocket money - then tell her about it.

I googled a bit and found that 53% of Romanian prefer living in Ceausescu's regime.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/30/struggling-romanians-yearn-for-communism/

It is quite strange that in Indonesia, many people have similar feelings about dictatorship. They feel living in Soeharto's era was more comfortable than the present age. I have some "theories" about this phenomenon despite it was not communism:

- Happiness is relative to its neighborhood peers (I can't remember what the term in psychology for this effect though): When people are more equal they can't look up and envy what their neighbors have. Conversely, if there are the poor and the rich, the poor will envy the rich. This inequality is the source of dissatisfaction and, therefore, unhappy.
- The dead cannot speak: The 53% probably the one who got benefits from the past regime. What happens to the opposite party? They were slaughtered or assassinated.

In the reality, agree or not. According to me there's no government in the capitalist country really think about the poor. The rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer

arguably a marxist structure for capital would only change the ruling class---from the capitalists to the political/bureaucrat class. workers still wouldn't own the means of production and would be at the mercy of the political class.

some political theories see marxism and especially soviet-style communism as just another form of (anti-market) capitalism. free market theories that also oppose private property are much more interesting to me.


these aren't really marxist ideas---more like welfare statism and democratic socialism.

Yeah, things like that would never happen in a communist country, because there would never be any toilet paper in the stores to begin with (wink-wink to people who actually had to live through socialist regimes).

All this talk about inequality is completely wrong, because inequality isn't inherently wrong - people don't get poor because of others getting rich. This gets proven every time a communist regime gets installed, as the population overall quickly slides into extreme poverty. The twentieth and the current centuries are full of examples that capitalism works and socialism doesn't, but naive people still think that the grass is greener on the other side.

I know that you want them to help and you don't want them to suffer but I hope you could read this. I am from a province in the Philippines and I live in a barangay with a lot of poor people. I am not that rich, not a mid one too but we are doing well compared to them.

People are actually struggling to find a job here not because they can't but because they are comfortable with what they can get. They are earning a minimum and they are actually good with that. We are in a province so that is fine but some of the people in our barangay actually can do better since some of the people here are now working overseas, with their connection they can work under them or work somewhere and live with them but they don't want that.

In terms of help, we have what we call 4Ps, in which poor people will be receiving incentives by helping cleaning our barangay but the thing is they don't look at it as a help, they took it as a job and the money being given to them as their wage. As you expect, people are just waiting for that to happen and don't do that much in their spare time. They are relying on that small amount so much, it is not that bad but I know they could do better.

I know it is risky to work right now but I am observing this in years and years I am living here. They wanted luxurious lives but they don't have the drive to do that and I don't know why. From what you are saying that as rich people just kept on getting richer, I guess that river will be widened more if people are just taking jobs they can and not thinking about what they can do and make their lives better. They'll keep on working under but they didn't know they can work better and earn better than that.

Damn, that is one hell of a word dude. Marxist principle does not work really well in execution because of the people that are in charge vying to have a control over it. In my opinion, that ideology will only will work on small scale because people will surely become tyrant once they realize that they have control over things, I do believe that it will only work if the man in power is someone as virtuous as Jesus or Buddha which means that the ideology will not work unless there is no corruption within someone who wants to lead.

Progress, innovation and advancement in the world. Increasing standards of living. All of it comes from capitalism and the private sector.

Socialist monopolies like NASA could never hope to compete with private sector groups like Space X on an even playing field.

All real scientific and technological progress in the world comes from free market competition between corporations like AMD and Intel.

All of the real efforts to address issues like climate change and reliance on fossil fuels come from corporations like tesla who are forcing automakers to build electric vehicles, while simultaneously pushing battery technology the way it needs to progress in order to reduce reliance on coal, natural gas and oil.

If the world were dominated by global socialism over the past 20 years. We would all still be using computers with less than 64 megabytes of RAM with CPU's that had a clock speed still measured in megahertz.

Marxists often attack capitalism. And never offer a superior alternative. While the alternatives they do offer trend towards being oppressive & repressive.

Marxism theory has been made sense during all time of its existence. However, it doesn't mean that building the communist society is ever possible. Why? There was a historical example. The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. The goal wasn't achieved, in 1991 the USSR was dissolved.

Incorrect.

There are also people that do jobs and also provide jobs. And here we can talk about rich people that still work and about medium class ones too that obviously work, but may need to hire somebody (individual or company) for house keeping, cleaning, food preparation, take care of the children...
And there are also people that don't do job and neither provide - from people in care of others (individuals of country/institution) to rich people that choose to not create businesses.

