I'd also like to know how people here feel about the argument that if you need someone to do a job for you, no matter how easy it is or how little training it requires, you should pay them a proper living wage.

That's the Marxist theory of labor, and it fails on contact with reality.

Reality is, a barista is not as valuable as an engineer.

Do you believe the richest 1% are really as rich as the video says, compared to everyone else? If so, do you think this is fair or unfair? Why? If you believe it's unfair, what solutions do you support?

They are that rich indeed, and it is very unfair, but the cause of this is not capitalism. The crypto-socialist Sir John Maynard Keynes is responsible for a lot of the reprehensible actions of government in pertinence to the economy, namely such things as incessant money-printing, abandonment of the Gold Standard in favour of Fiat, forcing low interest rates, and importantly, Trump's bowing to the Sickle and Star with his subsidization of farming. Did you know that Benito Mussolini said about Keynes's book "The Death Of *Lassiez-faire"" what amounts to, "lmao based and stickspilled", and that it is the very same fascist economics that are in use today, all over the world, without exception?

It is the government that creates more money to pay off it's cronies, thereby also devaluing the savings of the common person. The government monpolizes law enforcement and allows unions, leading to huge negative results for the consumer as wrongdoing government employees, notably public school staff and law enforcement, keep their jobs and pensions because the alternative is them going on strike and oh no now all the parents are writing angry letters, and muh voots are gone.

Leave alone this, the government socializes more and more every day, and says it's just capitalism. Protectionism, locking people in their homes, forcing people to comply with a strict code, lying to the masses, I bet you Stalin is cumming uncontrollably in Hell right now.

People who live in extreme poverty (e.g. families sleeping in cars) despite seeking jobs or having two jobs: why do you think people find themselves in that situation, and what would potential solutions be?

Government keeps entry into certain industries locked behind strict liscensing, legislature that reads like an Office script, and inconsistent law enforcement.

And if, once restrictions on minimum wage, employment standards, government-approved business, and so on and so on are removed, and sound, private money is adopted, we will have a truly free market. At that point, it is no longer my problem, because that person sleeping in his car now has the choice to learn a skill and sell it at any price he should choose, and now, I have no responsibility for him, because I neither leech off of his tax dollars, nor does he off of mine.

Employers having more negotiating power regarding salaries, because they don't have much competition when hiring workers, meanwhile employees are competing with thousands of other candidates: fair or unfair, and why? If unfair, what could be done to solve this?

Unfair, and again, solution is less government.

I often heard strong supporters of capitalism say that "Everyone can be rich if they work hard enough". Except there's a need for all kinds of jobs, even those that pay little, and there's no need for billions of people doing the jobs that currently pay millions. So even if everyone worked twice as hard tomorrow, nothing would change. In other words, it seems the system isn't designed to allow everyone who works hard to make a comfortable income - even if everyone worked twice as hard starting tomorrow, the poor would stay poor and nobody would earn more. How do you guys feel about that? I'm especially interested to know why if you disagree.

This actually hinges on the point above, and I wanted to address both at the same time to make it easier.

Once you remove business regulation, a company does truly become the spirit of a company: the pooling of capital. Anybody can make a company now, at least, anybody with resources and an idea. More competition among employers will undoubtedly lead to more power to the worker to effectively choose his salary. And since "money" in the fiat, socialist sense that it exists in right now, would be entirely gone and replaced instead with "sound money" and private trade, I would be paid what my employer and I would agree my labour was worth; if our opinions differed, I could find another employer, and the employer another employee.

I'd also like to know how people here feel about the argument that if you need someone to do a job for you, no matter how easy it is or how little training it requires, you should pay them a proper living wage. Otherwise, you're just exploiting them until they become unable to work due to health issues, at which point you discard and replace them with someone else. In other words, if you need someone to work for you, you should make sure the job lets them sustain themselves. Again, how do you feel about this and why?

If you don't like my wages, don't work for me. There's other companies.

Social safety nets: I heard the opinions that everyone needs to be responsible for themselves. But is it really in the best interest of society to let a worker with years of experience and education end up on the streets because of a difficult period in their life they couldn't get out of? Why or why not?

I would employ such a worker, even at a loss, because that loss would not be permanent. Eventually, I would coax him out of his foxhole, without spending too much, so that I now have an experienced employee indebted to me not only morally, but in labour. I would pay such an employee dearly!

These are some heavy questions, and I haven't formally touched economics since high school, but I'll give some of the easier questions a shot.

Watching the video, I'm not in the least bit surprised. I live in South Africa, and our GINI coefficient is some of the highest in the world. There are millions of people here (and in the USA, and the rest of the first and third world countries) who are living below the breadline — people who will go their entire lives making less money than some CEOs make in a single day.

Is it fair? No. But is the current system fairer? I'd have to say, compared to the alternatives, absolutely.

It's far from perfect, and there is enough room for improvement to keep generations of economists busy. But right now it's the fairest system we have, especially considering that an economic system cannot live in a temporal vacuum, it doesn't start off from a clean slate — it needs to work with decades and centuries of legacy, often unpleasant.

