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Marketwatch brings good news for the USA: American workers are finally reaping the benefits of the lowest unemployment rate and best jobs market in decades: Wages and benefits are rising at the fastest pace in a decade. Firms have sought to fill openings by offering better benefits such as more vacation time or flexible hours. When push comes to shove, they are offering higher pay. While bigger paychecks are great for workers, the US Federal Reserve is watching closely to see if rising compensation is stoking inflation. The Federal Reserve could increase U.S. interest rates if it becomes a big worry, but so far inflation remains relatively mild.
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Wages and Benefits are Rising at the Fastest Pace in a Decade
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday August 06 2018, @08:41PM (16 children)
Who gets the right to decide what their effort is worth?
It's an important question, because there are bosses out there that decide that their workers' effort is worth absolutely nothing, regardless of what they've done. And there are workers who expect $millions for doing absolutely nothing.
Supply-demand could conceivably set the value of their work, but that runs into some problems, most notably that 80% or so of American adults must either work or starve / freeze to death, whereas businesses with more than 1 person can manage well enough without an employee for a while, making those negotiations inherently unbalanced and thus skewed in favor of the employer rather than the employee. The Marxists would claim the value of their work is something along the lines of "(price of finished product - price of materials) / number of people who worked on it * number of finished products created during the period in question", but that ignores the effects of management both good and bad. And as best as I can tell the libertarian approach is that the correct wage is whatever a person is being paid, unless that wage is affected by the minimum wage in which case it should be less.
My thinking generally falls along these lines:
1. If somebody has to be available to work full-time, they should be getting paid at least enough to live on. That means poverty line divided by 52 divided by working hours per week. Especially if that arrangement precludes them from taking on any other job, which many low-wage workers are stuck in.
2. Maximum wealth should be in the ballpark of $50 million. That, invested at a rather modest 5% APY, gives you $2.5 million annually to live on, which is more than enough for anybody to be extremely comfortable. The message of that is something along the lines of "Congratulations, you won capitalism, now go find something else to do." If they're really the best and brightest, they shouldn't have any difficulties coming up with ideas.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 06 2018, @09:08PM (2 children)
On the small scale, it's negotiated between employer and employee. On a regional scale (for any sized region) it's an aggregate based largely on how far one lives from the employers who are willing to pay the highest wages.
That first sentence is key. If you go into an interview with the idea of jobs having a fixed sticker price, you're doing yourself (and others around you) a great disservice.
As for the libertarian idea, there isn't one. Libertarians are individualists as a general rule. Someone else's idea of what something is worth in no way affects my own. From my own specific perspective, I prefer to gauge how important the position is, set the spherical cow rate from that, then adjust it based on the value of the person filling it. Including my own, mind you. If I'm having to do most of the heavy lifting administratively, mentally, or physically, that leaves less for the employees on the job. If I'm not, the wages increase in accordance. Mine is always going to be a significant percentage, mind you. Creating the job opening in the first place by starting a company and keeping it afloat year after year is no trivial matter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 06 2018, @10:21PM (1 child)
My understanding, assuming you're a reasonably good representative of the libertarian perspective, is that it's basically tautological: The wage that ends up being paid (barring any government interference) is by definition the correct wage. Is that different from what you just said, and if so how?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 06 2018, @10:31PM
On a macro scale this is the case. It can most certainly fall out of whack when the market is allowed to become corrupted though. On an individual scale, individual judgment rules.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 06 2018, @09:21PM (12 children)
Separate comment because it's really a separate issue.
Why should there be a cap at all? Economics is not remotely a zero-sum game. Assuming no regulatory capture or monopolistic aspects, someone earning five trillion dollars a year literally means the people of the nation felt their lives would be worse off had they not paid that five trillion. Wealth is not solely that which can be counted monetarily. What you exchange your monetary tokens of choice for is also wealth or you would not exchange them.
Further, consider those whose primary motivation is monetary gain. Do you really not realize how easily that is manipulated? If you take away the opportunity to gain money doing a thing, they stop doing that thing. If you make doing a thing financially attractive, you will always find those willing to aid society by doing that thing. Yes, there are those who will do a thing without monetary incentive but there you are left entirely at the mercy of their whims. With those wishing personal gain, you get to dictate what they are able to make their gains doing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 06 2018, @10:04PM (11 children)
Because very rich people can do a lot of damage trying to get even richer, while it doesn't really make them any happier, it just changes the score in the game known as the Forbes 400. This all stems from my general viewpoint that wealth is much like manure: Spread it around and it can help a lot of good things grow, but pile it up in one place, and it's just a big cesspool of stink.
