What is the problem with CEO’s making piles of money? What if their salary doubled tomorrow. How does that negatively affect you? Who cares what CEO’s make??
I care a whole lot more about what I make, and I know I have more chance of making more if people around me are also making alot more.
Great! Please explain how they apply, in what ratios, and let’s have a look at some non-economic issues, too.
Generally, when citing, it’s incumbent on the citer to explain how their cite addresses the point they’re trying to make.
I wasn’t actually claiming that this was a problematic situation. It was just an example of another way that someone could get rich other than “sell something everyone wants”. Selling something that only some people want, but who will pay more, is another route.
You don’t see a problem with me being less able to afford goods and services? I mean, that seems like the simplest negative in the world to me; I can’t get what I want, or need. Is it just that you don’t care about my personal purchasing power?
Why not? It’s hard to completely corner the market on some product, but you can certainly narrow the field down enough to ensure everyone is playing to the same tune, even without collusion.
You can certainly do that! Unless you work in an industry which uses diamonds, in which case you’re now relying on substandard alternatives, resulting in a negative impact on your profitability and the efficiency of your business.
That’s just diamonds, though. What happens if we apply that through to something more vital? Although I suppose it’s certainly possible you could decide to not purchase food or utilities or a place to live.
Oh, the Heritage Foundation. The place run by the fucking insane, bigoted twat, Demint?
Who cares what they think? They’re a mindlessly ideological conservative circlejerk clinging to the failed policies that kicked a generation of the American middle class in the gonads.
Sorry to tell you but this shows a serious disconnect from reality. Basically no one is retiring 18 years after college. Unless they win the lottery.
Was actually thinking military - know several who enlisted after college at 22, retired in their early 40’s, now onto second careers with full pension.
Oh, so ITR was just posting a random link of no consequence? Good, I thought he was trying to defend Walker.
Ok…again I lean hard on the Index of Econ. Freedom here. If you don’t accept that data, then you won’t accept my argument here. but basically, I notice a general trend that those countries with higher amounts of economic freedom have a lot more prosperity.
are you somehow entitled to a status of being able to afford the goods and service you want? is that a basic right or is it something you have to get off your butt and earn? My own thot is that being able to afford stuff is something you must earn. It’s not something the govt should give you.
so are you of the opinion that the govt should provide everyone with free housing, food, and utilities?
so…you are of the opinion that all the data in the Index of Econ. Freedom is inaccurate?
Pretty positive you don’t get a full pension after 18 years. And if they feel the need to keep working, they ain’t retired.
There might be some factors that would persuade me to go ahead and spend the extra 50 cents (or 50p, in your case).
I’m of the opinion that the determinations made from the data is probably seen through the lens of partisan chuckle-fuck stupidity like how Demint and other idiots see everything.
But even accepting that, that’s correlation, not cause; how are you accounting for the idea that it isn’t the other way around - that prosperity results in more economic freedom. Or that the two are merely linked rather then causative, or significant contributors to cause. North Korea is way down there on that list, but I don’t think it would be reasonable to say that North Korea’s lack of prosperity can be put down to its economic freedom policies.
Nor does your cite seem to back up the point you’re making. GDP is an extremely loose way of measuring “prosperity”, but if we go with that since you pointed to it earlier, we can compare with how they rank on the Index you cite;
1 United States - 12th most economically free nation per your cite.
2 China - 139th
3 Japan - 20th
4 Germany - 16th
5 United Kingdom - 13th
6 France - 73rd
7 Brazil - 118th
8 Italy - 80th
9 India - 128th
10 Russia - 143rd
If GDP works as an expression of prosperity, and the Index is a good predictor of it, we should see some kind of curve here. But it’s all over the place. And that’s not especially surprising, since there are other big factors beyond those that your cite claims to measure which play a role in GDP.
The other big issue with your approach on this is that prosperity isn’t solely a determinator of what’s in my “best interests”.
I’m not talking about any kind of entitlement. I’m saying that me not being able to buy what I want or need is a negative. It is a bad thing for me. It isn’t in my best interests.
Speaking of earning, however; in the situation where you have raised your sandwich prices by $1 purely in the interests of gaining more profit, what is it that you have done to “get off your butt and earn” that dollar?
No, I’m not. I’m of the opinion that the free market is generally very good at making profit, but that that does not necessitate (and, in some cases, can even harm) prosperity in the median.
This is a good point too. We don’t all make our buying decisions based purely on what’s the least expensive option. Sometimes it’s even the opposite - luxury brands can get more sales by being up there with the most expensive options. And then of course there’s product quality, service, ease of purchase, history…
And that’s just the more rational side of things.
I can understand why professors like tenure and I agree that there are benefits from such a system. However, I’ve worked my ass off for more than 18 years and I can be fired at will with no more than 2 weeks notice. I just don’t see tenure as a sacred cow that needs to be preserved.
What are you calling a “full pension”?
No, you were trying to shift the burden of proof and it didn’t work.
Regards,
Shodan
Why is tenure considered to be such a good thing? When I was in college, I had two profs that should have been put out to pasture long before I got there. But they had tenure, so everyone in their classes got screwed over. The only way we learned enough to pass the tests was from the T. A.
That may not be a problem with tenure per se, but with an institution or department that doesn’t value undergraduate teaching and doesn’t weigh it very heavily in their decisions about hiring faculty, awarding tenure, assigning classes, etc.
I took “private institutions” to mean research conducted by non-government institutions, which was at least part of what he meant, judging from subsequent conversations. The other poster also seems profoundly misinformed about how universities are funded, particularly the distinction between capital and operating budgets and their research funding.
As for Bell Labs, yes, by golly, I’ve heard of them. You will note my comment in #23 that “… Only a very few of the largest and most forward-thinking companies do any research that doesn’t have a fairly specific product focus with the prospect of short-term ROI. The rest is all public funding.” Bell Labs was one of the ones I was thinking of in that regard. However, the commercial nature of Bell Labs has become an increasingly harsh reality. It now has a layered history of foreign ownership, first Alcatel-Lucent and most recently Nokia, and over the years it has been pulling out of basic science and even semiconductor research and redirecting its focus to the immediate business interests of its owners. You know, more or less exactly like I was just saying.
For example: Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research. It’s amazing that you didn’t know that.
Your post was about WI taxes paying for “rock star” “top researchers”, which has fuck all to do with an English lit prof with no funding who gets paid shit. And with only a few nuggets of that shit coming from state coffers.
There were big news stories about false rape accusations at UVA. What farce did my VA taxes pay for, and how much did it cost, and what does that have to do with tenure?