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from the work-like-a-dog-/-fingers-to-the-bone-/-nose-to-the-grindstone dept.
Mary’s story looks different to different people. Within the ghoulishly cheerful Lyft public-relations machinery, Mary is an exemplar of hard work and dedication—the latter being, perhaps, hard to come by in a company that refuses to classify its drivers as employees. Mary’s entrepreneurial spirit—taking ride requests while she was in labor!—is an “exciting” example of how seamless and flexible app-based employment can be. Look at that hustle! You can make a quick buck with Lyft anytime, even when your cervix is dilating.
[...] It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms. And yet this type of faux-inspirational tale has been appearing more lately, both in corporate advertising and in the news. Fiverr, an online freelance marketplace that promotes itself as being for “the lean entrepreneur”—as its name suggests, services advertised on Fiverr can be purchased for as low as five dollars—recently attracted ire for an ad campaign called “In Doers We Trust.” One ad, prominently displayed on some New York City subway cars, features a woman staring at the camera with a look of blank determination. “You eat a coffee for lunch,” the ad proclaims. “You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer.”
[...] At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear. Human-interest stories about the beauty of some person standing up to the punishments of late capitalism are regular features in the news, too. I’ve come to detest the local-news set piece about the man who walks ten or eleven or twelve miles to work—a story that’s been filed from Oxford, Alabama; from Detroit, Michigan; from Plano, Texas. The story is always written as a tearjerker, with praise for the person’s uncomplaining attitude; a car is usually donated to the subject in the end. Never mentioned or even implied is the shamefulness of a job that doesn’t permit a worker to afford his own commute.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @01:17PM (129 children)
As long as there IS something that pays better, that's fine. But perhaps you didn't notice that there are a lot of crappy jobs and not a lot of good jobs to be had out there.
If a job is important enough that the employer would be in trouble if it couldn't get anyone to do it, then the job is worth a living wage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @01:55PM (62 children)
Clearly, they aren't getting paid that much, because it isn't worth that much.
The labor supply is too big; there are too many people, especially low quality people.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @02:53PM
But we must let all the Muslims and Mexicans in! It is the RIGHT thing to do! /s
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @03:04PM (52 children)
So let's say the fry cooker at McDs (the device, not the operator) requires 10 KW to operate. What would you say to the manager if he said it's only worth 5 KW, let's crank the voltage down to 60? How about he further argues that it's up to the rest of society to provide the other 5KW?
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @03:32PM (12 children)
Wow, that's an incredibly stupid analogy. I feel dumber just for having read it. Congrats, you win 5 Internets for the Daily Dipshit competition.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @03:35PM (7 children)
Yet you offer nothing to refute it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @03:41PM (6 children)
It refutes itself. You made a wholly worthless analogy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @03:50PM (5 children)
No, someone has to get off their lazy butt and refute it if they want it refuted. The problem you're having is that you desperately don't want it to be true but you cannot seem to find a way to break it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @04:01PM (4 children)
Dude, you would have done better with a car analogy. Comparing the situation to things that do in fact get upgraded in efficiency when customers show a demand for such makes zero sense and in fact refutes your point.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Friday March 24 2017, @06:21PM (3 children)
I disagree with TMB in general on the "just get a better job" point and do feel that Lyft, Uber, etc are engaging in some shady labor practices; but seriously that your fry-cooker analogy is beyond useless to illustrate the point you're trying to make. After reading it over several times, I still have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Friday March 24 2017, @06:44PM (2 children)
It's a perfectly good analogy. If you need a piece of equipment to perform some work, you have to properly supply that equipment. A fryer needs a certain amount of electricity to function. A person needs a certain amount of food/clothing/shelter to function. If your business requires that person to function every day but you do not supply a wage sufficient for them to meet those needs, it means you're forcing taxpayers/parents/spouses/friends/etc to pay for your office supplies. I despise Walmart, I don't shop there, I wish they'd go bankrupt...yet every year I end up paying part of the salaries for their employees solely because they refuse to do so. That should not be legal.
How about instead of deciding that people whose jobs have been automated must be worthless and should just roll over and die (but only once some corporation has managed to suck every last drop of marketable labor from their corpse), maybe we could try to celebrate the fact that automation has reduce the demand for human labor and re-calibrate our economy accordingly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:48PM
Please, see here [soylentnews.org] and here [soylentnews.org] for why that's not happening automatically.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday March 24 2017, @11:46PM
The trouble with the analogy is that, disregarding variation of the fryer's resistance with temperature, the voltage should be set at 85 V if 5 kW is desired. At 60 V only 1250 W will be drawn. Who can live on that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm's_law [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday March 24 2017, @10:08PM (3 children)
Why are you being suck a fucking dick? Very few people out there actually act entitled. The rest are people more than willing to work, but not willing to work for less than they need. It's impossible to see that as entitled behavior, when it is simply intelligent and responsible behavior to ask for what you need.
I would agree with you if the job market wasn't rigged from the top. Desperate labor pools are engineered, not spontaneously created. Which do you think corporations like more? Desperate groups of people at a door screaming at the foreman to let them in to work that day? Or calm people with strong foundations capable of feeding, clothing, and housing themselves agreeing to a fair work offer in an environment free of duress?
That's why you are fucking full of shit and you know it, buddy. The world is not the way you say it is. You cannot simply apply for a job with higher wages when corporations are deliberately moving those jobs to foreign countries where they can pay less. Say your offensive bullshit to the career professional sacked from HP after training his H1B replacement. He looked for a living wage job the entire time on his grind down into homelessness.
Corporations have a bit more power over the work offers and environment of engineered duress than you think, and conveniently ignore.
As for Lyft, none of those EMPLOYEES are entitled for asking for a living wage. I'll say that again for you: "NOBODY IS A FUCKING ENTITLED ANYTHING WHEN SIMPLY ASKING FOR A LIVING WAGE". None of the "INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS" are entitled to point out, that the relationship is fraudulent as long as Lyft is setting the prices so low they cannot obtain living wages.
The problem with people like you, is that you actually believe it's correct, moral, and ethical for people to work for less than they need, and then to suffer for it. You always conflate, "I need adequate food, I need adequate medical, I need to put away for my future, I need a not-freezing house in winter", with entitlement squealing like, "I *need* my spinning rims, I *need* my iPhone, I *need* by XBOX360". That's fucking bullshit.
It's neither entitlement, or impossible, to gain living wages. What makes it impossible are attitudes like yours, and Corporate America determined to have their race to the bottom.
Or do you honestly think it's correct for 8 people to have over 99% of the wealth? You act so fucking smart, so come from the other direction and demonstrate to me why an MBA suckhead is actually worth the dozens of times that a hard worker down in shipping is? All of that money that cannot be paid to the lowly workers must be going to the executives, so just what the fuck are they doing that is that important? Obviously, it's important enough to create millions of Americans suffering and living with material deprivation while killing themselves for the almighty suits, so again, why?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:00AM (2 children)
Indeed. I've actually asked this question a couple of time now and each time...surprise, surprise...no one seems willing or able to answer it: what do these folks in upper management actually do that entitles them to these exorbitant compensation packages? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the CXOs at the top of the corporation are each getting $10 million. (Yes, I know the mid-level MBA suckhead doesn't make that much, but I think you can all scale the numbers accordingly.) Even if we make the unrealistic assumption that they are working 18 hour days, 7 days a week, with no vacation or holidays off, that comes out to $1522/hr! What the hell does one do for that kind of money? I can not think of anything that would justify that kind of compensation unless it entailed extreme danger to life or limb. Hell, our fine men and women in the military actually are risking their lives and they get paid a pittance in comparison! So, what are these people at the top of the management chain doing that justifies this level of compensation? I am genuinely curious to know.
(Score: 3, Touché) by dry on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:35AM
They're setting the wages, usually based on their own self-worth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @12:56AM
Indeed. I've actually asked this question a couple of time now and each time...surprise, surprise...no one seems willing or able to answer it: what do these folks in upper management actually do that entitles them to these exorbitant compensation packages?
What is upper management being paid to do? Run a large portion of the business. The "hard worker down in shipping" isn't doing that. Now, maybe you don't care whether a significant fraction of the business runs or not, but I assure you the "hard worker down in shipping" will care when his/her paycheck stops showing up because that part of the business is no longer running.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @03:52PM (15 children)
Firstly, as the device requires 10 kW to operate, it won't work on 5 kW; so, what is the manager actually saying? What he's saying is that this aspect of his business is eating into his profits too much, and he wants to reduce that cost (at least as far as it costs himself).
How can this be achieved?
Well, as you say, he argues that society should cover the other 5 kW, but what does that mean? It should mean that he raises the price of fries, so that patrons are paying for that cost.
However, the government has made another solution possible: Instead of reducing the cost of the device, instead reduce the cost of employees, and thereby make society pay for that overhead through the welfare programs (food stamps) that the underpaid employees will inevitably start using—then, not only are the patrons covering the cost of that extra 5 kW, but so are people who are not patrons, because every taxpayer is paying for those welfare programs.
That is, the government is distorting the market by crafting an artificial source of resources.
To make matters worse, not only has it become socially unfashionable for children to work these jobs, but minimum wages make it too costly to hire children anyway, so these crap jobs that were at one point meant to be a stepping stone into productive society have taken on the illusion of being "careers" for adults, who are much more likely to seek out welfare programs to supplement their income.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @03:59PM (6 children)
If the manager raised prices on patrons, he might lose patrons, so this forces the manager to find other ways of reducing costs, perhaps leading to a more energy-efficient device.
Yet, this motivation is removed: The government's coercive powers mean that the welfare programs guarantee a subsidy for underpaid employees; thus, why bother putting resources into improving the device?
As a result, innovations stagnate; there is no incentive to search for innovations.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:34PM (5 children)
If the manager raised prices on patrons, he might lose patrons
...except that that doesn't happen.
The places that have -already- raised wages are doing just fine.
In fact, putting money into the pockets of WORKERS who will SPEND that into the economy BOOSTS the economy.
Fiscal multiplier [wikipedia.org]
(We have previous experience with this concept, going back to The New Deal in the 1930s and having a giant peak in the 1950s and 1960s.)
...and, in the case of raised wages, the management class and the ownership class skimming off -less- of the profits (while producing nothing) would be a Good Thing(tm).
Have you ever seen a manager who was worth 300x what his workers are worth?
Capitalism is a broken system.
(See "Worker-Owner", below.)
An ESOP is a baby step in the right direction.
Publix: The happiest, most motivated workforce in America [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [fortune.com]
...but that is still subject to the vicissitudes of Capitalism.
With ESOPs, it doesn’t take long for the Wall Street types to push workers aside and take back control [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [leviatan-magazine.com]
(at the 40 percent point on the page.)
The solution is Democracy in the Workplace AKA the Worker-Owner cooperative AKA Socialism.
The 100,000-Strong Mondragon Cooperative [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:38PM (1 child)
Try reading it again. Seriously. You're not countering an argument I've made.
Here's a hint: At some point, the business cannot raise the price of his product; he's got to innovate until he achieves lower costs.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:50AM
The question is at what point can't the business raise its price and why. Is it that the competition is cheaper? Is it that everyone is making too little? Is it just an imaginary limit? Is it just an unmaintainable business?
Minimum wage is supposed to take care of points 1 &2. Point 3 is often just that, imaginary, like Timmys here claiming that they can't raise the price of a cup of coffee above a dollar without even trying.
Sometimes it really is point 4, perhaps my small town really can't support 3 tim hortons, 2 starbucks + the independent, 2 MacDonalds, a Wendys, a Burger King and a bunch of local restaurants. That's the situation in the small town I live in. I really don't understand how all these businesses stay in business considering the total population and how many people must be like me who rarely even buy the dollar cup of coffee, little well actually eating out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:32AM (2 children)
(We have previous experience with this concept, going back to The New Deal in the 1930s and having a giant peak in the 1950s and 1960s.)
Then labor competition from Europe and the Far East magically disappeared the power of that multiplier. Funny how once again, the story is about what supposedly works, while ignoring that what supposedly worked then, doesn't work now.
...and, in the case of raised wages, the management class and the ownership class skimming off -less- of the profits (while producing nothing) would be a Good Thing(tm).
