This would be valid except for one thing. To misquote Don Rumsfeld, We are stuck with the voters and politicians we have, not the ones we wished we had.
By and large, the progressives who want UHC, want taxpayer-funding for it. This is simply not possible with the voters and politicians we are presently stuck with.
If you were a progressive thinker, Mr. Adaher, I would sympathize with your view here. IIRC, you are not, and your comment resembles only confused snark.
Lest my criticism be unclear, let me ask you how you would vote on the decision “whether everyone should have health care.” If you vote yes, what program do you support? If you vote no, why do you have the right to use that argument to disparage the only solution politically possible?
Why?
[/quote]
Self interest.
It’s amusing how it’s perfectly fine to be completely, psychopathically self interested if you run a company, but the workers are supposed to be all selflessly loyal to the company, and customers are supposed to buy garbage made by slave labor, and do it with a smile. Everyone else is supposed to deny their own self interest so the wealthy can indulge theirs without limit.
Nonsense. Their standard practice has always been to drive all the local stores out of business. People who hate Walmart still work there because they have no choice.
In America? They don’t. Americans are too gutless and passive to do anything to retaliate against them, and Walmart certainly isn’t going to feel anything like a moral obligation to do anything except exploit everyone it can as ruthlessly as it can get away with.
No; the most important part of the market is to make the rich, richer. That’s what it’s for.
That’s only half true. The public supports UHC; the politicians don’t. And the politicians are willing to defy the public and risk losing their jobs rather than give the public what they want on this issue.
It’s not snark to expect that if liberals want things, then liberals should pay for them.
Since Wal-mart won’t be covering their part timers, that means Medicaid, our single payer insurance program for the poor, will. Since liberals prefer single payer, this is a good thing, no?
Wow!! :smack: :dubious:
I think we’d need to go to the Pit to discuss this “insight.” Here’s a hint though: Should only the war-mongering idiots have had to pay for Bush’s Wars?
I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that when the public wants to demonstrate generosity by bequeathing benefits on people, the public should pay for it.
“The public”, whomever that is, increasingly wants a return to 1950’s Republican values, wherein CEO’s live in the nicer end of the same neighborhood as their employees and make 2000% of their wages, not 204000% http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio_n_3184623.html
So yes, we want Walmart to pay for healthcare for their employers, since we can’t have our single payer universal health care yet. We want Walmart to pay for a living wage for their employees on all levels, too. And it feels supremely disingenuous to say that higher prices or fewer hours (for the cashiers and stockers, not the CEO and administration?) are the only workable options when for the golden years of our country a more equitable pay scale (which amply rewarded both workers *and *administration) worked very very well and created a strong middle class economy.
CEO pay isn’t what you think it is. You cannot just take away CEO pay and suddenly everyone has health care. Not even close. At most, you’d give everyone a hundred per year extra.
This is part and parcel of the fantasy that we could pay for everything just by taxing the rich.
Of course companies are out to maximize profits. In the three-way pull between profit, prices and social responsibility, the most successful companies will be those that maximize profits, increase prices as much as they can without harming profits, and basically ignore social aspects.
But that’s why market regulation exists. Otherwise organizations would still employ children, dump lead into the water supply, engage in price-fixing etc.
So for me, the annoyance when a company gives its employees the shaft is directed either at the government for allowing such things to happen, or the company itself if they’ve knowingly bent the rules.
(I should add though that the specific wal-mart case which was mentioned I may not put under this bracket. From just scanning the issue, I’m not sure they’ve acted in bad faith, or that the government should legislate for such things).
It’s interesting to watch people prove my point.
adaher - Doesn’t see anything inheretly unfair about a system where the WalMart CEO makes more than 1000 average employees.
John Mace - Thinks it’s “stupid” to pass on regulation costs to businesses and consumers. Who should those costs be passed onto? Should they be socialized throughout the entire country?
XT - Seems to think that as long as there are lines of desperate people willing to take any job, the “market” allows them to treat their employees however they want.