But actually, at least indirectly, everybody provides jobs.



There are discussions about a global minimum income. There are well fundamented opinions in both directions, from encouraging people just don't work (which in my country already happens in many cases) to the opinion that people who will want a little more than the average will actually work.

I think that giving anything for free is discriminatory for the ones who actually work for that and pay the taxes which are given for free to others.
I think that a system where everybody has a chance to earn is more beneficial for everybody. Reducing the working day from 8h would be a start. Some would work less and still have enough money and some others will work too.

A more fair wage system is also necessary. I don't see as normal that somebody who was able to remember a few lines and got lucky enough to live and work at Hollywood just get paid millions per year for that. And it's
only one of many many examples.


Governments have 2 simple points on their agenda: [1] get access to country's funds so they can fund their own pockets, preferably indirectly so they cannot be caught and [2] get re-elected.
All the rest is way lower on the priorities list.

What we need is:

1. Since we have a global economy, we need a global government. If then there will regional governing units, that's another story.
With one government and same rules for everybody, with same currency, .. things should be better.

2. Since current type of politicians are not of any good, we need something better. The current way of democratic elections are incorrect (you can pick for a small list where the same politicians get visibility over and over again), so we need a different way to get the government, by merit, by projects, by interview, like applying for any job. Of course, like in any job, one can be fired if he doesn't do the job well enough, not only after a number of years.
[The only flaw in this logic is that I don't know who would be capable to fairly pick from the candidates.]


Unfortunately the governing system always favored either the rich, either the governing group (political party, monarchic family, ... name it). Never the one who is fair and poor.

What happened in the year 2020 and make you think that this theory has a meaning?
the facts you talk about happened some time ago and have not changed anything.
The socialist, and Marxist theories all failed to find a single solution for all countries in the world. They may succeed in some countries, but they will not work in many countries.
It is impossible to create equality for all incomes in the world, but it is easy to make the standard of living of all people above the limit of subsistence and extreme poverty.

I think the strengthening support for socialism and Marxism lately is caused by several things including:
- As if the communist and authoritarian countries are more competent in dealing with a pandemic than the capitalist countries here represented by China and America
- The power of socialist propaganda in moving the media to support propaganda so that narratives are directed and public opinion is made to accept that socialists are better than capitalists. Especially in today's online world, many reports are considered true even though their validity and sources are not credible.
- Maybe the OP had read Francis Fukuyama's book that he postponed the end of the history in 2018. Even though in 1992 he published the book the end of history and the last man stand. I know this book because when my wife went to college this was a must read book.


Maybe even distribution of prosperity cannot be achieved with Marxism but Liberalime is considered to cause a wider and even deeper gap between rich and poor.

I wouldn't want to live in a country that practise Marxism in that case.

This is the reason why water supply and energy supply has to be owned by the government not from private entity for profit. If the capitalist won't be able to provide it for free in times like this then the government can intervene because there is no job and income for which the working class will be able to pay for their bills. If its not going to be done its only a matter of time that the people who without electricity to light their homes will revolt. Chaos will inevitable in times like this pandemic.

What actually happened is that with the development of the Internet, it became easier to reach people, so radicals of all sorts, including marxists, are able to spread their propaganda without problems, while in the past newspapers and tv channels could simply refuse to host them.

Another reason why it's on the rise is because the US and Western Europe have never experienced communism, so a lot of their people think that it's a good idea, due to the "the grass is greener on the other side" effect.

Personally I am against when someone doesn't work and gets rewarded. That makes people lazy and loafer. Instead, we have to provide higher education for people and reward system for them. Let's make it happen for everyone to get high quality education in every school and those who will succeed the most, give ability to learn in one of the greatest universities like Oxford, Cambridge and so on.
But no, they won't do it because Governments need uneducated and poor people, it's easier to manage them. When a person hasn't seen a good life, he/she doesn't crave it and is satisfied with the live that they have. That's beneficial for governments, they'll tell you some lies like we will make electricity cheap if you vote us and so on. Higher percentage of people fell into this lie. Did one government broke their promise? No problem, these people will have a hope for another one and it goes endlessly.

Some people have trillions of USD and then they tell us: Oh man, it's bad to print money cause it causes inflation. Then give us your money if you really care on us.

Do billionaires try to help poor people? Yes? Then how are they billionaires? And again, hunger isn't an infection to get affected by it, so they just don't care on poor people but when corona virus came here, they suggest us: Buy face masks, stay (without money) at home to make me feel secure and unaffected by virus, to protect my health.
Sounds hilarious, right? But truth!