Ah, yes, that terrible ownership class not making things. What again is the scarce thing here? It's not the labor side. We have plenty of workers throughout the world. Instead, it's the employer class that we don't have enough of. I'd rather do things that help people, like create more employers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)
And time and time again it is demonstrated that higher wages and more taxes are what enable people to be successful and become employers. Taking all the money and services away, keeping people port, that is hhoe you tank the economy. So, not that you don't have a somewhat valid point, but you are missing a decent chunk to make it fully valid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 26 2017, @09:51AM
And time and time again it is demonstrated that higher wages and more taxes are what enable people to be successful and become employers.
"Demonstrated"? Then you should be able to show this rather than merely assert that it exists without proof. Meanwhile, how again is labor supposed to get higher wages when there is a surplus of labor? At some point, you need to create more demand for that labor via business creation, expansion, and turnover. This stuff doesn't happen overnight. You need to have a good environment for such businesses for decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:14PM (3 children)
You know we had centuries where there were no food stamps or no society safety net. You know what happened? People died on the streets from trivial ailments (such as starvation). It was worse in every way. The "invisible hand" left to its own devices does not lift up the poor.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:28PM (2 children)
For centuries, there was no such thing as science or appreciable technology. It is capitalism that has saved people from their wretched existence.
For one thing, your own distress about the needy colors how you yourself choose to allocate your own resources; your worries guide that "invisible hand" to help them, but unfortunately your resources are instead taken by a government and squandered on, say, bombing people on the other side of the planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @08:13PM
no such thing as science or appreciable technology.
In Europe, that was mostly due to the prevailing superstition (religion) and a subservience to self-appointed overlords (clergy) who squelched discovery.
It is capitalism that has saved people from their wretched existence.
Capitalism is a system which rewards idle, non-productive overlords.
Worker-owned cooperatives (Socialism) can do what the Capitalist system does--just remove the non-productive people.
There is no need for an Aristocrat class skimming off profits while producing nothing.
...and if you look at the work of e.g. Kepler, Leonardo, and others, you'll realize that things got started under a Feudal system.
Then, as now, huge amounts of resources went into weapons development.
It was the rise of towns (people not bonded to the land) that really got things going (AKA consumers).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @10:08PM
Thanks Alex, I'll take "incredibly wrong statements" for $800.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @07:19PM (2 children)
Since the alternative to the government introducing a market distortion is letting people starve to death, we can't just stop. We can introduce a compensating distortion though. That's what the minimum wage is all about, but it needs to actually cover everything if it's to work.
As for the kids working those jobs, many parents prefer that their kids not learn to accept poor treatment for crap pay as being somehow normal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @07:35PM (1 child)
You've summed it up right there: Your solution is not only to pile ad-hoc distortions on top of each other, but to do so through widespread coercion.
If you don't know exactly how to solve something, then you've got to allow people to find solutions through their own possibly risky trial and error; it's a bad idea to force everyone to throw their resources behind your probably wrong ideas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:32PM
Hmm, problem is your "risk trial and error" is heavily skewed towards the people who own everything. Pair that with desperation of parents trying to provide for their families and you have a recipe for greed causing exorbitant human suffering. The minimum wage is not a "probably wrong idea" it is the basis of keeping this country alive. It is straightforward for a business to accommodate, they simply raise their rates to adjust for the new reality.
(Score: 2) by http on Friday March 24 2017, @08:07PM
The government isn't introducing the distortion. Society aiding the disadvantaged is older than the written word and every form of government other than "I've got a bigger stick". The various corporations have figured out how to weasel a higher ROI from infrastructure intended for other purposes.
And because car analogies are sometimes fun... When a trucker drives through a residential neighbourhood instead of taking the tollway, saving a couple bucks, he doesn't see that the residential streets took as much of a beating from one rig in one passthrough than from ten thousand cars trundling back and forth over the entire winter (4th power axle law). Oh, so clever, those entrepreneurial truckers!
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday March 24 2017, @04:07PM (22 children)
> So let's say the fry cooker at McDs (the device, not the operator) requires 10 KW to operate. What would you say to the manager if he said it's only worth 5 KW, let's crank the voltage down to 60? How about he further argues that it's up to the rest of society to provide the other 5KW?
I may be missing an analogy here, but the way I read it, this makes no sense what so ever in relation to the original post.
The cooker needs 10KW of energy to operate, that is a constant energy demand. It has no bearing of price of said energy.
Whereas the "worth" of a salaried employee is directly related to how many other potential employees are out there who can do the job for the same or lower price.
A better analogy is saying the cooker needs 10KW to operate, however there is another cooker out there that can produce the same amount of output using 5KW of energy (because efficiency improvements, for example).
Now imagine that there is no capital cost of switching cookers (i.e. it costs you almost nothing to switch cookers), what manager (or business owner) would say "No, I will keep my old 10KW cooker". Most would go for the 5KW cooker. All it takes is one to make the jump, and the others must follow in race to reduce costs (which can result either in increased profits, or reduced prices for end customers as the business fight over market share).
That is how it works with unskilled labour. By definition of being "unskilled" (in the sense that it doesn't make much training to do) the "switching cost" is almost zero. The equivalent to "energy cost" is the salary, which is a function of how low the person is willing to work for.
If all burger flippers collectively said "No, we will not work for less than $X per hour", then there would be no choice for the employers but to either pay that salary, find an alternative (robots?) or go out of business.
This however, does not happen, so salaries are a function of demand for burger flippers, coupled with supply. If salaries are going down it either means:
a) more and more people are desperate for a job, any job, for lower wages than their competition. -- This is usually a sign of high unemployment levels, i.e economic troubles
or
b) less and less people are buying burgers, meaning there is less demand for burger flippers. Fewer positions == more applicants per position == more wage competition == lower wages. Another sign of economic trouble.
Either way, the above situation is a symptom of underlying economic problems, rather than the problem itself. Using regulation to "force" certain salaries masks the problem by treating the symptoms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @04:14PM
Please, see my reply [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @06:50PM (20 children)
The employee needs enough to cover food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare or he will die (and do no work at all). If we had no social safety net at all, the poorly paid would die and not show up for work (or end up homeless and show up for work smelling like they haven't had a shower in a month). Since we have one, the manager thinks it is society's responsibility to support the worker-unit so he can continue under-paying him.
If the manager would prefer to provide the food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare directly, I would be OK with that as long as it was all up to standards and included at least some decent amount for discretionary spending.
It's amazing the number of people who clearly understand that a machine requires what it requires but think a person can live on polluted air and filtered sunshine alone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
Please, see here [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Friday March 24 2017, @07:51PM
Because you are an AC, which means I don't get message notifications of your replies. It is only by happy accident I saw this one. So, to respond.
> If the manager raised prices on patrons, he might lose patrons, so this forces the manager to find other ways of reducing costs, perhaps leading to a more energy-efficient device.
Exactly. However if there was a floor where nobody could drop wages further, then the managers would all have to raise prices by an equal amount, keeping the relative competition between them equal.
It might reduce demand (inflationary pressure), so there is a downside. The situation is very complex.
> Yet, this motivation is removed: The government's coercive powers mean that the welfare programs guarantee a subsidy for underpaid employees; thus, why bother putting resources into improving the device?
Agreed. That is a problem with the way you have set up welfare/regulations. I didn't realise it worked like that in the USA, and it seems ass backwards, because essentially welfare becomes a subsidy for unskilled labour, allowing companies to bring wages to the bone in the knowledge the government will pick up the tab,
> As a result, innovations stagnate; there is no incentive to search for innovations.
Also agreed.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday March 24 2017, @07:43PM (15 children)
> The employee needs enough to cover food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare or he will die (and do no work at all).
If there is no work for the person to do, will them dying really affect the workforce that much? So at best a neutral effect on the situation (while admittedly sucky for the individual involved)
> If we had no social safety net at all, the poorly paid would die and not show up for work
Which would result in reduced supply for a job (with relatively fixed demand), driving up wages until a livable equilibrium is achieved.
> (or end up homeless and show up for work smelling like they haven't had a shower in a month).
I doubt that would be tolerated for very long. If there are others out there who are capable of basic hygiene to replace them. Some places I worked at have provided employee showers, primarily because quite a few people cycle in to work, and the office can really smell rank in the morning. However it would be a solution to other personal hygiene problems that you mentioned.
> Since we have one, the manager thinks it is society's responsibility to support the worker-unit so he can continue under-paying him.
This I don't get. Admittedly where I live (the UK) you only get benefits while unemployed. So you will get income support, and "jobseekers allowance" to help you survive while looking for a job, however once you get a job all benefits stop.
This does mean employers cannot cut salaries to the bone and have the government make up the difference in welfare. It does however result in a negative incentive to find work.
If a person is receiving the equivalent of minimum wage while unemployed, and the only jobs they can find pay minimum wage. Their choice is either:
a) take the job, get paid the same amount of money as if you were unemployed, but a harder life.
b) not take the job, get paid the same amount of money as if you were working, but with all the free leisure time you want. Plus the more kids you get, the more money from the government, so an incentive to have very large families.
c) Not take the job, get paid the same amount of money as if you were working, then find "cash only" black market jobs, which gives you tax free cash income + the welfare. Not so much time to have large families because you are actually working, but benefit of more money.
The lazy poor take option (b), the hardworking poor take option (c), and the honest poor take option (a) . Funnily enough, very few in the (a) group, and people in the (b) group are multiplying far faster than anyone else. In this situation, wages for those unskilled jobs would have to rise because it makes more sense to just live off welfare than work, meaning nobody would be willing to do the jobs, and the positions would remain unfilled unless wages rose.
The problem in this case is globalisation, because the employer has an option to just hire freshly arrived migrants, who don't usually qualify for benefits, keeping wages down, all while building generations of families who live only on welfare.
Of course, if we didn't have globalisation, then automation would be the risk to rising wages. Either way it is a complex situation that has no single answer to how it can be solved.
>If the manager would prefer to provide the food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare directly, I would be OK with that as long as it was all up to standards and included at least some decent amount for discretionary spending.
>
> It's amazing the number of people who clearly understand that a machine requires what it requires but think a person can live on polluted air and filtered sunshine alone.
I guess it is fundamentally because a machine is not a conscious entity. It is not capable of survival unless maintained. A person is a conscious entity, and can decide for itself how much crap it wants to take for a particular job, and how to maintain themselves in other ways (including moving away to a place with better prospects).
Hence, it is the responsibility of that person and them alone for their well being.
It is the same reason we take care of children up until they are deemed fit and capable of taking care of themselves. Eventually they have to become adults though, and that involves taking responsibility for themselves, their choices, actions, etc...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @08:36PM (14 children)
Which would result in reduced supply for a job (with relatively fixed demand), driving up wages until a livable equilibrium is achieved.
Yes, it would. So let's skip the letting people die part and go directly to paying the livable equilibrium wage. It would seem to be a more ethical approach and much less likely to drive crime through the roof.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday March 24 2017, @10:04PM (13 children)
> Yes, it would. So let's skip the letting people die part and go directly to paying the livable equilibrium wage.
So say we did that. Say that at current prices, a livable wage would be $15 an hour. So from now on nobody will earn less than that. What will happen is that salary costs will increase. As a result, prices will rise, making the "base tier" of the economy more expensive.
This will in return increase prices across the the other tiers, resulting in increases across the board (i.e. everything getting more expensive by a similar ratio).
End result; Now that everything is more expensive, that $15 an hour is once again not a livable wage.
The price of the labour has gone up, but not its value, so relative to other value in the economy, nothing has changed (except inflation has gone up).
> It would seem to be a more ethical approach and much less likely to drive crime through the roof.
The reason that the "people dying will increase wages" thing I mentioned works, and your idea doesn't, is precisely because by removing people, the value of the remaining people increases (because there is less of them). As a result, prices increase to reflect that, and they increase relative to the rest of the economy making those left better off.
Your idea involves Increasing the price of people when their value to the economy is the same (As the supply of them is the same) which is inflationary. Removing number of people in existence has the effect of reducing supply, increasing value of the remainder, and hence increasing the price they can ask.
