I'm constantly questioning things because I have a hard time accepting being sodomised against my will, but the more I raise questions the harder it gets for me to find satisfactory answers. However, you and this channel, give us, the unconscious sheep, the impression that you have all the answers. You've figured this out! All in all, all we get is - No Government. No government? No government? That is your solution? Man, that is so thin it has no structure.
@Laoch111 "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill
A corporation or a business exists to produce something, be it oil, food, clothes, etc. They are the true benefactors of mankind. The government produces nothing except corruption and protection rackets and stagnation and tyranny. But we are all indoctrinated--in public schools, in universities, in movies, in music, in art & literature, everywhere--to believe that production is evil and we need bureaucrats to protect us from the people who keep us alive. Separation of economics and state NOW
I am 50 years old and what you are saying is that instead of getting laid off over a year ago, I should have been able to retire. Therefore, I should be able to sue the government for all that money that I lost over those 30 years of working. Should I give it a go?
It's not just taxation that stefbot is pointing out, it's regulations which are often written by the big corporations to limit competition from smaller businesses, thru lobbying for-sale-politicians (most of them) of course. Purchasing power is also a phenomenon that so many people are ignorant about, even people who've graduated college don't understand inflation and how that erodes our purchasing power, I mean, I only have a GED and understand what stefbot is saying, but good luck to all.
@stefbot Taking into account the statistics you posed in part 2, and I know I'm kind of grave digging here, do you really think that if we taxed the corporations less, deregulated, and made things easier on big business, that they would actually pass those savings on to their employees or lower the costs of their goods? No, that money would still go back into their pockets. The Occupy movement is flawed in that taxing the rich for more handouts won't work, but neither will deregulating them.
@TheValkryie That's the thing. There is no 'Moral' Solution. We can't morally take their money and redistribute it. Taxing them unfairly in comparison to the rest of society is still an example of that. Deregulating them is just going to create a greater profit margin for them, which they will use to line their pockets. Lets do the opposite now. Tax less? Greater profit margin. Regulate more? Less profit means they start laying people off. It's a no win situation.
@dataphreak You're assuming that companies that are directly competing with one another would, in the absence of coercive, captured, regulatory institutions, fix prices and refuse to undercut each other. If all companies suddenly have a greater profit margin due to taxes being cut, then any one of them can expand production, lower prices and get even more profit at the cost of the competition. Their greed causes prices to fall (assuming no inflation) and, ultimately, profit margins to shrink.
i didn't know this until i started actually looking at payroll accounting sheets, but whatever Canadians contribute to EI, CPP, and Income tax your employer matches it dollar for dollar so a minimum wage of 10 dollars your employer has to pay you 10 dollars (minus taxes) and the government $1.20 for payroll taxes
no wonder why there are more closed tills at walmart than open ones... yet the government says they are broke
I'll take 1 penny placed on the first square of a chess board, for every minute I work move the penny one square and double it. At the end of 64 minutes the amount would be 9.223372036854776e+16, it's so much that I don't even know what that means. That's taxation for you. (I hope I worded that correctly, the original story was one grain of rice and when the ruler figured out how much the man was asking for he killed him for his greed, shame this turned out to be a government business model.)
So this guy thinks that people should be paid less than it's possible to survive on, he wants to deny children a rounded education and send them out to do manual work, he doesn't want to pay any taxes so that most people will be priced out of health care, education and so on. I listen to this with an open mind and perhaps this makes sense to Stefan but he seems to me like a mouth peice for the far right wing who would be very happy to exploit the poor with no regulation for their own gain.
stefbot, if you could somehow spread this message to members of law enforcement, government agents, military, etc. in sufficient numbers you could take away the "gun" from the state. If there were some way to direct this information to those individuals then I think it would greatly accelerate a movement toward true freedom.
He has more faith in business than I. If we didn't have taxes/regulations, it wouldn't mean business would suddenly treat people fairly. We'd still have the poor, b/c no1 will pay more than the bare minimum, taxes or no. He keeps talking about ' business has to pay for this and that', well, YEAH! If you're gonna have a biz, you've gotta invest in it. But they will put as little in as poss., profit as much as poss., & mayb leave some scraps for their workers, only b/c slavery is illegal.
I agree that the gov't does a mediocre job of alot of things, but we have better standard of living than we would if everything was run soley by capitalists who are out for themselves. Businessmen have all kinds of reasons why they dont pay decent wages, create jobs, avoid their taxes, etc...but the fact is they're just greedy. But if they paid fair wages so people could BUY things, &acctually PAID their taxes we'd be in better shape. Gov't is a parasite? Ok, but what about big business?
@JennJenification Big Business wants to pay 0$/hour. Turns out it cannot. Assuming the government does not intervene 'fair' wages will be paid. Fair not being the same as equitable.
How is he going to educate his daughter when the government can rip er away from your hands in most western states and throw it in the mental prisons called schools? Should I move to Canada if I am going to get a child?
Great work Stef. Personally, I really wish he would stop using the word "free" and then imply that it's "equal". You cannot be both free and equal. You are either free OR equal. Freedom, like all things, doesn't exist on it's own. One persons freedom is another persons slavery. Equality, on the other hand, is "slavery shared by all" neither is pleasant.. but it depend on what end what you prefer. If your fat and prosperous, you want "freedom" if your skinny and tired.. "equality"
F** the government. It has too much power. It should be smaller. It's not our master yet it's taken that role. And we expect it to do everything. So we too are responsible
F** the education con. The holding pen. Keep us locked up, uninspired learning meaningless things that we can learn later in life for our own interest.
F** the mental slavery, and mental cloud that I've been trying to remove after having been indoctrinated for so many years.
Don't forget *interest bearing debt*. I've read that up to 40% of the cost of any product you buy is due to interest owed to banks. For example the capital used to make the goods is often purchased with interest bearing debt issued as fiat currency via a bank.
Of course the taxes you pay to the "government" *also* go to pay of the debt the govt owed to the banks! Banks can therefore be said to be the root of the evil.
Money is very clever. It is a tool that allows a person to do 'fuck all' and benefit from another persons labour. So long as the labourer gives value to the paper money then it continues to be that way
You convinced me in this video. So, I've decided to lobb a fairly large branch off the tree, and I'm trimming off the branches right now. It should make a great club with which I will just beat the Healthcare companies, the Oil companies, and all the corporate lobbyists out of existence. Mind you, I intend to shout out profanities while I do it!
Please explain why wall street makes absurd profits during recessions if government taxation is the reason unemployment is so high. Do you really think that if those taxes were repealed that the released capital would be returned to the worker? Isn't it more realistic to suppose that the "masters" would use it solely to increase profits? After all, "greed is the driving force of human affairs" as you quoted in your first video...
@jjaggers Wall Street manufactures numbers much the same as banks manufacture dollars out of thin air. They make these huge profits because the American public was sold a bill of goods years ago. I have been telling people this for years, and have been told that I did not know what I was talking about. Most people will not admit they were wrong, but I do know a few people who have come to me and admitted that I was correct in my claims.
it gets worse for the divorced income provider as well. typically he/she [mostly he in the current situation] has to pay around 25% in child support [for 2 children average]. When you add this 25% to all that you said, it becomes painfully obvious you will stay below water for the duration of the childrens' upbringing.
Stefbot, might want to read "Worlds Wasted Wealth" by JW Smith.
Look, your argument boils down into "people pay taxes on everything they do bwaaah bwaaaah!" You dont like taxes, we get it. But the reason for this is, property, roads, mail, security, are all kept in order by the government. If you have a job somewhere in society, you're benefiting from the actions of the state. To pay for the all the things that you benefit from in society, hence 100 diffferent taxes. You are not independent.
You should continue reading and challenging yourself on this topic of gov't service. Gov't so-called "service" like roads, defense, mail, currency, etc. are really protected cartels which diminish competition and, thus, real value and growth. What's more, much of gov't expenditures has very little to do with service to taxpayers, but, rather, boondoggling and fleecing to enrich the politically-connected. The fantasy of a benevolent state is just that.
I assure you with no taxation, no collective funding and synchronized buying of services we all benefit from, society would crumble to caveman land inside of a year. There'd be no roads left, no water treatment and no communities. There'd be 10x as many homeless people and every remaining home would be a fortress. Mad-max.
Yes, you did say that you can "assure" us of such things happening. But, like most people, provide no logical argument to support it. If that would happen without the State, well, it would happen right now as the people that are in/out of power at the moment, would be the same persons responding to the same incentives even if the State did not exist.
@StrafingMoose are you daft? History has repeatedly shown examples that roads aren't paved when there are no governments, people just walk or use bikes or a donkey or horse or run their car down on bad roads. That is what happens without the state and it happens all over the world. Private industry is open to fix it and refuses to do so.