There is no really a perfect government system even china had made a huge leap when it comes to economic growth as a communist country. Their huge population and prodictivity brought china into this economic progress as I assume. Their workforce receiving low salary or just enough to make a living or nothing at all since they are provided by their government make sense on why the china products were relatively cheap.

The maxirsm theory on which OP had mention relatively is all about conflict theory on the capitalist and the worker. Karl Marx had pointed out that it could result to revolution to overturn overturn capitalism to which it could be change to communism of government form.

I am not in favor of communism nor the capitalism. Everyone should have the favor to access or has the freedom to get and workout what one wanted like a good house which in communism coulr not be done and property with high value might be confiscated.

In capitalist way of life also will be difficult to the poor since the rich will become richer and poorer will become poorer. The Capitalist compete each other to take the spot on the richest or the largest asset they could have. They do not understand the value of humanity that instead of sharing, they let their employee to starve by giving them low salary.

the internet made radical politics more accessible but i suspect wage stagnation, falling living standards, and the general realization that ordinary people growing up today will never own a home, has more to do with it. we've been on a grim trajectory for many years now---long before the coronavirus pandemic, which is just an accelerant.

my read on generation z is they are much closer to political radicalization than millennials, who are still clinging to their tiny house dreams and robinhood accounts. they more so see the writing on the wall, and they lack the political idealism that rallied millennials behind politicians like obama. i see them becoming increasingly leftist (whereas obama-ites were very centrist) and apolitical in the mainstream sense of electoral politics.


people are also becoming less and less fooled by the conflation of "socialism" or "communism" with the USSR. marxism-leninism and certainly stalinism and maoism are widely viewed on the left as extreme perversions of marxism. and marxism is certainly not the totality of socialist thought either, even if its economic theories have been influential.

While this thread is about marxism, I wasn't only talking about it, because all radical movements are on the rise right now. Far right are getting more support in the US and Europe, which partly can be explained as a reaction to immigration, but that's not all. Mainstream social media really help this radicalism to grow, reddit and twitter have very vocal far-left userbase, Facebook and Youtube's algorithms will bombard anyone who looked at something political with more content from the same political camp. It's very easy join these radical ideologies if all you have to do is just use popular social media platforms - previously you had to find the ideology, now the ideology finds you.


It's just like I said, it's only true for the West, because they don't have a grandma to tell them how it was, so the public opinion can change, especially in the age of social media. Eastern Europe sure isn't warming up to marxism right now.

Marxism is a political doctrine based on the philosophy of materialism. With the orientation of egalitarianism and populism collectivism which is the teaching of Marxism, is absorbed by Marxism-Leninism by removing the legal rights of individuals who are citizens of society. The collapse of the monolithic soviets actually encouraged the development of Marxism apart from Stalinism and became a new school of thought and action that was creative and pluralistic.

The development of Marxism was certainly caused by a high gap between ideality and social reality where poverty and hunger and natural destruction widened, exploitative capitalist power structures and led to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few people making the reality of oppression real, rooted in an economic and political appetite.

The structural approach will lead to an awareness of the importance of analyzing class struggle to establish a truly just society structure. In addition, a pragmatic approach to marxism will remain relevant given the development of capitalism is very crucial, which requires us, to keep sanity so that it is not easy to be moved to superficial issues that are not substantial. This certainly needs to be supported by placing human values as the foundation with Marxism as the method of analysis while the class struggle as a method of struggle.

Any collectivistic doctrine is doomed to fail, for it contravenes the mere human nature. People are egoistic, which is justified by the law of the evolution. Without proper incentives, a collectivistic society cannot reach full productivity and loses to more efficient models.


You have just invented a progressive tax system.


Nice, a business owner in your village counts a new payroll and concludes that the business is not profitable now, so he:

a) drastically raises prices if the business is locally oriented;

b) shuts down all his operations and moves to a region that provides most marginal efficiency in the other case.

Now instead of people who get smaller wages we have a bunch of unemployed. This can only work properly with public institutions.


How are you going to force employers to follow it? There are many anti-discrimination rules that simply don’t work until you set hard quotas.

It is very difficult to eliminate differences in the economy, no matter how well the government regulates the economy. There will always be rich
and poor people, because everyone is different in character and luck. So for those who are hard working, diligent, smart and also lucky, it will
definitely be easy becomes rich. Then the rest will certainly be poor, that is the law of nature. And it keeps happening, and no one can fix it.
So from that we ourselves must choose which one we want to be, if we want to become rich people we must be willing to work hard, work smart
and never give up. If you are lucky it can be achieved in a relatively short time.