There is historical proof of this. When the Black death hit Europe, it wiped out almost all the peasants. As a result lords didn't have enough workers to work their land. They couldn't grow the crops they needed to sell to pay for their armies and for their tithe to the King.
As a result the remaining peasants were in such high demand that their value increased measurably. They could cease being tied to their lord, and could "shop around" for the lord who gave them the best privileges and benefits/pay. The mass death due to that disease allowed the masses to finally break free of serfdom and become independent. The first formation of middle classes. These independents could own land , get better pay, and in time acquired education and skills to become the middle classes. This then allowed the increase in skill sets, the eventual creation of engineers, thinkers and scientists, and the future the upper classes. This resulted in the Enlightenment, Renaissance, Industrial revolution, usurpation of power, and in some cases (e.g. France) actual overthrow of the Royals.
I am not advocating we start mass killings to solve the unemployment problem, and like you mentioned not having welfare will just allow crime to shoot through the roof (all life has the goal of self preservation and self replication at its core, few humans would just curl up and die. Most would decide to either take what they need by force, or decide to go out with a bang rather than quietly into the good night) and general destablising of society..
The point of me showing this in a candid an analytical way it so show how complex and difficult a problem this is to solve (if we want to retain some ethics and humanity). If it was as simple as price fixing a minimum "livable" wage everywhere, this problem would have been solved a long time ago.
Generally, the way (in modern times) this was solved, is by having a war. As soon as there were too many normals in the world, the elites would kick off a war and "thin the herd". This was fine for most of modern history, but WWII showed that we have reached a dangerous technological level ("total war") and now such global warfare is far more likely to wipe all life off earth. The elites (most of them at least) have self preservation of them and their wealth as a goal, so I suspect we are destined to muddle through as we are for a while until something breaks.
Then again, lots of poking of different power blocks going on round the world, so maybe some sort of limited "middle level" warfare is planned. The "Low level" warfare in the middle east (and other places) is not killing people fast enough to match global birth rates, so the problem is still there. Ain't the world lovely :-)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @10:36PM (12 children)
The part you're missing is that the higher the floor wage goes, the more incentive there is for those far dfrom the floor wage to take just a little less and reap the benefits of being the price leader.
Keep in mind, labor prices going up do not necessarily raise the other costs in a business. Some are backed by jobs that already pay well more than the minimum wage, some are backed by sunk investments in machines that won't suddenly have to be paid for again.
If your argument that all prices will move in lock-step with the minimum wage is true, we should set all wages to zero so everything will be free. The same factors that make that silly also mean prices will not quite rise to eat away at the advantages of increasing the minimum wage.
In the past, minimum wage was actually about $15/hr in 2017 dollars. Somehow, society survived. Since then, advances in efficiency and automation have pumped a good deal of money into the economy, but it certainly hasn't trickled down.
Long term, I suspect UBI will need to come along to replace the minimum wage, but we need a stopgap while we wait for the old guard to die off.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday March 24 2017, @11:16PM (11 children)
> The part you're missing is that the higher the floor wage goes, the more incentive there is for those far dfrom the floor wage to take just a little less and reap the benefits of being the price leader.
Depends on if there is enough slack to take it up I guess. I can see small business being more willing to forgo extra profit if possible. However the big public companies are beholden to shareholders, who demand the best returns on their investment as possible. They are not really going to be willing to "take a little less" in return for higher minimum wage.
Thing is, the "profit" is not there just to enrich the owners. That profit is to be used to reinvestments as well, possibly paying off of debt. If you reduce your profit margins you may find down the line that your competition is able to outspend you in investments, eventually pulling ahead of you.
Being the price leader means having the lowest prices, but that isn't always the most profitable course of action.
To take an example of the big company. Say there is a hike in minimum wages. big_corp_A says they will reduce their profits, cut down on investment pools and pay out less dividends as a result, but they will keep all their staff with the increased wages (so, happy staff at least). big_corp_B says they will reduce headcount until costs match what they were, look towards outsourcing/automation so fewer workers can do more, and will keep their investment plans and dividends at the same level they are now.
Which of the two corps do you think will investors go to, on the pretext of longer term success?
> Keep in mind, labor prices going up do not necessarily raise the other costs in a business. Some are backed by jobs that already pay well more than the minimum wage, some are backed by sunk investments in machines that won't suddenly have to be paid for again.
Why wouldn't it raise other costs? Other wages at least. To give an example. Say you have a fast food joint. Few employees, and a store manager. Employees making maybe round $7.50 an hour, manager making $15 or so. Suddenly you hike the minimum wage to $15.
So now the employees (some of which might be new starters) are making $15 an hour, same as the store manager (who might have worked up for years to reach his position). Do you think the manager will be happy with this reward for his work? Or would he then demand his wage increase by the same amount? Chances are he will use the situation to demand his wage increases by a consummate amount. All well and good, but now he is earning as much as the regional manager per hour, who themselves will not be happy about this situation, etc....
And so wage rises go up the chain, presumably to the people who have most of their income from profits/shares/etc... rather than salary, who might be willing to sacrifice a bit. However the initial "low sacrifice" of increased wages for the bottom end might actually end up costing the company a lot of money in wage increases all round.
Not sure how sunk costs in machinery makes a difference here. That cost will not change if the wage goes up or not. It is fixed cost, and a depreciating asset. Even then, eventually those assets will be replaced. So at best you have won a delay of the inevitable.
> If your argument that all prices will move in lock-step with the minimum wage is true, we should set all wages to zero so everything will be free. The same factors that make that silly also mean prices will not quite rise to eat away at the advantages of increasing the minimum wage.
Actually no, setting wages to zero would not mean everything is free. There would still be costs of the materials, energy, etc.... And most importantly, the people involved. If the people are willing to work for free, yes you would be able to produce stuff for very little money. Rather than inflationary it would be deflationary. Meaning things would go down in price rather than up, so people could buy more with their money.
The situation is not silly. Very unlikely (because I doubt you will convince people to work for free), but based on the same logical rules so still feasible. Hell, that was one of the cornerstones of Communism. You don't get wages that reflect your ability, but you get your needs provided (from each according to their ability, to each according to their need). Living in that system is a whole other topic that is probably too tangential to the current one, so I will skip the monologue :)
> In the past, minimum wage was actually about $15/hr in 2017 dollars.
Fair enough, I haven't a clue what the actual minimum wages are in the USA,. I am just using prices as examples.
> Somehow, society survived.
Depends when in the past. In the olden days there wasn't so much debt (with interest) that needs to be paid. If we are talking pre-71 then the USD was gold backed, and deflationary.
> Since then, advances in efficiency and automation have pumped a good deal of money into the economy, but it certainly hasn't trickled down.
It has increased productivity, but gets eaten up by debt. Most of the productivity gains have gone towards financing ever larger debts, rather than to improving quality of life for normal people.
Essentially we are now paying for debts incurred by our parents and grandparents, while the debts being taken out now (on the back of our productivity) will have to be paid for by our children and grandchildren (who will have increased productivity compared to us, but the same struggle because the extra productivity benefits go towards financing our debt).
The whole fiat/debt based system is designed to control and eck out as much profitability out of people. Usury was banned for a reason by religious texts. However increasing the minimum wage will not deal with that cause, at best it handles the symptoms temporarily.
> Long term, I suspect UBI will need to come along to replace the minimum wage, but we need a stopgap while we wait for the old guard to die off.
How would the UBI be funded though? More debt? Higher taxes?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:09AM (10 children)
The debt business is nonsense. The government owing itself a few trillion doesn't affect McDs ability to pay $15/hr in the slightest. The depressing effect on the USD just means imports from China cost more than they did in 1971 when they were practically non-existent anyway.
Sure, the manager will also want a raise so he's making more than a new hire, but that effect will dwindle up the chain. Surely the CEO won't demand an extra $1/hr to keep ahead of the new hires.
The UBI could be paid for by rolling back the tax cuts in the highest brackets to 1950s levels.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:39AM (9 children)
> The debt business is nonsense. The government owing itself a few trillion doesn't affect McDs ability to pay $15/hr in the slightest.
Most US debt is held by others, not the US government. If they feel the debt is unsound or that the USA in future will not be able to pay it back, they may start liquidating their holdings. This will result in a fall in USD value to the point that even paying $100 per hour will not yield a livable wage.
> The depressing effect on the USD just means imports from China cost more than they did in 1971 when they were practically non-existent anyway.
And imports from the rest of the world, of which it seems America depends on far more than vice versa. Yes, that includes China. America would have to quickly discover how to become self sustainable, which, interestingly enough, would help solve the lack of demand for jobs and stagnant wages (increasing demand, due to import substitution, meaning more locally produced goods == more local employment == more demand for workers == higher wages).
> Sure, the manager will also want a raise so he's making more than a new hire, but that effect will dwindle up the chain. Surely the CEO won't demand an extra $1/hr to keep ahead of the new hires.
Indeed I doubt the CEO would, but there is enough movement up the chain that the initial minimum wage will cost far more than people expect. It is essentially a multiplier effect. And couple this rise in costs across all companies (because by being mandated at a federal level, everyone has to increase the wages) means that the effect will be inflationary on the economy as a whole.
I suspect that by the end of it, $15 an hour (or whatever the minimum wage is artificially set to) will end up not being a livable wage. Sure, there might be a lag of a couple of years before this is reflected (perhaps long enough for the politicians who proposed it to move on, and not be left holding the bag when it goes tits up), but when push comes to shove, nothing has been fixed. 5 or so years down the line, those same people will find their new minimum wage is not enough to survive, and will ask for another hike, and so on and so forth.
> The UBI could be paid for by rolling back the tax cuts in the highest brackets to 1950s levels.
Ok, so raising taxes in the highest brackets. Why wouldn't these people just leave then? Or move their wealth offshore? Problem with rich people is they are rich enough that they can up sticks and move relatively easily. The rest of us are tied down by mortgages, or jobs, etc...
In the 1950's Globalization had not taken hold, Europe was devastated by WWII and not a fit place to live, half the world had joined with the USSR under communism and they would have just confiscated any wealth you brought in "For the people".
I suspect the filthy rich decided that sitting put, shutting up and paying the US taxes was the best deal at the time, hence you could notch up the rates to eye watering levels and they would not go anywhere else.
Plus the USA was booming on loans and manufacturing output for the reconstruction of Europe, so the growth rate was phenomenal, and even after taxes, the returns and growth was still the best in the world. That isn't the case anymore.
Not to mention they still had ways to avoid paying most of that tax, usually through funds, trusts, and other machinations.
The world has changed since then, notch up the taxes to 1950s levels, and I think all the rich would just vacate the country. Of course, maybe in the long term, getting rid of the filthy rich might actually be a net benefit for the USA.
You're welcome to try, if you can manage to put someone in the White house who will actually do it (and survive long enough for it to take effect) it would be interesting to see if things get better from thereon.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:31AM (8 children)
Naturally, $15/hr won't solve the problem until the end of time. It'll have to keep up with inflation. Just like $5/hr wasn't the final answer. Big deal, we just have to increase it from time to time or index it to inflation.
As for higher taxes and UBI, where will they go when they renounce their U.S. citizenship (necessary if they don't want to pay U.S. taxes), Greece? Perhaps China just as it's taking a big hit in it's exports due to the shake up in the U.S.? Yeah, not all that attractive either. Do you really think they'll hold a fire sale on their U.S. assets (also necessary to dodge U.S. taxes)? Meanwhile, Warren Buffet has actually suggested raising taxes on people in his own income bracket. He believes that in the end it will work out better for him as well as everyone else. The U.S. does import a lot, but don't forget, we are a net exporter of food and oil. Meanwhile, most of the imports are only because they're slightly cheaper, not because we can't make them here. As you say, it might even be a win for us.
Agreed, the biggest obstacle to any of that is Washington D.C.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday March 25 2017, @08:03PM (7 children)
> Naturally, $15/hr won't solve the problem until the end of time. It'll have to keep up with inflation. Just like $5/hr wasn't the final answer. Big deal, we just have to increase it from time to time or index it to inflation.
There is one problem with that. Say you have an increase in minimum wage of 1%. The inflation generated by that would be >1%, so it isn't a one to one relationship. Say for example the multiplier is 1.5. That 1% min wage increase results in 1.5% inflation after a couple of years, so next time you increase wages by 1.5% percent to keep up with inflation. That causes inflation to be 2.25%, so increase wages by 2.25%, but then inflation becomes 3.375%, and so on...
