posted
I found the speech by Bill Moyers facinating not only for it's content but because it shows exactly how polarized America is becoming. To right wingers who paint all liberals with the same brush, this probably won't mean anything. But as some one who has been at the far left of the politcal spectrum for a long time, its a big suprise to hear phrase like "class war" coming out of Bill Moyers mouth.
quote:Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs -- if this isn't class war, what is?
It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.
posted
American dream. Hnn. All the Republican conservatives seem to say, "If you work hard enough, you too will be rich." It's a lie. It's a myth. People in this country work their fingers to the bone on 2 or 3 low paying jobs each and still get no where... But what can be done about it? How can we fight against this?
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posted
The unspoken truth behind the American dream is that no matter how talented and committed and ambitious you might be, in the end, SOMEone is going to have to clean the toilets at the Burger King. Not everyone is going to meet spectacular success, and most won't feel like they've met much at all. And honestly, I have no idea if there IS anything we can do about it.
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posted
I mean, social programs, sure. But if you're cleaning toilets for a living, AND getting a check from the government to fill the rest of your needs ... is that really anything remotely like succeeding?
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My aunt took some kind of evaluation of her political stance the other day, and was shocked to find herself registering at the extreme left. I guess she just thought she was a normal person in a right winged culture. But I guess the other place besides Utah where she spent a lot of time was Sausalito.
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Here's the thing... We are talking about- corporations downsizing to put more money into their pockets. Tax cuts for people who don't need it! It's reasonable that some people are going to have to clean toilets, that is understandable. But is it really good for the country for millions of american families to have 2 or 3 kids, 2 or 3 parttime jobs each, no time to spend with their children so the children are running amoke. This is the reality in a lot of parts of the country. Even I, a recent college graduate am struggling and underpaid on my current job. It's only rent subsidies that allow me to keep my head above water without having to ask for money from relatives. And yet, these same social programs are constantly being threatened. Health benefits for workers, time and a half or double time for working overtime or on Sundays, anything that makes it bearable for working people is constantly being threatened. Take Walmart for example. Many people here love shopping there but Walmart does not give its employees benefits, pays them about 7.50 an hour, does not allow unions and expects them to be able to survive. not to mention using workers from third world countries to manufacture their goods. It's wrong. Large quantities of wealth build on the blood and sweat of other people. Just like in the middle ages. We can't LIVE like this anymore. I don't care what anyone says, it has to stop... Rationalizing it by saying that not everyone can achieve the dream is unacceptable. We need a society that will be about HELPING people... not holding them back!
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posted
In this country, I'd wager most people registering as extreme leftists would be, by world standards, considered normal people in a right-wing culture.
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posted
Do you think this I Robot movie is really about immigrants who staff many of our service positions? (kind of kidding but it is conceivable).
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quote:But if you're cleaning toilets for a living, AND getting a check from the government to fill the rest of your needs ... is that really anything remotely like succeeding?
i was thinking more along the lines of free or substantially subsidized education and health care. when i tell my european friends how much i pay in tuition they're dumbfounded.
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quote:I know, I know: this sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful paperback polemic by William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. He called on the financial and business class, in effect, to take back the power and privileges they had lost in the depression and new deal. They got the message, and soon they began a stealthy class war against the rest of society and the principles of our democracy. They set out to trash the social contract, to cut their workforces and wages, to scour the globe in search of cheap labor, and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control. Business Week put it bluntly at the time: "Some people will obviously have to do with less....it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."
This, as I see it, is the problem. Business is now seen by the government and by many people as having more rights than actual individual human beings. Big business must "have more", as Mr. Moyers quotes Business Week as saying. But it is perfectly fine for actual human beings to go without so that business can have its more and more.
I once worked for a national retail establishment that made it's millions by never hiring full-time employees, except as management. Part-time workers (everyone else in the company) were urged constantly to "be loyal" to the company. But was the company loyal to the employees? Don't make me laugh. Part time employees never got paid even time and a half for working on holidays. Part time employees were not eligible to accrue sick leave or vacation time. Work schedules were never the same from week to week, and were never released until the day before the new work week started, making it impossible for anyone to make any plans to take care of non-work business. Often, employees were denied breaks mandated by law. When minimum wage rates were raised, all hourly employees got their hours cut so that they were not making any more money than they had been before the raise.
Employees were encouraged to work when they were ill. Employees were ordered at the last minute to work hours beyond their scheduled hours, and threatened with firing if they said they could not work the extra hours. Even full-time, salaried store management were required to work so much overtime that when all was said and done, they were actually only making five or ten cents an hour over minimum wage, this after having worked for the company for more than ten years in some cases.
