Shareholders and Wall Street

[erpowers]

Does anyone think that when Wall Street says that if Costco would pay their employees less they could give more to the shareholders they (Wall Stree) are actually speaking in code and really pushing for something else. If you look at Wal-Mart which pays its workers small amounts of money you could see that the company takes in $10 billion a year. It would only cost them millions of dollars to pay their people $2 more an hour. So it would not hurt their shareholders if they paid their workers more money. In addition, it would not take that much money from the Wal-Mart profits, maybe a billion dollars at the most. So it seems that Wall Street is not worried about shareholders getting more. They seem to be concerned about something else.

[Fovea]

1. creating an economy based around the invester class.

reduce labor to penury, and control the working class.

Thus, American companies can compete with other third world econonomies.

[erpowers]

2. Third World Economies

I have never seen how or why American companies have to compete with third world economies. It seems to me that all these companies had to do is not have their things made in foreign countries. I do not really see how third world countries are actually competing with American companies.

[Fovea]

3. If the goal of capitalism

is the pursuit of greater profits, then one way to accomplish that is
through reduced cost. And in countries where labor is slavery cheap, if all things like transportation costs are negligible, then the pursuit of profits (the raison d'etre of corporations according to modern theory) demands that you send your production to the cheapest supplier.

However, if you are not simply looking at the investor's bottom line, then other aspects like Durkheim's social contract, and Henry Ford's idea of enabling the laborer to purchase the item they produce becomes worthy of discussion.

This narrow pursuit of profits at the expense of the society that hosts the corporation creates a parasitic version of capitalism. Societies that eschew this model are derided by neo conservatives (or corporatists in general) as "old europe" or "nanny states."

But such societies as make up the E.U. make efforts to provide a minimum quality of life for all classes of citizen (in many cases even 'guest workers') within the nation, not just out of sheer altruism, but because their cultural memory includes cautionary tales wherein the upper classes were overthrown by the lower classes, often in violent and bloody revolution.

In America, with one or two exceptions, capital has always felt completely immune to such depredations. However, never has global competition for labor been so easy to utilize. This will change, however er, as cost for transportation of goods and materials becomes greater than the profit offset by cheap labor.

Also, as our economy collapses under the combined influences of ruinous military adventurism, energy price shock, and the unwise reliance on an economy that houses, works, moves, plays, and makes products exclusively based on cheap oil, the political stability of our system will collapse also. And within a decade, we will look back fondly on the great depression, when at least America had a functioning, and thrifty public transportation system that ran, for the most part, on coal.

At that point, perhaps the investing class, having lost the good will of the lower middle classes, whose current religious trance will evaporate with their suburban lifestyle, will see the wisdom of a social contract with the majority of the well armed electorate.

That's my 25 cents worth.