So in actual fact, it is a big deal. You end up in a inflation cycle that will ruin the country in the long term, while (in the interests of helping the poor) you actually make the rich richer and drive more people into poverty (especially people on fixed income, like pensioners, and prudent savers) while rewarding those who own assets (the actual real "capitalists" in capitalism, because assets can't be inflated away like you can print money) like property, stocks, shares, bonds, etc... .
Not to mention higher inflation will force higher interest rates, resulting in people defaulting on large debts they own, which could cause a credit crunch like was seen in 2008, if not worse.
> As for higher taxes and UBI, where will they go when they renounce their U.S. citizenship (necessary if they don't want to pay U.S. taxes), Greece? Perhaps China just as it's taking a big hit in it's exports due to the shake up in the U.S.? Yeah, not all that attractive either.
Most of them seem to be moving to New Zealand from what I have heard. Relatively low taxes, beautiful country, great weather, easy to get citizenship, land and property is quite cheap (by their standards), they speak English and have a similar culture.
Saying that, London is filling up with Americans who have renounced as well, and brought a lot of their wealth with them (as a result, sustaining the high house prices in the city when the rest of the country is in a crisis). Americans tend to stick to places that speak English natively and have culture somewhat recognizable to their own, (so ex-commonwealth mostly).
This is ignoring the obvious low-tax rich bolt holes like Monaco, Luxembourg, etc... which (unlike in the 50's) are nice places to live again, and even Switzerland is popular (but you have to renounce for that, due to recent events w,r.t the IRS).
Don't forget, they don't have to renounce their US citizenship. Very easy to set up a trust for their offshore wealth. Basically they can claim that assets abroad are not theirs, but held in a foreign trust for other beneficiaries who are not US citizens. Et voila! Tax avoidance, perfectly legal. That doesn't even scrape the list of other ways (both fully legal and some shady/gray methods) of not paying IRS dues.
If the screws were tightened further in the USA, would not surprise me to find rate of citizenship renouncements would increase as well.
> Do you really think they'll hold a fire sale on their U.S. assets (also necessary to dodge U.S. taxes)?
They don't need to. If they renounce citizenship then they are just foreigners who own US assets, not unlike me for example (despite never setting foot in the country). I have to fill in a form to the IRS confirming I am not a citizen of the USA, and I get everything tax free (it gets taxed by my country of residence instead).
If they don't renounce citizenship, they can just liquidate hard assets slowly, besides, most wealthy people have a lot more wealth in places other than hard to liquidate things like property. Quite a lot of have stocks and shares, which have no problems moving round the world.
> Meanwhile, Warren Buffet has actually suggested raising taxes on people in his own income bracket. He believes that in the end it will work out better for him as well as everyone else.
That is fine, because one of the great things about being rich, is you can alter how much income you actually make. I have seen them do it, they can make their income so low that rather than paying taxes, the government can owe them money. I know rich people who make 10 times more than me, then pay less than 10% the tax I do (all done legally). It isn't even because they can hire better lawyers and tax accountants. I asked those same accountants what they could do for me, and they said "basically nothing, as you are a salaried employee". Not working for a company (or working for your own company) opens up a lot of flexibility when it comes to tax and income, which is denied to those of us who have to work for others.
He suggested it, knowing that a) it placates the masses, b) makes him seem more caring, all the while c) making not a jot of difference to how much tax they would actually pay.
> The U.S. does import a lot, but don't forget, we are a net exporter of food and oil. Meanwhile, most of the imports are only because they're slightly cheaper, not because we can't make them here. As you say, it might even be a win for us.
True, and with inflation, it imports would get more expensive, and exports cheaper. Question is, if exports got cheaper and imports more expensive, would you overall be better off? If yes, then Trump's tariffs on imported goods should be a good idea anyway, as it would have a similar effect to dollar devaluation.
> Agreed, the biggest obstacle to any of that is Washington D.C.
Indeed, but it is also all the other statelets within the USA as well. you are in a federation after all. There are not enough proponents of UBI and other radical ideas to allow this concept to ever see the light of day.
Might be worth concentrating on a single state that seems the most likely to go for these ideas, and trying to just get that state to do it as a trial. If other states see it is a good idea, I am sure they will follow.
The only state that comes to mind is California. Plus they apparently have a really good economy (if it was an independent country, it would be the worlds 5th largest economy or something), so might be a good place to try it.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @08:33PM (6 children)
Your factor of 1.5 is completely unsupported and quite unlikely as well. That would presupose the price of everything being dominated by the minimum wage. It has been increased in the past with no such gloom and doom coming to pass. I see no reason it should now. Particularly when an increase in the minimum wage will result in at least somewhat lowered costs for social services (for example, SNAP) now that more people will make ends meet. In that sense, it is simply internalizing an externality.
As for interest rates, the prime has been hovering around 0 for a long time now. Other interest rates have been dominated by potential returns on Wall street for about as long.
Stocks, bonds, and rich people can move around the world fairly easily, but if they touch the U.S. at any point, they're a scratch of a pen away from being taxed. The U.S. market is too bid for them to be willing to write it off.
It wouldn't take long for a mass exodus to drive up prices (and the temptation to tax) in all of the countries you mentioned. Ask Mr. Dotcom how well that New Zealand citizenship shields you from the U.S. Government (not saying that was right, just stating the fact).
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:10PM (5 children)
> Your factor of 1.5 is completely unsupported and quite unlikely as well.
Of course it is, I pulled it out of my backside, hence I said "for example". I don't know what the real multiplication factor is, but it would be lower than that. I set it high enough to show in 3 steps what change it would do to the economy. If the factor was really 1.5x the first min wage rise would snowball into an economic crisis, which doesn't happen.
> That would presupose the price of everything being dominated by the minimum wage.
The price of everything is dominated by the floor, which includes things like cost of energy units, and minimum wage, and a few other things. For example if you decreased the cost of energy and increased minimum wage by the same amount, it would have no effect on the wider economy.
> It has been increased in the past with no such gloom and doom coming to pass. I see no reason it should now. Particularly when an increase in the minimum wage will result in at least somewhat lowered costs for social services (for example, SNAP) now that more people will make ends meet. In that sense, it is simply internalizing an externality.
Well, that is for a few reasons unique to the USA. Specifically it is the current holder of the worlds reserve currency, allowing you to export inflation onto other countries. This allows you to have crazy debt levels (20 trillion, was it?). This is an increasingly untenable position, as other countries don't like their wealth being stolen in this way. As a result the USA has to enforce the status quo on the world via its large military apparatus, causing much death and destruction round the world.
If you raise the minimum wage, and just borrow the money, then it won't have much effect on your inflation rate. However that debt gets added to the pile, and eventually you will have to pay it back, or you will have to have a massive world war to wipe out the debt (if you wipe out your creditors physically, the debt becomes nullified).
> As for interest rates, the prime has been hovering around 0 for a long time now. Other interest rates have been dominated by potential returns on Wall street for about as long.
Yes, but that is political. When inflation is at (for example) 3%, you should set the interest rate to 3%, so that peoples savings and pensions keep up with inflation. The rate is deliberately kept near 0% while inflation increases, taking wealth from these people and transferring it upwards.
The hope is that by dropping interest rates they will spur economic growth, but all they are doing is inflating another massive credit bubble, as people go into further debt to survive. It will collapse at some point, and I intend to be as far away from it as possible.
The only alternative they can see, is to push into negative interest territory, basically a tax on anyone who has money deposited anywhere. If they did this, people would just take money out of the banks and into cash ( a so called "bank run") because between given the choice of having a monthly percentage of their money taken by the bank as negative interest, vs keeping it in cash which is 0% interest by name, people will take the cash and run.
So before they enact negative interest rates, they need to get rid of cash, hence the massive push towards a "cashless society".
> Stocks, bonds, and rich people can move around the world fairly easily, but if they touch the U.S. at any point, they're a scratch of a pen away from being taxed. The U.S. market is too bid for them to be willing to write it off.
So they just won't touch the US. It isn't hard. Once upon the time the US market was seen as too important to ignore, but more and more that isn't the case. A nation of indebted servants who struggle more and more to afford things? Not a good long term bet. Sure, for now it it still a big market, but the writing can be seen on the wall. Might be a few decades yet though.
Still, like I said, you can earn money in the US market, but not pay tax there, as long as you are not a citizen. I could even go visit the USA if I wanted to get fondled by strangers at the border, and still would not get taxed.
> It wouldn't take long for a mass exodus to drive up prices (and the temptation to tax) in all of the countries you mentioned. Ask Mr. Dotcom how well that New Zealand citizenship shields you from the U.S. Government (not saying that was right, just stating the fact).
Actually, tax havens work on the concept of keeping tax low to attract the rich. Their logic being getting 2% tax on their billions is a better absolute return than demanding 70% tax from the working poor. They see the rich as the goose that lays the golden eggs, they won't kill it by raising taxes. The exact opposite. there is a race to see who can attact the most rich people, by offering the lowest taxes or the best benefits (security, discretion, entertainment, etc... ) for them.
London's recent influx of rich Americans has got them thinking about reducing taxes further, which is has has resulted in much teeth gnashing from other tax havens, and as a result I think it has been suspended, but there is competition to attract the rich.
Mr. Dotcom got into sticky mess because he has an arrest warrant against him. He is a suspected criminal, and New Zealand has an extradition treaty with the USA. As a suspected criminal Dotcom was stupid to go to a country which could extradite him back. He should have gone to any one of the countries that don't extradite their citizens to the USA. Assuming he knew he was a criminal, which (even if he isn't) he should have known he pissed off some very powerful people who want to extract revenge upon him.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:27PM (4 children)
Of course it is, I pulled it out of my backside, hence I said "for example". I don't know what the real multiplication factor is, but it would be lower than that. I set it high enough to show in 3 steps what change it would do to the economy. If the factor was really 1.5x the first min wage rise would snowball into an economic crisis, which doesn't happen.
Well if we're going to have a conversation based on whatever we pull out of our backsides, I say we should raise the minimum wage to $200/hr so the wish unicorns will descend from the clouds and pay off all the debt and give us candy.
Since you now acknowledge that a rise in minimum wage doesn't actually create a crisis, I see no reason not to do it. The few places that have done it have seen an improved economy as a result in spite of the doom and gloom conservative pundits were pulling from their backsides.
As for the value if our dollar, I'm pretty sure China would be awfully upset if it devalues. too much. You should be more worried about them. The "99%" here in the U.S. would probably benefit from a little devaluing since it would make manufacturing here more profitable.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:39PM (3 children)
> Well if we're going to have a conversation based on whatever we pull out of our backsides, I say we should raise the minimum wage to $200/hr so the wish unicorns will descend from the clouds and pay off all the debt and give us candy.
If you can't tell the difference between reality and a theoretical example, then yes, your argument makes sense.
However unlike your example, my one is founded in logic and how things actually work, and has been shown to happen in countries around the world that tried to dictate prices politically rather than letting the market set them. No wishing, unicorns or other magic required.
> Since you now acknowledge that a rise in minimum wage doesn't actually create a crisis, I see no reason not to do it. The few places that have done it have seen an improved economy as a result in spite of the doom and gloom conservative pundits were pulling from their backsides.
Don't put words in my mouth. I never said it would cause a crisis straight away, but it will cause one down the line. Also it would take a hike across the entire USA, equally, before it makes an effect on the US economy (because if a county gets too expensive, people just shift to another country with lower burdens, and still contribute the same amount to the federal economy).
Also, at this moment it will be hidden by unique position provided by the USA reserve currency position. However when that ends all hell will break loose. Signs are indicating that the system is faltering already. Trump is just a symptom of the underlying malaise, and (at least based on what I have been reading in the news) the US population has never been more divided and combative.
> As for the value if our dollar, I'm pretty sure China would be awfully upset if it devalues. too much. You should be more worried about them. The "99%" here in the U.S. would probably benefit from a little devaluing since it would make manufacturing here more profitable.
