Henry Ford was a Warren Buffet Socialist

[JHB]

Robert Reich's recent stock tip (Stock Tip: Be Worried. Workers are Consumers. http://robertreich.org/post/9142270982 ), which mentions Henry Ford's 1914 "economic crime" (so-named by the Wall Street Journal of that time) of paying his workers three times the typical factory worker salary (What an idiot! How could that possibly maximize profit?) reminded me of another Ford quote:

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Henry Ford

Highest wages? For the love of God, Henry, think of the profit margin! What's with this damn redistribution of wealth?


This is where we are now, when Henry Ford counts as a "socialist".


Edited to add: That's the union-busting, goon-hiring, Hitler-praised-antisemite Henry Ford. But these day's, he's a socialist as far as Wall Street's concerned.

Further edit to add :sarcasm: since the point of this post is to highlight how distorted economic terminology has become that Buffet took flack for being a "socialist" for his op-ed on raising tax rates at the high end. My apologies if that was overly obscure.

[DesMoinesDem]

1. You have a bizarre definition of socialism.

[JHB]

5. Not my definition of it.

It just illustrates that self-proclaimed "pro-business" people (especially commentators on Fox Business Channel) have an insanely broad definition of what constitutes socialism.

[DesMoinesDem]

7. You're the first person I've ever seen claim that one person voluntarily paying another person

is socialism.

[phleshdef]

9. You apparently aren't reading what the OP is saying.

Some Fox News assholes have been openly calling Warren Buffet a socialist for his suggestion that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

[DesMoinesDem]

10. What do taxes have to do with one person voluntarily paying another?

I see no connection. One person paying another has nothing to do with taxes.

[phleshdef]

11. The connection is, maximizing profit should not be the most important thing in life.

In the case of Warren Buffet, he is advocating fair taxation over building more personal wealth.

In the case of Henry Ford, it was giving the workers higher wages instead of paying them less and thus, building more personal wealth.

I thought the connection was painfully obvious myself.

[DesMoinesDem]

12. There is no connection.

The Fox idiots didn't call Buffet a socialist because he doesn't want to maximize his wealth. They called him a socialist because he wants the government to take more money from some people to spend on other people. If Ford wanted the government to take his money to give out, there would be a connection. Right now there is absolutely no connection because there was no force involved for Ford.

[phleshdef]

15. There is. You would just rather avoid admitting it than lose an argument that you started.

I spelled the connection out clearly. The OP chose to take 2 examples of wealthy individuals portraying an attitude outside of the capitalist, profit maximizing world of greed. The element of force is completely irrelevant. If someone wants to make a comparison like that, its perfectly valid and you don't GET to decide what argument they are making. They do. But you'll live over it.

[DesMoinesDem]

16. There is no connection.

The element of force is completely what their claim of socialism is about. It has nothing AT ALL to do with 'maximizing wealth'. Do you actually think that they are calling every employer that pays anyone more than minimum wage a socialist? Do you think that they think the big bankers that are giving out huge paychecks to their employees are socialist? Obviously not. No one thinks that. The argument is entirely based on force, which is why the op and your posts make no sense. And your claim that Henry Ford was portraying something outside of a capitalist economy is laughable. Wages are an integral part of capitalism. In a capitalist society better workers make more money. What you are saying is that Fords workers weren't worth more money than other workers and he paid them more for fun, which is your opinion based on nothing. To him they were worth more.

[phleshdef]

17. Yes there is. As I said, you don't GET to decide the OPs point for them.

It makes sense to me, the OP and some others that have posted in this thread. Our consensus alone is proof of a connection of ideas. You can't do anything about that. It will continue to be a connection and make sense to us whether you like it or not. At this point, you are so desperate not to lose an argument that you are taking the OPs words literally and trying to parse words. Its pretty pathetic honestly.

The OPs point was about an attitude one takes towards wealth and how conservatives are demonizing wealthy people who aren't participating in the all out profit worship. They are obviously calling people socialist for all kinds of stupid reasons and none of them are valid anyway. None of these people they are attacking as socialists actually are socialists. So whether or not the word is being used correctly here is a nonissue. The OP is clearly pointing out that they are using it incorrectly to begin with.