For all of you who complain about “loss of profits” and costs incurred through implementing regulations,how much extra would you be willing to pay to not work in a building that might collapse at any minute?
The “damaging corporate behavior” is that companies like Walmart are essentially an arbitrage between American labor markets and foreign labor markets where wages, working conditions and safety standards are far below anything Americans would accept for themselves. We enjoy the benefits of those products, but some other country incurs much of the costs.
I think there is a typo in there somewhere, but I don’t understand what you’re saying. I read it three times, and I don’t recognize anything I’ve said in this thread.
I think that if we, the people, place more regulations on businesses, that we should expect the added costs to be reflected in increased prices. And just to be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pass regulations if we think they are needed. Some should, and since this is a democracy above all else, we get to decide that. I just don’t understand the bitching about increased prices (or reduction in wage hours) when you’ve forced a company to increase its cost structure.
Mijn: Pretty much agree with your post.
Well that’s good 
but I do want to add that I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that prices will increase.
In any industry you’ll have some companies treating employees better than others. Set a red line for extreme bad behaviour and probably some companies are already on the right side of it.
So, you legislate against certain business practices, and of course EvilCorp will claim that that will mean an increase to prices.
But in reality, if they do that, they’ll lose market share to GoodCorp, which could be disastrous. So they have no choice but to take the hit out of their own profits, at least until they can treat their employees better and still be competitive, like GoodCorp.
We’re not talking about what the purpose of Walmart is, we’re talking about damaging corporate behavior and the leeway given to them by conservatives.
You realize the city of Long Beach is part of the government, right? What, only federal government damage counts? So if your city passed a law saying “Adaher must be punched by everyone who sees him”, its fine?
A good company should be able to be profitable without driving its workers into the poor house.
And again, your second paragraph completely misses the point that they can simply earn less. It really doesn’t occur to you, does it? Let me ask you this: what makes Walmart or any company’s current percentage of profit, whatever that is, the absolute minimum that is tolerated? If their profit margins go up, then they must cheat and kill to maintain it? Fuck them if they think that. If something, like stopping pollution, not using slavery to make your products in other countries, or outsourcing cuts into your profits, then let them cut into it. No company should ever expect that their profit stay at least as high as they currently are. If their profits drop due to, I dunno, taking care of their god damn workers, or not using child labor, then good! Maybe they shouldn’t have been making that much profit in the first place
Its like if I kidnapped a bunch of people and forced them into slavery in my donut factory. Sure, hiring actual people and paying them would cut into my profits, but so what? At least I’m not using slaves anymore. Nothing guarantees, nor do I have a right , to keep my profits at slave labor levels. Walmart and every big company should pay for its employees health insurance. They should not cut hours or raise prices to compensate for their. Paying for health care is normal. Whatever profit margins those are, its how much they should be
I think at least large, profitable businesses like Walmart should have more regulations and should not increase prices or screw their workers. They aren’t entitled to that extra revenue based on no health care after all
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Self interest.
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Who’s self interest? Yours? Mine? John’s? My youngest son who works at WalMart?
Dude, is straw on sale? I never said, nor have I ever thought that workers should be selfless. Workers should do what’s in their best interest. If it’s not in a workers best interest to work at Walmart then tey shouldn’t, and they should take their labor elsewhere.
It IS amusing that you would create such a ridiculous strawman, and your use of ‘psychopathically’ is classic DT hyperbolic horseshit at it’s finest.
Maybe in strawville, but where I live there are plenty of other opportunities for people to work in retail, WalMart hasn’t by any means driven all the other local stores out of business…in fact, the local WalMart has attracted local stores that were never here before, bringing in MORE jobs…and while I’m sure many people hate working at WalMart, they would probably hate working at ANY retail or food services type minimum wage store. In most cases they do have choices, yet here there is a huge waiting list to get a job in the store, and people aren’t exactly crushed in miserable poverty and living on the streets in some sort of liberal dystopian fantasy.