Why would I be worried about them? They already are aware of what the situation is, and are hedging accordingly, trying to decouple from the USA (and are liquidating treasuries at quite a pip). The Chinese have been around for many thousands of years in one form or another, I am sure they will be around for many more.
Hmm, for the 99%, devaluation would make their labour and savings worth less, increase their debt load, all the while making the land/asset owning 1% richer. Yes, it would make US exports cheaper, so they would be working more, unemployment will go down, but they will be able to afford less for the work they do.
I guess it is a win if you consider the 99% working more for less money while the 1% get richer a win. I however, get the impression this isn't what you had in mind with your proposal :-)
However you are free to try to increase the minimum wage politically, go for all it. This discussion was just to show how things work, and what will happen in the eventual end. Personally if you want to go for this, I would include in that packet of minimum wage increase some welfare reform. Something more akin to the European model. As things stand, your welfare acts as a "top up" for poor wages, allowing companies to offset their labour costs against the government.
Quite frankly, I think if you just reformed welfare, you would see a jump in minimum wages because suddenly nobody will want to work on jobs where their total income isn't enough to survive. The companies would have no choice but to up wages to attract someone willing to do the job. You got the worst of both worlds right now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 26 2017, @11:04PM (2 children)
Well let's see, the minimum wage has been raised several times over half a century or so and the gloom and doom never happened, so it seems my wish unicorns are about as likely (that is to say, not at all) as your gloom and doom. You even admitted that there was no realism to your number, but then spun a whole economic armageddon from it and expect me to (apparently) accept it on faith. I'll go with the historical record, thank you.
And no, there is no logic in creating a disaster scenario based on a number selected to be disastrous and then attempt to apply it to reality. If you like, I'll grant that if the number was 1.5, it would be very very bad.
The 1% would see their savings devalued. The 99% would see their debt devalued.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday March 27 2017, @08:25AM (1 child)
> Well let's see, the minimum wage has been raised several times over half a century or so and the gloom and doom never happened, so it seems my wish unicorns are about as likely (that is to say, not at all) as your gloom and doom. You even admitted that there was no realism to your number,
Well, I tried to explain what will happen, using as much logic as reason as I can. However if you are not interested in rationality I can't help you there. The point of my examples was not to give you a prophecy, I am not Nostradamus. I was trying to explain to you that the problems are more systematic than "oh, raise minimum wage and everything will be peachy". There will be consequences of doing that, some of the human costs, some economic.
And I will point out that over the last half a century, the US economy has been going down the toilet while its debt load has been going up.
> but then spun a whole economic armageddon from it and expect me to (apparently) accept it on faith. I'll go with the historical record, thank you.
No need to use faith, just look at history. Loads of countries that tried to dictate prices. Most of the USSR tried to do that as well, we can see how well that worked out. As I mentioned above, the US economy has been suffering for roughly half a century, basically when you went off the gold standard and started printing money to sustain yourselves rather than increase your economic output.
By all means start controlling prices, it all worked so well before, plus if I am honest, making the US economy less competitive is in my benefit, so go right ahead.
Problem is you don't have to convince me, but the rest of your country that it is a good idea, and there are a lot of people in the USA who understand how economies work (being one of the founders and main proponents of Laissez-faire capitalism after all), so it will be a tough sell.
The world economy is really really chaotic and complex. In my mind it is the most complex system on earth, alongside the climate. And like the climate, there is a lot of slack built in the system, there are some points of resistance where you can push against, but there are point where you can kickstart corrections and feedback cycles that can either be constructive and destructive.
Most people on this board can understand this when it comes to climate, and understand that just because we are pumping out tons of CO2 right now and the world hasn't come to an end, doesn't mean it won't cause problems 10-20 years down the line. Yet somehow they can't understand the same situation applies with the economy?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @02:00PM
Well, I tried to explain what will happen, using as much logic as reason as I can.
No, you pulled a crazy number with no backing out out of your backside and extrapolated it to death. If you really think that constitutes reasoning about the situation, you need help. The only useful thing about your exercise, given that minimum wage was implemented half a century ago and your scenario didn't play out, is that your first guess of 1.5 was too high. Run the numbers again with a lower guess until you get something that looks like the historical record, and we'll talk.
Your next step appears to be jumping directly to the extreme example of fixing all prices by central committee. I'll go ahead and agree that that never works out well. It caught up with the Soviet Union slowly and has caught up with others quickly. It's a good thing we're not planning to do anything that extreme.
Unlike your scenarios, AGW is supported by actual evidence. The various coefficients have been selected based on actual measurement and actual measurements correspond well with the models. The physics behind the mechanism is well settled for over a century. Further, the models have been shown to have predictive power.
Get back to me with your scenarios when you have actually done the work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Sounds to me like you are one small step away from advocating for the company store. [wikipedia.org] Perhaps you are OK with debt slavery but I'm not.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @09:52PM
The company store charges money. In fact it charges just enough money to indebt the workers in perpetuity. I certainly do not advocate that. If the employer were to provide those necessities directly, it would have to be as part of the pay, not requiring any additional payment.Compensation would also need to provide cash to be spent as the employee desired. In practice, I would also require an extensive grace period after termination so nobody would get fired and homeless on the same day.
But really, it was just a way to simplify the problem so even the nimnuls who would treat a piece of equipment better than a human being might understand.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 24 2017, @03:13PM (7 children)
Is that saying we've overpopulated?
I see two basic futures for humanity. 1) Endless cycles of overpopulation followed by war, famine, and epidemics. Or, 2) we curb our greed and competitiveness, keep a lid on population, and enjoy lives of peace and plenty. The second can be done. The first is harsh and cruel, and stupid evil, but was workable so long as we didn't have the power to really mess up the world. Now that we do have that power, the first option just doesn't look viable any more. If that's the road we take, our future may be a very short one.
I see the macho, ostrich head in the sand. authoritarian conservative as blindly pushing us all in the direction of option one. Many of their policies inadvertently slow population growth by putting a lot of pressure on the masses so that people feel they can't afford more children. But that only delays the reckoning, and if they get their way, all too soon they'll have us all in a corner where war or famine are the only options left. It's the best explanation I've thought of for their seemingly contradictory policies towards women and children. No abortion, no contraceptives, yet no help to care for the children their policies force on us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @03:34PM (4 children)
In order to achieve a robust society, that society must be allowed to evolve by variation and selection, a process which is best implemented as a free market: Individuals must be allowed to make bets on what they think are the best ways to exist; through this competition of ideas, society as a whole is actually cooperating to find solutions to its problems (nobody knows what the best solution actually is), including solutions to problems that nobody even knew existed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @03:43PM (2 children)
War is peace, love is murder, idiots are insightful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @04:01PM (1 child)
Honestly, I'd like to know.
Are you just being cute, or do you really not comprehend the point that OP is making?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:40PM
I was being cute, but also trying to highlight the inherent problem with OP's idea. Competition is not cooperation, I understand the point but it only works in an ideal scenario where humans are good and productive members of society. It is a offshoot of the misguided "the strong survive the weak die" and the US is a prime example of how that concept totally fails. When you pit people against each other you often end up with someone on top, and they dictate the rules. There is no way some bootstrapper is going to pay his employees a fair wage if he doesn't have to, and the greedy sociopaths are often the ones that end up with wealth and power because they pursue it single-mindedly. Then these horrible human beings are able to disproportionately affect politics, or use their money to destroy competition.
So I call bullshit on competition == cooperation. It is a load of crap with some idealistic rationale as to why it would work.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 24 2017, @08:32PM
There's friendly competition, and destructive competition up to total war. The first is good, the second, not so much.
We ought to take care to keep the competition friendly, and I fear we're not being careful enough to make sure we don't end up starving and desperate enough to reach for the nukes. If Climate Change gets really bad and cuts our food supply significantly, before we can adjust, we may be in that kind of hurt. But now the US government is controlled by a bunch of climate deniers. Let us hope they prove to be irrelevant, and the US can respond sensibly to Climate Change in spite of them and whatever petty obstructionism they can mount.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday March 24 2017, @09:02PM
Option two doesn't strike you as authoritarian? It is the One Child Policy of Red China, where abortions were forced on women.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:38AM
Or, 2) we curb our greed and competitiveness, keep a lid on population, and enjoy lives of peace and plenty.
That "greed and competitiveness" has created a developed world with negative population growth among native populations. That's right. Capitalism (and associated policies like female education) has solved positive population growth for over a billion people in the world. 2) is the better answer than 1).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @03:34PM (65 children)
There is always something that pays better. You just have to be able to do the job. If you lack the skills, that's on your dumb ass for failing to acquire any marketable skill during your entire life.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @03:42PM (48 children)
I see, so when a kid goes to school as required by law and come out of it without enough knowledge to pass a GED because the school is sub-standard, that's all his fault? Shoulda picked wealthier parents who live where the schools are good? Where there's a library close enough to get to?
Shoulda picked parents with enough money for college perhaps? (not that that is much of a guarantee of decent employment these days).
There are a lot of people working jobs below their skill level these days.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
Should have used his spare time to learn something useful instead of hanging on the street, playing vidya, or chasing tail. People do it every day. And they make a better living than you do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @06:38PM
Let's see, he could have what, walked to the library that closed 10 years ago and hoped to learn something by absorbing the residue of the books that used to be there? Then get picked up by the truant officer because he had to skip school for that? I suppose if anyone had ever taught him the art of scholarly research, he could fire up the ol' 28.8 modem and read a few pages on the internet if the ISP bill got paid and the ads aren't too thick.
Yes, I may have exaggerated a bit, but the point is there. Further, no matter how much you learn on the internet, you'll still need to cough up the bux for that piece of paper that says you know something. Those have gotten a lot more important to even entry level jobs than they used to be. That isd probably related to there being more qualified applicants than there are jobs to fill.
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Friday March 24 2017, @04:59PM (45 children)
No, it means that if you want to solve the problem you fix/nuke the government schools. Demanding that employers pay the marching morons coming out of them 15/hr so you who advocated for the government monopoly on education don't have to accept the guilt for your actions won't work.
As for the poor unfortunate victims of those schools, life isn't fair. They got fucked by the system but they still have a far better chance at a good life than 80% of the people now alive on Planet Earth by virtue of having been born in the 1st World. It is going to be on them to suck it up and learn a skill that can allow them to access the opportunity available to them. Thankfully there are a -lot- of good paying jobs that do not require a college degree. They will often require hard labor and probably moving away from the urban hellhole with the bad school.
It is a mental frame thing. Convince them they are victims and they will sit there their whole goddamn life waiting for somebody to fix it for them, teach them there is virtually unlimited opportunity out there waiting for them to figure out a way to grab it by the pussy and a remarkable number will do exactly that. The Vietnamese boat people came here with literally nothing, most spoke little English, but they didn't wait for a goddamned government check, they went to work and almost all of them succeeded. So if you are asserting that poorly educated hood rats can't succeed you are far more racist than most here seem to believe I am.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @06:15PM (44 children)
Funny how for them "life isn't fair" but if you might have to pay higher taxes to help them it's "HEY! That's not fair!"
You know, the boat people came here in a very different time, right? Back when the Rs of the day sounded more D than today's Ds, right? Back when if you presented yourself reasonably well you could get an entry level position where the company fully expected they would provide the training you needed to acquire a valuable skill.
As for the poorly educated, the racism is yours. What makes you think I wasn't also talking about poor white kids? They get sub-standard schools too. I didn't say they CAN'T succeed, but only an idiot would claim a poor education doesn't significantly tilt the odds against it.
I well understand self education, I did a lot of that myself. But I am not so conceited that I fail to recognize that the availability of a good library and well stocked book stores (along with parents who could afford to buy me some books) were major contributors to my efforts. Also a few good teachers who were willing and able to answer questions outside of the class material and loan me their books. The really bad schools don't have those or good libraries.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that I ever advocated a government monopoly on schools. I have not, and there is not.
As for the "marching morons", it you need them, you need to pay what it actually costs for them to exist. Otherwise, you're like my story of the moronic manager who decides 60V is good enough for the fryer.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday March 24 2017, @07:32PM (34 children)
What makes you think I wasn't also talking about poor white kids?