@StrafingMoose the logical argument is based on reality: older tribes around the world, few as they are; the Mongolian Nomads who do still exist but not for long, all are 100% real and living examples of having no government, no taxation and no future (and no services now). Crumbled or never-existed, all the proof you need as long as you're not a reality-denier.
Money pays for things, no taxation = no money to pay. People refuse to pay on their own.
"Money pays for things, no taxation = no money to pay. People refuse to pay on their own."
So within that frame of thinking, you are admitting that the State is dictatorial and forcibly makes people do things they would not do otherwise. By the way, government mostly does not fix nor build roads even today; private enterprises do the actual work.
@ytgv3fc7 Why aren't Libertarians migrating en masse to Somalia? We all the truth is that people that stef in the video is an intellectual fraud who wants all the benefits of civilization without bearing any of the costs. In short, Libertarians are nothing more than societal parasites.
@apostate001 well ... that's a little far. I guess I don't know Libertarians very well but they strike me as being very naive, having the odd idea that's good, and the rest are going to collapse society if they ever happen.
statism vs bank vs personal-holdings: if you had no state and no taxation but you had banks to hold your savings and used those savings, even collectively for high-efficiency mass-purchasing, banks will nick you on fees for holding money and moving it in and out of accounts and if you don't like it you have to hold it on your own, and then you risk any of that money being robbed or ruined in floods or fires.
This is nonsense to say jobs are lost because of taxes that provide services. No tax?
Statism vs taxation: collectively it's cheaper for everyone to pay together, somehow, to those who maintain and provide essential services like roads that actually aren't falling apart, sewers that actually move waste-water and treatment that ensures the outflow isn't poisoning our drinking water. Should it be investment? Taxation? It should not be individual payment. Such individual, nonsynchronized actions are so inefficient we'd easily pay 100x as much for the same services.
If you have to try to convince someone they're poor, they're not poor.
The most grinding poverty in the world is from capitalism, from the predation of the private sector upon private lands and collectively owned lands, around the world.
Sure, I know debt is bad, and that's why I have none. Sure, I understand inflation robs the middle-class but the poorest are robbed and poor regardless because of capitalism itself. Statism? Not even close to a serious problem. Wealth-concentration is.
Hi Stef- I like the video, I used this example just two days ago but insted I used the prospective of the transaction of the consumer. For example, I go to a gas station and buy fuel, I pay the company, lets say $1, well in my area that is 6%, and then they must pay at least 6% on that same dollar, and if they then spend it, again another 6% or so.
But my question, what should we do. I have found a lot of information as to why, but these all seem to be problem identifiers, and not solutions.
This would be wonderful if true. However you miss one enormous failure. When the taxes are lowered and the interest rates turned to zero, when the government takes less, the businesses don't change. They don't take the price down. They don't lower rents. They just collect the benefits, leaving the poor, poor. Literally there is nothing I have ever seen that can make companies do anything but collect more profit and screw people over further for no reason besides personal gain.
Why would I lower my prices if interest rates are turned to zero ? If interest rates go to zero, it means the paper's value people pay me with is going down since its offer is vastly increased. I then need more paper to make up for its value loss.
@StrafingMoose I was refering to interest rates seperately of tax rates. My point was that instead of putting that 30% into price reduction, they put 30% of it into profits, keeping the price steady and lowering the buying power of individuals.
@StrafingMoose I didn't say that. I said that although cutting taxes off simply doesn't result in a drop in prices, not in the modern world. That is why things are still so incredibly expensive and difficult to afford, where if prices followed costs like is suggested here, we would easily be able to afford everything we need right now. Instead it ends up in the pockets of the top 1%. Are you just searching for something to argue about?
@StrafingMoose Homes, cars, electronics, food. If you look at the cost structure a good 90% of it ends up in the pockets of the rich, and a 8% to the government, the other 2% to he who earned it. You may think consumer electronics cheap, but my computer cost me 1200 bucks, when it cost the companies that made the parts less then 200 dollars to build, probably closer to 50 bucks. And that was on black friday, just parts, I built it myself.
@StrafingMoose raising prices at all possible times is the primary goal of every business I've worked with, although cutting costs (even stupidly cutting their own valuable workers who quit) also is another tactic.
I find the first part hardly semantically credible. Raising a price is NOT a goal. A "goal" is something you need to work hard on attaining. How hard is raising a price ?
@StrafingMoose the "not very hard" goal of raising prices is indeed the only goal, there is no other, for capitalist systems and all units within them. A goal is NOT (wish it was) always something you work hard on attaining.
"goal: The purpose toward which an _endeavor_ is directed; an objective"
You are saying that raising prices is the main goal, activity of business and then saying it's an easy goal. You are basically saying doing business is easy.
@StrafingMoose no, I'm saying what businesses DO, and they're still doing it. That's factual, no opinions required.
Raising prices IS what businesses do, to rake in profit margins. It is their main goal and they SAY SO to employees so it's not debatable. How can you be so blind? Or stupid? Or brainwashed? This is how capitalism works. Quality is second-best or not a factor, fraud is frequent, consequences zero or near it.
I've worked in plenty of businesses, ran one, and raising prices was not a strategy as customers were asking lower prices by the day. If we weren't able to lower them, those were customers walking across the street to our main competitor.
If raising prices is the main strategy, meet a bunch of investors and tell them to give you money because you've got an awesome profit making strategy and see how that goes.
In the 1890s, for example, we did not have all these income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. We still had a lot of poverty: poverty was not created by the introduction of these taxes, since it existed beforehand. Poverty is caused by a portion of the population who, for one reason or another, is less productive or not productive.
@countryhorsefive Poverty is exacerbated by the taxation of their income and of the products that they consume. Taxes that are a greater burden to the poor than to the wealthy are called regressive taxes. For example, taxes on beer and cigarettes are regressive. Taxes on cognac and cigars are progressive. So why are there so many regressive taxes and why are they not lowered, unless the intention is to find a way to make the poor pay taxes?
@DystopianUtopia Yes, people should watch this video for examples of species logic that shifts blame for the real owners of society who are oppressing us to some fantastical boogeyman called government....of the people, by the people, and for the people. Stef is an exemplar of an apologist that people should be able to readily recognize.
so what to we do? maybe collectively we should buy an island in the carribean, call it Freedomland, start issuing our own passports and currency. All of our laws have to fit on a piece of paper, largely following "the philosophy of liberty"
watch?v=Q3pKuJnnBvs
sounds easier than tearing down the existing system and starting over again.
@zeusvalentine Another approach is to operate outside the currency system. Grow food in a garden, check out square foot gardening and aquaponics. Make real things, barter and trade. This still won't escape the property taxes but you can avoid a great deal of the inflation tax and income taxes.
And if you do want an island you can make one. Check out Spiral Island. A floating mangrove island made on used plastic bottles.
Hey Stef, great vid as always. But I think you made the same mistake you have corrected in a previous video where you conflated labour and raw material costs together. If workers building the printer stop being income taxed by 30%, the printer's price won't go down 30% - that 30% price decrease will only apply to the _labour part_ of the total printer's cost. :)
@StrafingMoose Thanks, my reply would be that the machines the printer buys were built by someone, and so that labor price would go down, does that make sense?
@StrafingMoose price still won't go down, it will just be pushed onto the consumer and that 30% ends up in profits for the top brass of the company, who avoid taxes anyways.
If (sucessful) companies did not consistantly try and reduce prices or offer more for the same price, no one could afford anything by now with inflation calculated in.
@StrafingMoose And that is exactly what has been happening slowly over the past 50 years. In 1950 1 person could provide for a wife and 5-10 children easily, and buy plenty of nice things all the time. Fast forward 50 years and a 2 income household can not even afford one child, can't afford a house, can't afford nice things at all. Prices has remained static even as profits skyrocket.
You can't afford a house because of the government created bubble. Back when my father bought a nice 80k house 20 years ago, consumer electronics were very costy. Fast forward 20 years, houses all sky high but consumer electronics are mostly dirt cheap. Why ? Because one is highly government regulated and subsidized, while the other, considerably less.
@StrafingMoose Although correct on housing prices, you totally failed at consumer prices and your overall reasoning. Electronics are now cheaper because they cost only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what they cost to make years ago. Profits off of them are higher than ever as are mark-ups, just the base line is significantly lower. Houses should be cheap, there are more homes than people, so they should be practically free now. Yet still enormous costs, a decade of work just to own.
" Electronics are now cheaper because they cost only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what they cost to make years ago"
You just commited self imploding epic fail. Cost cutting does lead to price reduction. I think that sentence says it all. I don't care if the higher ups make more money now, good for them. What's important is that price went down, and you just confirmed that.
@StrafingMoose but the price drops disproportionately. Thats the thing. You might have a 50% drop in costs, but you will NEVER see more than a 5% drop in price. Think of it as drop in costs = D, and drop in price = P. D is always much greater than P, making P barely relevant in terms of purchasing power. Seriously, are you just looking for something to argue about? Cause it sure sounds like it.
