Check post #58, the post you’re responding to was supposed to be made by fessie.
I’m sure someone better equiped than I will give you a thorough responce later, but I want to comment on this part. Many people support the free market system because it does make everyone better off. Increasing the total amount of wealth generated makes the rich richer, but it also makes the middle class and the poor richer. Most people are better off than they would have been 30 or 50 years ago, as per my cite in my first post. I’m not going to argue that our system is perfect, it obviously isn’t, and it’s unlikely that any system will ever be perfect, but a system that uses free choice as it’s primary mechanism is the best we’ve ever come up with.
But I’m not proposing putting an end to the free market system. Just making it work better. You guys are going to have to get over the notion that anything other than maximizing the free market system for the advantage of the wealthy is tantamount to communism.
Speaking as a current MIT student, I can tell you from personal experience (and from that of my friends who have worked in the admissions office) that MIT’s admission policy is very much merit-based. No one is supposed to get in because their parents did, or because their family paid for the new library, or for any other reason other than their own demonstrated talent.
I can’t speak about other universities (people tell me this is definitely not the case with Harvard), but MIT is very proud of being a meritocracy.
Also, the students that MIT wants are not always the “straight-A valedictorian extra-curricular etc. etc.”-types.
Heck, my own nation of Canada has cobbled together a more-or-less working model with socialized medicine and whatnot, and it’s not (yet) a social crime to be rich, so I’m just wondering what the OP is yammering on about. Calling the rich “greedy” serves no purpose other than providing a handy justification for all the property seizures to follow.
Pretty much, or at least it’s an impasse. The alternative you seem to be offering is that if changing the system a little is good, then changing it a LOT must be fuckin’ GRRRRREAT! And that way lies, if not communism, something just as nasty and unpleasant. Frankly, your proposal regarding some ideallized middle class is flawed because the real-life situation is not as bad as you claim (“increasingly desperate”) nor will a “robust” (whatever that means) middle class work as efficiently as you describe. Numerous individuals within that class will be striving toward wealth (or ensuring their children have a better shot at it through education) so you can pretty much forget about some static middle class working to stabilize and ensure the nation’s overall wealth through some sense of civic duty.
Anyway, if you’re going to make arbitrary proposals like limiting CEO salaries to some multiple of median worker salaries, I’m just curious what you think a reasonable penalty would be for a corporation who extends to its officers benefits like stock options, use of company limousines/planes, subsidized penthouse apartments and other non-salary perks.
I shouldn’t have said “no choice”. Actually you have several - 1) choose to participate in our economy by getting a job or starting a business 2) do not participate in the economy and either become homeless or try to forage for yourself or 3) move and be a part of some other nations economy.
Why don’t you explain how we can make the system “work better”?
Why don’t you think about the watiers and cooks and maitre-d’s and suppliers and everone else involved in the dining process who gets a piece of that $250? Maybe you should have ordered a few more appetizers and put in a bigger tip so that your waiter can finance that fancy ski trip? Are you starting to get the idea?
You know what? Before I was staying in W hotels and eating $50 dinners every night on the client’s per diem, I sweated over pickles and french fries for minimum wage. You know what? THAT’S HOW MUCH I DESERVED TO BE PAID. I had no skills. No experience. My coworkers were high school dropouts. My managers were community college grads if they were lucky. Even if we did pay them $60,000 a year, no one would eat because meals would be 100x as expensive!
I can hear the whining self-entitlement in people’s posts - pay me more…give me more money…more benefits…more this…more…more…more. Why? Are you doing something special because you get up in the morning and drag yourself to work for 8-10 hours? If you think like a cog in a machine, you will get paid like a cog in a machine. You will only ever make what the market wage for your very repetitive, quantified, very replaceable labor will offer. Your income can only grow as fast as you grow and it will cap off at the limit you can produce. If you live a lifestyle of consumption and extravegance, you will continue living paycheck to paycheck, acumulating gadgets and junk instead of equity.
Working hard will not get you rich. You need to work hard to get rich, but a hamster in a wheel won’t get any furthur no matter how hard he runs. Is this a conspiracy by the rich? No (although wealthy people do conspire to keep wealth, and why shouldn’t they?). It is the results of a system that in general rewards innovation and ingenuity with wealth and punishes obsolesences and mediocrity.
