keep telling yourself that.
keep telling yourself that.
teacher guy wrote:
I didn't realize Walmart and Amazon workers had a gun Heald to their head forcing them to only work there and not pursue other employment opportunities elsewhere.
Also, I don't think these types of jobs are meant to be life long career paths. They are stepping Stones. What % of Americans over 30 work at McDonald's, Walmart or Amazon warehouse? I'm guessing it's around 0.5% to 1.5%
Figuring out the absolute max a company could pay general labor force (unskilled) based on their profits is just hilarious. What's your point?
Always a matter of time before someone floats this logic. If every employer treated everyone like crap, then there would be nowhere to go. That was the situation in early industrial america. We tried that. Didnt work, the corporations worked people 364 days a year and kids too. They sent militias to your home if you called in sick. People died on the job and were paid almost nothing. So, no, they couldnt just go somewhere else. That is dangerous logic.
Better idea lets hold the biggest employers feet to the fire to make a nice profit but pay the people that make them that money a decent wage. These jobs ARE careers for many. And by the way, you should be thanking them, because there aint enough "high school kids" to take all these crap jobs, You NEED these people to work at wal mart, and change the sheets at your hotel, and do landscaping, and pick fruit as a "career" or the country grinds to a halt.
chidder wrote:
SocialismIsForIdiots wrote:
It is insane how people with such an infantile understanding of economics can be so sure of themselves.... Jesus Christ...
So you've gleaned my exact understanding of economics by this post.
The response was to the poke holes in the age old saying "they will simply raise their prices". That's not universally true and it would also be pretty crappy if it was.
But, SocialismIsForIdiots, you clearly know more than me, an idiot socialist. Geniuses like yourself are worth millions at a young age because of your deep knowledge of business, right? I've never heard of the stock market or a 401k and spend my welfare money on weed and abortions, right?
Meh, Im going with SocialismIsForIdiots on this one. You would have to be blind and deaf not to see things are out of balance. Capitalism is great, it just needs a little attention from time to time. The logic that profits shall go up until everyone is working for nothing is problematic. Maybe we can strike a balance and not call everyone a socialist for suggesting it?
X-Runner wrote:
You know if their payroll expenses go up, their taxable income goes down and their tax expense goes down.
So the net income doesn’t go down as much as the additional expense.
Oh wait.
Amazon doesn’t pay taxes.
Amazon generated more tax revenue in the last 1 second than you'll ever pay in your life.
chidder wrote:
SocialismIsForIdiots wrote:
It is insane how people with such an infantile understanding of economics can be so sure of themselves.... Jesus Christ...
So you've gleaned my exact understanding of economics by this post.
The response was to the poke holes in the age old saying "they will simply raise their prices". That's not universally true and it would also be pretty crappy if it was.
But, SocialismIsForIdiots, you clearly know more than me, an idiot socialist. Geniuses like yourself are worth millions at a young age because of your deep knowledge of business, right? I've never heard of the stock market or a 401k and spend my welfare money on weed and abortions, right?
Where did you hear that large corporations are "averse to raising prices"?? That's literally the capitalist endgame if the free market runs unchecked. The big fish eat the little fish until there's a monopoly and then they can charge whatevever the hell they want.
Rojo discovers the concept of "surplus value."
If only there were a 19th-century philosopher who had written about this at length...
bigmig19 wrote:
chidder wrote:
So you've gleaned my exact understanding of economics by this post.
The response was to the poke holes in the age old saying "they will simply raise their prices". That's not universally true and it would also be pretty crappy if it was.
But, SocialismIsForIdiots, you clearly know more than me, an idiot socialist. Geniuses like yourself are worth millions at a young age because of your deep knowledge of business, right? I've never heard of the stock market or a 401k and spend my welfare money on weed and abortions, right?
Meh, Im going with SocialismIsForIdiots on this one. You would have to be blind and deaf not to see things are out of balance. Capitalism is great, it just needs a little attention from time to time. The logic that profits shall go up until everyone is working for nothing is problematic. Maybe we can strike a balance and not call everyone a socialist for suggesting it?
How are you going with him, then? I am not, in the original post, suggesting that what I describe is reality. That would be the reality IF the stupid "they will just raise their prices" was true.
Also, capitalism isnt great, and has needed more than a little attention over the years. Don't worship it. Pure, unrestricted capitalism used slavery and child labor until it was forced to stop. In publicly traded companies, it rewards ownership (Corporate and stockholders) way more than the labor force.
For 90% of us, we have to become "owners" (investors) by buying stocks and hoping it is worth more some day.