I don't know if I'm looking for something to argue, but I wouldn't be arguing with myself if you know what I mean. You kind of initiated this thing by replying to my comment. Who cares if it's disproportionate ? Costs go down, prices go down. Period. You said it yourself and are now admitting it. Should we keep taxing companies just because the price cuts might not exactly equate cost custs after tax cuts ?
@StrafingMoose If those tax cuts mean cutting welfare and social security than absolutely. because lets say we dropped taxes by 10% and welfare by 10%, but only .001% of the price due to tax was dropped. This means that suddenly the people on welfare have a lot harder time paying for the things they just could. because D >> P, P is largely irrelevant, and for all practical purposes doesn't help affordability compared to how much it hurts it. P would have to be a significant part of D, near...
@StrafingMoose nearly 90%, if not 100% in order to increase affordability. Otherwise the poor lose buying power while the rich gain money. And it is not a "might" it is absolutely and definitely. Take interest rates on loans for example (as they are the price you pay for the loan). The interest rate may have dropped from 4 percent to 0%, but the interest rate I have to pay on my college loans dropped by only .02%, meaning that banks make more money, while I am not helped at all.
Prices will come down 10% as well. That's the only way companies can go when they get a tax cut, lowering their prices or offering more for the same price. That's where technology comes from, willing to cost cuts as to compete. Why bother cut costs if you're not going to attract new customers with new features or lower prices ? BTW, your loan did not go down as this wasn't a "student loan" bubble, but a mortgage bubble. This is where they cut the loan prices from 10% to 3% (+/-)
@StrafingMoose No they won't, that is just it. I see it all the time. you know all the intel i7s between like 800 and 970 are the same processor, and cost the same amount to make, the only difference being between the price of 200 bucks and 1100 bucks, when they cost only 25 cents to a dollar each. Often times I hear about a new manufacturing process that costs 1/5th as much for a certain technology, but prices stay exactly the same.
Why bother cutting costs? are you retarded? higher profit
@StrafingMoose see, as long as you are cutting costs without cutting prices, you are increasing profits. And every business wants more profits. And you seem to misunderstand the banking system. The fed loans money to banks to loan out. Any money the banks loan out is totally based on that. So all loans should have dropped by the 4%, but the only ones that did were housing, and they only shrank slighly compared to the cut in the federal reserve percentage rate.
You cut costs, so to reduce prices and then get more market share and profits that you reinvest in research. If you just cut costs and pocket the money over and over you will still be offering the same products 10 years from now. Not all loans should have dropped as banks decided to concentrate their newly borrowed capital mostly on the mortgage loans, not student loans.
@StrafingMoose First of all, companies don't give a damn about market share ever since apple proved you don't need to. Give a piece of shit a good Shine, and call it something better and people will think they are buying something better, and the profits are so large your tiny market share doesn't matter. And most companies do no research, only a select few do research and they aren't that profitable. Why does it matter to selectively lower loans when their capital is as much as they could want
@ChrisSudlik Of course they seek market shares - they want monopoly. If most companies don't do research, then why did most consumer products change in the last 50 years, for example ? Banks decided to invest their capital in housing because they knew the government would bail them out if something went wrong in there - as opposed to the "student loan industry". In short, it was more short term profitable to them to do that than other things.
@StrafingMoose But thats just it, maintaining a monopoly makes you look bad, gets you sued, and is illegal in todays world. Which is fine, because monopolies are more evil than the alternative, which is what we have now where they just say "how do we maximize profits this quarter, and possible next quarter" with no attention to the long term. Only companies with intensive long term design processes give a damn about the long term, like car companies and Intel, AMD, and such, and competition ...
@Emil246 If by model you mean copy exactly the products and don't spend millions on process development, then you are right. If you mean do research and create progress, you are smokin' some kinda monster man.
@StrafingMoose and competition is so direct in companies like Intel and AMD that the the only way to sell more than the competition is to do research, because they sell to businesses. Those who make consumer products don't need better products, they just need the illusion of better products. And the illusion is cheaper to make with advertising than than actual improvements. 4G networks for example, are just an advertising ploy, they are the the same as 3G with very minor bug fixes.
Stefan. I remember in Econ 101- Microeconomics, within the first two weeks we covered a concept called 'opportunity cost.' Opportunity Cost is the justification of usury plain and simple. When the professor defined the word for the class I went cold from head to toe. I looked around at all the other bees in training furiously scribbling away, not a one stopping to think about whether this concept is even legitimate, or whether the whole of Economics is founded on the sand of jargon. Thank You.
@ToYouWhoHaveEars1: I think you have a strange definition of opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is (for example) the the red shirt that you didn't buy because you preferred the green shirt or a pair of pants or a double sided dildo. Help me out here?
@andyissemicool-The green/red shirt are complementary products.The way that it was taught to me, was that opportunity cost is what 'I' could have bought instead of lending the money to you. Since I 'lose' the POTENTIAL profit of investing elsewhere, I thereby am justified in ESTIMATING what I could have profited percentage-wise in that other venture, so I then add that estimated profit to the lent sum by way of the interest rate. It is this estimate that makes the usury rate/slave tax arbitrary.
@ToYouWhoHaveEars1 What got to me was that the interest rate seemed to be calculated using 20/20 hindsight, taking a block of POTENTIAL past investments and averaging the 'profit.' Then they use this percentage to determine 'interest' on a loan. For example-the bank looks back at how it's best investments MAY have profited over the past 5 years, assumes this rate of growth on FUTURE POTENTIAL INVESTMENT, then tacks on the potential profit as ACTUAL profit/interest onto your 5 year mortgage.
Yes we would be staggeringly weathy, but what could you do with your money, when there would be no roads to drive to the mall on, no police to protect you from criminals taking your money, and no home to come back to becuase it burned down due to no fire departments
@DIFowner: Do you honestly think that without a government that no roads would be built? 300 million people in this country want and need roads (and you've already granted these people would have staggering wealth to pay for them) and hundreds or thousands of companies are capable of building them. Do you think that since there is no government middleman in this scenario that nothing would get done? Same with security and fire protection and the other scare stories that statists come up with.
@andyissemicool, Yes Andy I think without government few roads would be built. The one example from history we have is when the Centralized Roman State dissintegrated and Europe was reduced to the dark ages, people had to submit to the local strongmen, Barons, Counts, or Lords, another name for (Mafia Dons). The rich and powerful are not going to disappear? No, state and there will be no restraint at all on them. They'd take direct control of whatever area they could and hold it with force.
@DIFowner I disagree. Government protects the interests of large corps not joe bloggs. joe bloggs protects joe bloggs. Problem is when joe is too busy chasing his own fucking tail than looking around and enjoying life for what it is in all its wonder, it all goes tits up since somebody gets left with an overbearing load passed on from one to another..
We need to pull together and uphold virtues and values that are positive and healthy for all creatures.
Since people are paid in large part what they are willing to work for, if there weren't taxes, people would work for much less. So the two effects oppose one another. It's debatable what the end result would be.
@Stephen5000 So more money to the rich then, since it's got to go somewhere? I think It would increase productivity, partly because the bureaucrats would have to get productive jobs and start businesses instead of being leeches. There's competition to get qualified employees too. If the wages/prices are too low, you'll get a shortage of skilled people, and more people competing for jobs with less requirements. It's important that prices/wages float so they reflect actual need/value.
@Stephen5000 They might start out working for less, but the instant everyone who wants to work is working, any new employer (or old employer wanting to hire more employees) would find themselves needing to offer either a higher wage or better working conditions, because he has to compete those workers away from some other employer who has already hired them. This is basic supply and demand at work. The supply is relatively stable, the demand goes up, therefor the price (wages) goes up.
@Stephen5000 There are several things that prevent basic supply and demand from function with regard to employment. The Gov has imposed price controls, a minimum price below which labor cannot be sold. That results in some labor simply not being salable. Union monopolies exacerbate the situation. both visible and hidden taxes on employment massively raise the cost of employment to employers, worsening the problem even more.
@Silveracity Probably by spending most of what they have left on trying to forget they exist, I know the feeling well, it's not nice to realize your no more than a sacrificial animal to people that couldn't really care whether you live or die and some who would just like you to die. Having to mortgage ones life for savages is not great.
The so called "poor" people I know, live in heated/cooled apartments, have health and dental care, digital cable television and all the food they can eat and have become obese. Is this the new definition of poor?... When you have everything you need, but want what others have to feel rich?
One problem that I've heard with our idea about privately run fiat currencies, is that it would be very difficult to start such a currency as nobody would buy it not knowing how much each unit would be worth or if people are going to take it up.
With a commodity currency, the initial value of the item serves as the value at the point where it becomes a currency, and then may rise a more people begin to use it.