If you lash out at religion and call them evil and such you could hit all your high points. Come on, say something nasty about theists, just to make sure you cover all the bases. 
[QUOTE=msmith537]
XT - Seems to think that as long as there are lines of desperate people willing to take any job, the “market” allows them to treat their employees however they want.
[/QUOTE]
Sadly, and after literally years and countless debates on this subject, you actually don’t seem to have any idea what I think and are ridiculously far off of the mark. It’s more like the strawman comic version of what I think that only bears resemblance to my views in that you put XT in there.
Plus, like DT you seem to thrive on the liberal dystopian fantasy of long lines of desperate people who are forced, practically at gun point, to work for WalMart in towns that have no other work…perhaps in a hazy, Mad Max-esque landscape where death carts are taking around calling ‘bring out your dead’.
Sure, but it should not be surprising if something does change. In the case at hand, the government (that is, us) put a new cost on some businesses that hire full time workers. They can avoid that cost by hiring more part-time workers. Is it really surprising that some companies are going to shift their ratio of full time: part time workers in response?
Yes, but the economy is always in a state of dynamic equilibrium, and when you shift the parameters that affect that equilibrium, you should not be surprised when companies respond, sometimes by raising prices, sometimes by cutting hours, sometimes by automating, etc, etc, etc. I was being a bit sloppy by focusing only on prices rises, but think of that as a proxy for any number of things a company might do to maintain or increase market share in a competitive environment.
For example, a restaurant my respond to an increase in regulatory costs by cutting portion sizes. The salmon now is a 7 oz piece instead of 8 oz (this is from an interview I heard on the radio recently with some restaurant owner who was talking about what they were planning).
I don’t think that’s a very good economic model-- that there is always a GoodCorp out there to balance every EvilCorp.
Because the Right historically treats people as commodities, to be exploited alongside any other natural resource. It doesn’t matter that society is made up of people, and that an exploited populace is unstable and dysfunctional. To the Right, American is all about Freedum. If you are exploited, you have the Freedum to go to some other job and not be exploited. So quit yer complaining and bring me my food, wench.
Except…Wal-Mart doesn’t operate in a vacuum. If Wal-Mart circumvents the law to maintain their low-low prices, then it would be bad business for its competitors to do otherwise. Which would render the regulation pointless. The problems it attempted to address will remain and worsen. That’s why people should care. We elected for this legislation through the folks we put in office. Corporations who subvert the laws and the will of the people for their own benefit are no different than greedy individuals who do the same thing.
As for why the public doesn’t find this outrageous, conscientious consumerism has never been our strongest suit. At the end of the day, despite all the talk about our precious values and empathy for the world, we only really care about price tag and whether it makes us feel good. As long as a corporation can ensure a steady stream of cheap pleasure, they can do whatever the hell they want and we will defend their right to do so.
In a market economy, company owners set prices in response to what the market will bear. If you don’t like the product, you are free not to buy it. You (or I) don’t get to set prices that companies charge. We have set lots of minimum standards, but if you stipulate that every time we tighten those standards, that companies are not allowed to shift any of the cost back onto us, then you’ve set up a recipe for putting every company out of business. Regulations cost money-- if they were free, we could have infinite regulation at no cost.
Are you proposing that, as part of Obamacare, that piece of legislation should have required no company to rise prices, cut work hours, or change their hiring practices? If not, what, specifically, are you proposing? Go ahead an lead a boycott if it really bothers you.
But this is exactly the way a regulated, market economy works. If that really bothers you, then you should propose a different economic system.
I wasn’t saying always.
I said: “Set a red line for extreme bad behaviour and probably some companies are already on the right side of it”.
But just because Company A has figured out how to stay profited on the “right side” doesn’t mean Company B is going to be able to. And if Company B goes out of business, then it’s employees are really screwed.
Now, that’s an extreme example, but let’s say that Company B’s way of competing with Company A in the new environment is to hire more part-time instead of full-time workers. Is that evil?