Sounds like just one step above slavery to me. And that's just how big business likes it.
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quote:Oh my goodness. That is *soooo* many steps away from slavery.
Agreed. But that doesn't make it a good thing, either.
Frankly, these practices put us a lot closer to the pre-union days of coal-mining exploitation, sweatshops and the robber barons. (Note - these are described as "the bad old days" by those who work and "the good old days" by at least some who run businesses.)
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posted
BTW, he's very wrong about doing with less so that Big Business will have more... it is, in fact, the consumers that drive this. These kind of things are done to keep prices down and because huge corporations like Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble can overstock and undersell the local joe blows, the local little guys can't compete. So you have your $.99 value menu at Wendy's and you super cheap books and CDs at Wal- Mart but you get very few Bill's Record and Tapes or local burger joints or Pubs. I own a exact, licensed duplicate of a Music Man bass. It sounds and plays just like the original, and costs about 1/6 as much. So I'm guilty, too.
two great Chesterton quotes on the irony of our situation:
quote: "The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic." - ILN, 5/29/26
"Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it." - Commonwealth, 1933
posted
A solution? Revolution? Do you have a better idea? Big business seems to have their hands in the pockets of our government what with lobbyists and all.. so what can the commonfolk do but cry injustice and stage a revolution?
*and no.. I don't think this has ANYTHING to do with I, Robot. I can't wait until that film comes out though. Too bad I never read the book
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um, my question is why do people who know they don't make much money have 2-3 kids? Last year I made 16,000 as a teaching assistant and I survived just fine. Could I afford to go out a lot? No. Could I afford kids? Hell, no. So I did not have children...and I did not go out. Once I get out of graduate school I will be doing much better...but I still won't have kids for a while. My grandfather was dirt poor (did not even have electicity or indoor plumbing when he was young) so when he got drafted he stayed in the military since they gave a steady paycheck. It was enough to put food on the table (once he was married), but not to send his kids to a University. Even though they did not have much money, my dad knew a college degree was important, so he worked construction to pay for it. Started out at a community college, then went to a University. No he did not have kids until he was older...but he knew he could not pay for it. Now my parents are doing well, they are comfortable in the middle class...maybe upper middle class.
If you work hard you can move from poverty to the middle class...but it must be the right kind of work. No, working hard in part time jobs won't do it. You have to work your way through community college, then work your way through a bachelors degree, and eventually you can support yourself. It makes it a lot tougher if you have kids...but that is a choice. Why should society have to pay for someone's bad decision?
quote:Why should society have to pay for someone's bad decision?
right, like the "decision" to be born into a poor black neighborhood where the schools are little more than holding tanks, the only real jobs are crappy and low paying (except of course if you want to sell crack), and everywhere you go people look at you as though you're about to rob them.
sure, there are cases where people have bad lives because they made bad decisions, but that doesn't mean that everyone whose lives in poverty is there because they made a bad choice. if nothing else, shouldn't we be spending extra resources on the children of such people so that they are not forced to suffer for the mistakes of their parents?
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Garick, I think a lot of folks are concerned about the way the movie appears to out-of-the-gate dismiss the hardwired principles that are the basis of Asimov's fictional universe. Which is why I would jest about it.
P.S. Kerinin, my dad also found a good steady job and got ahead. But he was the first to tell me the world ain't like that anymore. And I know an M.D. Ph.D. who during her program was called into a meeting where they were informed that while they would all certainly have jobs, they probably wouldn't be the kinds of jobs they were expecting.
posted
It's not that simple. How can you get the good jobs if you can't even get your feet in the door? A person at one time probaly could start in the mail room or mop floors at Mc Donalds and in a few years run a francise or become vice president. It's not so easy anymore. Even in Japan known for work security men get laid off. What can you do? What can you do if you want to make more than 120 dollars a day for work that pains you but you have no car, no experience, no connections, nothing...
Plus the worse thing is WANTING to go out every once in a while to see a movie or wanting to go to a free meeting to meet people but having to pay a dollar extra to get to the city. Having loan debt hanging over your head isn't a picnic either. People can't understand... That Victorian social darwinist nonsense doesn't apply anymore.
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quote:Here's the thing... We are talking about- corporations downsizing to put more money into their pockets.
This kind of attitude frustrates the hell out of me. If a typical corpration can't make payroll, especially a small service corporation, it dies. It either gets bought out, in which case the owners are lucky to cover their debts, or it defaults on its contracts and goes bankrupt. And it can happen incredibly quickly.