@sharperguy Well, there would be nothing stopping anyone from doing that. I would be extremely surprised if anyone used them. Why on earth would anyone accept my monopoly money redeemable for nothing, when they can accept your certificates known to be redeemable in gold? They would not. One could issue 'Canada Tire' money which is redeemable in goods and services from that company perhaps, but that will never be as competitive as commodity money IMO.
I wonder how you came up with 3.5 times as rich. You brought up some very good points about how much tax really goes into things. Stuff I'd never pondered before. Purchasing power is the accumulation of a LOT of things, although government can obviously influence this power. Just off the top of my head- purchasing power is dependent on salary, inflation, total amount of money in the system, advertising (how much crap you don't need that you buy), population, growth, technology, etc
@ritherz Actually the money in the system simply defines the price level, not the purchasing power. Adding money to the system can shift purchasing power to whomever gets that money first, but it ultimately removes purchasing power (in a balancing effect) from whomever it reaches later, as the prices go up. The idea that adding money increases purchasing power is one of the primary fallacies on non-austrian economics.
IMHO,the money is not the issue,there is limited amount of goods and resources.Taxes and money are useful to redistribute the wealth and make society more egalitarian.Inflation and taxes are most harmful to the rich and lowest income people usually benefit per saldo.It forces collective responsibility on people which is not that bad because people are too selfish to be free.As for unemplyment,the world is overpopulated and people should work less to allow unemployed to also get their share.
@dominikst I beg to differ. The very rich are able to avail themselves of low interest loans paid for by society with inflation. It is the poor who cannot avail themselves of that who disproportionately bear the burden of inflation. And the idea that the rich pay the most taxes is an illusion. In reality there is virtually a flat tax when things like the employer's tax, and hidden taxes on property, etc. are all factored in.
Watching these videos I tend to dream of absolute freedom. We can imagine peaceful scenario's of a magnificent world with the greatest of ease because most of us did this a lot as children. Your finally old enough to get a job and you get your first paycheck and instantly you realise your a slave. Perhaps you'll ask your father to explain why the government is taking so much but it's never a good enough explanation or it's too complicated. Eventually you just accept it, you are now branded.
Its true, My business went bust because we couldn't afford to employ someone because all the gov regulations, but we really really needed someone to help us out as we where doing to good. we could of easily paid someone a good wage but when we looked into the insurances, super, taxes, and on and on. Then we got so busy that we couldn't keep up with demand, it created massive stress and we folded the business. :(
Thumbs up bud. I've worked for plenty of small businesses when they've needed a little help here and there. Under the table of course. I know more than enough people that have been in that situation.
What's going to motivate people to accumulate more job responsibility, and the implications of such: less time for chemical stimulation, more stress, etc. if they can get their needs met working a less straining job (by having more purchasing power)?
What's going to motivate adults to sustain the vitality of their offspring, if, once their offspring generate superior physical/intellectual prowess, they are subject to direct competition with the superior young adults?
@gn0m1k I'm not implying there would necessarily need to be -government- protectionism (unions, barriers to entry), but there would need to be these policies distributed "privately", atleast, to motivate people to defer present consumption to future investment and capital accumulation.
Otherwise, if you are going to be subject to direct competition with an influx of healthy, young adults when you are old and frail, why bother with the low time preference?
I know many people and organisations in UK, who employ their workforce "illegally" and semi legally. I fully support them and have done it myself before (not in UK though).
@zxzxzx09 You mean where do all the criminals go once you kick them out of government? Society regulates itself, through voting with your dollars, legal contracts, insurance and liability, etc.. I would rather that than turn justice over to a monopoly of crooks.
This is correct thinking: A company that has to pay taxes (taxes that ultimately fund the jobs of bureaucrats and fund the inefficient organization of bureaucracy) means that in lieu of those taxes going into the company for expansion, innovation, it feeds the beast of bureaucracy. It is either employment for more public sector employment and bureaucracy OR more employment opportunities for companies to hire and expand. Guess what happens when government grows...
no taxes means no schools ,police,roads.years and years of not paying for services has brought bridges that are falling appart.no man is an island.we need services as a community .who will fix our roads for free.educate us for free,provide police and fire dept for free.who ?? i saw the spread sheet its goobly goop.ignors so many unstated things who would print the money for free.mmmm YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.PAY NOTHING you get nothing.
@stealhgerm007 Yes, and who will feed us if not for government? Who will clothe us, house us, provide communications, entertainment, and all the other things a society needs in order to maintain itself.
I'm constantly questioning things because I have a hard time accepting being sodomised against my will, but the more I raise questions the harder it gets for me to find satisfactory answers. However, you and this channel, give us, the unconscious sheep, the impression that you have all the answers. You've figured this out! All in all, all we get is - No Government. No government? No government? That is your solution? Man, that is so thin it has no structure.
primaryspiral 2 weeks ago
Where's Robin Hood when you need him...
natefeez2 3 weeks ago
All I can say is that you have to be one of the most amazing personalities I have ever run across. Fantastic stuff!
Keep up the good work.
TheRobertRedbeard 1 month ago in playlist More videos from stefbot
If you think Westerners are living on scraps -- what do you think Cambodians getting 20c per hour on living on?
We can not all become staggeringly wealthy in a capitalist society -- there is unfortunately always those at the bottom getting paid a pittance.
Karl Liebknecht: "The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I."
Laoch111 1 month ago
@Laoch111 "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill
brianmo180 1 month ago
Stuff like this is why intelligent people tend to be more depressed than stupid people.
brianmo180 2 months ago 9
@brianmo180 Amen, brother. Ignorance is bliss for the masses.
rimwrangler 1 month ago
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@brianmo180 Stuff like this is why intelligent people tend to be more depressed than stupid people. {this deserved repeating...)
natefeez2 3 weeks ago
A corporation or a business exists to produce something, be it oil, food, clothes, etc. They are the true benefactors of mankind. The government produces nothing except corruption and protection rackets and stagnation and tyranny. But we are all indoctrinated--in public schools, in universities, in movies, in music, in art & literature, everywhere--to believe that production is evil and we need bureaucrats to protect us from the people who keep us alive. Separation of economics and state NOW
Success0527 2 months ago 2
I am 50 years old and what you are saying is that instead of getting laid off over a year ago, I should have been able to retire. Therefore, I should be able to sue the government for all that money that I lost over those 30 years of working. Should I give it a go?
AnnRKey 3 months ago
It's not just taxation that stefbot is pointing out, it's regulations which are often written by the big corporations to limit competition from smaller businesses, thru lobbying for-sale-politicians (most of them) of course. Purchasing power is also a phenomenon that so many people are ignorant about, even people who've graduated college don't understand inflation and how that erodes our purchasing power, I mean, I only have a GED and understand what stefbot is saying, but good luck to all.
elnik32 3 months ago
@stefbot Taking into account the statistics you posed in part 2, and I know I'm kind of grave digging here, do you really think that if we taxed the corporations less, deregulated, and made things easier on big business, that they would actually pass those savings on to their employees or lower the costs of their goods? No, that money would still go back into their pockets. The Occupy movement is flawed in that taxing the rich for more handouts won't work, but neither will deregulating them.
dataphreak 4 months ago 3
@dataphreak So what would be your solution (s) to this problem? What are your ideas? Please share with us.
TheValkryie 4 months ago
@TheValkryie That's the thing. There is no 'Moral' Solution. We can't morally take their money and redistribute it. Taxing them unfairly in comparison to the rest of society is still an example of that. Deregulating them is just going to create a greater profit margin for them, which they will use to line their pockets. Lets do the opposite now. Tax less? Greater profit margin. Regulate more? Less profit means they start laying people off. It's a no win situation.
dataphreak 4 months ago
@dataphreak You're assuming that companies that are directly competing with one another would, in the absence of coercive, captured, regulatory institutions, fix prices and refuse to undercut each other. If all companies suddenly have a greater profit margin due to taxes being cut, then any one of them can expand production, lower prices and get even more profit at the cost of the competition. Their greed causes prices to fall (assuming no inflation) and, ultimately, profit margins to shrink.
gregalexludwig 2 months ago
i didn't know this until i started actually looking at payroll accounting sheets, but whatever Canadians contribute to EI, CPP, and Income tax your employer matches it dollar for dollar so a minimum wage of 10 dollars your employer has to pay you 10 dollars (minus taxes) and the government $1.20 for payroll taxes
no wonder why there are more closed tills at walmart than open ones... yet the government says they are broke
KaKKutak 5 months ago
I'll take 1 penny placed on the first square of a chess board, for every minute I work move the penny one square and double it. At the end of 64 minutes the amount would be 9.223372036854776e+16, it's so much that I don't even know what that means. That's taxation for you. (I hope I worded that correctly, the original story was one grain of rice and when the ruler figured out how much the man was asking for he killed him for his greed, shame this turned out to be a government business model.)
frostyuk2007 5 months ago
why not use open office or similar as spreadsheet, stefan ?
