A million bucks. That’s the limit. You don’t make more than that, I don’t care if you’re god.
That last post is a joke in practice, but not in spirit. Finding a point where everyone is happy with a cap is an exercise in futility.
Besides, where does the excess money go?
That’s like saying nobody makes you hand over your wallet when you’re being robbed. We do have a CEO in my area with your heart in mind. Everytime the Union comes to the table the offer is reduced. They’ve been out for a year and the scabs are making over $60K a year as a result of the overtime.
Um, I suppose SOME can, but given the fact that the median FAMILY income is less than $60K a year (I assume you meant $60K and not $60) I find your figures … suspicious. And we live in a country where you just about HAVE to make $30K a year to make ends meet.
The market is not a natural system. In the marketplace, if Joe Blow has ten chickens and John Smith has two knives, Joe gives John two chickens, and John gives Joe a knife and everybody has chickens and knives to carve them up with.
In the natural world, John stabs Joe to death with his knives and takes all the chickens. That’s the way animals do it, for the most part.
The marketplace is an artificial system created by humans. It absolutely REQUIRES other artificial constructs like laws to protect personal property, to function properly. It is much better than the bigger killing the smaller and taking all their stuff whenever possible, but if unregulated to take into account human greed, the marketplace is not much better than natural law from the point of view of the poor. Especially the ones who are good with knives.
So when labor exerts power in the free market, it is robbery, but when management exerts power, it is just good business? :dubious:
Are scabs less deserving of a $60k salary than union workers or is this simply another case of “the CEO is ripping us off because he’s not paying me $60k”?
The same applies to a wage floor.
Maybe he didn’t present a compelling business case. Lots of people have ideas for stuff. Most don’t make anyone money.
Why? We have thousands of companies out there all researching future products and inventions and plenty of venture capitalists and private investors willing to invest in them. I guess you forgot about a little thing called “the mid to late 90s”.
First of all they do spend it on capital investment. Most of that wealth is often tied up in their companies. Second, where do you think $5000 suits, watches, country club memberships and other non-productive items come from? The $5ks, w, ccm and onpi fairie? They come from companies with employees who earn livings from those purchases.
Maybe. But what you really want to do is increasewealth, not income. Who cares if people have a little more spending cash to buy crap they don’t need. If people aren’t using that cash to aquire wealth - start businesses, acquire real estate, invest in stocks and other financial instruments then it doesn’t help them.
Jack Welch is highly paid because he successfully ran a Fortune 10 company worth over $670 Billion in assets and created enormous wealth for a great deal of people.
Because you don’t understand the difference between accounting price and market price. The market sets the market price. It’s what other people are willing to pay. The price you pay and record on your books is the accounting price. The difference we call “getting a great deal” if you pay less and “getting ripped off” if you pay more than the market price.
In Japan in the 80s (which is what you are really talking about) you also could not easily find a new employer if you left your current one. In exchange for job stability, they expect a much higher level of employee loyalty and competence than most Americans are willing or able to give.
I’m not sure what you are arguing about. GM was short-sighted in their goals and they are paying the price by losing market share to the competition. The result is that they will need to downsize their workforce and operate as a smaller company. If you are arguing that the CEOs should not benefit while the company is floundering, I agree with you. It’s unfortunate when layoffs happen, but it is something we have decided to live with in exchange for having an economy that’s much more eflexible and adaptable to change.
Well, that’s the big question. Every barrel has a bottom. What do we do with ours? We can try to build wealth by encouraging the growth of businesses and evil corporations. We can invest more in our schools so we don’t have high schools that produce nothing but future welfare cases and prison inmates. We can try to improve the mess that is the healthcare system. The one thing I don’t see working is creating an arbitrarily high “living wage”.
Oh and infrastructure. We could also invest in that.
Execs determine their own salaries.
Pharm companies write the laws that regulate them
Senators and congressman determine their own wages.
There are no restraints on medical costs.
Whats missing. Counterbalance. If regulation does not stop them they will continue to loot. Poor and working class have lost their political power. The demise of unions and control of press and TV has allowed it. Eventually the poor will realize that taking to the streets will be their only chance. It could get ugly.
The rich never get enough. Did Gates stop at a billion. When 2 percent of the population controls 50 % of the wealth ,do theyn slow down. Nope.
What reality do you live in? :rolleyes:
Again, why do these things always turn into (stupid) appeals to emotion? I mean, gonzo is obviously at the extreme end of the fact free appeals to emotion…but they always seem to degenerate into crys about the evil rich and the poor downtrodden masses, yearning to have a big screen TV of their own. I’m surprised no one has trotted out the masses of folks starving in the US yet…that usually gets some play until someone asks for cites about how many folk starve in the US each year. Then the crickets start chirpin…
Nope, they sure don’t…good thing too. Because the capital of those 2% provide the fucking JOBS for the most of the others, you bone head! Their taxes provide all the goodies that run the fucking country my friend…didn’t you know that? They pay the lions share of that too. Its a good thing Billy boy Gates didn’t stop at a Billion and retire…because his company has created untold amounts of wealth and jobs, has increased productivity in this country and others in a big way…same with Jobs and the Wozster and their lot over at Apple.
Seriously man, you need to take a bit of a reality break, and lay off the Marx and all that class struggle crap…poke your head up some time and look around. Just as a change of pace.
-XT
The 2 % absolutely do not provide the jobs. The eliminate them . When have you seen an American exec go on TV and brag about creating jobs. They announce layoffs ,right after explaining how productivity has skyrocketed. They send the work to India and China . They dont give a squat about America. They are international corps and do not care who they screw over., as long as they can show cooked books once a year that justify more looting.
You seriously don’t have any idea what you are talking about…do you? You have no idea how capital actually works, or what the rich do or do not do with their money…do you? You don’t even have any idea where jobs actually come from…perhaps you think they come from the jobs fairy? Or that the gubberment provides all the jobs? Or that its the workers and peasants that provide all the capital for all the companies that provide all those jobs?
I’m sorry…but the level of ignorance shown in your posts simply can not be fought…at least not by the likes of me.
-XT
But should they have to?
I await your full-throated advocacy of free post-secondary education.
Yes, I responded to a post on the 1st page before I saw there were already 8 pages.
Efficiency is a relative term. Enslavement of the masses by a king who can convince them he is a god worked damn well for thousands of years, but those “enlightment liberals” (like Adam Smith) put a stop to that, & instituted the education of those who some people (on this thread) would be more comfortable keeping in superstition & ostensible social insignificance. Fighting ignorance ain’t efficient, but it’s good.
I am stunned at the anti-MW/LW responses on this thread. On the 1st page, xtisme completely mischaracterized the OP repeatedly as calling for a global raise of everyone’s earnings to $40K/year & went unchallenged; then when those of us who favor MW/LW pointed out that the absence of any such laws means, at its logical ultimate reduction, (a) slavery or (b) starvation for somebody (well, I should add © wage slavery, or (d) serfdom, which is at least better than the other three) they were accused of “straw men.”
I dunno. I was raised seriously evangelical Christian, & steeped in the Bible: “What you do for the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me.” I apparently already am one of those of whom the OP speaks, who thinks everybody–everybody–should be paid enough & given enough opportunity to live reasonably well. We can argue about how a living wage is defined, about lifetime earnings vs. pay at a given point, about exchange rates & national protectionism, about money paid vs. opportunity extended… but let’s be serious here:
Labor is a cost. You want to sell a car plated with 5mm of solid 14k gold, that’s going to cost something, because gold costs something by definition. You’re stuck with the problem of how to get the gold & pay for it. Similarly, if your business model requires a human being to be in attendance for 30+ hours a week, that costs something as well. That person is giving up free time for you, if nothing else. Hardline free-marketers will point out that we can always breed more wage slaves, & some fool will agree to do the job cheaper, with no health insurance. I would add that while he’s bussing tables for you, he’s not doing anything that would give him that insurance, & at least some of these guys are going to regret that. Workers just have to stand up for what they are really worth, as human beings. Too many of us “sell our birthright for a pot of mess.”
