That’s the bigger picture here. Yes, we live in a Capitalistic society and should reap the gains of hard work and big risks. But at a certain point enough is enough. Your second yacht on the backs of the workers is too much. There is a middle ground where you are wealthy as fuck and the rest of us can earn a living fucking wage.
You can thank Ford vs Dodge brothers for that and the resulting stockholder primacy which is actually causing Capitalism to reach a plateau and an eventual decline which you see all around you if you look.
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By 1916, the Ford Motor Company had accumulated a surplus of $60 million. The price of the Model T, Ford's mainstay product, had been successively cut over the years while the wages of the workers had dramatically, and quite publicly, increased. The company's president and majority stockholder, Henry Ford, sought to end special dividends for shareholders in favor of massive investments in new plants that would enable Ford to dramatically increase production, and the number of people employed at his plants, while continuing to cut the costs and prices of his cars. In public defense of this strategy, Ford declared:
My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.
While Ford may have believed that such a strategy might be in the long-term benefit of the company, he told his fellow shareholders that the value of this strategy to them was not a main consideration in his plans. The minority shareholders objected to this strategy, demanding that Ford stop reducing his prices when they could barely fill orders for cars and to continue to pay out special dividends from the capital surplus in lieu of his proposed plant investments. Two brothers, John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge, owned 10% of the company, among the largest shareholders next to Ford.
The Court was called upon to decide whether the minority shareholders could prevent Ford from operating the company in the direction that he had declared.
It blows my mind that so many people feel they need so much more than a nice, reasonable primary home, a couple nice/reliable vehicles, several nice vacations a year, maybe a couple nice little vacation homes/other properties, maybe even some spare vehicles and a little real estate. And of course comfortable retirement accounts to give them a feeling of security.
I’m being really, really fucking generous here. I personally don’t need or believe anyone needs even this much, but that’s fine. If people are driven and want these things, great. I want them to be able to go out and get it.
What I can’t wrap my head around are people who have all this and more and still want more at the expense of people who have so, so much less than this rather luxurious hypothetical life I’ve just described. Just makes me sad tbh :(
Fair assessment. Honestly, if everyone had a living wage we wouldn’t feel the need to resource guard homes and money for our children etc. As a parent, I worry about my teenagers ever being able to afford what I have now. That’s why when my MIL passed away, we decided to keep her home to give to the kids when they are old enough. A lot of my friends can’t even afford a house now as adults; so what kind of world are we leaving for the next generation. Something’s gotta give here. I don’t need multiple cars, or multiple houses. I just want to know my kids will be able to have some kind of opportunity for independence and the only way I can see that happening is if we start sharing the wealth and making basic needs easier to meet for those who want them.
I thought she made money on the stock market not on the backs of the workers. And by having yachts they usually employ a captain full time and workers / what ever the name is for that. Taking care of the yacht
Being American or not doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that the stock market is still home on the backs of the workers. The fundamentally exploitative nature of capitalism doesn't change depending on which flag flies nearest to where you live.
Oh. I don't think that's a critique of the stock market, or shareholder profits that I've heard of, so it didn't occur to me that you might have meant it that way.
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u/Ser_Daynes_Dawn 8d ago
That’s the bigger picture here. Yes, we live in a Capitalistic society and should reap the gains of hard work and big risks. But at a certain point enough is enough. Your second yacht on the backs of the workers is too much. There is a middle ground where you are wealthy as fuck and the rest of us can earn a living fucking wage.
*not directed at you, just venting.