StorkLovesSilver 5 months ago
This is because the Roman Cult Law has claimed ownership of everything in this (and other) country- see some of Frank O'Collins teachings.
urflofit2010 5 months ago
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CleverDjembe 6 months ago
I'd prefer to see a non money based system where people have what they need and share the planets resources equally and in a sustainable manner.
Klute1977 6 months ago
@Klute1977 I'd prefer to not live like primitive natives.
HeyItzMeDawg 5 months ago
So this guy thinks that people should be paid less than it's possible to survive on, he wants to deny children a rounded education and send them out to do manual work, he doesn't want to pay any taxes so that most people will be priced out of health care, education and so on. I listen to this with an open mind and perhaps this makes sense to Stefan but he seems to me like a mouth peice for the far right wing who would be very happy to exploit the poor with no regulation for their own gain.
Klute1977 6 months ago
@jackrabb33 LOL. That was cute! Seriously though this guy is right on the money!
MsTheresaKelly1 6 months ago
@MsTheresaKelly1 you...you called 'stefbot' "this guy"!?! i dont know whether to laugh or cry....
rephrase : 'stefbot' is right on the money.
from U.K. angry umemployed
DaddyFuManchu 6 months ago
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measy007 6 months ago
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measy007 6 months ago
I am unemployed because I watched all of these videos.
But really, good stuff.
jackrabb33 7 months ago
stefbot, if you could somehow spread this message to members of law enforcement, government agents, military, etc. in sufficient numbers you could take away the "gun" from the state. If there were some way to direct this information to those individuals then I think it would greatly accelerate a movement toward true freedom.
clairishe 8 months ago
He has more faith in business than I. If we didn't have taxes/regulations, it wouldn't mean business would suddenly treat people fairly. We'd still have the poor, b/c no1 will pay more than the bare minimum, taxes or no. He keeps talking about ' business has to pay for this and that', well, YEAH! If you're gonna have a biz, you've gotta invest in it. But they will put as little in as poss., profit as much as poss., & mayb leave some scraps for their workers, only b/c slavery is illegal.
JennJenification 8 months ago
I agree that the gov't does a mediocre job of alot of things, but we have better standard of living than we would if everything was run soley by capitalists who are out for themselves. Businessmen have all kinds of reasons why they dont pay decent wages, create jobs, avoid their taxes, etc...but the fact is they're just greedy. But if they paid fair wages so people could BUY things, &acctually PAID their taxes we'd be in better shape. Gov't is a parasite? Ok, but what about big business?
JennJenification 8 months ago
@JennJenification Big Business wants to pay 0$/hour. Turns out it cannot. Assuming the government does not intervene 'fair' wages will be paid. Fair not being the same as equitable.
FrankiePoker 8 months ago
How is he going to educate his daughter when the government can rip er away from your hands in most western states and throw it in the mental prisons called schools? Should I move to Canada if I am going to get a child?
Motherlandpluto 8 months ago
random but you'd look handsome all the way bald...just cut it.
TheEditor80 9 months ago
Great work Stef. Personally, I really wish he would stop using the word "free" and then imply that it's "equal". You cannot be both free and equal. You are either free OR equal. Freedom, like all things, doesn't exist on it's own. One persons freedom is another persons slavery. Equality, on the other hand, is "slavery shared by all" neither is pleasant.. but it depend on what end what you prefer. If your fat and prosperous, you want "freedom" if your skinny and tired.. "equality"
ShinEmperor 9 months ago
Best video explaining what I've always known. Highly recommend spreading this to everyone who may watch or listen. Sow the seeds of revolution!
RodCornholio 1 year ago
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F** the government. It has too much power. It should be smaller. It's not our master yet it's taken that role. And we expect it to do everything. So we too are responsible
F** the education con. The holding pen. Keep us locked up, uninspired learning meaningless things that we can learn later in life for our own interest.
F** the mental slavery, and mental cloud that I've been trying to remove after having been indoctrinated for so many years.
Jdjohnjd 1 year ago
to "Help the Poor" - EXTERMINATE the Rich !!!!!!!!!!! (class)
(along with ABOLISHING ALL of their artificial ways, means and institutions they have created / invented to ROB productive people of their 'wealth').
(it's really that simple).
EXTERMINATE (annihilate, obliterate, assassinate) the blood-sucking, parasite, exploiting class!! (it's the ONLY way!)
End 'elitism'.
ForeignPerson1 1 year ago 2
Right on man smaller gov Stop letting them decide where our money goes as if they know better!!! Fuk the fed
711Daniels 1 year ago
Great section.
Don't forget *interest bearing debt*. I've read that up to 40% of the cost of any product you buy is due to interest owed to banks. For example the capital used to make the goods is often purchased with interest bearing debt issued as fiat currency via a bank.
Of course the taxes you pay to the "government" *also* go to pay of the debt the govt owed to the banks! Banks can therefore be said to be the root of the evil.
BarringtonDailey 1 year ago
Money is very clever. It is a tool that allows a person to do 'fuck all' and benefit from another persons labour. So long as the labourer gives value to the paper money then it continues to be that way
cjellwood 1 year ago
You convinced me in this video. So, I've decided to lobb a fairly large branch off the tree, and I'm trimming off the branches right now. It should make a great club with which I will just beat the Healthcare companies, the Oil companies, and all the corporate lobbyists out of existence. Mind you, I intend to shout out profanities while I do it!
pjamesbda 1 year ago 15
Please explain why wall street makes absurd profits during recessions if government taxation is the reason unemployment is so high. Do you really think that if those taxes were repealed that the released capital would be returned to the worker? Isn't it more realistic to suppose that the "masters" would use it solely to increase profits? After all, "greed is the driving force of human affairs" as you quoted in your first video...
jjaggers 1 year ago
@jjaggers there should be no government at all, and so no corporations
stefbot 1 year ago 21
@stefbot you don't just mean government but any external system of control?
jjaggers 1 year ago
@stefbot Wall Street Profits = ((Profit % Time) - Labor)
InfinityDollar 7 months ago
@InfinityDollar assuming the % is really a /
KORTOKtheSTRONG 7 months ago
@stefbot How do you go about affecting and maintaining such changes?
Koshy2 5 months ago
@stefbot yep. america is fucked. game over, man. game over.
returnofbeaux 5 months ago
@jjaggers The government is the largest purchaser of stocks. Fact.
djilyaz 1 year ago
@jjaggers Wall Street manufactures numbers much the same as banks manufacture dollars out of thin air. They make these huge profits because the American public was sold a bill of goods years ago. I have been telling people this for years, and have been told that I did not know what I was talking about. Most people will not admit they were wrong, but I do know a few people who have come to me and admitted that I was correct in my claims.
AnalyzeIt 5 months ago
I cant get employed becouse I dont have any work exp... I dont have work exp becouse... I dont got a job.
radzio1488 1 year ago
@radzio1488 wrong. u dont have a job because the government wont let u work at mac donalds for 5 dollars an hour.
sniped101 1 year ago
it gets worse for the divorced income provider as well. typically he/she [mostly he in the current situation] has to pay around 25% in child support [for 2 children average]. When you add this 25% to all that you said, it becomes painfully obvious you will stay below water for the duration of the childrens' upbringing.
Stefbot, might want to read "Worlds Wasted Wealth" by JW Smith.
Gizziiusa 1 year ago
Anti-state, libertarian nonsensical unfalsifiable babble.
Look, your argument boils down into "people pay taxes on everything they do bwaaah bwaaaah!" You dont like taxes, we get it. But the reason for this is, property, roads, mail, security, are all kept in order by the government. If you have a job somewhere in society, you're benefiting from the actions of the state. To pay for the all the things that you benefit from in society, hence 100 diffferent taxes. You are not independent.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
@GnomesAmok
You should continue reading and challenging yourself on this topic of gov't service. Gov't so-called "service" like roads, defense, mail, currency, etc. are really protected cartels which diminish competition and, thus, real value and growth. What's more, much of gov't expenditures has very little to do with service to taxpayers, but, rather, boondoggling and fleecing to enrich the politically-connected. The fantasy of a benevolent state is just that.
selfrealizedexile 1 year ago
Anti-state, libertarian nonsensical unfalsifiable babble.
GnomesAmok 1 year ago
I assure you with no taxation, no collective funding and synchronized buying of services we all benefit from, society would crumble to caveman land inside of a year. There'd be no roads left, no water treatment and no communities. There'd be 10x as many homeless people and every remaining home would be a fortress. Mad-max.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
@ytgv3fc7
Yes, you did say that you can "assure" us of such things happening. But, like most people, provide no logical argument to support it. If that would happen without the State, well, it would happen right now as the people that are in/out of power at the moment, would be the same persons responding to the same incentives even if the State did not exist.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose are you daft? History has repeatedly shown examples that roads aren't paved when there are no governments, people just walk or use bikes or a donkey or horse or run their car down on bad roads. That is what happens without the state and it happens all over the world. Private industry is open to fix it and refuses to do so.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose the logical argument is based on reality: older tribes around the world, few as they are; the Mongolian Nomads who do still exist but not for long, all are 100% real and living examples of having no government, no taxation and no future (and no services now). Crumbled or never-existed, all the proof you need as long as you're not a reality-denier.