Large and inefficient companies with massive overhead costs, like Walmart, pay incredibly low wages and are wildly successful because of it. Stockholders get all of the benefit while workers do all the work and still need foodstamps. They get paid so little they can't even buy stock in their own company, or pay for college. Then the very smart conservatives tell them that it's their fault for not having a better job, even though the same % of available jobs would be retail/fast food/unskilled even if everyone went to college.
People recognize that shareholders and workers are basically fighting over the same pile of money. Giving people raises increases expenses which decreases profit which decreases the value of the company. For a share to maximally increase in value, expenses (including wages) have to be as low as they can be without hurting revenue. There is an obvious opposition there.
I fundamentally understand the economy the same way you guys do. You guys love it all. I don't. You think I'm stupid for thinking some amount of the profit is owed to the workers who created it (yes, beyond wages), rather than the shareholders who effectively bought the future rights to all of it. Or that, at the very least, the workers should be paid enough to buy stocks themselves (without skipping meals) and benefit from the fruits of their labor.
Ex. I work for private company as a Physical Therapist. I get a bonus every quarter based on the profit of the company (not the revenue, if it matters to you). That's me benefitting from my work that was making money for the business. Hy-Vee, where I worked as a high schooler, does profit sharing for fulltime employees. Walmart tells their employees to suck it and live in their car in the parking lot.
This post was removed.
chidder wrote:
bigmig19 wrote:
Meh, Im going with SocialismIsForIdiots on this one. You would have to be blind and deaf not to see things are out of balance. Capitalism is great, it just needs a little attention from time to time. The logic that profits shall go up until everyone is working for nothing is problematic. Maybe we can strike a balance and not call everyone a socialist for suggesting it?
How are you going with him, then? I am not, in the original post, suggesting that what I describe is reality. That would be the reality IF the stupid "they will just raise their prices" was true.
Also, capitalism isnt great, and has needed more than a little attention over the years. Don't worship it. Pure, unrestricted capitalism used slavery and child labor until it was forced to stop. In publicly traded companies, it rewards ownership (Corporate and stockholders) way more than the labor force.
For 90% of us, we have to become "owners" (investors) by buying stocks and hoping it is worth more some day.
Large and inefficient companies with massive overhead costs, like Walmart, pay incredibly low wages and are wildly successful because of it. Stockholders get all of the benefit while workers do all the work and still need foodstamps. They get paid so little they can't even buy stock in their own company, or pay for college. Then the very smart conservatives tell them that it's their fault for not having a better job, even though the same % of available jobs would be retail/fast food/unskilled even if everyone went to college.
People recognize that shareholders and workers are basically fighting over the same pile of money. Giving people raises increases expenses which decreases profit which decreases the value of the company. For a share to maximally increase in value, expenses (including wages) have to be as low as they can be without hurting revenue. There is an obvious opposition there.
I fundamentally understand the economy the same way you guys do. You guys love it all. I don't. You think I'm stupid for thinking some amount of the profit is owed to the workers who created it (yes, beyond wages), rather than the shareholders who effectively bought the future rights to all of it. Or that, at the very least, the workers should be paid enough to buy stocks themselves (without skipping meals) and benefit from the fruits of their labor.
Ex. I work for private company as a Physical Therapist. I get a bonus every quarter based on the profit of the company (not the revenue, if it matters to you). That's me benefitting from my work that was making money for the business. Hy-Vee, where I worked as a high schooler, does profit sharing for fulltime employees. Walmart tells their employees to suck it and live in their car in the parking lot.
The good thing about America is you have an opportunity to become a business owner too. Some of the profit made by companies that are paid back to employees are nice, but it's not "owed" to the workers, it's a bonus or incentive. Part of the problem is that everyone thinks they are "owed" something. When you sign on at one of the many many business that offer employment, you agree to work at a certain reward or wage. If you don't like the way the business is paying you, go find another job where the benefits might be better for you. I work at a very large corporation, and I never got any type of incentive bonuses until i reached a certain level of employment, which 1. takes time, and 2. effort. For my time and effort the company I work for chooses to offer a bonus. There is nothing that says it's owed to me, it's something they do to incentivize me and other employees to stick around and put in the effort. My company is also publicly traded, and part of our pay are stock options. I also worked at Walmart when i was in college, and they paid higher than minimum wage at that time.
This post was removed.
stillaprofit wrote:
The good thing about America is you have an opportunity to become a business owner too.