I have a policy to only include a couple of concepts in a post that tend to invoke "crimestop" in people, at least when I'm not shitposting with the explicit intent of triggering snowflakes instead of convincing anyone. Including the idea of the existence of disadvantaged white people would have been one too many. For if they exist, White Privilege does not exist and that would instantly trigger most people who might possibly be persuaded by the other ideas I was promoting. Instead of explaining, lets see if anyone is bright enough to realize what does exist by applying the three laws of SJW to their stated positions.
I well understand self education,
Then you should realize there is now no excuse for ignorance. We live in a world of information abundance. Anyone who get get to a public library or otherwise scrounge access to the net has access to more solid information than anyone can absorb in ten lifetimes. Stop watching cat videos and videos of people playing video games and learn something!
As for the "marching morons", it you need them, you need to pay what it actually costs for them to exist.
Wrong. I am only responsible for their upkeep if I am to become their feudal lord and they wish to be my serf. (And if the law were to allow such a thing.) If I hire someone it is because we agreed on a price for services rendered, period. These people exist, I didn't create them, they aren't my responsibility, I certainly have no intent of adopting them to raise their children. I am happy to peacefully trade with them but that is the extent of it. Hopefully, and barring government interference it is almost a certainty, we mutually benefit from the relationship, they increase their salable skills and they can earn more in the future, whether working for me or elsewhere. Because of the well known tax advantages, it makes sense to offer long term employees access to a group health plan, again because of government meddling, because the employee gets affordable care and I get a hook to retain them. I'd be a fool to ignore an advantage like that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday March 24 2017, @08:24PM (32 children)
So you prefer to pawn off the rest of the money you should be paying them on the rest of society? You do know that without a social safety net, you would definitely have to pay for their upkeep unless smelly diseased workers dropping dead was somehow good for your bottom line. I'll bet a restaurant wouldn't get much business if it's waitstaff or cooks were all homeless and diseased.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:59AM (1 child)
Whether they get hired or not, the productive are being taxed to pay for their upkeep. So you are confused already. If the government has decided that, ignoring the layers of bullshit, nobody is going to have less than X dollars why does it matter how much Walmart pays them? They like the money better than spending the time with their XBox and Walmart needs the labor to earn more money than they are paying the employee. How much Walmart pays their employees doesn't change their liability to pay for the welfare state either, other than expensing the increased payroll. If you force the minimum wage up and Walmart lets most of them go instead of paying, they still suckle the public teat.
But you are right that if there were no welfare state it would change the equation. If someone were trying to live an independent existence or raise a family they could not accept a job (or jobs) that paid less than they had to spend to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. At least not as a long term prospect, brief distortions of the economy excepted. Not being taxed to pay for a welfare state would make paying those higher wages easier, just to put that on the table for consideration. Such a very different society would see a total reordering of pricing in ways we can't currently assess. Hopefully it would also inspire a resurgence in private charity as well. But there would still be SOME number of people, as I noted above, willing to work at some jobs for far less than the minimum "living wage" and hiring those people should be possible. Those would tend to be the absolutely least valuable jobs, but they should not be outlawed from existing.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:38AM
The UBI would be a much more humane answer. Then we could actually afford to just forget about the minimum wage and a bunch of other labor laws and let the market sort it out. But as for taxes now, Walmart comes out ahead paying crap wages and letting themselves and everyone else make up the difference. They're actually getting you to help them out with payroll.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 26 2017, @10:21AM (29 children)
So you prefer to pawn off the rest of the money you should be paying them on the rest of society?
Of course not, jmorris pays the $0 per hour they deserve. And your public display of morality is deeply valuable to me. For with it and a roll of toilet paper, I may wipe my ass.
Once again, we see the free lunch class educating us on what we're supposed to do without any consideration of how that would screw up our society. In a society with healthy business creation, workers can afford to self-fund most of that social safety net because there is a lot of demand for workers and wages are relatively high as a result. In a society with little to no business creation (say because workers are getting the "rest of the money" that they "should be paid"), no one (even the fabulously wealthy elite concentrated by these policies) can afford to fund that social safety net.
Don't confuse what you want with what is needed.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:07PM (28 children)
Don't confuse what you want with what is needed.
Take your own advice.
And keep in mind that although suffering will increase a great deal and crime will go through the roof, without a social safety net wages will go up anyway because a businesses cannot stay open if it's employees are mostly disease ridden homeless people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @09:52AM (27 children)
Don't confuse what you want with what is needed.
Take your own advice.
Way ahead of you on that. So now let's fix you up.
And keep in mind that although suffering will increase a great deal and crime will go through the roof, without a social safety net wages will go up anyway because a businesses cannot stay open if it's employees are mostly disease ridden homeless people.
Unless, of course, that doesn't happen say because highly paid, in-demand workers aren't disease-ridden homeless people. My view, of course, is that you have this exactly opposite. For example, in the US Black Americans were better off before we tried to help them. The social safety net people haven't a clue how to get out of this particular hole.
Meanwhile a person with an income and work experience can better their life in more ways than the social safety net can provide, plus they can pay for that social safety net, should it ever be a good idea to do so. While the unemployed person who is not worth minimum wage can't.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @01:15PM (26 children)
So you believe that restaurants will start hiring highly skilled well paid people and that servers will be in strong demand?
It seems you are desperately trying to avoid seeing the truth here. Whistling past the grave of your ideolong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @05:43PM (25 children)
It seems you are desperately trying to avoid seeing the truth here. Whistling past the grave of your ideolong.
You had many decades to show this works. It's time to take care of the actual problems of the US.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @08:07PM (24 children)
Actually, most of the problems have been due to monkey wrenching. For example, by conservatives that insisted that welfare should have a sharp cutoff that actually serves to keep people trapped on welfare, or who block any attempt to make the minimum wage keep up with inflation.
Before that, LBJ's war on poverty was actually working.
And yes, I did notice that you failed to answer the question.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @08:38PM (23 children)
Actually, most of the problems have been due to monkey wrenching. For example, by conservatives that insisted that welfare should have a sharp cutoff that actually serves to keep people trapped on welfare, or who block any attempt to make the minimum wage keep up with inflation.
There's always an excuse for why it doesn't work. Counterrevolutionaries, Kulaks, or conservatives hold us back with their mental failwaves. If the non-conservatives wanted a system that didn't fail quite as badly, they could have always put in a tapered cut off. And conservatives didn't force on us the one-size-fits-all minimum wage.
And yes, I did notice that you failed to answer the question.
I still don't think your question is worth asking or answering, but since you asked nicely, I'll answer it:
So you believe that restaurants will start hiring highly skilled well paid people and that servers will be in strong demand?
I believe that they already do. But sure, with pro-business policies in place, I think restaurants will hire even more highly skilled and well paid people than they already do. And yes, in such a world, servers would in even stronger demand than they currently are.
This is an example of a loaded question which presents a false assertion as part of the question - here the idea that restaurants don't already hire highly skilled and well-paid people. The thing that is ignored is that restaurants are not a single thing. They're not all doing the same thing. Sure, McDonald's isn't paying top dollar for the best and brightest. But they're not the only restaurant out there. High end restaurants do this sort of thing.
For example, my employer employs a lot of servers (hundreds just in Yellowstone over the course of a summer) at a variety of sit down restaurants in various US and state-level parks. Those positions tend to be the best paid on location due to the tip income. In a variety of ways, my employer is far from perfect, but if prospective employees weren't so common, my employer would have to pay even more (and make additional concessions) to attract the necessary talent.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @09:04PM (22 children)
OK, since you're studiously dodging the issue, I'll put it more on the mark for you. In the absence of a social safety net, McDonald's and other restaurants that currently pay minimum wage or close to it would be forced to pay more because nobody wants to eat at a place staffed with diseased and homeless workers.
Or are you going to now wax poetic about the special flavor burgers take on when the grill operator coughs TB or Hep C all over them?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @09:08PM (13 children)
In the absence of a social safety net, McDonald's and other restaurants that currently pay minimum wage or close to it would be forced to pay more because nobody wants to eat at a place staffed with diseased and homeless workers.
Only if the social safety net prevents that sort of thing. When it doesn't, then they'll have to pay for both the social safety net and the clean workers. And you're wasting my time by claiming that people can't clean themselves without requiring the tender hand of government.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @09:22PM (12 children)
The safety net provides food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare to those who can't afford it. People getting paid minimum wage often can't afford it.
Even if you hate McD's and never set foot in one, part of your paycheck goes to supplementing their payroll by allowing them to pay less than the natural cost for clean healthy employees.
I'm surprised you seem to be fine with that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @10:02PM (11 children)
The safety net provides food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare to those who can't afford it.
It also takes away food, clothing, shelter, and health care from those who work. This is the typical analysis where one only looks strictly at the benefit or cost of a thing in a vacuum.
People getting paid minimum wage often can't afford it.
And the unemployed often can't afford "it" even with said safety net.
Even if you hate McD's and never set foot in one, part of your paycheck goes to supplementing their payroll by allowing them to pay less than the natural cost for clean healthy employees.
Asserting something doesn't make it true. But let's supposed for the sake of argument that you were right and we're subsidizing McD's payroll. Why again is that supposed to be a bad thing?
I'm surprised you seem to be fine with that.
I'm not surprised that you can't understand my viewpoint. Seems to be a consequence of the ideology.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @10:20PM (10 children)
So a million dollars in welfare for corporations but not a penny for humane beings?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @10:50PM (9 children)
So a million dollars in welfare for corporations but not a penny for humane beings?
If you think throwing money at corporations is a good idea, then you are free to hold that opinion. But I don't.
This is yet another reason I don't believe in the strong social safety net. It routinely degenerates into a handout to big businesses. It's not the Walmarts of the world that concern me either. It's the banks providing exclusive contracts for debit card-based welfare because welfare of our poorest citizens is important. It's the Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs who get exclusive government protection because housing is important. It's the defense contractors who get all sorts of sweet deals because defense is important. It's the many, many corporations over the generations who benefited from US Social Security because every cent of excess was dumped into the general funds and subsequently spent.
And it's 80 years of US voters who went along with this even though it quickly became clear that the social safety net wasn't sustainable. They got bribed to look the other way while the government squandered a fair portion of the US's future.
But you're presenting this corporate giveaway as if it were money being sent to "humane" people? We don't have to take you seriously, right?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @11:05PM (8 children)
Ah, so you've flip flopped on the welfare for McD's now. It sounds like you are now concerned about corporates plundering the social safety net programs. One way to stop that is to make them pay no less than they would have to in the absence of that safety net. That would be a minimum wage.
It also sounds like you would support no more plundering of social security.
Of course it also sounded a bit like you want us all sitting naked in a cave with no fire because that's the only way to make sure nobody mis-appropriates anything.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @11:23PM (7 children)
Ah, so you've flip flopped on the welfare for McD's now. It sounds like you are now concerned about corporates plundering the social safety net programs.
You haven't even shown McD's pays less due to social safety nets. You just assert it does.
And of course, we're missing the elephant in the room. Employing poor people is a thing we want McD's to do. And the point of subsidies is to encourage the relevant parties to do the things we want them to do. It is absurd to claim that McD's is anything like the case you claimed of "million dollars in welfare for corporations but not a penny for humane beings".
It also sounds like you would support no more plundering of social security.
There's no way legally to do it. Social Security revenue is just like any other revenue by the Constitution, subject to the whims of the current Congress just like any other revenue that they get their dirty paws on.
My view is that it would be best here to just end the program outright. The proportionate loss of wealth would be adequate reward to the elderly for helping to create the state of affairs.
Of course it also sounded a bit like you want us all sitting naked in a cave with no fire because that's the only way to make sure nobody mis-appropriates anything.
You're the one in a tizzy because McD's "misappropriates" social safety net subsidies, supposedly.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:10AM (6 children)
You haven't even shown McD's pays less due to social safety nets. You just assert it does.
Well, let's see. They get SNAP because they can't afford adequate food. Long term, inadequate food makes you sick or dead. Sick and/or dead people really kill the appetite. If not for SNAP, McDs would have to pay enough for their employees to eat enough to not get sick and/or dead or go out of business.
Insert the name of any minimum wage employer above.
I'm fairly sure we covered this just prior to your last self-initiated mind wipe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @12:52PM (5 children)
I'm fairly sure we covered this just prior to your last self-initiated mind wipe.