Money pays for things, no taxation = no money to pay. People refuse to pay on their own.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
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@ytgv3fc7
"Money pays for things, no taxation = no money to pay. People refuse to pay on their own."
So within that frame of thinking, you are admitting that the State is dictatorial and forcibly makes people do things they would not do otherwise. By the way, government mostly does not fix nor build roads even today; private enterprises do the actual work.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@ytgv3fc7 Why aren't Libertarians migrating en masse to Somalia? We all the truth is that people that stef in the video is an intellectual fraud who wants all the benefits of civilization without bearing any of the costs. In short, Libertarians are nothing more than societal parasites.
apostate001 1 year ago
@apostate001 well ... that's a little far. I guess I don't know Libertarians very well but they strike me as being very naive, having the odd idea that's good, and the rest are going to collapse society if they ever happen.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
statism vs bank vs personal-holdings: if you had no state and no taxation but you had banks to hold your savings and used those savings, even collectively for high-efficiency mass-purchasing, banks will nick you on fees for holding money and moving it in and out of accounts and if you don't like it you have to hold it on your own, and then you risk any of that money being robbed or ruined in floods or fires.
This is nonsense to say jobs are lost because of taxes that provide services. No tax?
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
Statism vs taxation: collectively it's cheaper for everyone to pay together, somehow, to those who maintain and provide essential services like roads that actually aren't falling apart, sewers that actually move waste-water and treatment that ensures the outflow isn't poisoning our drinking water. Should it be investment? Taxation? It should not be individual payment. Such individual, nonsynchronized actions are so inefficient we'd easily pay 100x as much for the same services.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
If you have to try to convince someone they're poor, they're not poor.
The most grinding poverty in the world is from capitalism, from the predation of the private sector upon private lands and collectively owned lands, around the world.
Sure, I know debt is bad, and that's why I have none. Sure, I understand inflation robs the middle-class but the poorest are robbed and poor regardless because of capitalism itself. Statism? Not even close to a serious problem. Wealth-concentration is.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
Hi Stef- I like the video, I used this example just two days ago but insted I used the prospective of the transaction of the consumer. For example, I go to a gas station and buy fuel, I pay the company, lets say $1, well in my area that is 6%, and then they must pay at least 6% on that same dollar, and if they then spend it, again another 6% or so.
But my question, what should we do. I have found a lot of information as to why, but these all seem to be problem identifiers, and not solutions.
donolie21 1 year ago
Joy Zeitgeist movment ore The Venus Projackt
sylve6 1 year ago
This would be wonderful if true. However you miss one enormous failure. When the taxes are lowered and the interest rates turned to zero, when the government takes less, the businesses don't change. They don't take the price down. They don't lower rents. They just collect the benefits, leaving the poor, poor. Literally there is nothing I have ever seen that can make companies do anything but collect more profit and screw people over further for no reason besides personal gain.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
Why would I lower my prices if interest rates are turned to zero ? If interest rates go to zero, it means the paper's value people pay me with is going down since its offer is vastly increased. I then need more paper to make up for its value loss.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose I was refering to interest rates seperately of tax rates. My point was that instead of putting that 30% into price reduction, they put 30% of it into profits, keeping the price steady and lowering the buying power of individuals.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
Soo, you think the primary goal of business is raising prices whenever they can ?
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose I didn't say that. I said that although cutting taxes off simply doesn't result in a drop in prices, not in the modern world. That is why things are still so incredibly expensive and difficult to afford, where if prices followed costs like is suggested here, we would easily be able to afford everything we need right now. Instead it ends up in the pockets of the top 1%. Are you just searching for something to argue about?
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
Which "things" are you refering to exactly ?
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose Homes, cars, electronics, food. If you look at the cost structure a good 90% of it ends up in the pockets of the rich, and a 8% to the government, the other 2% to he who earned it. You may think consumer electronics cheap, but my computer cost me 1200 bucks, when it cost the companies that made the parts less then 200 dollars to build, probably closer to 50 bucks. And that was on black friday, just parts, I built it myself.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose raising prices at all possible times is the primary goal of every business I've worked with, although cutting costs (even stupidly cutting their own valuable workers who quit) also is another tactic.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
@ytgv3fc7
I find the first part hardly semantically credible. Raising a price is NOT a goal. A "goal" is something you need to work hard on attaining. How hard is raising a price ?
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose the "not very hard" goal of raising prices is indeed the only goal, there is no other, for capitalist systems and all units within them. A goal is NOT (wish it was) always something you work hard on attaining.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
@ytgv3fc7
"goal: The purpose toward which an _endeavor_ is directed; an objective"
You are saying that raising prices is the main goal, activity of business and then saying it's an easy goal. You are basically saying doing business is easy.
I frankly think you are talking out of your arse.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose no, I'm saying what businesses DO, and they're still doing it. That's factual, no opinions required.
Raising prices IS what businesses do, to rake in profit margins. It is their main goal and they SAY SO to employees so it's not debatable. How can you be so blind? Or stupid? Or brainwashed? This is how capitalism works. Quality is second-best or not a factor, fraud is frequent, consequences zero or near it.
ytgv3fc7 1 year ago
@ytgv3fc7
I've worked in plenty of businesses, ran one, and raising prices was not a strategy as customers were asking lower prices by the day. If we weren't able to lower them, those were customers walking across the street to our main competitor.
If raising prices is the main strategy, meet a bunch of investors and tell them to give you money because you've got an awesome profit making strategy and see how that goes.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
In the 1890s, for example, we did not have all these income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. We still had a lot of poverty: poverty was not created by the introduction of these taxes, since it existed beforehand. Poverty is caused by a portion of the population who, for one reason or another, is less productive or not productive.
countryhorsefive 1 year ago
@countryhorsefive Poverty is exacerbated by the taxation of their income and of the products that they consume. Taxes that are a greater burden to the poor than to the wealthy are called regressive taxes. For example, taxes on beer and cigarettes are regressive. Taxes on cognac and cigars are progressive. So why are there so many regressive taxes and why are they not lowered, unless the intention is to find a way to make the poor pay taxes?
countryhorsefive 1 year ago
Love your videos. At the bottom of the spreadsheet it says "Reatiler," I assume you mean "Retailer." :-)
Aryaba 1 year ago
4 fucktards missed the like button. Every person in the country, fuck that, the world, NEEDS to watch this video.
DystopianUtopia 1 year ago
@DystopianUtopia Yes, people should watch this video for examples of species logic that shifts blame for the real owners of society who are oppressing us to some fantastical boogeyman called government....of the people, by the people, and for the people. Stef is an exemplar of an apologist that people should be able to readily recognize.
apostate001 1 year ago
so what to we do? maybe collectively we should buy an island in the carribean, call it Freedomland, start issuing our own passports and currency. All of our laws have to fit on a piece of paper, largely following "the philosophy of liberty"
watch?v=Q3pKuJnnBvs
sounds easier than tearing down the existing system and starting over again.
anyone with me?
zeusvalentine 1 year ago
@zeusvalentine Another approach is to operate outside the currency system. Grow food in a garden, check out square foot gardening and aquaponics. Make real things, barter and trade. This still won't escape the property taxes but you can avoid a great deal of the inflation tax and income taxes.
And if you do want an island you can make one. Check out Spiral Island. A floating mangrove island made on used plastic bottles.
MarkProffitt 1 year ago
Geez, this is bad. I didn't even previously taken into account the cumulative effect of the government taxing every step of production.
Pericles461 1 year ago
You're annoying!
MetaCraken 1 year ago
5*****s
HolySpiritSentMe 1 year ago
Hey Stef, great vid as always. But I think you made the same mistake you have corrected in a previous video where you conflated labour and raw material costs together. If workers building the printer stop being income taxed by 30%, the printer's price won't go down 30% - that 30% price decrease will only apply to the _labour part_ of the total printer's cost. :)
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose Thanks, my reply would be that the machines the printer buys were built by someone, and so that labor price would go down, does that make sense?
stefbot 1 year ago 4
@stefbot
I think so!
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose Labor is the root of all production.