Because everyone knows that small companies are better than large ones.
And I should point out that a degree is not necessarily a ticket to wealth.
It’s really a poor/middle class mentality that going to college, graduate, get a good job with a good company is the secret to success. It helps, but the secret is to build equity and ownership - start a business. Failing that, work for a business where you can get a piece of ownership in the company after enough years of service - finance, law or consulting usually. Then other people make money for you. People get rich by putting together deals that make other people money and then get a piece of that money.
It’s been fascinating to read these posts because, well, money’s an interesting topic anyway, and the range of views is impressive - the different ways that people frame money is intriguing, some of these perspectives are quite foreign to me. I wish I had time to respond in greater detail - although I’m not sure your posts merit reply, xtisme; whatever happened to “no flaming”?
My perspective as an artist (which is what I was before these twins made me a SAHM) is so different from you business people. Imagine being trained to make the best possible work your talent permits, and then finding the marketplace driven by entirely different factors. The urge to create, and the drive to make wealth - totally different experiences.
Honestly, though, I wasn’t motivated by a “pay me more” mentality (I won’t bore you w/my whole history as a wage earner; you’ll just have to trust me). It’s more a - “Yes, I see that you’ve got a lot of money. So what. I’m not impressed.” How one earns money and how one spends it are much more meaningful than the mere possession and display of wealth. At least they should be, in my little fantasy world.
As to why QtM’s fictional receptionist ought to be making a good living, since he’s doing so well - duh! So sharing’s no longer a virtue? Let’s assume she’s a really good receptionist, one who adds value to his practice by the way she performs her job. Is she not therefore entitled to a share of the value she’s created? Argue the inverse, that he should pay her as cheaply as possible - what does he really gain? A resentful employee, one who’s distracted by financial woes, whose children aren’t well provided for. Is that really worth him having one more boat? Remember all those lovely parables - but for her grandson’s efforts as a researcher (education paid for by grandma’s estate), his granddaughter suffers a horrible diseased death, yadda yadda.
Well first of all, lets move away from a few misconceptions.
Filing a few papers and taking a few phone calls is not “building the company”. Anyone with mastery of the english language and a telephone can do that. I’ve heard too many receptionists and admins who think they’re Erin Brockovich because they have their own little filing system only.
Sharing is not a virtue in business. Business is the exchange of goods and services. If the reception truly is that valuable, a wise businessman will pay her what she’s worth or she should be able to get a job somewhere else.
Many large public companies DO in fact offer profit sharing to all employees in the form of ESPP plans, stock options and 401ks. Many Microsoft (and other) employees became extremely rich because of this.
[QUOT=fessie]It’s been fascinating to read these posts because, well, money’s an interesting topic anyway, and the range of views is impressive - the different ways that people frame money is intriguing, some of these perspectives are quite foreign to me. I wish I had time to respond in greater detail - although I’m not sure your posts merit reply, xtisme; whatever happened to “no flaming”?
[/QUOTE]
Don’t reply then. Though if you consider what I wrote to be flames you haven’t been in GD long. My suggestion is to report me to a mod if you really think I’ve flamed you…its your right.
So, you work as hard as you can, make the best possible work your talent permits…and people still don’t like what you do, or its not commercially marketable. I think your perception of how business and the market function are fairly skewed if you don’t think that business people are driven by more than the urge to ‘make wealth’, or that most of the Super Wealthy as you put it have their roots in a deep seated urge to create, to use their best talents.
What was your motivation then? If you aren’t impressed by someone else’s wealth, then good for you. You shouldn’t be. Certainly I’m not impressed with Bill Gates billions. I AM however impressed with his acheivement though…the creation of MicroSoft into a fortune 500 company basically from scratch all by the force of his own creative genius, his work, his will. THATS an impressive acheivement IMHO. He has created a huge amount of wealth in this country…a great acheivement in itself.
His fictional receptionist OUGHT to be making exactly what s/he is worth to the company employing him/her…not a penny more. If she (going to assume its a woman just for the sake of avoiding this s/he business) is an exceptional receptionist and her company refuses to pay her more, then she is free to take her services elsewhere to some other company that will pay her what she feels she is worth. Sharing has absolutely nothing to do with it. Its a mutual contract…what the receptionist feels her labor is worth, and what the value of said labor to the company.