We can't all be business owners - we need people to work. If we all tried to live off dividends; guess what, the dividend would stop.
stillaprofit wrote:
Some of the profit made by companies that are paid back to employees are nice, but it's not "owed" to the workers, it's a bonus or incentive. Part of the problem is that everyone thinks they are "owed" something.
This can be flipped around, stock holders feel they are owed the profits as a return on investment, workers feel they are owed the profits as they should get the full value of their labor. It's an age-old class conflict.
Tatar... wrote:
stillaprofit wrote:
The good thing about America is you have an opportunity to become a business owner too.
We can't all be business owners - we need people to work. If we all tried to live off dividends; guess what, the dividend would stop.
stillaprofit wrote:
Some of the profit made by companies that are paid back to employees are nice, but it's not "owed" to the workers, it's a bonus or incentive. Part of the problem is that everyone thinks they are "owed" something.
This can be flipped around, stock holders feel they are owed the profits as a return on investment, workers feel they are owed the profits as they should get the full value of their labor. It's an age-old class conflict.
The sad reality is a large percentage of the population is too stupid to do well in an advanced society. This notion that the only thing causing financial inequity in the world is greed is idiotic. If you have an IQ in the mid 80s or lower as HALF if not more of the world population does you're career choices are very limited.
Your calculations are dubious because of how company accounting operates. "Profit" is a nebulous number that companies use to impress Wall Street or avoid taxes with the IRS (2 different numbers, rest assured). Companies set up Sub companies, etc and make sure that most of them operate at a loss by billing one portion of a company for work performed by another portion of the company at rates that are not the actual cost.
Example : I work for a company that has >100K employees. The "profit" they reported to Wall Street divided by number of employees is >$25K per employee. But at review time, they send an email saying that our department exceeded its budget and raises will average <2% (every dept. gets the same story). Management outright demands that we bill 45-50hrs/week no matter how many hours worked. This is billed to other departments within the company at rates 3x higher than employees salary rate (40hr). So the accounting is a total sham. Every dept / Sub company loses money, but somehow Wall Street sees huge profit and the IRS gets almost nothing.
BTW ROJO, you are posting a lot of political hot button topics phrased as if you are asking a question, but really you attempting to give validity to "conservative" talking points. It is your web page so you can do that. But people should understand that your opinion stated as if it were facts or backed up with pseudo facts and pseudo math should be read with a little scrutiny.
I suggest that you and lot of others here try getting your news from less biased sources for a few weeks and see if your frustration and anger level drops. You will probably find that both sides of American politics have many faults and there is a lot of nuance to hot button topics.
WeaponsOfMathDestruction wrote:
Your calculations are dubious because of how company accounting operates. "Profit" is a nebulous number that companies use to impress Wall Street or avoid taxes with the IRS (2 different numbers, rest assured). Companies set up Sub companies, etc and make sure that most of them operate at a loss by billing one portion of a company for work performed by another portion of the company at rates that are not the actual cost.
Example : I work for a company that has >100K employees. The "profit" they reported to Wall Street divided by number of employees is >$25K per employee. But at review time, they send an email saying that our department exceeded its budget and raises will average <2% (every dept. gets the same story). Management outright demands that we bill 45-50hrs/week no matter how many hours worked. This is billed to other departments within the company at rates 3x higher than employees salary rate (40hr). So the accounting is a total sham. Every dept / Sub company loses money, but somehow Wall Street sees huge profit and the IRS gets almost nothing.
BTW ROJO, you are posting a lot of political hot button topics phrased as if you are asking a question, but really you attempting to give validity to "conservative" talking points. It is your web page so you can do that. But people should understand that your opinion stated as if it were facts or backed up with pseudo facts and pseudo math should be read with a little scrutiny.
I suggest that you and lot of others here try getting your news from less biased sources for a few weeks and see if your frustration and anger level drops. You will probably find that both sides of American politics have many faults and there is a lot of nuance to hot button topics.
https://www.makeuseof.com/top-unbiased-news-sources/
You have to be clinically brain dead to think there's unbiased news sources...
SocialismIsForIdiots wrote:
Tatar... wrote:
We can't all be business owners - we need people to work. If we all tried to live off dividends; guess what, the dividend would stop.
This can be flipped around, stock holders feel they are owed the profits as a return on investment, workers feel they are owed the profits as they should get the full value of their labor. It's an age-old class conflict.
The sad reality is a large percentage of the population is too stupid to do well in an advanced society. This notion that the only thing causing financial inequity in the world is greed is idiotic. If you have an IQ in the mid 80s or lower as HALF if not more of the world population does you're career choices are very limited.
Labor vs Capital is solved by you with "Workers are stupid."