With the same results. You make a bunch of unfounded, irrational assertions and I (along with other posters) correct them.
To summarize my viewpoint here, once again you ignore the importance of employers. We need them. We don't need more unemployed. You talk on and on about the needs of the employees - how they need this food and that health care, blah blah blah. Nobody aside from government and a few non profits hires people merely because people have needs. Every other employer hires people because they're worth more than they cost. The more costs you add to that, the less people they hire. Supply and demand. And since we need employers not unemployed, we should be paying attention to the things that cause businesses to employ less people and the things that prevent new employers from being created and existing employers from hiring more people.
What is particularly mendacious about your argument here is that you repeatedly, like a moth to a flame, assert that employers who in particular employ poor people are being "subsidized" by the "social safety net" and hence, should be paying more (either more taxes or more wages, whatever). This ignores a variety of things: employers already pay wages and taxes - the latter which in turn go to things like the social safety net; social safety nets are often not a boon to employers (like taking potential employees off the market or redirecting public funds to uses that are far less valuable to the employer); that employing poor people is a social good you supposedly want (and it's not a stretch to subsidize social goods that you want, right?); supply and demand - raise cost of employing people and less employing happens; and social safety nets often don't work as advertised even for the people they're supposed to help (particularly in the US which apparently has a large "conservative" population to blame for the mess).
I wish whatever author popularized this complaint in the first place could have found a real problem to worry about. It creates such massive suffering for poor people to have all these helpful people throw them out of a job just because they want to stick it to the low wage employers.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:19PM (4 children)
Apparently you really believe poor people can live on polluted air alone if they just try. You also apparently believe employers currently hire more people than the minimum they actually need.
That is the only way your post could be credited with even a shred of intellectual honesty. If you do not believe both of those things, that shred of credit will need to be revoked.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:50PM (3 children)
Apparently you really believe poor people can live on polluted air alone if they just try.
Pollution control is not a social safety net thing. And if your social safety net is too big for your government's budget, then things like pollution regulation tend to slide. The more sensible welfare states have that figured out. You need to fund essential functions of government first, then nonessential entitlements not the other way around.
You also apparently believe employers currently hire more people than the minimum they actually need.
Employers don't need to be employers. We have plenty of cases every day where businesses have expanded and contracted changing their employee needs of the moment more and less. And it really should go without saying that if an employer has to spend more per employee and has less money to spend, then they're going to employ less people in the long run no matter how many people they need for their operation.
That is the only way your post could be credited with even a shred of intellectual honesty. If you do not believe both of those things, that shred of credit will need to be revoked.
We don't need to speculate when you could just wake up those gray cells and actually read what I post rather than go on these meaningless meanders.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:00PM (2 children)
Why am I not surprised you accuse me of your own sins. Such as your last post for example. Ronald Reagan was really good at changing the subject in press conferences by answering the question he wanted to answer rather than the one asked. You just aren't that good at it and you don't seem to realize it doesn't work that well in text form anyway.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:12PM (1 child)
Ronald Reagan was really good at changing the subject in press conferences by answering the question he wanted to answer rather than the one asked.
Let me guess. He steered it to psychological projection?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:42PM
Don't be daft.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:16PM (7 children)
OK, since you're studiously dodging the issue
I'll note here the goalposts got moved. Yet more confirmation that I shouldn't have bothered.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:22PM (6 children)
No need to note it, just put them back where you found them and all will be fine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:56PM (5 children)
Or are you going to now wax poetic about the special flavor burgers take on when the grill operator coughs TB or Hep C all over them?
Since I reviewed this follow-on comment, I have additional comments to make. It's worth noting that a good portion of health care is spent on people who will never work another day in their lives. That's a huge money sink from the point of view of employers.
All this supposed dealing with sick people in McD's is a small part of the actual spending on such things. In the developed world, a lot more is spent on people in the last six months of their lives than in immunizations against TB or Hepatitis C.
This is related to another complaint I had elsewhere [soylentnews.org] in this discussion about people who want more government taxing and spending, but can't be bothered to care where the current spending goes. Here, we see the usual symptoms: only discussing some small fraction of the spending, only discussing the alleged benefits of social safety nets and not the costs, and coming up with the usual stilted and fallacy-ridden arguments for why we should screw employers yet again.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:31PM (4 children)
I believe the word you're looking for is damning, not loaded. As in you must either give an answer that makes you look like an idiot or answer truthfully and damn your argument for it's ilogic.
As for the rest of your quacking on, you seem to have forgotten that the original proposition was that in the ABSENCE of a social safety net, McDs and other minimum wage employers would have to pay more to their employees anyway. (See what I mean about you needing to put the goalposts back?)
What's your suggestion for those who probably won't work again (since you brought it up), bullet to the head and bill their family for the bullet? Throw them to the wolves? Sit them on the curb and let sanitation carry them off once they expire? Shut your eyes tight and chant "I see no sick people!"?
I'm guessing the latter. You've established a pattern of ignoring reality.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:27PM (3 children)
I believe the word you're looking for is damning, not loaded. As in you must either give an answer that makes you look like an idiot or answer truthfully and damn your argument for it's ilogic.
No, loaded question was accurate. I take it from the surge in trash talk, that you've exhausted your arguments. So let's make this quick.
As for the rest of your quacking on, you seem to have forgotten that the original proposition was that in the ABSENCE of a social safety net, McDs and other minimum wage employers would have to pay more to their employees anyway. (See what I mean about you needing to put the goalposts back?)
Ok, even if we pretend that were true, you still have a ton of social safety net that doesn't do immunizations. That has cost. You still haven't established that McD's and other minimum wage employers are experiencing a net subsidy.
What's your suggestion for those who probably won't work again (since you brought it up), bullet to the head and bill their family for the bullet? Throw them to the wolves? Sit them on the curb and let sanitation carry them off once they expire? Shut your eyes tight and chant "I see no sick people!"?
So destroying our society in order that grandma live another three months is better? No matter the health care system, at some point it transitions to "Sucks to be you" with economics and the inevitability of your death being the dominant factors as to when that happens. Intent is quite irrelevant to outcome. It won't be any consolation that you didn't intend poor people dying on the curb when you advocate health care at any cost, destroying the very social safety net you tried to construct. Or prioritize living wages over employing poor people, harming the very people you tried to help.
The grown ups have to consider consequences. Children hoard all the pixie dust.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:47PM (2 children)
Sorry, the correct term is damning.
Since immunization wasn't a topic anywhere in this whole story, I have no idea what you're on about there.
Finally, so which of those methods do you advocate to do away with sick poor people? Or are you thinking Soylent Green?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:46PM (1 child)
Sorry, the correct term is damning.
Whatever. Let's step through the thread again. You wrote [soylentnews.org]:
So you believe that restaurants will start hiring highly skilled well paid people and that servers will be in strong demand?
Notice the assumptions such as start hiring. It's quite clear that you phrased the question in a way that your question assumes no restaurants already hire highly skilled, well paid people and servers aren't currently in strong demand. This of course is what a loaded question is. From Wikipedia:
A loaded question or complex question fallacy is a question that contains a controversial or unjustified assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).
Notice in my reply [soylentnews.org], I start by correcting the erroneous assumptions of your loaded question:
I believe that they already do. But sure, with pro-business policies in place, I think restaurants will hire even more highly skilled and well paid people than they already do. And yes, in such a world, servers would in even stronger demand than they currently are.
Then I attempt to educate you. Sadly, it didn't take.
This is an example of a loaded question which presents a false assertion as part of the question - here the idea that restaurants don't already hire highly skilled and well-paid people. The thing that is ignored is that restaurants are not a single thing. They're not all doing the same thing. Sure, McDonald's isn't paying top dollar for the best and brightest. But they're not the only restaurant out there. High end restaurants do this sort of thing.
Moving on
Since immunization wasn't a topic anywhere in this whole story, I have no idea what you're on about there.
Alright. Let us note the following passage about TB/Hep C. You wrote [soylentnews.org]:
Or are you going to now wax poetic about the special flavor burgers take on when the grill operator coughs TB or Hep C all over them?
TB can be vaccinated against with Hep C vaccine being a new thing under development. So that is how immunizations found their way into the thread. You're welcome.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:09PM
Sorry no. You need to step back a little further where it is established that we are talking about people paid little enough that they qualify for various safety net programs like SNAP. You then pulled high end places that clearly pay more than that out of your ass and pretended the same would apply to some place like McD's.
Then after moving the goal posts you accused me of moving the goal posts.
That is your typical style. Introduce irrelevancies until you can't even remember what the conversations was about. If I say rattlesnake bites are bad for people you'll say it's a non issue because prairie dogs are immune.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:45PM
Finally you admit to being a shitposter! Now stop being a shitperson...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:56AM (8 children)
Funny how for them "life isn't fair" but if you might have to pay higher taxes to help them it's "HEY! That's not fair!"
The latter votes. And funny how you spin it as "pay higher taxes" when the obviously superior route is to spend existing taxes on things you actually want. But maybe we need a bigger military-industrial complex and more money for banks?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:40AM (7 children)
Actually, I have advocated for reduced military spending and no more handouts for Wall street. Nevertheless, the point stands since the same people who say the former are still the first to say the latter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:23AM (6 children)
Actually, I have advocated for reduced military spending and no more handouts for Wall street. Nevertheless, the point stands since the same people who say the former are still the first to say the latter.
Same here.
But what's the point about complaining that people don't want higher taxes when there is so much grotesque spending out there? After all, the terrible spending is the reason lowering taxes has political legs in the first place. There will always be a group wanting to cut taxes no matter what. But they're getting huge support from the people who are concerned about spending priorities and government corruption/incompetence.
As I see it, the problem here is that the US already collects an adequate amount of taxes. And if we look at the actual spending rather than merely assuming more revenue means better services, we see that huge amounts are spent on benefits - retirement and health care, then military and interest payments on bonds, and then a rather small amount, at most a third of the budget is spent on everything else (with most spent just as ineffectively as the big items). That is, one merely needs to look at the actual budget to see that our priorities are mostly where one wants them to be. Sure, military spending is rather high, but the US checks off the boxes that the people calling for more spending want: health care, public pensions, education, unemployment protection, welfare, etc. Much of this spending has merely made the problems they were intended to fix worse rather than better (higher education in particular being a shining example of making the problem worse) or created new problems (Social Security contributing to inter-generational conflict).
What does it take to realize that the US is suffering right now because of this spending rather than despite it?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:33PM (5 children)
Because as soon as the topic of the social safety net comes up, those same people will complain bitterly that it's unfair they have to pay even if their taxes are only a thousandth of a percent. Somehow they don't complain if taxes for the DOD amount to 10%. Their guiding principle seems to be a million dollars to kill someone but not a penny to help.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 26 2017, @09:56AM (4 children)
Somehow they don't complain if taxes for the DOD amount to 10%. Their guiding principle seems to be a million dollars to kill someone but not a penny to help.
And I don't hear you calling their bluff either. Personally, I think the only way the US will get a fiscally stable system is via universal cuts in spending - your social safety net as well as their defense spending. We can keep raising taxes all the time, but the current system will continue to spend more than is earned.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:02PM (3 children)
The big problem here is that you're trying to stuff your agenda into an unrelated conversation. That and history tells us the system can be quite stable even with much higher taxes on the wealthy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @09:29AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 27 2017, @01:17PM (1 child)
So do you sing about that instead of "Happy Birthday" at parties too?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @05:48PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @03:45PM (15 children)
And this is why no one in their right mind would work for you. Only naive and desperate people... How long have you retained the same employee before? Your self serving "logic" is extremely naive.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 24 2017, @04:03PM (14 children)
I'm in fact an extremely easy person to work for if you are of any value at all to society. If you are valuable to me, you're paid and treated like it. If I can replace you with an untrained teenager for the same day for the same pay, you're also paid and treated like it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @04:39PM (12 children)
No, you're a delusional crazy person that has no clue what's going on.
You can't just work harder to get a better job. In the past that largely worked because the wealth was more evenly distributed, but with 10% of the population having more than the total had by the lowest 90%, you're not reasonably work through that consistently.