Nothing drives a service organization down faster than having too many employees not earning money. It really is often a matter of firing 5 people so 20 others keep their jobs. It's not an easy thing to do, but it is the moral thing to do. People talk about enormous profits, but these enormous profits are usually less than 10% of costs. Which means a typical business doesn't actually have that much room to carry people at a loss for long.
it really frustrates me when people bash corporations in a generalist sense. Most small business owners could make a lot more money in private industry, especially after running a business at a profit for 10 years. But they continue to run their business, partly in the hopes of getting far enough ahead to profit from their hard work, and partly because of loyalty to their employees.
i sort of started it so i guess it's my fault, but anecdotal examples are really a horrible way of arguing. the real problem (IMHO) isn't that it's impossible to climb the social ladder, but that it's extremely difficult. I grew up in a pretty affluent white area and with little or no work for the majority of my education was required to do practically nothing to sail through our educational system. i ended up at a really good state school with a scholarship and never really had to exert myself. in order from somone without my background to have ended up where i am right now they whould have to work night and day and constantly battle socio-economic stereotypes, and even after being educated would probably never really be fully accepted in the professional culture.
i know to a certain extent this is probably inevitable, but that doesn't make it acceptable to the degree it exists today.
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posted
Dag, I'm reasonably sure that when people "bash corporations in a generalist sense," they are most likely talking about large corporations like Microsoft, HP, or Lockheed, rather than small service corporations. And while there are similarities between huge corporations with tens of thousands of employees and small ones with twenty employees, there are also quite a few differences.
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quote:it really frustrates me when people bash corporations in a generalist sense. Most small business owners could make a lot more money in private industry
i don't think most people are bashing small businesses, they're bashing the enormouse multi-national businesses with the clout to influence policy.
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posted
True. But layoffs are sometimes necessary. A company that can absorb non-productive employees for any significant length of time represents some serious economic resources that could be used to provide better jobs elsewhere. Not that the reallocation usually happens very efficiently. But there comes a time when it is the correct, moral thing to shut down a non-profitable business enterprise, no matter what Moore said in Roger and Me.
Dagonee Edit: Here's a link on this from a movie that I watched with trepidation, expecting a Wall Street-like condemnation of capitalism in general and traders in particular: [url= http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechotherpeople'smoneydevito.html]Other People's Money[/url]. Although DeVito's character still isn't really a "good guy," letting him give this speech showed a refreshing willingness to show both sides of the story on the part of screenwriters who typically like black and white better than shades of gray:
quote:Amen. And amen. And amen. You have to forgive me. I'm not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say "Amen" after you hear a prayer. Because that's what you just heard -- a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called "The Prayer for the Dead." You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, "Amen."
This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead alright. We're just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure.
You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best g--damn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the DECENCY to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.
"Ah, but we can't," goes the prayer. "We can't because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?" I got two words for that: Who cares? Care about them? Why? They didn't care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, "We know times are tough. We'll lower taxes, reduce water and sewer." Check it out: You're paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are still making twice what they made ten years ago; and our stock, one-sixth of what it was ten years ago.
Who cares? I'll tell ya: Me. I'm not your best friend. I'm your ONLY friend. I don't make anything? I'm makin' you money. And lest we forget, that's the only reason any of you became stockholders in the first place. You wanna make money! You don't care if they manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You wanna make money. I'm the only friend you've got. I'm makin' you money.
Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be used productively. And if it is, you'll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if anybody asks, tell 'em ya gave at the plant.
And by the way, it pleases me that I am called "Larry the Liquidator." You know why, fellow stockholders? Because at my funeral, you'll leave with a smile on your face AND a few bucks in your pocket. Now that's a funeral worth having!
posted
right, and i have no problem with that. i love free trade and letting countries with cheap labor do the laborious work, i just feel like if the government is going to enact trade agreements making it easier for companies to outsource it should simultaneously take responsibility for training the displaced workers so that they can continue to contribute to the economy.
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Oh, I'm all in favor of job training. One of the reasons we have government pay for education is to help prepare people to get good jobs. I see no reason to stop after some arbitrary cutoff, as long as the person can demonstrate that they will use the skills.
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sounds like just one step above slavery to me. And that's just how big business likes it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh my goodness. That is *soooo* many steps away from slavery.
Well, yes, objectively it is many steps away from slavery. On the other hand, having lived it, I have to say that in that sort of situation the employee gives up a lot more control of their life than any person living in a country that calls itself "free" should have to.