You see, there is another side to this equation…what the labor of this receptionist is worth to the busniess. If this persons labor is only worth X amount to the company reguardless of how exceptional the receptionists services are, then X is what they can pay. A company is in business for one reason…to make money. If they don’t make money then they don’t stay in business very long.
Seems to me you’ve got a tautology going here. People are paid what they are worth by their company. And what they are worth is what they are paid. So no one can ever be under or overpaid, because what they are paid is what they are worth.
Also, every bit of my many years in the real-world labor market scoffs at your notion that businesses pay people what they are worth. They pay whatever they can get away with. I’ve known of SEVERAL women who worked for important people in companies, people who were, basically, goofs. They did the goofs’ job for him while he goofed off. These women (it’s always women, somehow) did NOT have the option of leaving their job and getting paid what they were worth (essentially, what the goof was getting paid) because their job title was generally “executive assistant to …” or something like that. They could only get a fraction of their worth.
I also know of employers in my area who hire illegal immigrants and pay them sub-minimum wages … because they CAN, not because that’s what the job is worth. If they could get away with paying people with a bucket of slops and a dollar, they’d do that. But that wouldn’t mean the people who were accepting such wages were worth so little … just that when you race to the bottom, you eventually get there.
Your assumptions about economics come from some kind of ivory-tower fairy-tale world where employers are stern but fair. Mostly, they’re just greedy, just like the OP says.
Well, you know what - ever notice how people complain about “lousy service”, how you can’t hire a decent contractor (there was a whole nightmare roofing thread on this), or get your order filled at the drive-thru? I think it’s because of attitudes like those.
If you don’t think that a good receptionist makes a difference in how a business is run, then you’re not paying attention. Keep that in mind next time you’re tempted to rant about the idiots you run into during a typical day. “Taking her services elsewhere” is pointless when “everyone” agrees that someone who answers phones for a living doesn’t deserve to earn a plug nickel. And you know, I’ve found it terribly amusing how often I’ve seen references (in various and sundry threads) to “well, why should I pay a professional for X service, when I could just have my secretary do that.” There’s something seriously wrong with this logic - on the one hand, anyone could do her job; on the other, she can do anyone else’s work.
Business ought to be about far more than simply making money. If it were really that simple, then the Chambers of Commerce would be run by drug dealers (who knows, perhaps they are).
If this is going to become about me, then I will bore you with a few snippets of my employment history (babycare permitting).
Wanna hear about the summer I spent doing my boss’s job (for about 10% of her salary) because she was busy planning her wedding?
Or the two goofballs for whom I worked briefly (thankfully!) who didn’t understand that their cost of goods sold exceeded their sales price, and that was why they were in fact losing money even though their cash flow was increasing b/c I’d decided to pursue month’s worth of Accounts Receivable that was just sitting there?
Oh, and those moron ladies with their hoity lunch – is does so happen that that company did go bankrupt. So my observations about their wastefulness were borne out.
As a self-employed artist, which is what I’ll be returning to, I finally figured out how to balance my talents with market pressures. What I accomplish extends well beyond making money, although having dough in hand is truly sweet.
What I don’t get is why people here are so hostile to my notion that employers have a responsibility towards their employees. Of course, their first responsibility is to themselves, their families, their business – but I maintain they also owe a moral debt to their employees. What’s so strange about that? And why are you so unwilling to give credit to underlings for adding value to the company - does it have to be just about you?
Well, you’d be right…except you ignored the whole ‘if I don’t think I’m being paided enough I’ll take my services elsewhere’ part. Interesting that you forgot that part. See, its not a slavery issue…or a workers board who decides exactly how much labor is worth. Its a mutually agreed upon price. If there is no agreement then you don’t HAVE to work there…you can go work somewhere else. Why this concept is so difficult to grasp is beyond me.
They pay whatever they can get away with…true enough. However, they also have needs. And the market sets the price on labor. So, if I NEED a good engineer say, then I have to pay the price to get one, whatever that price is. If I offer too little either I’ll get a poor engineer or no engineer at all.