We have a system which resembles the one in the former USSR where the link between effective work and compensation has broken to the point where only great fools and the rich would claim otherwise. There's just not the money left over after the kleptocrats get their cut to pay for performance
Some people manage to succeed, but there's a huge degree of luck involved and the hardest workers are invariably working for minimum wage.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday March 24 2017, @05:17PM (10 children)
No, you are trying to rationalize why you are a failure. Only 2.9% of American jobs pay minimum wage, including those that include tip income. If you goal is to merely be a worker bee then yes, you depend on the wealth of others and your labor is a mere commodity increasingly being forced to compete in a globalized market that is driving the price down as the supply rises.
The winning move is to -create- wealth, the opportunity to do that is nearly limitless. When you create new wealth it starts with you and you distribute it into the economy in ways you hope will increase it even more. The cycle repeats, everybody wins. An example to illustrate the concept. Everyone uses IP[1] as an example so instead open a restaurant and work your ass off to make it popular. That popularity is called 'goodwill' and it gets listed on the balance sheet, you can go to the bank and borrow against it. It is a real thing, it is wealth that didn't exist until your Will moved upon the Economy and made it so.
[1] Yes, I will do penance to St. IGNUcius later.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday March 24 2017, @06:40PM (9 children)
More self-serving delusion. It is like you pay zero attention to the real world. There is no infinite well of wealth for people to pull money from. To use your restaurant example: sure you can make a successful restaurant, but in any given area only so many restaurants will be supported and many go under through no fault of their own. They make good food, they have a reasonable location, they put out advertising, but in the end they just don't quite get enough customers. The same goes for every other business, there is no way I can break into the telecom industry no matter how hard I work. Unless I get lucky and some billionaire wants to give me a massive loan then there is no way it'll happen. And please don't whine about government regulation being the problem, the initial capital is still a barrier to anyone who isn't independently wealthy.
The only way to make your version of reality true is to abolish large corporations and change the tax rates so that after some decently large amount of money the rest of your increases in earnings only net you 5-10% and the rest go to taxes. But taxes are theft right? I presume you have a problem with the top couple % of rich people paying exorbitant amounts of tax... This solution would give small businesses the market share to compete and thrive, and it would prevent wealth hoarding which inevitably results in "money making money" which would put us right back to where we are now.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:19AM (8 children)
Yes, most entrepreneurs fail multiple times. Then when they succeed spiteful weasels covet their profits and call them awful names instead of being inspired to emulate them. This is unfair but they are driving a Ferrari and have a trophy wife in the passenger seat so it is all good. This doesn't change the fact that wealth is in fact created all the time. Go look at the NASDAQ; how many of those businesses were invented from nothing but an idea. Tech companies tend to be built by a few fresh faced guys right outta school who convince a VC they have the next Big Idea. All of that wealth, all of those productive employees beavering away making things that didn't even exist as a dream fifty years ago... hell ten years ago in a lot of cases. In America you can get rich curing diseases, how f*cking cool is that? Feel good about curing a horrible disease AND stack cash. All that wealth pulled right out of thin air. Don't you wish you were capable of that? Guess what, the odds are against you pulling a billion dollar company outta yer butt. Yup, that is true. America only promises you the Right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it on your own. Maybe your idea only make a business big enough for just you, isn't that still Winning?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:50PM (7 children)
Blech, your posts are like literary garbage, they just make me feel nauseous. You don't care about the problems, you only care about using narrow anecdotes that don't cover the breadth of a problem to somehow "prove" your point. I wonder why no one has ever just tried to stop being poor??? /s
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday March 25 2017, @10:26PM (6 children)
You miss the direction of the arrow of causality. Poverty isn't caused by a lack of money. Being a poor person is why they don't have money. Because they won't save, won't plan for the future, generally have poor impulse control, are prone to addictive habits and other self destructive behavior, etc. All these things lead to a lifestyle where accumulation of wealth isn't likely.. Even if they win the lottery most end up right back in poverty a decade later.
You want to solve poverty, at least realize what the actual problem is and work on that. It has nothing to do with the distribution of wealth, that is an effect, not a cause. That means it is literally impossible for any effort in that direction to have the slightest chance of success. You might, and almost certainly will, cause a lot of new problems but you can't actually achieve the stated goal. While daunting, the actual problem is a real problem in need of solving so please give it your best shot.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:18PM (5 children)
Thank you for promoting stereotypes that make bigoted people think their prejudice is justified. History shows you to be wrong, factual data from multiple successful and (according to your types) socialist societies shows you are wrong. You promote the worst policies.
Now, personal responsibility is important. People should learn to look out for themselves and we shouldn't coddle them. However, that is not the point of all this. Worker's rights is the issue, not welfare for someone who refuses to work. Stop conflating the issues and working to make our society WORSE!
It has nothing to do with the distribution of wealth, that is an effect, not a cause
You are just so very wrong. All the radio talk show bullshit, all the propaganda promoting class warfare, it is ALL WRONG! But you're too thick headed and filled with prejudiced emotionally reactive bullshit to realize. You mix rational thinking with emotional belief and somehow think you're just being rational. You're blind, and as I've said before the only reason to reply to your bullshit is to make sure some random reader knows there is more to the story.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:25AM (1 child)
actual data from multiple successful and (according to your types) socialist societies
As usual, I attack the premise. Show us one of these "successful" socialist societies you claim to have multiple examples of. Then we can talk about what example it might offer. All I see in Europe are dead and dying countries who have lost the will to live and are inviting in their replacements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:57AM
All I see in Europe are dead and dying countries
This sounds strangely like Kanye West, when he said: "I see white people, and they don't even know their white!" jmorris, you are such a Nazi! I suggest you look into Mishima Yukio. He reported that traditional Chinese doctors used to be able to distinguish male from female by the pulse alone, but in modern times, men's pulse has become just like that of a woman. Oh, the huge manatee! Maybe the only solution it to do it the Mishima way: Take over a national guard headquarters, call for them to join you in your wet-dream right-wing nut-job rebolution, and when they laugh you into submission (Baka!!!), go cut your guts out. It is the only way to be sure. But get a better tomodachi than Mishima did.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 26 2017, @10:34AM (2 children)
You are just so very wrong. All the radio talk show bullshit, all the propaganda promoting class warfare, it is ALL WRONG! But you're too thick headed and filled with prejudiced emotionally reactive bullshit to realize. You mix rational thinking with emotional belief and somehow think you're just being rational. You're blind, and as I've said before the only reason to reply to your bullshit is to make sure some random reader knows there is more to the story.
Then present these facts. Don't merely state they exist. I suspect we'll find that your socialist countries are doing so well because they're actually capitalist countries which can afford at least for a time the socialism that they have.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:17PM (1 child)
Real success is a mix of both, socialize the services that are necessary for basic success in a society. We already do that in the US, except the paperwork and hoops people have to jump through is detrimental and actually leads to people being stuck in those systems. It is INSANE to me that a single mother basically has to stay on welfare since getting a job to fit around her schedule is financially a worse decision. That is a fundamental disconnect.
As usual you go black/white with the topic and try to twist it to your own worldview. It is a very irritating tactic, and it is obviously garbage as you know full well the countries I'm talking about. You just seize every opportunity to cast doubt on things you don't like.
I suspect we'll find that your socialist countries are doing so well because they're actually capitalist countries which can afford at least for a time the socialism that they have.
Got any facts to back up your claim? No? Hahahahahah hypocrite. Oh wait, you said "I suspect" which of course means you need no proof! Alt-facts at work, you're learning quickly Darth Stupidous. I would usually refrain from adding insults, but I'm fucking tired of dealing with your bullshit arguments just because you don't like reality contradicting you.
The facts are in, supporting your population's basic needs means they can safely and securely pursue careers and become contributing members of society. The myth that everyone would sit on their ass watching TV all day is just that, a myth! Most people want to be useful, do something that matters or engage in society. I'm all for catching fraudsters, and eliminating the health insurance industry would free up a large number of people skilled in catching fraud so we can nail such assholes.
Long story short, we are focusing a huge amount of human activity on wasteful / inefficient / counter productive activities which make a small segment of the population rich. The share of the pie needs to swing back towards the majority of the population.
Not that we can't have rich people, but we can't have the same scale of rich people we do now. Capitalism + Socialism is the successful recipe and what we have now. The US just does it so poorly and inefficiently because of so many angry conservatives that don't understand much beyond "they took money out of MY paycheck!!" The irony there being that so much of their money goes to military activities which they 100% support. War and death? No problem. Improving society? No thanks.
* In case you're wondering I did look into reporting those people for fraud, but the required proof is something I don't have.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 30 2017, @12:44AM
Real success is a mix of both, socialize the services that are necessary for basic success in a society. We already do that in the US, except the paperwork and hoops people have to jump through is detrimental and actually leads to people being stuck in those systems. It is INSANE to me that a single mother basically has to stay on welfare since getting a job to fit around her schedule is financially a worse decision. That is a fundamental disconnect.
This is typical tragedy of the commons stuff. There has to be a cost or obstruction somewhere to keep people from loading up on free stuff. The federal government comes up with some public good, the "socialized service". People abuse the hell out of it. They then generate rules to prevent those abuses. People find new ways to abuse the hell out of the service. The bureaucrats come up with even more rules - lather, rinse, repeat. The insanity you see is a natural work in progress.
As usual you go black/white with the topic and try to twist it to your own worldview. It is a very irritating tactic, and it is obviously garbage as you know full well the countries I'm talking about. You just seize every opportunity to cast doubt on things you don't like.
Do I need to quote again your comment where you tell jmorris he is completely wrong? That's quite black and white.
And I see once again that you fail to provide evidence for your assertion. Sure, I probably have guessed right the stereotypes you would present as evidence, should you ever do so, just as I know my rebuttals once you give these examples. But I won't put work into this, when you won't.
Long story short, we are focusing a huge amount of human activity on wasteful / inefficient / counter productive activities which make a small segment of the population rich. The share of the pie needs to swing back towards the majority of the population.
And needless to say, I have ideas for fixes, should you ever become interested.
Not that we can't have rich people, but we can't have the same scale of rich people we do now. Capitalism + Socialism is the successful recipe and what we have now. The US just does it so poorly and inefficiently because of so many angry conservatives that don't understand much beyond "they took money out of MY paycheck!!" The irony there being that so much of their money goes to military activities which they 100% support. War and death? No problem. Improving society? No thanks.
Once again, without a scrap of evidence to support your assertion. Glancing at the current list [forbes.com] of richest people in the world, I see Bill Gates tops the list. What again is the adequate compensation level for creating tens of millions of man-years of high paying work, a company worth half a trillion dollars, and some of the most widely used software on the planet for the past three decades? $86 billion seems reasonable cumulative compensation for around three decades of doing that.
My view on this is that wealth inequality is a complete scam. I don't see even the slightest reason to care that the vast majority of humanity who neither has tried to build a business nor accumulate significant wealth is not as wealthy as someone who has created a half trillion dollar company from scratch.
Real world poverty, the metric that we should actually care about, has been improving world-wide since about 1950 when the world was still recovering from the Second World War and the end of the Chinese Civil War. We've since seen a huge move towards capitalism globally (and the related phenomenon of globalism, international trade and such) particularly with the end of Communism as the ideology for a bloc of over a billion people.
An industry has sprung up over the past century to address poverty and similar social ills. But those ills have steadily improved since. Like a fire fighter turned arsonist, when they ran out of natural problems to address, they made new problems to replace those.
I'll note here that Zimbabwe has, once you get outside of the corrupt center circle draining wealth from the country, done a marvelous job of reducing wealth inequality. Everyone (again aside from said center circle) happens to be much poorer as a result, but that's what you want, right?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:21PM
You can't just work harder to get a better job. In the past that largely worked because the wealth was more evenly distributed, but with 10% of the population having more than the total had by the lowest 90%, you're not reasonably work through that consistently.
That is a non sequitur. Wealth inequality doesn't mean anything in this context. We might be able to work harder to get a better job or we might not. You can't tell from the irrelevant information you gave. It's also worth noting here that in most societies there will always be wealth inequality. So you can always make this argument - just insert different numbers into the argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @05:24PM
So you're a psychopath and you expect us to be ok with it.
Do you have a tumblr yet?