You can't plan anything, and it is difficult to impossible to get a second or third job. One of the objectives to switching up schedules from week to week like that and not issuing schedules until the day before they begin - and this was admitted to me by someone in management - was to prevent employees from being able to get a second job. Other employers are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have a regular schedule, because it makes it very difficult to schedule them for the second job. You see, for that job that didn't ever pay enough to live on, the employee was expected to be available 24/7 just in case their labor was needed. I was told more than once that I shouldn't go anywhere on my days off because I had to be available "just in case they needed me". That ain't freedom, exactly, when your employer is telling you when you can and can't leave your own home.
Problem with all that? No one can make a living on that sort of minimum-wage, part-time job. You have to have two or three or four of them. Now, minimum-wage jobs were never meant to be what people make a living from. But the reality in this economy is that sometimes even people with much more education than it takes to do those sorts of jobs have to take them anyway, simply because nothing else is available. Take the town I live in. With a population of around 20,000, the unemployment rate is over 18 percent, and almost 25 percent of the population lives under the poverty level. In that kind of economy, it doesn't matter what kind of education you have. You take the jobs you can find, or you leave. And often, unless you lie about your education, you can't even get those jobs because you are considered "overqualified".
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quote: You take the jobs you can find, or you leave.
I used to hear this all the time back in Citrus County. You'll notice I'm now in Tallahassee. And I don't intend to stay here forever. These people want $100,000 for a 1,500 square foot house. I'm not paying that for for a house. So I intend to leave in another 3-4 years.
I just don't understand why some people (mostly the kids back home) would whine about moving like it was the end of the world. Sure, it wasn't fun, but work is? If it's what you have to do, suck it up and get the job done. I hated people talking about Citrus like the entire county needed to grow just to accomodate them.
quote: Business is now seen by the government and by many people as having more rights than actual individual human beings. Big business must "have more", as Mr. Moyers quotes Business Week as saying. But it is perfectly fine for actual human beings to go without so that business can have its more and more.
While the business makes the money, they don't really keep it. Sure, they need some capital in the bank for unforseen expenses. Most of what they keep, they reinvest. The rest goes to the stockholders. And anyone can be a stockholder. Maybe we ought to push for investment ed as a required high school course so everyone in the country, regardless of class, race, or what have you, will have a firm grasp of how to make money.
And I hate to get biblical, but some people are poor becuase that's the decision they've made. Parable of Talents
Not everyone is the guy with the one sheckle. I think most of us are the middle guy. We'll get by with a moderate amount and do fine for ourselves. Maybe we won't get the big promotion, but maybe we can't handle the job that needs to be done. And a lot of people are the other laborers not in the story. They put in their forty hours a week, didn't distinguish themselves, and didn't even get the chance to prove themselves to the landowner.
I think a lot of it comes down to planning, determination, talent, and luck. The first two are the only ones an individual can control, but they're the two that will mean the most in the long run. Nothing says you can't try again if your first plan doesn't work.
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posted
10 years ago in Citrus, my parents built a 3,000 square footer on an acre of land for $125,000. The prices are going up, but you'd still only be looking at $60,000 or so for a 1,500.
Of course, you can't expect to work in Citrus. Unless you're a doctor. The retirees always need more doctors.
Edit: Wait...doing math in head. 60k sounds like too much. Mom's is 2,500 and around 80k now. 1,500 would have to be cheaper. Both of those would be quarter acre lots, though.
quote:, in the end, SOMEone is going to have to clean the toilets at the Burger King.
Have you ever considered the possiblity that the solution to this problem isn't social services. Anyone who is doing and essential job, (and I think that cleaning toilets is pretty essential) should be paid a living wage. That is only just. If Burger King is paying their toilet cleaners so little that they require tax supported social service to live, then in effect Burger King and all their customers are cheating both the employee and the tax payers.
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posted
When I was cleaning toilets at the place where I worked, the problem wasn't the toilets -- it was making the rent. And, mind you, I lived in a cockroach-infested crack den.
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posted
I also keep a fondness in my heart for the Old Testament requirement that we not scrape as much profit from our endeavors as possible, but rather that we must share of our largesse -- and not just to stockholders, but to those who have not.
quote:"thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and for the stranger," Leviticus 19:9-10.
And again:
quote:"When thou reapest thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. When though beatest thine olive tree, thou shall not go over the boughs again . . . . When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it after thee; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow," Deuteronomy 24:19-21.