It could be manipulated easily, but it won't be manipulated so long as those in a position to do the manipulating adhere to the real Golden Rule, namely that the one who has the gold makes the rules.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 06 2018, @10:38PM (9 children)
That only works if wealth is zero-sum. I invite you to consider the economic implications of this reference book [amazon.com]. Yes, it's a poop joke but I'm also very serious.
Then start manipulating it yourself. It's not that difficult or politicians wouldn't be any good at it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday August 07 2018, @03:02AM (8 children)
Wealth is essentially zero sum for the majority of the US population ie. the "zero point" must sustain life, and 50% of US citizens are classed as poor or in poverty. Hell, 67% of the population could not handle a $1000 emergency without going into debt. This latest economic "Trump bump" is just businesses investing in the hope that things will get better in the longer term, but they won't (unless Trumps reserve starts printing money like Obama - and I mean why not? Those extra dollars aren't going to cause inflation... pretty quickly they'll be vaccuumed from the real economy and go into financial market bubbles where they can't hurt anyone doing real work.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 07 2018, @11:22AM (7 children)
Wrong definition.
This isn't the case being that value is exchanged for value and every time human effort makes someone's life better, new wealth is added to the sum total.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday August 07 2018, @09:58PM (6 children)
In that case you could starve an entire population and call it positive sum. I guess if you pay attention to the economic tokens and not to the results...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 08 2018, @01:28AM (5 children)
That's just the meaning of the term. I brought it up only to make sure you're hearing what I'm actually saying. That primarily being that the tokens are of minor relevance and don't remotely begin to encompass the wealth strewn all across the US. Thinking you're living in poverty when you have the latest xbox, a computer, a smartphone, two cars, a roof over your head, multiple televisions, air conditioning, and enough calories to keep you going for the day is an odd way to view poverty mostly unique to the first world.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday August 08 2018, @03:27AM (4 children)
Technically I suppose you could be correct ie. Nazi work camps supplying rations insufficient to sustain life is positive sum ie. both parties "benefit". I would argue a more common sense understanding of a positive sum interaction would be pay capable of maintaining physical and mental health for the average person, with enough leasure to allow some self betterment. As for talking about xboxes etc... considering the poverty level is set at $12,140 for a single person, $16,460 for a couple etc... you're welcome to try living on $235/wk, and that's just the poverty cutoff... one in seven Americans have less.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:43PM (3 children)
You're still not understanding what I'm saying or the term "zero sum". I'm saying wealth is not just money. Buying something does not transfer wealth, it exchanges it. Where "zero sum" comes in is that new wealth is created every time worthwhile human effort is performed. The wealth your employer is exchanging currency for literally did not exist before you went to work today. Wealth isn't infinite because of the eventual death of the species or universe but it is ever-growing and its upper bounds are fairly well unfathomable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday August 08 2018, @11:05PM (2 children)
*eyeroll* Double-entry accounting doesn't suddenly make the entire economy zero-sum. Unless you're already ultra-rich or else winning-the-lottery fortunate you've already lost the economic game. When wealth is allowed to accumulate too much (because of low wealth tax) your labour will eventually be worth next to nothing - a small group of ultra rich just don't require enough goods and services for trickle-down to be a thing. As money is in the real economy becomes less over time, the less investment in labour, plant etc... is needed to vacuum it up, and your labour value becomes uncomfortably close to zero.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:18PM (1 child)
Which is an entirely separate argument unless you are still misunderstanding the definition of "zero sum".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday August 13 2018, @08:30AM
You're either absolutely clueless on what zero-sum means, or trying to purposely misinform others in this thread. If employment at a business was zero-sum (ie. one party wins an amount equal to what another loses eg. gambling) then most people wouldn't risk employment. Their adversary in this hypothetical zero-sum employment game would have more chance of "winning", and therefore would have a better than even chance of EXTRACTING money from them and pocketing it. That's not what employment is - cash flows to the "weaker" party in fact. Once you comprehend why you'll see employment at a business is more than a double-entry transfer of cash, and that it is in fact positive-sum and that the proceeds of wealth creation are shared between employer and employee. If you're really keen you might look into "positive-sum negotiation between entities of unequal power" and how as employers become more powerful they can negotiate an ever greater share of these proceeds. This is why unregulated capitalism tends towards monopoly, stagnant or declining wages over the long term, and recession/depression.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:55AM
They can do a lot of good too. TMB already figured out to make that happen.
And why should we care, that someone values money more than happiness, much less interfere in their life?
The thing is, if we get rid of the wealth of the private world, then where will it come from? The cesspool of government. A key thing being ignored here is that many private sources of wealth are far more disperse than a few public sources of wealth.