Fat, Conservative, bloviator, Rush Limbaugh, came out against that guy, Dan Price, the Seattle CEO who gave a huge pay raise to all his employees.
Limbaugh said that the move was "pure, unadulterated socialism, which has never worked." He's also hoping the company fails because he wants it to be used as a case study in MBA programs to show why socialism is a failure.
I guess Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan, Germany, France and many more countries like those are "failures," too. That would be strange because they're all modern, prosperous, peaceful democracies that are socialistic in one degree or another.
What Dan Price did is not Socialism, it's his business model. Calling it Socialism would be like calling sales incentives or marketing, socialism.
The owner is making an investment. He is betting on a happier, more fulfilled and motivated work staff; one that is less stressed out and ultimately more productive. The idea being, it will translate into higher sales as customers receive better service and more goodwill is generated.
It may work, it may not; but that's not the point. The point is, as a business owner he can choose whatever business model he wants as long as it's legal. Furthermore, the minimum wage has been shown to be a positive thing.
Anyway, you get the feeling these "free market" psycho-morons like Limbaugh are hoping, praying, it doesn't work because if it does then it would destroy everything they learned from their Holy Bible--Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Dan Price aside, it wouldn't be correct to think we don't have socialism here in America because we do...big time. When banks get bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars in taxpayers' money...that's Socialism, just don't expect Limbaugh to agree. And what about their failed business models? He'd call that free market capitalism.
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I guess Henry Ford was both a Commie and a failure as "entrepreneur" and surely Limbaugh has more money and power than Ford ever did.
When banks get bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars in taxpayers' money...that's Socialism, just don't expect Limbaugh to agree.
I remember when the first vote on bailing out the banks was defeated, and one US politician said something to the effect of this bill being "a Bolshevik takeover".
Nationalizing the banks would have been socialism.
As Bill Black pointed out, "nationalizing the banks" was a propaganda construct to allow TPTB not to follow the law and put insolvent banks into resolution.
This is done all the time. The insolvent bank is taken over by regulators after close on Friday, restructured, and opened for business on Monday morning.
What was done was to circumvent existing law in order to protect TPTB from having to assume responsibility for their mistakes and missteps.
Worse, they were given a get out of jail free pass (TBTJ) for their wrongdoing.
This was just another giant dupe-the-rubes exercise.
"Move on, nothing to see here."
Are you referring to the FDIC procedures?
That would have been one humiliating haircut for the TBTF institutions.
And no, that's a far cry from nationalization.
Right. Management would have been replaced, equity holders hit with the bill and bond holders crammed down to equity holders. The TPTB would have been in an uproar, but that's the law.
The "excuse" is that this would have further disrupted the global financial system. That may be some truth to that. If so, then the systemic risk is too great and institutions that are TBTF and TBTJ need to be broken up with anti-trust legislation. This would also drive TPTB nuts, too, since they control the world through trusts that are anti-competitive, anti-democratic, and systemically dangerous.
What happened instead was greater consolidation, less competition, more systemic risk, and more power to TPTB left standing.
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