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The now well-known point is that the market is a fantastic information exchange. Changing prices are signals of shortage and surplus. Furthermore, the capitalist market gives people an incentive to respond to these signals in the search to maximize profits (private vices, public virtues again). Take away the market and the profit motive and you remove both signal and incentive. However skilled the planner, it is impossible to gain the quantity of fine-grained information about consumer demand and changing market conditions that even a small market automatically produces. But even if we did have this information, responding efficiently also relies on a level of good will and power we are unlikely to see. Despite its apparent attractions a planned economy just cannot do what it is designed for.
what??? what??? I need to read more critiques of markets to develop a more eloquent response to this but this feels so off: 1) assuming rationality; 2) ignoring the power dynamics inherent in a purchasing power distribution that's not equivalent to need
also tell me how this applies to bitcoin u fucking melt
[...] there’s a point that nevertheless goes strangely unmentioned in the Cotis report: firms have been pampering their shareholders in recent years, resulting in a troubling fall in the share of profits devoted to investment. This reality is hidden by the authors’ choice to focus on gross profits, or profits before deducting capital depreciation. But since productive capital is always depreciating, worn-out equipment must be upgraded or replaced before any new investments can be made: computers are regularly upgraded, buildings and other assets have to be maintained and repaired, and so on. From an economic as well as a tax point of view, the relevant concept is net profit—profit after deducting depreciation. These net profits are more difficult to estimate, but since INSEE takes the trouble to produce the best possible estimates of depreciation, it would be better to use them than to leave them unmentioned. Especially since the overall picture of profit distribution changes completely when you move from gross to net profits. The Cotis report tells us that over the last twenty years, gross profits have been 32–33 percent of firms’ value added, versus 67–68 percent for wages, which is true. But capital depreciation has been around 15–16 percent of value added, or roughly half of gross profits. In other words, pretty pie charts showing that firms generously devote half their profits to investment are kind of a joke. The truth is that companies replace old equipment before they pay their shareholders—which is the least they can do. If we use net profits, however, we see that firms paid out practically all their profits to their owners, in the form of interest and dividends. [...]
[...] When he became president in 1933, Roosevelt knew precisely nothing about the policies he would adopt. But he did know that the Depression and austerity were bringing America to its knees, that the state had to assert control over a financial capitalism gone mad. Today, in 2012, four years after the onset of the 2008 world financial crisis, Hollande finds himself in exactly the same situation. When he started his campaign he didn’t know he would end up proposing a 75 percent tax on incomes higher than €1 million. But he quickly came to the same conclusion as Roosevelt: taxes are the only weapon that can put a stop to the insane explosion of very high pay.
France has excelled at accumulating various direct taxes, with moth-eaten, overlapping tax bases, each with different rules: never mind, we’ll create a 75 percent bracket with a third tax base, different from both the income tax and the social security tax, and even more full of holes than the first two. One thing is certain: in the kingdom of Rube Goldberg machines, the tax advisers will be kings.
just a good quote
She came back with the pot and poured coffee for him and for the two men. Then she picked up a dish and turned to get some ice cream. She reached down into the container and with the dipper began to scoop up the ice cream. The white skirt yanked against her hips and crawled up her legs. What showed was girdle, and it was pink, thighs that were rumpled and gray and a little hairy, and veins that spread in a berserk display.
The two men sitting beside Earl exchanged looks. One of them raised his eyebrows. The other man grinned and kept looking at Doreen over his cup as she spooned chocolate syrup over the ice cream. When she began shaking the can of whipped cream, Earl got up, leaving his food, and headed for the door. He heard her call his name, but he kept going.
At home he had Doreen take off all her clothes and get on the scale. He frowned when he saw the veins. He ran his finger the length of one that sprouted up her thigh.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said.
He looked at the scale and wrote the figure down on a piece of paper.
He read the classifieds. He went to the state employment office. Every three or four days he drove someplace for an interview, and at night he counted her tips. He smoothed out the dollar bills on the table and stacked the nickels, dimes, and quarters in piles of one dollar each. Each morning he put her on the scale.
In two weeks she had lost three and a half pounds.
"I pick," she said. "I starve myself all day, and then I pick at work. It adds up."
But a week later she had lost five pounds. The week after that, nine and a half pounds. Her clothes were loose on her. She had to cut into the rent money to buy a new uniform.
"People are saying things at work," she said.
"What kind of things?" Earl said.
"That I'm too pale, for one thing," she said. "That I don't look like myself. They're afraid I'm losing too much weight."
"What is wrong with losing?" he said. "Don't you pay any attention to them. Tell them to mind their own business. They're not your husband. You don't have to live with them."
"I have to work with them," Doreen said.
"That's right," Earl said. "But they're not your husband. "
so many themes to dissect here: him controlling her as a substitute for his lack of control in the labour market, workers' lack of power during this time in general, his role of "husband" really being an empty vessel for channeling the perceived judgment of other men ...
She stood in the doorway and turned the knob. She looked as if she wanted to say something else. She wore the white blouse, the wide black belt, and the black skirt. Sometimes she called it her outfit, sometimes her uniform. For as long as I could remember, it was always hanging in the closet or hanging on the clothesline or getting washed out by hand at night or being ironed in the kitchen
She worked Wednesdays through Sundays.
inspo maybe (pano)
"Morning," I said, offering the letter.
He took it from me without a word and went absolutely pale. He tottered a minute and then started back for the house, holding the letter up to the light.
I called out, "She's no good, boy. I could tell that the minute I saw her. Why don't you forget her? Why don't you go to work and forget her? What have you got against work? It was work, day and night, work that gave me oblivion when I was in your shoes and there was a war on where I was ..."
[...] She touched the ewdding band on her ring finger with her thumb. She turned onto her side and then onto her back again. And then she began to feel afraid, and in one unreasoning moment of longing she prayed to go to sleep.
Please, God, let me go to sleep.
She tried to sleep.
"Mike," she whispered.
There was no answer.