MotesTV 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose price still won't go down, it will just be pushed onto the consumer and that 30% ends up in profits for the top brass of the company, who avoid taxes anyways.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
If (sucessful) companies did not consistantly try and reduce prices or offer more for the same price, no one could afford anything by now with inflation calculated in.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose And that is exactly what has been happening slowly over the past 50 years. In 1950 1 person could provide for a wife and 5-10 children easily, and buy plenty of nice things all the time. Fast forward 50 years and a 2 income household can not even afford one child, can't afford a house, can't afford nice things at all. Prices has remained static even as profits skyrocket.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
You can't afford a house because of the government created bubble. Back when my father bought a nice 80k house 20 years ago, consumer electronics were very costy. Fast forward 20 years, houses all sky high but consumer electronics are mostly dirt cheap. Why ? Because one is highly government regulated and subsidized, while the other, considerably less.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose Although correct on housing prices, you totally failed at consumer prices and your overall reasoning. Electronics are now cheaper because they cost only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what they cost to make years ago. Profits off of them are higher than ever as are mark-ups, just the base line is significantly lower. Houses should be cheap, there are more homes than people, so they should be practically free now. Yet still enormous costs, a decade of work just to own.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
" Electronics are now cheaper because they cost only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what they cost to make years ago"
You just commited self imploding epic fail. Cost cutting does lead to price reduction. I think that sentence says it all. I don't care if the higher ups make more money now, good for them. What's important is that price went down, and you just confirmed that.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose but the price drops disproportionately. Thats the thing. You might have a 50% drop in costs, but you will NEVER see more than a 5% drop in price. Think of it as drop in costs = D, and drop in price = P. D is always much greater than P, making P barely relevant in terms of purchasing power. Seriously, are you just looking for something to argue about? Cause it sure sounds like it.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
I don't know if I'm looking for something to argue, but I wouldn't be arguing with myself if you know what I mean. You kind of initiated this thing by replying to my comment. Who cares if it's disproportionate ? Costs go down, prices go down. Period. You said it yourself and are now admitting it. Should we keep taxing companies just because the price cuts might not exactly equate cost custs after tax cuts ?
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose If those tax cuts mean cutting welfare and social security than absolutely. because lets say we dropped taxes by 10% and welfare by 10%, but only .001% of the price due to tax was dropped. This means that suddenly the people on welfare have a lot harder time paying for the things they just could. because D >> P, P is largely irrelevant, and for all practical purposes doesn't help affordability compared to how much it hurts it. P would have to be a significant part of D, near...
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose nearly 90%, if not 100% in order to increase affordability. Otherwise the poor lose buying power while the rich gain money. And it is not a "might" it is absolutely and definitely. Take interest rates on loans for example (as they are the price you pay for the loan). The interest rate may have dropped from 4 percent to 0%, but the interest rate I have to pay on my college loans dropped by only .02%, meaning that banks make more money, while I am not helped at all.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
Prices will come down 10% as well. That's the only way companies can go when they get a tax cut, lowering their prices or offering more for the same price. That's where technology comes from, willing to cost cuts as to compete. Why bother cut costs if you're not going to attract new customers with new features or lower prices ? BTW, your loan did not go down as this wasn't a "student loan" bubble, but a mortgage bubble. This is where they cut the loan prices from 10% to 3% (+/-)
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose No they won't, that is just it. I see it all the time. you know all the intel i7s between like 800 and 970 are the same processor, and cost the same amount to make, the only difference being between the price of 200 bucks and 1100 bucks, when they cost only 25 cents to a dollar each. Often times I hear about a new manufacturing process that costs 1/5th as much for a certain technology, but prices stay exactly the same.
Why bother cutting costs? are you retarded? higher profit
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose see, as long as you are cutting costs without cutting prices, you are increasing profits. And every business wants more profits. And you seem to misunderstand the banking system. The fed loans money to banks to loan out. Any money the banks loan out is totally based on that. So all loans should have dropped by the 4%, but the only ones that did were housing, and they only shrank slighly compared to the cut in the federal reserve percentage rate.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik
You cut costs, so to reduce prices and then get more market share and profits that you reinvest in research. If you just cut costs and pocket the money over and over you will still be offering the same products 10 years from now. Not all loans should have dropped as banks decided to concentrate their newly borrowed capital mostly on the mortgage loans, not student loans.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose First of all, companies don't give a damn about market share ever since apple proved you don't need to. Give a piece of shit a good Shine, and call it something better and people will think they are buying something better, and the profits are so large your tiny market share doesn't matter. And most companies do no research, only a select few do research and they aren't that profitable. Why does it matter to selectively lower loans when their capital is as much as they could want
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik Of course they seek market shares - they want monopoly. If most companies don't do research, then why did most consumer products change in the last 50 years, for example ? Banks decided to invest their capital in housing because they knew the government would bail them out if something went wrong in there - as opposed to the "student loan industry". In short, it was more short term profitable to them to do that than other things.
StrafingMoose 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose But thats just it, maintaining a monopoly makes you look bad, gets you sued, and is illegal in todays world. Which is fine, because monopolies are more evil than the alternative, which is what we have now where they just say "how do we maximize profits this quarter, and possible next quarter" with no attention to the long term. Only companies with intensive long term design processes give a damn about the long term, like car companies and Intel, AMD, and such, and competition ...
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@ChrisSudlik Intel and Amd are the top ten companies. People will model there success.
Emil246 1 year ago
@Emil246 If by model you mean copy exactly the products and don't spend millions on process development, then you are right. If you mean do research and create progress, you are smokin' some kinda monster man.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
@StrafingMoose and competition is so direct in companies like Intel and AMD that the the only way to sell more than the competition is to do research, because they sell to businesses. Those who make consumer products don't need better products, they just need the illusion of better products. And the illusion is cheaper to make with advertising than than actual improvements. 4G networks for example, are just an advertising ploy, they are the the same as 3G with very minor bug fixes.
ChrisSudlik 1 year ago
Stefan. I remember in Econ 101- Microeconomics, within the first two weeks we covered a concept called 'opportunity cost.' Opportunity Cost is the justification of usury plain and simple. When the professor defined the word for the class I went cold from head to toe. I looked around at all the other bees in training furiously scribbling away, not a one stopping to think about whether this concept is even legitimate, or whether the whole of Economics is founded on the sand of jargon. Thank You.
ToYouWhoHaveEars1 1 year ago
@ToYouWhoHaveEars1: I think you have a strange definition of opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is (for example) the the red shirt that you didn't buy because you preferred the green shirt or a pair of pants or a double sided dildo. Help me out here?
andyissemicool 1 year ago
@andyissemicool-The green/red shirt are complementary products.The way that it was taught to me, was that opportunity cost is what 'I' could have bought instead of lending the money to you. Since I 'lose' the POTENTIAL profit of investing elsewhere, I thereby am justified in ESTIMATING what I could have profited percentage-wise in that other venture, so I then add that estimated profit to the lent sum by way of the interest rate. It is this estimate that makes the usury rate/slave tax arbitrary.
ToYouWhoHaveEars1 1 year ago
@ToYouWhoHaveEars1 What got to me was that the interest rate seemed to be calculated using 20/20 hindsight, taking a block of POTENTIAL past investments and averaging the 'profit.' Then they use this percentage to determine 'interest' on a loan. For example-the bank looks back at how it's best investments MAY have profited over the past 5 years, assumes this rate of growth on FUTURE POTENTIAL INVESTMENT, then tacks on the potential profit as ACTUAL profit/interest onto your 5 year mortgage.
ToYouWhoHaveEars1 1 year ago
Yes we would be staggeringly weathy, but what could you do with your money, when there would be no roads to drive to the mall on, no police to protect you from criminals taking your money, and no home to come back to becuase it burned down due to no fire departments
DIFowner 1 year ago
@DIFowner: Do you honestly think that without a government that no roads would be built? 300 million people in this country want and need roads (and you've already granted these people would have staggering wealth to pay for them) and hundreds or thousands of companies are capable of building them. Do you think that since there is no government middleman in this scenario that nothing would get done? Same with security and fire protection and the other scare stories that statists come up with.
andyissemicool 1 year ago 2
@andyissemicool, Yes Andy I think without government few roads would be built. The one example from history we have is when the Centralized Roman State dissintegrated and Europe was reduced to the dark ages, people had to submit to the local strongmen, Barons, Counts, or Lords, another name for (Mafia Dons). The rich and powerful are not going to disappear? No, state and there will be no restraint at all on them. They'd take direct control of whatever area they could and hold it with force.
DIFowner 1 year ago
@DIFowner I disagree. Government protects the interests of large corps not joe bloggs. joe bloggs protects joe bloggs. Problem is when joe is too busy chasing his own fucking tail than looking around and enjoying life for what it is in all its wonder, it all goes tits up since somebody gets left with an overbearing load passed on from one to another..
We need to pull together and uphold virtues and values that are positive and healthy for all creatures.
Fight the good fight
SOCRATES012 1 year ago
Sounds great in theory, but it will end up the same outcome always .. this has been going on from the dawn of time.The haves and have nots.
callingoutpunks 1 year ago
Since people are paid in large part what they are willing to work for, if there weren't taxes, people would work for much less. So the two effects oppose one another. It's debatable what the end result would be.
