Economics

(article on 2013 bull market for stocks, bear market for workers)

What is the economy? What is "politics"?

Both "Institutions" – that is, organized spheres of social life designed to meet peoples' needs.

One has to do with the distribution of resources, the other with power / decision making

Markets? Supply and demand? Production and consumption? Specialization

Agricultural revolution – using animal power

calorie ratios, 1:50 is better than 1:3 (hunt/gather) or 1:5 (horticulture/pastoralism)

Industrial – using machine power (1:5,000)

5 changes on p. 337

expanding market – reigned in by unions and child labor laws

WHAT DID IT MEAN TO OUR GUYS?

Durkheim – increased specialisation, organic solidarity

Weber – triumph of rationalism

Marx – capitalist revolution (over fuedalism)

Information – knowledge is power!

3 changes, see also 5 changes on page 348.

(will robots take over the service sector?)

Globalization

world market, jobs outsourcing

takes economic activity out of control of local governments

raises concerns about rights of workers
other concerns?

Economic systems and justice: interrogating inequality

• capitalism & Adam Smith, invisible hand of market forces (compatible with classical liberal position that government exists for the sake of the individual)
  • freedom TO

• socialism & intentional, centralized planning (position is that government exists for the sake of the society as a whole)
  • freedom FROM

Person 1:  No, justice is no boxes for anyone but what they bring themselves. Penalising the strong to support the weak is socialism.  Justice is being held to account for ones actions, for the decisions one has the authority and power to make. It has nothing to do with redistribution of resources, and trying to conflate the two is dishonest and manipulative. 

Person 2: It's interesting that we see this picture completely differently. Notice that it's about making sure everyone can see the game, not about anything someone did or didn't do. Is it just to let someone in a wheelchair not access something because everyone else is too tall or can climb stairs?

Person 1: Of course, because you see it as the responsibility of the collective to make sure everyone can see the game, and I see it as the responsibility of the individual that (s)he can see the game.

Person 2: It's both, I think. One can take responsibility for one's own actions *by* asking for help from the collective.

Person 1: "Asking" is the pertinent part. Asking for is different than entitled to. The difference between charity and socialism is the freedom to say no, and the obligation of those asking to respect that no.

 Person 2: The difference between our positions is that collectives can ask, and have their ask permanently respected. How do you know the folks in this picture didn't ask? People also need to be taught (by the collective) that they are allowed to ask. In other words, parents, teachers, and so on are responsible for making tools available for exercising agency.

Person 1:If the collective's "ask" is permanently respected, it's not a request, it's a decree, and therein lies injustice.

Person 3: This argument seems contingent on a particular view of what is voluntary vs not. For example, if one views wage labor and particularly the distribution of wages to not be totally voluntary, we are already in a situation of injustice. So, at the very least, to assume that injustice starts at REdistribution is false.  Similarly, this argument seems contingent on the view that those who can see the game have done so through their individual effort, but of course in the analogy the tallest person has likely exerted no extra effort which causes them to become taller. Therefore, only the shorter persons actually bear any "responsibility" for seeing the game. The tallest person's "responsibility" is an illusion. Therefore, making individual responsibility the standard for who is able to see the game vs not seems likely to be an argument the tallest person has come up with for their own benefit, rather than a universally obvious truth.

from reddit ELI5

Communism is a form of socialism. Pure Communism doesn't exist. Neither does pure socialism. Both words are used in so many different ways (especially socialism these days) that there is no clear distinction to be drawn, until you focus on a particular ideology (Marxist Communism vs. Anarchist socialism, Maoism vs. Social Democracy, etc.).

Socialism is a broad term used to mean a lot of different things. For some people it's just the idea of everyone helping everyone else out to make sure no one dies from a lack of basic needs (food, water, shelter, etc.). For others it means an economic system, usually the opposite of Capitalism, where things are in place to stop how much capital (stuff that makes money) gathers up in any one person's hands. At it's core though, socialism is always concerned with the idea of the good of the larger number, rather than the pursuit of individual gain. Some people who believe in Capitalism think that pursuing individual gain helps everyone in the end anyway, but Socialists would disagree with that.