That, along with the years of jubilee, would have made for a different context entirely for both poverty and community.
quote:"Beware that there be not a base thought in thine heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou give him nought: and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee," Deuteronomy 15:1-2, 9.
And such a strong call made on us by the Old Testament, a call to care for the poor as family, regardless of merit and without hardness of heart:
quote:"If there be with thee a poor man, one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt surely open thine hand unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanteth . . . . Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy work, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto," Deuteronomy 15:7-8, 10.
Abiding by the call of Deuteronomy would tax the most virtuous. However, if one is keen to rely on the Parable of the Talents, it is best to remember where those talents were to play out.
posted
One of the underlying problems is that the cost of living indexes have been tied to food prices, which have not changed that much, instead of housing, which has.
[ June 19, 2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote:...if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor...
Putting aside the rest of Bill Moyer's usual rhetoric (about as predictable as Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh), I still laugh when things like this are said.
The wealthy pay, many times over, 'their fair share'. They pay, in terms of proportion and actual dollars, a vastly larger sum of taxes than middle- and lower-class taxpayers.
Not to mention, 'the wealthy' were by far not the only ones to get tax relief. And 'the poor' often pay reduced or no taxes at all (which is as it should be, I think).
--------
quote:All the Republican conservatives seem to say, "If you work hard enough, you too will be rich." It's a lie. It's a myth.
I'm sure some 'seem' to say that, but none actually do. The American Dream is that anyone has the ability to achieve great success through a combination of good luck, hard work, and ingenuity. It isn't, "get rich if you work hard enough."
quote:Tax cuts for people who don't need it!
Since when is it acceptable to tax based on how much a person or group 'needs'? I don't need the car I have, I could be driving a VW Bug (old model). I don't need a DVR, I could just get the free channels. I don't need all the books I own, I could go to a library.
quote:It's wrong. Large quantities of wealth build on the blood and sweat of other people. Just like in the middle ages.
Right. Just like the Middle Ages.
quote:Many people here love shopping there but Walmart does not give its employees benefits, pays them about 7.50 an hour, does not allow unions and expects them to be able to survive.
Wal-Mart doesn't give a rat's posterior about its part-time employees surviving. And you know what? Anyone who volunteers to work at Wal-Mart had a choice of whether or not to work there. Now I realize it's not always (often it ain't) an attractive choice, but ask yourself this: how much in your middle-class life is lived at the expense of a poor person's labor? Ever buy fruit? Well there's probably a Hispanic man, woman, or child who spent a piece of their day in the sun in California picking that fruit, not getting health care or remotely decent wages.
Ever buy sneakers? Gasoline? Anything that says, "Made in China / Pakistan"? If you answered yes to any of those questions, consider that answer next time you cast judgement on 'the rich'. Because they get rich by selling things to people like you and me.
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posted
That film was called Other People's Money, I believe. I really enjoyed it, partly due to the fact that DD is awesome. I'm gonna record it next time I see it.
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quote:If Burger King is paying their toilet cleaners so little that they require tax supported social service to live, then in effect Burger King and all their customers are cheating both the employee and the tax payers.
The employee is (perhaps) being cheated, but not the taxpayers. Millions of people everyday go to a fast-food restaurant. When you buy something from a company, which you KNOW does not pay and treat its workers decently, then you're signing away a whole helluva lotta moral high ground.
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Wow... that's the first time I've heard the parable of the talents considered financial advice...
As for the 1500 sq ft house. A friend of mine bought one in San Fran several years ago for $380,000, sold it after about six years for about $850,000, and paid $2 million for the one he lives in now.
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I was talking about *his* not yours... I'm just slow posting
I have to say it reaches a new level of biblical literalism to think that Jesus was taking about investing money there... it *is*, after all, a parable.
I mean, it's like saying the parable of the sower is farming advice.
Or that the parable of the ten young virgins is about wedding ettiquette...
posted
Personally, I think our debt culture is doing a serious, long-term number on the economy. Debt slavery is certainly alive and well in America.
But something does need to be done about earning a living wage. If I remember correctly, the Bible does warn against binding the mouth of the oxen that turn the thresher.
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Jim, the reason parables work is becuase they take a concept people already understand and use it to explain a new concept. The parable of the sower works because any farmer knows seeds don't grow on rocks. They choke in weeds. They need good soil to grow. They could understand the spiritual side when it was explained in terms they understood.
So if you ask me, the parable of talents shouldn't have to be investment advice, it should be common knowledge. You have to put your money to work for you if you want to get more money.
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