You can't even address the point he actually made, which is: feeling like you are "owed" something is what workers and investors both do. Right now investors get basically all of it. Call me a socialist, but when companies are making tons of money, workers should at least get paid enough to invest in the future value of their labor. Even uneducated, stupid people. Saying people are too stupid to do well was the exact justification slave-owners used. Jesus Christ.
When I or Tatar, or anyone brings up the class conflict in its simple version, 20 of you guys are ready to hop in to say that we simply don't understand economics. You think your opinion about what "should" happen is fact and that it is self evident because it is the current status quo.
Nobody is as entitled as large investors. They even demand (and get) the government to backstop losses on their speculation when their bullcrap blows up every 8 to 10 years. Then they preach about hard work. Sociopaths.
1) Companies, especially public ones, have a goal to not just stay in business, but to make a profit, and the bigger the better.
2) Public companies need to appease their shareholders, and the best way to do that is to keep on recording record profits. One way to do that is to keep what is usually their biggest cost (labor) down as low as possible.
3) While I am a liberal and support the working man, I am also part of the problem, because I am an investor. I am one of those shareholders that companies want to appease by keeping labor costs down as low as possible. I am not going to stop being an investor, because that is necessary for someone like me with an upper middle class income to become a wealthy person (already done). I make no excuses for playing the system to become wealthy, but I do recognize that many people were kept poor because of that system (HOWEVER, I do maintain that it is very possible for someone with a very low income to still invest a tiny bit of their income so that they can retire comfortably).
chidder wrote:
Labor vs Capital is solved by you with "Workers are stupid."
You can't even address the point he actually made, which is: feeling like you are "owed" something is what workers and investors both do. Right now investors get basically all of it. Call me a socialist, but when companies are making tons of money, workers should at least get paid enough to invest in the future value of their labor. Even uneducated, stupid people. Saying people are too stupid to do well was the exact justification slave-owners used. Jesus Christ.
When I or Tatar, or anyone brings up the class conflict in its simple version, 20 of you guys are ready to hop in to say that we simply don't understand economics. You think your opinion about what "should" happen is fact and that it is self evident because it is the current status quo.
If workers want a share of the profits they can purchase stock in any publicly traded company just like anyone else. It's called a free market.
roller coaster wrote:
chidder wrote:
Labor vs Capital is solved by you with "Workers are stupid."
You can't even address the point he actually made, which is: feeling like you are "owed" something is what workers and investors both do. Right now investors get basically all of it. Call me a socialist, but when companies are making tons of money, workers should at least get paid enough to invest in the future value of their labor. Even uneducated, stupid people. Saying people are too stupid to do well was the exact justification slave-owners used. Jesus Christ.
When I or Tatar, or anyone brings up the class conflict in its simple version, 20 of you guys are ready to hop in to say that we simply don't understand economics. You think your opinion about what "should" happen is fact and that it is self evident because it is the current status quo.
If workers want a share of the profits they can purchase stock in any publicly traded company just like anyone else. It's called a free market.
Obviously, genius. The problem is when they can't afford to buy stock because they are paid so little (indirectly causing the stock to go up and be even further out of reach).
Now you can shame them for their theoretical life choices to justify the impossibility they've been placed in. Go ahead.
roller coaster wrote:
chidder wrote:
Labor vs Capital is solved by you with "Workers are stupid."
You can't even address the point he actually made, which is: feeling like you are "owed" something is what workers and investors both do. Right now investors get basically all of it. Call me a socialist, but when companies are making tons of money, workers should at least get paid enough to invest in the future value of their labor. Even uneducated, stupid people. Saying people are too stupid to do well was the exact justification slave-owners used. Jesus Christ.
When I or Tatar, or anyone brings up the class conflict in its simple version, 20 of you guys are ready to hop in to say that we simply don't understand economics. You think your opinion about what "should" happen is fact and that it is self evident because it is the current status quo.
If workers want a share of the profits they can purchase stock in any publicly traded company just like anyone else. It's called a free market.
+1
Why do all of the "the world isn't fair" types all seem to think companies and corporations are evil robot overlords rather than actual people??
chidder wrote:
roller coaster wrote:
If workers want a share of the profits they can purchase stock in any publicly traded company just like anyone else. It's called a free market.
Obviously, genius. The problem is when they can't afford to buy stock because they are paid so little (indirectly causing the stock to go up and be even further out of reach).
Now you can shame them for their theoretical life choices to justify the impossibility they've been placed in. Go ahead.
Who placed them there? Maybe the solution is to fix the family rather than trying to tear down everyone else to their level?