To be honest, this is one of the greatest thread i ever read in this section. I am not a marxist but i did always believe in the developed reason of this theory.
However, marx insist in the necessity of the interfer of the government to elaborate the mecanisms of production in the society. But, with the blockchain technology, some principles in the marxcism should be revised, as individuals can take responsability of their own lives without the need of the interfer of any other additional part.

Yes. Disparity in inherited wealth (and in passive income derived from inherited wealth) is a bigger driver of inequality than is disparity in earned income.

I would argue that if you have no minimum wage, then in a system that has unemployment, this will allow employers to drive wages down. An employer in general has zero interest in the standard of living of his employees, rather they just want to get a job done for the lowest cost possible. This is why illegal immigrants are paid below the minimum wage - because there is no barrier to prevent employers from doing so. So long as there is unemployment, the power is with the employers. The converse is only true in specific circumstances such as working-age population depletion after a war.
Secondly, if a minimum wage is in place, then for a company to reduce wage costs they will have to look at reducing the wages of those higher up the chain, which helps to reduce inequality. I don't think they would achieve this by reducing headcount of the lowest paid employees, as in most (all?) industries these are the indispensable people who are actually doing the job, rather than those managing them and working at a level of abstraction.
Thirdly, from the perspective of the wider economy it is healthier to employee 100 people at $10k per annum than it is to employ 1 person at $1m per annum - because rich people tend to hoard their wealth, whereas poor people spend it and keep it circulating.

... as for the overall question of Marxism, I think it will lose relevance. A key premise is that the proletariat have a huge bargaining chip in that the employers need their labour. But in modern society we are seeing huge and ever-increasing automation, and it is likely that the 'working class' will soon become an anachronism. To bring cryptocurrencies into it, smart contract platforms such as Ethereum offer the possibility of automating whole swathes of white-collar professions (mortgage broker being an oft-cited example). I believe that as this continues we will see more of a clamour for the introduction of a UBI.

In the modern era (for non-authoritarian regime countries), this is incorrect assumption because workers need hygiene in order to perform. Since no slave allowed, employers must pay "enough" so employees can work properly. Moreover, the market will determine whether the payment is acceptable or not and workers are free to choose their job.

The view about the capitalists are bad, is Marxist.

Nowadays, business owners understand if they want to build sustainable business, they have to treat their workers humanely.

I'd argue the illegal immigrants are paid below equilibrium point, because more bargaining power for employers. If there is no minimum wage and the workers are legal, it's going to be at the equilibrium.

By putting barrier, a lesser number of unemployed will get the job. Perhaps someone somewhere cannot get a job (and cannot acquire new skills) at the moment because of this barrier.

Minimum wage is only applicable for low-skill jobs, if a worker has a high-skill job, he will earn more than the minimum wage anyway. We live in a world that values skill, and not sweats and tears. Therefore, this minimum wage will only price out young labors who have no real skill and no real work experience.

Because wages are sticky instead of reducing wage, you will find the unemployment rate increases in any recession. The more skilled the worker, the more he becomes irreplaceable.

Based on your logic, why not removing the minimum wage and employ 200 people at $5k per annum? +100 for job training, -100 for potential criminals.

Like I said mate, we need to rethink the assumption of "removing minimum wage thus the management will earn more."

Both workers and capital owners need each other. Capitalists will simply get out of the country and invest somewhere else if they see the costs/risks are too high to do business, in other words, capital flight.

I disagree with a lot of your arguments there, but I appreciate you taking the time to argue it point by point. Not everyone does that. I think our differing perspectives can perhaps be distilled to the quote below.

In a society where there is unemployment, there are more people than there are jobs. For simplicity and as it relates to the question of minimum wage, we are talking here about low-skilled low-pay jobs. This means that the bargaining power is entirely with the employers. Say there are a hundred people and one job. If there is a minimum wage, then the employer has to pay say $5 per hour to whoever gets the job. The person who gets the job is the one who is judged to be the best applicant. Whereas in the absence of a minimum wage, the employer gives the job to whoever is willing to work for the least pay. If a hundred people are applying for that $5 job, then the employer can drop the pay to say $3 and still get twenty applicants. Maybe someone will do it for $2. What is happening is that the employer is exploiting the fact that there are surplus workers, and instead of paying a fair or living wage, they are paying the minimum that someone will do it for.

I suppose in part this comes to the question of what is the ethical thing to do, and there is no absolute right or wrong here, merely differences in judgement about what level of inequality is justifiable or desirable. But the question of whether markets need governments to rein in their excesses was answered in 2008 - albeit with the bailout money going to, in my opinion, the wrong people.

