If you ever thought, “Why am I paying these taxes?! I didn’t sign up for this…” that’s how Karl Marx feels about the entire capitalist system. Sure, if you don’t like your job, you can go sell your labor elsewhere, just like you can move and go pay taxes elsewhere...but you still have to get a job (and pay taxes) and work if you want to survive. You don’t have a choice, unless you’re a capitalist...that is, you’re the one doing the hiring and controlling the “means of production." Basically, you own the factories and what-not, deciding worker’s wages and where profits go and how much you keep for yourself.
The foundational theory of Marxian economics is the labor theory of value, which says that capitalists don’t pay workers for the full value they're providing as workers, keeping the surplus for themselves instead of spreading the love to the workers who created the value. Over time, this creates the growing inequality between capitalist and workers, i.e. the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Marx saw workers working hard, yet their wages didn’t reflect the value they provided, because all that extra value was pocketed by their bosses. He believed that, as capitalists get wealthier and wealthier from this surplus, and workers get poorer and poorer, the poor will eventually say “I’ve had enough of this,” and there’ll be a worldwide revolution of workers against capitalism (it can’t be just a small group), which accumulates the majority of wealth into the hands of a few.
Marx thinks it’s just a matter of time...and that when wealthy people are philanthropic in the meantime, it’s really just capitalists giving concessions to the workers to keep them content enough to not revolt, so the capitalists can keep their power (and their money). Instead of the “Wow, look how nice that billionaire is for starting a fund to feed the poor” reaction, Marx would say something like “Wait, why does one person have all that money in the first place? And why are those poor people so poor in the first place? Oh right, capitalism.”
The way Marx saw capitalism and technology growing, he felt that capitalism would eventually shoot itself in the foot, since it’s not really sustainable to have inequality continuously...grow. Yep...a lot of ideas coming out of that beard of his.
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Finance: What is Community Property?0 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is community property All right you
were married at twenty two Back then she looked great
in a bikini and you looked um you know great
in your speedo And unfortunately that was about all you
had in common She'd say faster faster The lights are
turning red Life in the fast lane pretty much slowed
So you filed for divorce in a quote community property
state unquote which means half no matter how you slice
things whatever gains you had in value of whatever properties
or investments or pieces of art a different art And
at the other end of the spectrum of no fault
lives equitable distribution divorce which pays attention to the assets
you came into the marriage owning along with their appreciation
and value during the marriage in an equitable distribution divorce
If you came to the marriage with a million box
and you're deadbeat husband had well nothing other than you
know large feet And with stock market compounding that million
dollars grew to be worth four million by the time
you got divorced Well then it's highly likely that you
would get to keep a very large portion of that
four million dollars in an equitable distribution Yes we're being
hugely vague here because every state is different in most
states Run the process in one form or another through
a kind of clearing agent in the form of a
divorce judge More less That judge then takes into account
a whole bunch of factors like the earnings power of
each spouse The value of the separate properties brought into
the marriage when they closed the deal The degree of
financial contribution of each spouse and future financial needs ages
liquidity pre nup agreement and all that general living stuff
Things like drug abuse adultery and domestic violence actually don't
count in the calculation of those post marital bliss financial
awards Yeah go figure A snapshot of the assets at
the time of separation is generally taken and the lawyers
feast on the contentious hostile he said She said process
of breaking up which really is hard to do well
this system runs office it to those of the community
property No fault laws of california and its brethren In
those cases while the financial gains accrued during the marriage
get cut in half and one piece goes the husband
and one piece goes the wife that is in states
which have adopted community property laws I either property you
two own together in your marriage is equally divided as
part of your little community of to you split it
when you split the community property states well wisconsin's one
and you know then basically the west That's community property
right there That's the matter So when divorce strikes community
property laws helped clarify things legally And the whole invention
of community property laws was a big innovation in the
legal community that primarily helped women And it actually help
them dramatically because before it's admin often property or assets
were viewed as earned by the husband solely so in
a divorce women got more less nothing in return for
staying at home and doing laundry washington dishes raising the
kids and you know running their undercover gambling operation And
in the process of this form of social innovation many
states adopted a no fault divorce system Where in you
know it really didn't matter who was having the affair
or with what didn't matter who was a total pain
in the ass to deal with in the mornings before
coffee you know Or who was a drug addict A
spendthrift a riverboat gambler It just didn't matter No fault
if a couple didn't want to be together Well the
law just changed and said the notion of blame is
removed hereby and with no fault Divorce and community property
Couples were ableto split up freely You know like art 00:03:20.063 --> [endTime] here he can no longer swipe right
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