The point stands. The connection makes sense. Your petty attempt to derail the discussion with nonsensical word parsing and obnoxious overanalyzing is a failure.

[DesMoinesDem]

18. You lost the argument.

There is no connection. I explained it to you and you rebutted nothing. I asked questions that you didn't answer because they would prove you are wrong. Get over it.

I know that the Fox people don't know what socialism is. But you don't understand what they think it is, which is why you see a connection. They see is with the use of government force, e.g. taxes. The connection you invented makes as much sense as saying Ford is a socialist because he was white and so is Buffet.

[phleshdef]

19. No, you just don't understand the argument and you don't know the history of Ford and his $5/d wage.

Or how he was actually attacked by big business interests over his attitude on wages. The Wall Street Journal labeled it as an "economic crime". Ford was verbally attacked by other big business interests over it, just as Buffet is over his advocacy for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Actually if you would just pull your head out long enough to look into the history of Henry Ford and his wage policy, you will even find that some even called him a **gasp** SOCIALIST over it. I didn't even realize that last bit until you started this silly argument over it, but apparently the connection is even deeper and more valid than I thought.

Caution, the following might hurt your feelings as it will obliterate any notion that your silly refutation of the OPs point was ever valid at all:

An excerpt from Robert Reich's book, Aftershock:

On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced that he was paying workers on his famously productive Model T assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, $5 per eight-hour day. That was almost three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time. In light of this audacious move, some lauded Ford as a friend of the American worker; others called him a madman or a socialist, or both. The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime.” Ford thought it a cunning business move, and history proved him right.

Ouch.

[DesMoinesDem]

21. Wow. You really just don't have a clue.

The op was making a sarcastic comment based on some people at Fox calling buffet a socialist for wanting TAX INCREASES. They didn't call him a socialist because he decided to increase the wages of his employees. Somehow you just cannot grasp this. This has nothing to do at all with what someone in 1914 supposedly said of Ford (I noticed no direct quotes were given). There is no connection from Buffet wanting tax increases to Ford increasing pay. Like I said before, the people at Fox aren't calling the big bankers socialists for giving enormous salaries, yet your argument would require them to. You lost the argument. Get over it.

[phleshdef]

23. Nope. Still wrong. The OP was pointing out an excerpt from Robert Reich's book...

...and how corporate right wingers went after him over higher wages. And how he sees the same attitudes today as they are going after Warren Buffet for suggesting the rich pay higher taxes. Both were called socialists by these same business interests.

I don't care why the people at Fox are saying what they are saying. They represent big corporate business interests and will go after even other wealthy, corporation owners if they do anything to screw with their club. Thats what the OP was pointing out. It was accurate and valid in every single way.

Heres the deal. This is is how this works. I'm right. And I won't shut up about it. If you want to keep embarassing yourself by changing your own arguments and painfully avoiding the FACT that both were accused of being socialists because they did or said something the corporate interests didn't like, then go right ahead. I'm more stubborn than you are and unlike you, I'm actually right. So I'll keep going all fucking day. I really don't care.

[DesMoinesDem]

24. You are hopeless.

You say op had nothing to do with Fox News but HE is the one that said he was referring to Fox News' definition of socialism. He said it. Period. I didn't just invent it. It's what he said. Can you get that through your head? Why are you so worked up about this? You're wrong. Your argument is a joke. Get over it. Move on.

[phleshdef]

25. Actually the OP never mentions Fox News.

I mentioned it because its well known enough that someone over there called Buffet a socialist. It doesn't make any difference. Right wing corporate interests are right wing corporate interests. When they attacked Henry Ford as being a socialist, committing crimes against the economy simply for paying a decent wage, it was the Wall Street Journal and the tea party of that age doing it. When they attack Warren Buffet the same way for calling for fair taxes, its Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and today's Tea Party doing it.