Disagreement makes life interesting ;D

The above assumption might not true. At least for honest employers who learn business 101.
If the employer can afford $5/hour, he would pick the best candidate at $5/hour.
If the employer can afford $4/hour, he would pick the best candidate at $4/hour.
The minimum wage will put the burden to businesses that can only afford less than $5/hour.

Well, that's a market mechanism, but as long as the exchange is voluntary, then why we want to restrict that decision? Is it morally correct to forbid voluntary exchange between employer and employee?

Unemployment will always exist because not all man is equal in term of skills. Some might have low enough IQ which makes them impossible to train/educate.

Anyways, if what shapes your view about this issue is related to sweatshops in Asia (*cough* China) or Africa, perhaps not all sweatshops are identical in terms of honesty. Some use force (backed by the regime) and fraud, thus the exchange is no longer voluntary. Moreover, some argue without sweatshops, the people there will suffer more.

It's important to view both sides of the argument, I could create an alt account (marxist) and argue with myself lol.

It depends. Voluntary can still be exploitative. An employer wants someone for a day's hard labour. He finds an illegal immigrant who is willing to do the work for a crust of bread. It's still a voluntary exchange, the employee has agreed to do the work for the stated reward. This is admittedly an extreme example to illustrate the point. But can we still say it's voluntary? The worker needs the job in order to survive. The employer knows this, and offers the minimum that he thinks the worker will accept.

I appreciate that there are honest employers who want to pay a fair wage, but equally there are exploitative employers. A minimum wage works to prevent exploitation. If a job needs doing, then I'm not sure we can say that the minimum wage will prevent the company from hiring someone, if there are executives on high salaries. I appreciate that for a small company with only a couple of employees, which is trying to expand, this may be different.

I think I might be diverting this from being an economic discussion to a moral discussion, so apologies for that.

Never underestimate any theory that tells you that there is a method that makes sense completely while leaving out everything else.

Unfortunately in our world there are all kinds of people and no system would be fit for everyone. I may understand that you may want to live in a world where racist people do not exist for example, or at least the world moves on to anti-racist laws whereas racist people are hated and disregarded and not cared about, that makes sense right?

Racist people are sick and horrible, yet the thing is, even when you do that which is right, they will get together and eventually that pumped up rage for "not being allowed to be a racist" would make them elect someone like Trump. So believe me, there is no one right method even if you want the best of the world.

To be honest, it quite easy to fix poverty issue in a short time, without creating other problems, and not necessarily through Marxist idea,  (which I don't fully understand yet).
Maybe using unique solutions to your own peculiar problem is a better way of solving the problems. Especially if people with different agenda won't frustrate you deliberately and consistently.

 I don't really believe in paying people more money than is required, so that they can buy whatever they like. What's important in my opinion is that everyone can afford the basic things (good/healthy things) of life to survive.
Many poor people are not lazy. They work really hard and produce good things yet are poor. There are several reasons why they would choose to remain poor which I don't want to go into.
The best/good producers among poor could be incentived to expand and produce more good things. Those who are not so good yet, could even work under the best/good ones. Government or society can guaranteed them healthy life by getting them paid special money they can only use for the basics things. You could even design the money to be used mostly for buying things from those they work under. The extra money they earn from working hard can then be used for extra/non-basic things.

This is an irony of life. This kind of situation and position wasn't brought in by the Marxist ideology but it is across all social-economic agenda, be it Communist etc. Also, it is there in the developed countries that people who are wealthy can provide more better things for themselves and class is present too ; also in poor nations.


All things are equal in every country  ;D


I think a society that wants to succeed should look for how to go down on corruption. Corruption eats down the fabric of all structure.

I was joking with my wife about corruption. Apart from corruption is an act that is not commendable and violates moral values and religion and harms the people. The habit of corruptors, especially large corruptors after committing corruption is to diverge their money at home and abroad so as not to be tracked. However, if corruptors spend all of their money from corruption to dissipate domestically, the money will rotate economically and the economy will move.

The amount of money corrupted by some corruptors is fantastic. One middle-ranking tax employee in my country committed corruption of USD 118,000,000.

Yes, corruption is a fundamental problem. Systems of governance that make corruption easy are more likely to fail - this is a part of what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe. In theory, democracies are least prone to corruption... but the problem with capitalist democracies is that the term is an oxymoron. If it's capitalist, then it's plutocratic rather than democratic - whether intentionally or not, if the aim is to increase your money, then those who already have money start at an advantage, and over generations can come to control everything, not least the media, which they can then use to increase their advantage. Rising inequality is a feature of capitalist democracies, not a bug. I would argue that beyond a certain point it becomes both unsustainable and morally indefensible.