Remember, the real free market isn’t the nice happy abstract theoretical bazaar we were taught about in macroeconomics class, where there always seems to be enough to live on, & goods are little abstractions in white boxes; the real economy includes finite space, biological resources with the risk of extinction, the ubiquitous threat of coercion, the reality of despair & desperation, & the “criminal” element of theft & robbery. When somebody says, “The service you provide isn’t worth paying you enough an hour to live on 30-40 hours a week, but I won’t hire you unless you work between 30-40 hours a week”–remind yourself that you, even if you are an ex-con high-school dropout with Down’s Syndrome, are better than that, & they might be willing to pay more if the choice of “you beating them up & robbing them of everything you can” were clearly accounted for. I wouldn’t tell a potential employer that, but remind yourself of it when thinking about what you’ll settle for.
Yes, I am pro-labor union. Also, I’m still on page 2, so forgive me if this has already been said.
I am struck by the degree to which the free-marketer lives unaware of economic reality. The majority of the capital in this country (over 80%) is in the hands of a minority (under 20%). This distribution is not eternal, inevitable, historically consistent, nor unreformable. Contrary to your assumption, the economy is not just barely managing to keep solvent at hard numbers of real wealth distribution that cannot change. There’s a lot of give–maybe not for Joe Bootstrap Entrepreneur from Middle America, but for the hyperrich, for the lending banks, & thus for the economy in general.
Well, we’re now going to tie minimum wage, but only minimum wage, to inflation in Missouri. I voted for it, whereas I was against other increases that just replaced one arbitrary number with another. Obviously, Mo. is not a closed system, but I think this is a test case for businesses’ fears of runaway feedback loops. And really, if you’re going to have a minimum wage, it should be based on purchasing power.
Also, in response to concerns about forced layoffs, I think legally mandated wages should have say, a 5%-per-2-year-period deflationary “give” as a way to adapt to economic variations. But I don’t think MW so much drives inflation as desperately tries to follow it.
Xt your superiority reeks through your posts. When you trot out a 60 k living wage ,you can not lose. When others imply a raise in min wage equates to 15 dollar burgers you cant lose.It is pure fantasy.
Your arguments are dishonest.
Do you mean profit? What people seem to forget in these threads is that the higher one is paid, the more that payment is from profits of the company. Profits are used to reward the risking of capital. Profits are sent to the shareholders of a company, to the owner (if the owner owns is outright), but typically it’s paid to the workers in bonuses or raises (my company has profit sharing) or more likely reinvested as capital: to buy more equipment or hire more workers.
Cast the straw out of thy own eye, fools, before looking for straw in thy neighbors, ehe? The OP clearly stated that he wanted this to be a world wide LW. So, no straw there. The OP clearly stated that he wanted a shoping list of goodies, which I speculated would cost aproximately $40k in the US for a family of 4. I’d say that my speculation is in the ball park. Don’t agree? Fine by me…tell me why you think a family of 4 could get all those goodies (the health care alone would probably cost a substantial portion of that yearly amount)…don’t start yammering about strawmen. Speculation is not the same thing as creating a strawman of the OPs arguement…or did you not know the difference and are only using the old ‘strawman!’ knee jerk arguement?
The irony of this statement is off the scale.
I never denied this…I also don’t particularly have a problem with it. As I told gonzo…they also pay over 80% of the taxes as well, and generate over 80% of the productivity with that capital (i.e. their capital is what drives the productivity of this nation).
Think of the poor huddled masses, yearning for FREEDOM! Really, these appeals to emotion are getting rather silly. I’m sure you would love to reform the current situation…I’m simply glad you don’t have the ability to do so. I don’t want to live under some blundering peoples state where we can all be miserable together, while listening to you explain that this wasn’t what you really intended. Thank the gods guys like you can only babble this kind of crap on a message board, ehe? 
Um…speaking of straw. Er, exactly WHERE was my assumption that the economy is just barely managing to keep solvent? I must have missed it. Could you kindly point it out for me?
Ah yes…those damn hyper-rich who do nothing but smoke their $10,000 cigars lit on the backs of the peasantry while tooling around in their million dollar yahts fueled on the sweat and blood of the good workers and peasants. Never heard THIS appeal before…no sir, its fresh and new!
And your arguements are, well, non-existent. BTW, my arguements would only be dishonest if I actually didn’t believe them. Let me assure you…I believe everything I write wrt this subject gonzo ole pal. I may be wrong (I have seen no evidence I am, but I could be)…but I’m hardly dishonest.
-XT