>I can appreciate how you feel but I don't believe it's true.
> In Japan (a capitalist country by any measure) CEOs are
>paid on average 11-12 times what a base-level employee
>makes. In the States it's over two hundred times.

so?

There
>isn't a free labour market in the US, corporations are
>subsidized by the government.

how?

Just because employees agree
>to work for that amount doesn't mean that they're happy
>about it, or that $18 000 accurately reflects what they add
>to the company. Only because of mass unemployment can
>WalMart get away with paying such a shitty wage.

walmart should be allowed to pay whatever they want since this is a free country. if you dont like it dont work there and dont go to walmart and support them.
>
>No one forces people to work at WalMart? What about Ford or
>GM, who outsource the majority of their production overseas?
> You don't think people are forced to work at WalMart? I
>don't think you have a very good idea of what it's like to
>be poor.

poor people can work whereever they want. the reason why this post was started was becuase someone said walmart pays poorly and has a poor healthcare record. i dont see this as a big deal cause people are free to work there or not.

Capitalism isn't an absolute, people take various
>measures to offset the negative effects of capitalism.
>Things like universal health care and education were created
>because people knew if the "free market" were to take over
>that wealth would centralize and poor people would get
>fucked.

you have to pull your own weight, dont expect the rest of society to bear your burden for you.

This is what Adam Smith wrote about in The Wealth
>of Nations.

read ayn rands 'virtue of selfishness'
>
>Inefficient for the economy. By paying people who are lower
>on the income ladder more money, you are giving them more
>money to spend - which they have to do because they need
>things to survive. When you give the rich more money, a lot
>of it ends up in hedge funds and speculative investments
>which don't contribute to the growth of the economy. The
>money just gets kicked around the world looking for weak
>markets to exploit.

your talking about shrinking the wealth gap. you are talking about things that do not comply with a free society. i believe in freedom, you believe in limiting people paychecks and you are talking about the redistubution of wealth which is socialism/communism and we both know how that turned out in reality. the elite got even more money. the wealth gap was far greater.

Paying factory workers (or in this
>case, WalMart employees) more gives them more money to
>spend, which means more profits for you and a bigger
>production/distribution base which allows you to exploit
>economies of scale (and compete internationally). It's
>called Fordism.

that works when only a few companies do that. profit sharing is obviously motivational and improves worker production. but you are talking about a blatant pay raise. how does the corporation pay for all this? you say it will increase profits but that is not a guarantee. if it were a guarantee then every company would do it.
>
>I think maybe you should read up on economics a bit before
>you begin talking about what's good/bad for the American
>economy. A lot of the right-wing cats gloss over the broad
>implications of what they're saying.

im not right wing, im an objectivist/libertarian. i also get my info from the economist.

>
>PS what is it you like so much about capitalism?

the ability to progress rapidly.