I love how its getting under your skin that you were so dead wrong about there being no connection between the 2 stories though. Both were rich guys. Both did or suggested something remotely selfless. Both were attacked by the right over it. Both called socialists. Yet you say there is no connection and suggest my argument is a joke. LOL. Do you realize how badly you are making yourself look here? Your reason to take issue with the OP at all has been completely torn to shreds so badly that I can only laugh at you now, yet here you still stand.

But lets review that little list one more time, just in case you need help.

Rich Guy -> Check
Attacked by the Right for expressing a hint of selflessness -> Check
Attacks by the Right included accusations of being Socialist -> Check

Connection - > Check, Check, Check

There really is no way out of this aside from giving up or admitting that you are wrong. Both would be preferable.

[DesMoinesDem]

29. Now I wonder if you even know how to read.

He specifically mentions it in post 5.

[phleshdef]

30. Post 5 is not the OP. Post 0 is the OP.

[JHB]

32. The OP was prompted by several things, among them the Fox clowns...

I'd read the Reich article mentioning Ford this morning, after the Fox nonsense about Buffet and (for full disclosure) a teabag encounter over the weekend whose notion of "socialism" was far more expansive than my caricature in the OP ... and this guy wasn't being sarcastic. So even if I didn't mention them specifically in the OP, they were part of it. There's no need to split hairs there.

BTW, for a non-Reich source for Ford being called a "socialist" by his contemporaries, here's a link to a 1935 Time magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,883433,00.html
It mentions that in the week following Ford's announcement of the wage standard 52 columns ran Ford stories in Manhattan newspapers. I can research at least some of those papers at the NY Public Library, but not until this weekend at the earliest. (Given the era, the papers would have ran from conservative to the genuinely socialist.)

DesMoinesDem: I will take issue with your statement that it's coercion that they take issue with. Even discounting the nonsense from the past weekend, the subset that has a genuine principled stand against coercion is relatively small. Contrary to the impression you may have gotten from the OP, which was a bit of venting, I do listen to these people and try to frame counterarguments that have a chance at passing through the us/them barrier. Even if you can't get through to the person you're debating, there's always the people listening in to consider.

Perhaps it's observer bias, but my sense of it is that once you get someone concerned about 'government coercion' talking long enough, it becomes apparent that what they're against is government coercion that affects them. Because they themselves are reasonable, but it's those other people who need a stick to act right. A further observation is that the ones who rant loudest and longest about 'coercion' (and, in fact, are the ones most likely to use the term "coercion") are the ones who wouldn't voluntarily pay a single cent.

The definition of 'coercion' expands to the point where it is effectively indistinguishable from "anything the government does". The definition of "socialist" has become similarly all-inclusive. And this morning, I was more than a little fed up with people who slap the term "socialist" on anyone that says anything that violates their "economic correctness".

[KillCapitalism]

2. Workers as consumers

That's the problem, companies see their workers as slaves rather than consumers. I think most companies are run by two different types of people; idiots, and greedy idiots. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why sales are down, but profits are up.

[Javaman]

14. The problem began, in recent times, when we were told that we were consumers

and were no longer referred to as citizens.

[JVS]

3. Henry Ford was a control freak and paid the best wage so that he could have his pick of workers.

The jobs paid well, but Ford also had spies out there monitoring the activities of his employees. I remember once putting salt on my dinner without having tasted it first and my grandmother informed me that if I had tried that in Ford's cafeteria I'd have lost my job. Evidently I was behaving in a manner that wasn't thrifty or well-measured enough.

[cali]

4. oh for fuck's sake. he was a union busting bigot- as you noted.

He was not a socialist. Neither is Buffet and Wall Street doesn't consider him one.

[MadHound]

6. You're either deliberately distorting facts,

Or you have absolutely no historical clue about Henry Ford and what he did. Yes, he paid his workers higher wages than normal for the time, he also expected them to work more. Furthermore he was a vicious anti-Semite who helped Hitler get into power and then proceeded to help supply the Nazi Army throughout WWII. The only reasons he wasn't brought up on Trading with the Enemy charges was because his son had died suddenly, he was an old man about to die, and the US really needed Ford's contributions to the war effort.