Socialism is also used negatively to describe things people see as getting in the way of successful Capitalism. All governments place limits on the free market ideal of Capitalism to some extent, but when people strongly disagree with how far those limits go, they'll often label them socialism to let people know they think they're bad. In the United States, for example, someone earning $500,000 a year will pay more in taxes than someone earning $50,000 a year. But (in theory) their children will have access to the same public education system – the person earning $50,000 will be getting a greater return, thanks to government redistribution. While this occasionally comes under attack, however, it is generally considered a good use of the government, so no one labels it Socialism. In many developed countries a similar system exists for health care, and it's often not labeled as Socialism. In the United States, though, a similar system for healthcare is usually called socialism – even if it isn't nearly extreme enough for a real Socialist to think it is.

There are a lot of different types of socialism, ranging from some schools of Anarchism (like Social Libertarianism) to Communism to Democratic Socialism (like, sort of, in Venezuela) to Social Democracies (Sweden).

Communism is just a special type of socialism. There are actually many different theories of Communism, and they are pretty different. But they all grow out of the teachings of Karl Marx. Marx believed (to simplify) that one of the really important parts of achieving a socialist state was that the people had to own all of the things that made things (capital) collectively, rather than letting individuals own factories, farms, and things like that, which would allow them to become richer and buy more factories and farms. Marx's vision of pure Communism actually required massive technological advances so that we were living in a world of extreme abundance, so that everyone could have anything they needed without anyone else not having it. What most people think of as a 'Communist State' would be seen by a pure Marxist as an intermediary step on the way to real Communism – where the very ideas of capital, class, economies, etc. all disappear, because we don't need them anymore.

Like I say, the words are misused so much that it's hard to really come up with a clear difference. Some people would say the difference is that Communists believe the state has to have a fundamental change of character for a collectivist world to exist, while socialists believe it can be done within the existing state. But socialist Anarchists believe very strongly in the abolition of the state first.

In fact, the great schism between the Anarchists and the Communists in Marx's time came from the opposite disagreement – Communists believed the fastest way to achieve equality was to have the state seize all property and forcibly redistribute it. Anarchists believed (unfortunately, mostly rightly) that once the state seized all of the property, those in power wouldn't want to then redistribute it.

EDIT: To really drive this home, because reading through all of the comments I think it's the most important point: while people are trying to answer your question, they're doing it based on the definitions of "Communism" and "Socialism" that they choose to use. As a result, some of the (relatively good) answers are contradicting one another, and most of them are hugely problematic. It's not your fault, because the words are used in public discourse as though they have very clear single definitions, but ultimately the question is like asking: What's the difference between a beetle and an insect?The problem is that not only is a beetle a type of insect, but it matters a lot what kind of beetle you're talking about, and what kinds of other insects you're comparing them to.

• welfare capitalism (a.k.a. democratic socialism)
• -harness the free market to generate resources to pay for social programs

• state capitalism (a.k.a. market socialism)
  
  

  govt. helps companies prosper (japan)

What is the role of charity?
Bill Gates
Slavoj Zizek
implications of the findings that how much rich people give seems to be a function of their neighborhood?

changes

many formerly socialist Asian and Eastern-European countries have gone capitalist in the last few decades – higher productivity and average standards of living, but also more poverty. (Berlin Wall 1989)

Soviet Union collapsed because it replaced economic elites (Czars) with political elites (under Stalin) (stratification)

Many formerly capitalist South American and Western-European countries are going socialist.

USA is changing – 40% farmers a century ago, now <1%. industrialization in the early 1900s brought blue-collar jobs. IT brought white collar jobs, which usually pay less than older factory jobs, so our generation tends to have a lower standard of living. Also unions have declined from 33% after the great depression to 12% now.

"Professionalization" as symbolic interactionism (p. 339)

Unemployment – not just an individual problem – caused by economic factors

underemployment – less than full time

but what about overemployment – working 2 or 3 jobs each and then relying on services, house cleaners, restaurants, nannies, etc... is this the result of the rise of the "service economy?"

corporations/conglomerates

Incorporating creates a legal entity that shields owners' private wealth, and can lower taxes.

are they competetive?

Regulation, monopoly, corporate welfare, tax dodging (Google, GE) etc.

GE made $5 billion in PROFITS in the US in 2010, paid NO taxes, and got back a tax benefit of $3 billion. Combination of tax lobbying, overseas shelters, and credits and subsidies

Globalization

Enron paid no taxes due to Cayman Islands

Google is doing something similar now for international profits in Bermuda