There are people who will go their entire lives working their hands to the bone, while struggling to put food on the table for their children, while there are people who were given every opportunity at every turn, and are just coasting through life. It's not fair, but it is also not something that I believe you can fix solely through political means, because that means that at the end of the day, a group of people will have to decide what is fair and who deserves what, eventually the goal skews from "More effort equals more reward", to "More political sway means more reward". This is where the whole free market vs controlled economy comes in.

Welfare and social safety nets are another subject that might seem simple at first but is deceptively tricky and intricate. On one hand it makes perfect sense to have a safety net for those who, through no fault of themselves, cannot provide for their own care and well-being. Whether through accidents, chronic disease, or unforeseen market trends. On the other hand, you cannot have half your population entirely dependent on welfare — that burden has to be carried by someone, often the dwindling middle class, who, while reasonably well off, are often struggling to maintain their status quo themselves.

With the current Covid situation, rising unemployment, poor job prospects, and the threat of automation and robotics, it definitely paints a bleak picture.

What does the world do with 8 billion humans, 65% of which are in the working age, when simply don't have the economic need for 5 billion workers in jobs? Do we promise them some welfare cheque every month as long as they keep voting for the political party in power? Do we try to have the middle class subsidise them? Or do we try and promote people going back to rural lifestyles and subsistence farming?

While wealth inequality is just as bad if not worse than he shows in the video you linked, it is just a symptom of a much larger evil called Central Banking. The Federal Reserve is the central bank in the US and despite the name it’s not actually part of the government, instead it is a private bank owned by shareholders. This video goes in depth on the Federal Reserve for anybody interested in learning more. Tl:dw the Fed effectively steals wealth from actual workers and gives it to bankers and the government.

Once properly understood I’m sure anybody would agree the current system is inherently unfair. To be honest I don’t have a perfect solution, but a great start would be to abolish the Federal Reserve and establish a new form of currency, unfortunately doing so would throw the entire world economy into chaos. As for what a new currency looks like precious metals and cryptocurrencies both have major potential as a stable currency upon which we can build a free market. Each comes with their own problems though, for gold and silver the primary issue is the fact that very few people currently hold most of the available supply which would leave the system open to manipulation if not dealt with. As for cryptocurrencies I haven’t done enough study into the underlying technology to comment on making a new one, but I can say existing ones like bitcoin have fatal long term flaws that make them bad choices.

As for your other bullet points I’ll number my responses 1-5 to make it easier on myself.

1. There’s lots of different reasons individuals can find themselves in poverty despite trying their hardest to raise themselves out of that situation, after all each person has a story. Some are due to poor financial decision making, while sometimes it’s factors beyond control of the individual (industry they trained for fails or becomes flooded with too many workers) the solution will be different for each individual. A wide ranging solution would again be to abolish the Fed and establish free markets on sound currency.

2. A lot of this comes down to 2 factors, first is unnecessary government regulation interfering with the free market. Big examples being things like minimum wage and regulatory compliance creating massive barriers to entry in certain industries which in turn gives the existing companies leverage when hiring workers. The other is immigration, using the tech sector as an example companies are able to list entry level jobs with bare minimum wage and 2+ years experience in the field then when no Americans apply for the insult of a “job” the company is allowed to hire H-1B visa workers from India who is already used to far lower salaries. This of course harms the negotiating power of all the American workers with fresh tech certifications/degrees trying to get started in the industry. The solution to both factors is less government interference.

3. “Everyone can be rich if they work hard enough" is indeed a fallacy as you have correctly identified. A correct statement in a free market economy would be “Anybody can be rich if they work hard enough at offering a valuable service or good.”

4. That’s just absolute nonsense, not every job deserves a ‘livable wage’. How exactly do you define a livable wage anyway? Is it the bare minimum to live in a shack and eat ramen 3 times a day? Enough to support a whole family with modern amenities? Let’s use the example of teenagers flipping burgers after school, why in the hell should an employer be expected to provide them with a livable wage? Is a burger flipper in NYC really worth more than a burger flipper in a rural town simply because where they live?

5. I’m actually in favor of social safety nets with one large caveat, they should be run privately and not by the government. Many churches and NGOs already provide services that help people when they fall on hard times. Anybody else who is also in favor of social safety nets is free to do their research and contribute to causes they believe in with direct donations or volunteering.

sounds like commie talk

The wage gap isn't a thing I care about in the slightest. Rising tides lift all boats and what not. Not particularly interesting for me. A lot of the problems you've listed are consequences of the policies trying to fix them. In fact, many of the policies were implemented precisely to create those problems.

Take the minimum wage for example. It was put in place for explicitly racial purposes, back when progressives still acknowledged basic economics.

The operation of the minimum wage requirement would merely extend the definition of defectives to embrace all individuals, who even after having received special training, remain incapable of adequate self-support... If we are to maintain a race that is to be made of up of capable, efficient and independent individuals and family groups we must courageously cut off lines of heredity that have been proved to be undesirable by isolation or sterilization.

-Henry Rogers Seager, President of the American Association for Labor Legislation

It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work, better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.

-Royal Meeker, U.S. Commissioner of Labor under Woodrow Wilson

[Minimum wages] protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.

-Arthur Holcomb, Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission