# Interchangeable carbon blobs. Only 1% generate any wealth. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 15, 2011, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976 "2011-05-15T11:53:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/101 "2011-05-17T21:39:18Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > First of all, the CEO is not stealing that money from anyone, you do realize that right? And the company that pays them isn’t stealing the money either. They provide a product/service people want, which is better than the competitor. Who are you to tell them what level of compensation is appropriate? > > And I see you’ve once again posted that bullshit comparing US CEOs to Europeans. You know what, American basketball players get paid more too, are you ready to go after their salaries as well? > > How about instead of posting the same bullshit rhetoric over and over you have the balls to tell us what you think should happen. Do you want a government panel to approve executive compensation? Do you want to mandate that it be a fixed ratio related to the average/median/lowest employee? > > What are you actually trying to say when you post that stupid statistic? Why are they not comparable? CEO of a telecom company that is actually bigger than AT&T is not a relevant comparison? You are the one short on statistics here to make your case. Indeed you have none. I’ve provided citations. Where are yours? ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/102 "2011-05-17T21:52:00Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Why are they not comparable? CEO of a telecom company that is actually bigger than AT&T is not a relevant comparison? > > You are the one short on statistics here to make your case. Indeed you have none. > > I’ve provided citations. Where are yours? You have not provided citations. Those links you keep regurgitating are bullshit. I get that they play to your base and get you lots of pats of the back, but they’re bullshit. We all know what the Gini coefficient is for the US, and we all know US CEOs make more than in other countries. You know what your “citations” can’t show? Why any of that matters. Ethiopia has a Gini around 30, how about telling us what they’re doing so well, what it is about their system that’s so great, and why we should all want to live in Ethiopia. The Gini coefficient on it’s own is complete and utter bullshit. Like so many other stats it represents a ratio and says nothing more. It says NOTHING about systemic issues that either make people rich or keep people poor. My wife and I moved from Canada (Gini around 32) to the US because of higher income potential. Do you understand what that means? Have you even been outside of the US? Have you been to any of those other countries with a nice low Gini? Your cites still don’t show why US CEOs are paid more, seems like it would be a really stupid thing for a company to do. Sounds like it would make them really unproductive and discourage stock purchases. But it doesn’t. It’s almost as if executive compensation doesn’t matter, and is simply your bizarre obsession. You still haven’t told me why basketball players make more in the US than in Europe or Japan. And you still haven’t told me what you want to do to limit executive compensation. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/103 "2011-05-17T21:58:29Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Can you explain the mechanism that makes this so? I won’t ask you to substantiate your dogma, dogma is what it is, an article of faith, and welcome to it. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Indeed, you have my heartfelt agreement that the confluence of government and business has tended to be a Bad Thing. Hooo, doggies! > > But what mechanism makes this so? You seem to suggest that all the fault lies with Big Government, that without such a pernicious influence, business would be as harmless to the common good as daffodils, or a field of frolicking axolotyls. But why should this be so? If you are unwilling or unable to define Big Government, then we must be content to accept your criticisms of its inherent nature? And suffer your disdain for our apparent devotion to this amorphous dark deity? The difference is that government has the right to use coercion to achieve its ends. Business does not. Businessmen aren’t any better than government officials, but their actions are constrained by their inability to force people to buy their products and services. Ultimately, their sphere of influence and profit potential is determined by their customers, who are free to deal with them or find someone else to deal with (assuming well-functioning markets, etc. And government has a role to play to ensure markets function). Government, on the other hand, is given the kind of responsibilities that require it to use force - maintenance of police, military, law courts, regulation, tax collection. We’ve given sovereign power to government, but we also put checks and balances on it to make sure that power gets used appropriately and we can withdraw our consent if the power is abused. We also set up constitutional law to restrict the sphere of government to prevent that power from being used where we believe it should never be used, such as to curtail free speech, peaceful assembly, etc. When the government begins to expand beyond these roles and enter into the sphere of the marketplace, it comes into contact with business. And business begins to corrupt the government and use its sovereign power for its own commercial ends. In return, the wealth and power it accumulates gets partly funneled back to the government. Now it is in the government’s interest to change the rules of the market. Goldman-Sachs gives handsomely to politicians, politicians bail out Goldman’s creditors to ensure Goldman gets paid. The government bails out GM, and now has a stake in GM’s success. So suddenly a $7500 rebate is available for a GM product. The UAW gives handsomely to government, and so the government elevates the UAW above other GM creditors and gives them a larger stake in the company. GE supports the government’s ‘green’ initiatives, and gets a huge amount of ‘stimulus’ money, and suddenly GE is buying up all the Chevy Volts for its fleet, making the government’s bailout of GM look a little better. In the meantime, the NBC Universal/Comcast merger sails through the FCC approval process - after which one of the FCC commissioners takes a high paying job at Comcast. You liberals used to be terrified of this kind of collusion when it involved the ‘military-industrial complex’. Remember? Now we have the ‘government-industrial complex’, and it’s spreading everywhere. The biggest, most politically connected companies make out like bandits, the politicians get rich and find their own golden parachutes waiting for them when they leave government, courtesy of the people they used to ‘regulate’. In the meantime, the playing field is twisted, and the people who pay the price for this are consumers and small businesses who don’t have the connections or the money to have the same kind of influence. It’s not that government is worse than business - it’s that the two are supposed to remain in their own spheres as much as possible precisely to avoid this kind of collusion. But when you start calling on government to regulate markets and involve itself in commercial activity, the dividing line gets blurred or obliterated and you wind up with crony capitalism. Now, some regulation is obviously required, so some of this will always exist. But recognizing the fact that government power will be corrupted by business leads to the conclusion that the amount of government involvement in the marketplace should be kept as small as possible. There are many other reasons to keep governments out of the marketplace, but this is one of the big ones. > [@](#): > > TL:DR WTF is “Big Government”, anyway? Something more than small government. (-:. It wasn’t meant to be a categorical definition any more than ‘big business’ is. I simply meant that as governments get bigger, these kinds of problems get bigger. And the same is true of business, which is why we have anti-trust laws (which mysteriously get ignored when the companies involved are Comcast and GE…). But theoretically, government is supposed to prevent companies from growing to the point where they can exert monopoly power. There is no such check on government itself, because by its definition it HAS monopoly power. So don’t let it collude with business. I think you know all this, which is why the left is so up in arms about the Supreme Court ruling that corporations can directly contribute to political campaigns. But you ignore all the other ways in which corporations influence government - ways much more powerful than just corporate donations to campaigns. You just wave your hands and say we need ‘good’ government, or just need to get the right people in place to clean it up. Republicans say the same nonsense. You need to understand that the system itself is corrupting by its very nature, and that corruption is unavoidable. It also gets worse as government gets bigger, because government’s ability to oversee things is very limited. Congress is roughly the same size as it was 100 years ago, yet the amount of economic activity it attempts to oversee is orders of magnitude greater. So you get your representatives voting on bills they haven’t read, which were written by industry lobbyists and staffers who came from that industry and who will go back to it when their work in government is done. Oversight fails, and the special interests run amok. > [@](#): > > If government is truly the creature of the people’s will, and I have no more dear a goal than that, then why should I fear its power? So long as I have a precisely equal share in that government, why should I worry about whether or not \*\*Sam Stone \*\*thinks it is too big? And you’re the one who calls me idealistic for trusting in the general regulatory power of markets. Do I really need to detail the myriad number of ways that government has failed, or has thwarted the will of the people? Do you need to be educated in the tyranny of the majority, or the power imbalance that occurs when the rich and powerful have behind-the-scenes access to the corridors of power? How many bribes and kickbacks have to be exposed before you realize that government isn’t quite as fair as you think it is? How many politicians and bureaucrats do you have to see moving back and forth between government and cushy high-paying industry jobs before you realize that the game is rigged? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/104 "2011-05-17T22:14:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No you don’t. But you do see big government as the bogeyman and government officials as jackbooted thugs trying to oppress you. > > As evil big government is just as much a myth as evil big business. The fact is they both have their uses. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to let either one run unchecked. > > There are some people who think you can solve any problem by enacting some government regulations. And there are some people who think you can solve any problem by abolishing government regulations. Both groups are willing to let their dogma override their reason. It’s all a matter of incentives. The incentives in government are skewed, and therefore produce bad behavior. Government does not have the information it needs, and government doesn’t get the right kind of feedback. Non-elected bureaucrats work with taxpayer money and do not have the same incentives to maximize reward vs risk or to contain costs. In private enterprise, the manager who producers more with the same budget gets rewarded. In government, the bureaucrat who doesn’t spend his entire budget sees his budget reduced. In business, a manager who manages to raise efficiency instead of hiring another person is rewarded. In government, the more people you can hire, the bigger your department grows and the more power and influence you have. In private industry, the best employees get the promotions, and the bad ones are let go. In government, the best employees get the same seniority raises as the bad ones, but they have to carry the workload for the slackers. In business, if you create a bad product that fails in the marketplace, or you create a good product but don’t constrain costs so it can’t be sold at a profit, your venture fails and your resources are released and you lose your position of responsibility. In government, if your grand program fails, the answer is obviously that it just needs more money and the person with the failed idea needs more power. That’s the way it is because politicians can’t admit failure to the voters. In business, if an executive is too risk-averse, he will earn less return on capital investment and ultimately be out-competed by his rivals. If he takes too many risks, a failure will wipe out the company or reduce its strengths. The companies that do best are the ones that find the right balance between risk and reward. In politics, a bureaucrat who refuses to approve a device that would have saved thousands of people is not punished, because no one sees the path not taken because there are no competitors taking that path. But if that bureaucrat approves a drug or device that kills people, he’s punished. Therefore, the incentives skew towards excess risk aversion, which causes a steady increase in the size and scope of the regulatory state. I could go on. I do not trust people to act in my best interest or to act out of charity or a sense of common purpose. I trust that they will respond to incentives that reward or punish them. In the free market, those incentives drive people to actions that benefit others and drive towards pareto-optimal results. In government, those incentives are distorted, and lead to inefficient results. Couple that with the nearly-exhaustible supply of taxpayer funds or borrowed money and you get… what you have today. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/105 "2011-05-17T22:33:48Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You’re kidding, right? We need to prove to you that in a consumer-driven economy, it is important that the consumers have enough money to buy the products? And producers need enough money to invest in new products. In a free market, workers are hired to make products. Those workers also consume products. The products made available are generally the ones the workers want and can afford. If there is excess demand for new products, money will be diverted into investment and research to create those new products. In the meantime, advances in productivity cause workers to be worth more more, because they produce more value per unit effort. That gives them more purchasing power, which changes the mix of goods and services that are profitable to offer them. These forces seek their own equilibrium. Companies that don’t invest in the future go under. Those that invest too much, or give too much money out in bonuses, CEO salaries, or through waste, find they can’t pay the workers well enough and wind up unable to expand or settling for lower-quality workers. If a company doesn’t offer enough pay to its executives, it will lose the best ones and wind up with a sub-standard organization. If you think you can use the power of government to just take money from the top and give it to the workers without affecting this balance and harming the economy, you’re crazy. Glib, simplistic notions such as “giving the workers more means they’ll buy more and the economy will get stronger” are no substitute for understanding the real relationships between supply and demand of workers, managers, products, and raw materials. Wage and price controls or attempts to manipulate the natural equilibrium of the market are doomed to failure or at least will cause reductions in efficiency. This is even more true in a global economy, where you don’t even have the power to set the standard for everyone. You can try to force equality by raising taxes on your most productive people and giving the money to the least productive, but other countries aren’t doing that, and they’ll eat your lunch. 70% marginal tax rates in the 1960’s might have been tolerable because they were universally applied (but heavily avoided) and America had few competitors. Today, such tax rates would drive many businesses out of the country and you would see massive capital flight - just as we Canadians saw many of our best and brightest move to the U.S. in the 1970’s and 1980’s, taking their money with them, when we attempted to tax them too much and put too many roadblocks in the path of businesses. We learned our lesson. Now we have a less progressive tax system than you do and lower corporate, capital gains and dividend taxes. Any tax plan that doesn’t take into account the reality of your global competition is setting you up to lose even more manufacturing jobs and eventually to have a reduction in your overall standard of living relative to other countries. Of course, you can always respond to that by erecting fences and trade barriers… Thus harming the economy even more. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/106 "2011-05-18T00:38:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In the meantime, advances in productivity cause workers to be worth more more, because they produce more value per unit effort. That gives them more purchasing power, which changes the mix of goods and services that are profitable to offer them. I would disagree. Advances in productivity tend to render complex processes simpler and repeatable. Jobs that once required a skilled craftsman with years of training and experience can now be performed much more quickly and accurately by a kid pushing a button on an assembly line. The advantage is that we can produce far more and for much more cheaply allowing more people to live a much more comfortible lifestyle. The downside is that it tends to eliminate a lot of skilled trade jobs and even some of the more tedious and repetetive white collar jobs. IOW, the workers can produce more, but the specific worker isn’t as valuable because their skillset is easy to acquire making it easier to swap out workers. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/107 "2011-05-18T00:43:36Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > For those who believe that workers are by and large expendable and that only 1 out of 100 people ever generate wealth, there seems to be no answer to some basic questions about this: > > 1. How can you manufacture much of anything without workers to help you? Namely, any operating system, cars or iPods? > 2. Get rid of all the interchangeable carbon blobs - namely, that other 99% - and who will buy your stuff? > 3. How can you generate any wealth without anyone to buy your stuff? > > Basically: what wealth can you generate if you provide all the supply and there’s no demand? I’ll ask you the same thing I asked you before. How can a farmer grow his crops without the swarms of locust coming around to eat them? Simply wanting stuff isn’t enough. If the 99% aren’t putting as much into the system in terms of their labor or intellectual capital as they want to take out, how is that sustainable? ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/108 "2011-05-18T01:59:51Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > See how [Apple share prices are manipulated](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/12/is-apples-share-price-being-manipulated/) for the Options market. Illegal? Yes. Common occurrence though and nothing is done about it. Okay, what the fuck was that? Do you really consider that a “cite?” Did you think I wasn’t going to read it? For those that want the short version, it concludes with, _“How is this manipulation being accomplished? Who is doing it? And why aren’t they being punished? Those are very good questions, which we’ll try to address in subsequent articles.”_ So where is the subsequent article? What you posted was speculation, ie garbage. And as to your comment (and failed cite) about capital gains tax, do us all a favour and actually look up what the current capital gains taxes are. Obviously you’ve never had to pay capital gains taxes because then you’d actually know. Let me know when you’ve looked up what the actual capital gains taxes are, and we can discuss something beyond just rhetoric. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/109 "2011-05-18T02:05:46Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I would disagree. Advances in productivity tend to render complex processes simpler and repeatable. Jobs that once required a skilled craftsman with years of training and experience can now be performed much more quickly and accurately by a kid pushing a button on an assembly line. Speaking as a person who actually spends time in factories, there isn’t even an ounce of truth to this. High elvels of technology and automation do not mean you can use unskilled button-pushers; it simply means you need technically savvy machine operators. I mean, seriously, you can’t have ever been in a modern First World manufacturing facility without knowing this. Just today I was in a structural steel fabricator that in the last three years has added plasma and drill beam lines, a laser profile cutter, a robotic welding cell, and a plasma table of the most advanced types. It sure as shit did not reduce the skill needed to use the machines - you have to be pretty well trained to operate these things. What it DID do was make the operators vastly more productive. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/110 "2011-05-18T02:14:58Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > This tells some of that story: > > While it is not talking about a direct wealth transfer That’s right, it didn’t prove your assertion. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > It is about evening the playing field. There is no such thing as evening the playing field. You accomplish one of two things: you create an environment where people game the system, and/or discourage those from participating. Corporate taxes in the US are supposed to be 35%. But then someone wants to level the playing field so they try to lower it for “small business.” But that encourages big business to divide up into smaller units, and discourages small business from growing. The Onion summed it up pretty well: [Team Owners Object to MLB’s New Run-Sharing Agreement](http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/team-owners-object-to-mlbs-new-runsharing-agreemen,20340/) So there, you provided some joke cites, now I’ve provided some joke cites, happy? > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > You are also financing Wall Street profits right now. Essentially the [banks are borrowing from the US government](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/fed-lending-helped-wall-street_n_853884.html) at shockingly low rates (0.5% or lower). They are then turning around and buying government debt and getting 2-3.5% on that money. The loans they took were backed by junk-rated bonds. Did you not see that coming? Canadian students have been doing it for years with student loans. They borrow from the government interest free, then buy some government bonds to get guaranteed returns. It’s exactly what happens when the government tries to get involved. Bush tried to circumvent that by giving everyone cash directly. Some douche in congress thought illegal immigrants would get it so they blocked people with ITINs (and their spouses) from getting the cash. Result was predictably that the illegals with SSN got the cash, but military families overseas couldn’t get the cash because their spouse had an ITIN. Every program the government offers to level the playing field has that same effect. All of these rules with good intentions create loop holes for the powerful to take advantage of. GE doesn’t pay any taxes because they don’t make any income. And why would they if they’re taxed on it? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/111 "2011-05-18T02:26:40Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Speaking as a person who actually spends time in factories, there isn’t even an ounce of truth to this. High elvels of technology and automation do not mean you can use unskilled button-pushers; it simply means you need technically savvy machine operators. > > I mean, seriously, you can’t have ever been in a modern First World manufacturing facility without knowing this. Just today I was in a structural steel fabricator that in the last three years has added plasma and drill beam lines, a laser profile cutter, a robotic welding cell, and a plasma table of the most advanced types. It sure as shit did not reduce the skill needed to use the machines - you have to be pretty well trained to operate these things. What it DID do was make the operators vastly more productive. Exactly. So you get fewer people, but the ones you have are more highly trained, and because the work they do is capital-intensive (larger investment in automation, system development, engineering, and other infrastructure), they are more productive and command higher salaries. Most of the guys I work with when dealing with people on the factory floor are trained as technicians. Most operators have a ticket of some sort, or a one or two year diploma in engineering technology. Or, they’re old-timers who were the best of the old bunch and managed to learn and adapt and stay relevant. They’ve got tons of domain knowledge that brings value, even if they’re not technically credentialed. But almost none of them are minimum wage drones any more. Some guys in shipping and receiving, maybe. A few general laborers, gophers, and cleanup crew. But by and large, modern factories are fully of highly-productive well trained people. The ones that aren’t have generally left the country. It’s hard to find real semi-skilled factory workers for $8/hr in North America - not when they can get just as much money standing around a mall with a flashlight or working at 7-11. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/112 "2011-05-18T02:26:50Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > You are also financing Wall Street profits right now. Essentially the [banks are borrowing from the US government](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/fed-lending-helped-wall-street_n_853884.html) at shockingly low rates (0.5% or lower). They are then turning around and buying government debt and getting 2-3.5% on that money. The loans they took were backed by junk-rated bonds. Had you read to the end of that article you would have seen, "Dubrowski countered by pointing out that Bank of America “extended $184 billion in credit to individuals and businesses” during that time. The author of the CRS report, Marc Labonte, cautioned that “correlation does not prove causation.” “There is no information available on how banks used specific funds borrowed from the Federal Reserve,” he wrote." And had you read the title you would have seen the work “likely.” But more to the point, the government took out a trillion dollars worth of debt, who did you think was going to pay for that? Aren’t you at least a little glad it wasn’t the Chinese?!?! Technically, the banks did exactly what the government ask of them, they lent, in this case they lent it to the government who was borrowing money to provide stimulus. And in the process made a lot of money. That’s why American CEOs get paid so much, obviously you or anyone else in congress wasn’t smart enough to see that coming. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/113 "2011-05-18T06:30:17Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > He is just offended by the LUtzian use of “job creators” used for the wealthy who keep getting their taxes cut because the Repubs insist it will create jobs. I tried to find out what “Lutzian” meant. Wikipedia has an entry for an economist named [Mark Lutz.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_A._Lutz) When I followed was supposed to be the link to his personal webpage, I got this result: [ > [@U of Maine](#): > > Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here. ]([http://www.umaine.edu/soe/faculty/lutz\_rev.htm](http://www.umaine.edu/soe/faculty/lutz_rev.htm)) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/114 "2011-05-18T08:50:29Z")
I think gonzo is talking about Frank Luntz, a Republican polling expert and political consultant, who advises people on the power of words to shape polls and narrative. In gonzo’s world, only Republicans try to shape narratives or use language designed to sell candidates and programs rather than being perfectly descriptive. Luntz will tell you that the two following questions will return very different poll results: 1. Do you favor tax increases on the wealthy? 2. Do you favor tax increases on job creators? If you can shape the language of the debate, you can change attitudes or skew poll results to your advantage. For example, you could call a “tax increase” something like “reducing spending in the tax code.” . ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/115 "2011-05-18T11:00:03Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think gonzo is talking about Frank Luntz, a Republican polling expert and political consultant, who advises people on the power of words to shape polls and narrative. In gonzo’s world, only Republicans try to shape narratives or use language designed to sell candidates and programs rather than being perfectly descriptive. > > Luntz will tell you that the two following questions will return very different poll results: > > 1. Do you favor tax increases on the wealthy? > 2. Do you favor tax increases on job creators?. Unfortunately, the rich are not creating very many jobs. Right now they are getting richer by killing jobs. * * * The New York Times Published: July 25, 2010 By most measures, Harley-Davidson has been having a rough ride. Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon. But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago… Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year — more than a fifth of its work force. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/economy/26earnings.html?pagewanted=1&\_r=1](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/economy/26earnings.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/116 "2011-05-18T11:01:47Z")
You know, I wasn’t really arguing that. I was just using the example of the previous post. Feel free to insert any other weasel-worded phrase. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/117 "2011-05-18T11:24:14Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Speaking as a person who actually spends time in factories, there isn’t even an ounce of truth to this. High elvels of technology and automation do not mean you can use unskilled button-pushers; it simply means you need technically savvy machine operators. > > I mean, seriously, you can’t have ever been in a modern First World manufacturing facility without knowing this. Just today I was in a structural steel fabricator that in the last three years has added plasma and drill beam lines, a laser profile cutter, a robotic welding cell, and a plasma table of the most advanced types. It sure as shit did not reduce the skill needed to use the machines - you have to be pretty well trained to operate these things. What it DID do was make the operators vastly more productive. Yes, I’ve spent plenty of time in factories. I didn’t say every single factory job is a button-pusher job. Certainly many jobs could not even be peformed without highly skilled operators running complex machines. But you can make those operators even more productive if you can reduce the complexity of operating those machines. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/118 "2011-05-18T11:32:26Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Yes, I’ve spent plenty of time in factories. I didn’t say every single factory job is a button-pusher job. Certainly many jobs could not even be peformed without highly skilled operators running complex machines. But you can make those operators even more productive if you can reduce the complexity of operating those machines. But that just shifts the productivity level higher and the educational requirements higher. I work in factory automation. I do exactly what you’re talking about - making machines easier to use and more efficient. The result of that may be fewer operators on the floor, but it then requires more people who can program automation and do high-level MES analysis. So you have fewer people pushing buttons, but more people sitting at desks trying to optimize routing algorithms or analyzing HMI displays to do predictive failure analysis, or whatever. This is why manufacturing in the U.S. has actually been increasing (pre-recession, that is), while the number of manufacturing jobs have not. As these jobs are eliminated, the increases in efficiency create new jobs, but those jobs are at an even higher value-added level with higher educational requirements. So you produce more stuff with fewer people, but those people are paid more. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/119 "2011-05-18T13:42:35Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Unfortunately, the rich are not creating very many jobs. Right now they are getting richer by killing jobs. That’s because “the rich” aren’t the ones that will create new jobs. The 1% referenced in the title of this thread represents the 1% of society that will come up with great products/services other people want to buy. And by doing do, they will create jobs and make themselves and others rich. The list of people that are “rich” right now represents that 1 in 100 from past generations. You also confused “share holders” with “rich people.” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976/120 "2011-05-19T00:00:40Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But that just shifts the productivity level higher and the educational requirements higher. Exactly. It’s like a trained backhoe operator can do the work of 100 untrained ditchdiggers with shovels. [According to this article, Silicon Valley companies](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/technology/18talent.html)are buying up companies just so they can bring on one or two high-level engineers and then they are scraping the rest. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interchangeable-carbon-blobs-only-1-generate-any-wealth/581976.md?page=7)