Stephen5000 1 year ago
@Stephen5000 So more money to the rich then, since it's got to go somewhere? I think It would increase productivity, partly because the bureaucrats would have to get productive jobs and start businesses instead of being leeches. There's competition to get qualified employees too. If the wages/prices are too low, you'll get a shortage of skilled people, and more people competing for jobs with less requirements. It's important that prices/wages float so they reflect actual need/value.
fleskebille 1 year ago
@Stephen5000 They might start out working for less, but the instant everyone who wants to work is working, any new employer (or old employer wanting to hire more employees) would find themselves needing to offer either a higher wage or better working conditions, because he has to compete those workers away from some other employer who has already hired them. This is basic supply and demand at work. The supply is relatively stable, the demand goes up, therefor the price (wages) goes up.
Panpiper 1 year ago
@Panpiper But nothing is preventing that sort of thing now, and many people are working for ridiculously low wages.
Stephen5000 1 year ago
@Stephen5000 There are several things that prevent basic supply and demand from function with regard to employment. The Gov has imposed price controls, a minimum price below which labor cannot be sold. That results in some labor simply not being salable. Union monopolies exacerbate the situation. both visible and hidden taxes on employment massively raise the cost of employment to employers, worsening the problem even more.
Panpiper 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@NobleEightfoldPath Have you not heard of the Austrian school of economics?
MOONDOGGIESWTF 1 year ago
If people are living on table scraps, fluff, and dandelions, then how are they getting so darn fat?
Silveracity 1 year ago
@Silveracity Probably by spending most of what they have left on trying to forget they exist, I know the feeling well, it's not nice to realize your no more than a sacrificial animal to people that couldn't really care whether you live or die and some who would just like you to die. Having to mortgage ones life for savages is not great.
coltrane1966 1 year ago
@coltrane1966
The so called "poor" people I know, live in heated/cooled apartments, have health and dental care, digital cable television and all the food they can eat and have become obese. Is this the new definition of poor?... When you have everything you need, but want what others have to feel rich?
Silveracity 1 year ago
@Silveracity Statistically it is the 'poor' people who are the ones mostly getting fat. It's not a money issue in the US, it's a lifestyle issue.
Panpiper 1 year ago
One problem that I've heard with our idea about privately run fiat currencies, is that it would be very difficult to start such a currency as nobody would buy it not knowing how much each unit would be worth or if people are going to take it up.
With a commodity currency, the initial value of the item serves as the value at the point where it becomes a currency, and then may rise a more people begin to use it.
sharperguy 1 year ago
@sharperguy It is pretty much a given that a private currency would be a commodity currency.
Panpiper 1 year ago
@Panpiper It's just I'm sure I heard Stef suggest the idea of privately run fiat currencies.
sharperguy 1 year ago
@sharperguy Well, there would be nothing stopping anyone from doing that. I would be extremely surprised if anyone used them. Why on earth would anyone accept my monopoly money redeemable for nothing, when they can accept your certificates known to be redeemable in gold? They would not. One could issue 'Canada Tire' money which is redeemable in goods and services from that company perhaps, but that will never be as competitive as commodity money IMO.
Panpiper 1 year ago
Talk about a get rich scheme!
inertia186 1 year ago
Thumbs up for truth.
chris3443 1 year ago
50%. Half of what you make is taken in taxes.
.
Half of what is left is used to pay taxes by the next set of people who receive it.
.
Half of what they have left is spent paying their taxes. And so on.
.
Sorry, Stefbot, you're wrong. It's at LEAST 87% of EVERYTHING is taxes.
CurtHowland 1 year ago
I wonder how you came up with 3.5 times as rich. You brought up some very good points about how much tax really goes into things. Stuff I'd never pondered before. Purchasing power is the accumulation of a LOT of things, although government can obviously influence this power. Just off the top of my head- purchasing power is dependent on salary, inflation, total amount of money in the system, advertising (how much crap you don't need that you buy), population, growth, technology, etc
ritherz 1 year ago
@ritherz Actually the money in the system simply defines the price level, not the purchasing power. Adding money to the system can shift purchasing power to whomever gets that money first, but it ultimately removes purchasing power (in a balancing effect) from whomever it reaches later, as the prices go up. The idea that adding money increases purchasing power is one of the primary fallacies on non-austrian economics.
Panpiper 1 year ago
@Panpiper I agree, I thought I made it clear that purchasing power DEPENDS on money in the system. :)
ritherz 1 year ago
visit liberty websites
dailypaul(dot)com
libertypoet(dot)com
campaign4liberty 1 year ago
IMHO,the money is not the issue,there is limited amount of goods and resources.Taxes and money are useful to redistribute the wealth and make society more egalitarian.Inflation and taxes are most harmful to the rich and lowest income people usually benefit per saldo.It forces collective responsibility on people which is not that bad because people are too selfish to be free.As for unemplyment,the world is overpopulated and people should work less to allow unemployed to also get their share.
dominikst 1 year ago
@dominikst I beg to differ. The very rich are able to avail themselves of low interest loans paid for by society with inflation. It is the poor who cannot avail themselves of that who disproportionately bear the burden of inflation. And the idea that the rich pay the most taxes is an illusion. In reality there is virtually a flat tax when things like the employer's tax, and hidden taxes on property, etc. are all factored in.
Panpiper 1 year ago
Watching these videos I tend to dream of absolute freedom. We can imagine peaceful scenario's of a magnificent world with the greatest of ease because most of us did this a lot as children. Your finally old enough to get a job and you get your first paycheck and instantly you realise your a slave. Perhaps you'll ask your father to explain why the government is taking so much but it's never a good enough explanation or it's too complicated. Eventually you just accept it, you are now branded.
frostyuk2007 1 year ago
Its true, My business went bust because we couldn't afford to employ someone because all the gov regulations, but we really really needed someone to help us out as we where doing to good. we could of easily paid someone a good wage but when we looked into the insurances, super, taxes, and on and on. Then we got so busy that we couldn't keep up with demand, it created massive stress and we folded the business. :(
jaminunit 1 year ago 18
@jaminunit
Thumbs up bud. I've worked for plenty of small businesses when they've needed a little help here and there. Under the table of course. I know more than enough people that have been in that situation.
andersoncouncil1968 1 year ago
What's going to motivate people to accumulate more job responsibility, and the implications of such: less time for chemical stimulation, more stress, etc. if they can get their needs met working a less straining job (by having more purchasing power)?
What's going to motivate adults to sustain the vitality of their offspring, if, once their offspring generate superior physical/intellectual prowess, they are subject to direct competition with the superior young adults?
gn0m1k 1 year ago
@gn0m1k I'm not implying there would necessarily need to be -government- protectionism (unions, barriers to entry), but there would need to be these policies distributed "privately", atleast, to motivate people to defer present consumption to future investment and capital accumulation.
Otherwise, if you are going to be subject to direct competition with an influx of healthy, young adults when you are old and frail, why bother with the low time preference?
gn0m1k 1 year ago
Just avoid taxes - there are multiple ways to do that
Nomels 1 year ago
@Nomels Very very difficult to do that in Britain.
coltrane1966 1 year ago
@coltrane1966
I know many people and organisations in UK, who employ their workforce "illegally" and semi legally. I fully support them and have done it myself before (not in UK though).
Nomels 1 year ago
@Nomels I fully support them too, they are certainly brave people.
I know how spiteful the inland revenue can be, try miscalculating your corporation tax by only one pence for example, it ain't pretty I'll tell you.
coltrane1966 1 year ago
Some of these comments make me cringe. Will you socialists actually learn about the Austrian School before you critique it?
Repeat after me:
THE AUSTRIANS DO NOT ASSUME A PURELY RATIONAL MARKET.
DentalFlossBush1 1 year ago
@zxzxzx09 You mean where do all the criminals go once you kick them out of government? Society regulates itself, through voting with your dollars, legal contracts, insurance and liability, etc.. I would rather that than turn justice over to a monopoly of crooks.
Panpiper 1 year ago
This is correct thinking: A company that has to pay taxes (taxes that ultimately fund the jobs of bureaucrats and fund the inefficient organization of bureaucracy) means that in lieu of those taxes going into the company for expansion, innovation, it feeds the beast of bureaucracy. It is either employment for more public sector employment and bureaucracy OR more employment opportunities for companies to hire and expand. Guess what happens when government grows...
qncsc 1 year ago 6
no taxes means no schools ,police,roads.years and years of not paying for services has brought bridges that are falling appart.no man is an island.we need services as a community .who will fix our roads for free.educate us for free,provide police and fire dept for free.who ?? i saw the spread sheet its goobly goop.ignors so many unstated things who would print the money for free.mmmm YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.PAY NOTHING you get nothing.
stealhgerm007 1 year ago
@stealhgerm007 Yes, and who will feed us if not for government? Who will clothe us, house us, provide communications, entertainment, and all the other things a society needs in order to maintain itself.
And yes, who would print the free money?!
*Rolls eyes with a big LOL*
Panpiper 1 year ago