But make no mistake, Ford was a fascist, not a socialist. A vengeful, hateful bitter man who despised everybody who wasn't white Anglo-Saxon.

[JHB]

13. I was making a deliberate distortion, but to illustrate the bastardization...

...of political terminology these days. If it came out of the blue, or was in a different venue, I would have devoted more time to elaborating the comparison. Coming on the heels of the Fox Business Clowns calling Warren Buffet a socialist I didn't think it was too obscure a reference, at least not in this forum.


My mistake.

[phleshdef]

20. Ford was however attacked by the Wall Street Journal and others over his high wages.

According to Reich, some even called him a socialist because of it. The Wall Street Journal called it an economic crime.

[MadHound]

31. That still doesn't mitigate the fact that Ford committed treason, aided Hitler,

Was a vicious anti-Semite, and got away with all of it. He was not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination, no matter what Wall St. or anybody else said.

[phleshdef]

35. I don't believe anyone suggested that anything was mitigated.

And Warren Buffet is no socialist either, though he is of a much more admirable character than Henry Ford, IMO.

The point was that these people attacked Henry Ford because he acted contrary to the script the wealthy elite was suppose to be following when he started paying massive wages. The fact that Ford acted villainous in many other instances of his life and career makes the point even more interesting. It just goes to show everyone how old this crap is and that even someone like Henry Ford, a socialist by no stretch of the imagination, would be labelled as such for doing something with his own money that ended up raising the bar on the kinds of wages people were paying.

[Drale]

8. Henry Ford was a border line Nazi although

a very smart borderline Nazi because he realized that if he did not pay his employees decent wages, they could not afford his products.

BTW: Most people don't know this but the Charcoal briquette we all take for granted was invented by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford working together and it was marketed as Take you family on a picnic out in the country in your new car. I believe when Charcoal first came out, they gave it away free with any new car purchase as well. Just a interesting factoid of the day.

[proud patriot]

22. Costco has a similar model

and been told it treats it's employees too well by wall street.

[unblock]

26. unfortunately, ford's wages were a clever solution to a peculiar business problem.

ford, of course, was in the business of producing the first automobiles.

cars were not widely accepted at the time, and ford knew he had to get critical mass going before the was genuine market acceptance -- which required not just people buying cars themselves, but also service stations, paved roads, traffic lights, and so on. these other things would not happen unless there was a large enough pool of cars out there.

ford knew that his own workers would be quick to display company loyalty and buy a car if only they could afford it. so he hit upon the idea of paying them enough so they could afford to buy a car. this proved a quick success, as they snapped up the new cars and quickly demanded better conditions for drivers.


while history proved this to be a genius move, unfortunately, there are very few, if any, individual businesses in a similar position today. for one thing, they would have to have a large enough pool of workers to make a difference. for another thing, costs of production and distribution are so cheap these days that most new products simply don't have this challenge. apple doesn't need to increase wages in order to get people to buy igadgets.

ford's high wages was perhaps a one-off where doing the right thing ethically and socially lined up with doing the profitable business thing.

[pnorman]

27. "...paying the highest wages possible."

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668. (Mich. 1919), is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford owed a duty to the shareholders of the Ford Motor Company to operate his business to profit his shareholders, rather than the community as a whole or employees. It is often cited as embodying the principle of "shareholder value" in companies.

The case has not represented the present law in the United States generally, or Delaware in particular, for over thirty years.<1> It has not, however, been overruled. <2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company

[JVS]

28. Activist judges telling the man how to run his business.

[booley]

33. Do most of you just not know what Sarcasm means?

It's even in the OP.

The author was being SARCASTIC

Sheesh

[roamer65]

34. Henry Ford allowed his plants to be run in a dictatorial fashion.

His thug Harry Bennett ran just about every thing for him. It was a brutal place to work.

Hitler modelled much of his Turd Reich after the Ford Motor Company.