TwoMisfits
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2002
Companies do not just store their money up in large money bins like Uncle Scrooge to swim around in.
They use the money they make to GROW their business (employing more people).
Their "fat cat" CEOs spend their money on luxury items (that employs more people --- someone gets paid to make a yacht).
That's just simple supply and demand. Disney is at high demand, so they raise prices to what the market bears. We all (on here) keep EASILY paying those prices, so they keep going up.
And what have they done with that money from the increased prices? Burned it? No. They have expanded their parks (paying construction workers to build SWGE, and eventually hire tons more cast members to work in the new land), they have created tons of fun movies yearly (which gives jobs to more people in the movie industry).
It simply comes down to two economic philosophies - socialism/communism (where the government controls wages and prices) and capitalism.
I'm pretty sure I like how capitalism works .. socialism hasn't done very well because it reduces the "greed" of capitalism .. and the "greed" of capitalism is what spurs people to work harder and spur innovation.
If the government just up and gave me a few dollar/hour raise .. I don't think I would work any harder than I did the day before.
It is a good debate and there is a solution there somewhere .. maybe not as black/white as we all think.
See, it doesn't. Right now, we don't have true capitalism anyway, but more a government-sponsored one which encourages large oligopolies over small businesses (in fact, even if you hate the current president, the rollback of regulations left and right will do more than anything else in the last few decades to start to level the business playing field between big and little than anything "done" by the government could do). And large oligopolies (at least public ones) are much more reliant on the market and are much more able to use their large corporate power to lobby government for things favorable to them (like unlimited visas or onerous tax requirements that little companies could never meet) and to force employees (and customers) to take what they give b/c there are so few options in that industry.
So many times people post black and white when it comes to economics, but most times, it's always a grey...and we're trying to move the grey more favorably to employees and customers right now b/c the pendulum has been too far towards the company profits for the last 1-2 decades...
Now, does that mean the government should mandate a living wage. No. As I mentioned above, the best thing the government can usually do is level the playing field for businesses and make them compete with each other for limited resources (which people are becoming, thanks to the current policies)...