You have to lower real wages by fixing the various factors pushing up wages. Healthcare, infrastructure, housing, daycare. If a government can provide those things and basically internalize those costs the production of goods becomes cheaper and more competitive on the global stage because as an industrialist you can pay lower wages without effecting the subsistence rate of workers. This will obviously never happen.

[–] Hexboare@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Healthcare, infrastructure, housing, daycare. If a government can provide those things and basically internalize those costs the production of goods becomes cheaper

Sort of like... prison cap-think capitalist-laugh

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago

I mean, in a sense yes. That's why wages in prison can be so cheap, because all other costs are already internalised so you only have to pay prisoners next to nothing and they won't just keel over and die. Obviously there's the explicit force present in the guards that also compels them to work, so wages outside literal prison would have to be higher unless you assign like prison guards to every worker lol.

[–] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

you could target the tariffs instead of a blanket tariff so that the domestic private sector in priority sectors can be built up with less competition from imports without causing general price increases.

or you could provide subsidies so the domestic goods are more competitive.

or better yet, state owned enterprises so the capitalists don't get free Government money (directly anyway). the state can price it competitively.

its really their choice, yea some neolibs would scream communism but the US can have imports and domestic production/jobs.

or you can destroy amerikkka with 500% tariff so that China is forced to sell goods to itself and other countries.

[–] Hexboare@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

Foreign competition was kept out by a high tariff conveniently set by Congress, and by 1880 Carnegie was producing 10,000 tons of steel a month, making $1 1/2 million a year in profit. By 1900 he was making $40 million a year, and that year, at a dinner party, he agreed to sell his steel company to J. P. Morgan. He scribbled the price on a note: $492,000,000.

Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive.

And so it went, in industry after industry-shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies

Industrial capitalist porky-happy

(Before they realise the US still has no real industrial capacity)

[–] GoodGuyWithACat@hexbear.net 6 points 1 month ago

Within a capitalist framework? Some sort of Keynesian program. Have the government buy stuff with some specifications that they have to be American made and the jobs have to be decent. Put money in regular folks hands and they will drive up consumption, which could lead to more jobs.

However, I think State owned enterprises like we see in China could become the new model capitalist solution for growth.