As to your anacedotes, I’ve heard it all before and can counter them with ones of my own. As to your assertion that didn’t have the option to leave their jobs…its ridiculous. In this country you ALWAYS have the option to leave. Now, leaving might mean you are unemployed…but you always have the option. If they have the skills though they can always go somewhere else and get a comparable job. My wife is an ‘executive assistant to…’ and when we moved from Maryland back to New Mexico she didn’t have too much trouble finding a new job. Of course, she doesn’t make the same thing she made in DC working for a high powered law firm…but then the salary scales are lower here. However, she NEVER had trouble finding work in DC making more than her previous job. I see your anecdote and raise you 5.
I own my own company and I’ll tell you…this is how it works for me. Receptionists are pretty much a dime a dozen. Its unfortunate but true…the market, even here in New Mexico, is flooded with receptionists. Therefore they aren’t going to command a great salary even if they are exceptional. In fact, exceptional receptionists won’t stay receptionists long…they will move up to better paying positions. Good IT engineers though are hard to find…so they command a much better salary. Good Project Managers are also very hard to find…and again, they command better salaries. And good CEO’s are nearly impossible to find…I know, I’ve been looking for one for over a year to take over as CEO of my company to free me to do other things.
This suggests your understanding of accounting was better than theirs.
So?
Good - congratulations!
Because they don’t. Treating your employees well is not a moral imperative.
Now, I would argue it’s a business imperative. Employees who feel like they’re part of the family are much more productive and much less of a retention issue than employees who feel alienated. Recruiting and retraining cost money. So as a general proposition, it’s a foolish manager that does not compensate employees fairly.
But the employee doesn’t have as much to do with the success of the business as the owner. The owner’s money is in it. The employee can quit and walk away at any time. The owner has equity in the business.
And the simple fact is that there are many people that can do a kick-ass job as receptionist. There are fewer people that can do a kick-ass job at proposal development. That are fewer people that can do a kick-ass job at marketing to federal agencies. There are fewer still that can handle overall responsibility for day-to-day operations of a large company.
For this reason, the receptionist gets paid less.
Now, if you choose to pay your receptionist less than the going rate for receptionists, she’ll leave for a better job, and you’ll have to recruit and retrain a new one. That’s foolish. But that doesn’t translate into a “moral debt.”
The irony of this statement is killing me. MY assumptions come from the real world, not some screwed up ivory-tower fairy-tale-world of psudo-marxist mismash that your’s seem to come from.
Its obvious from this statement “Your assumptions about economics come from some kind of ivory-tower fairy-tale world where employers are stern but fair” that you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about if you think this represents, in any way, my ‘assumptions about economics’.
Treating EVERYONE well is a moral imperative. Paying more than the market rate is not a moral imperative. In this thread, “treating well” seemed to suggest that employees were owed salaries above and beyond the market rate. That is not a moral imperative.
But what do you really gain when the “going rate” is insufficient to raise a family? How does increasing your own (presumably existent) wealth trump your obligation to society?
I’ll never argue that all positions are of equal value, that’s stupid. But when the working classes can’t make a go of it, we all pay elsewhere. Welfare, crime, hospital bills that have to be picked up the government - duh! No doubt there will always be poor people - but do there have to be so many? And do they have to be so poor? The Wal*Mart economy is not a pretty thing. Saying the lower classes “deserve it” overlooks the fact that it’s their willingness to work for pennies that permits the wealthy to keep the remainder. And our society’s worship of wealth keeps this machine going, which is why I posed my original question - why do people put up with it? If people who were only making $5/hour actually gave $5/hour value, instead of performing their jobs exceptionally because that’s their value system, it would stop this economy cold. That’s not to say they’re all noble, I know they’re not, but I’ve run into many, many of them who are.
Bricker, why bother asking for anecdotal information if you’re just going to blow it off? If you were being rhetorical, you could’ve just saved some bandwidth by making your points yourself.
Again, if you as a company are offering too little you aren’t going to get any employees. Its up to you, as a worker, to decide if whats being offered is enough or too little…and decide whether or not to take the employment. if the going rate for what you do is insufficient to raise a family then you have some hard choices to make. Perhaps you shouldn’t have a family. Perhaps you should change lines of work. Perhaps you will need government assistance even if working. Perhaps you need to move to a less costly area. The choice is yours as a worker…work for the offered wage, look elsewhere, change lines of work.
Business’s have no ‘obligation to society’ save what they owe ‘society’ in taxes. They are in business to make money, not to build a utopian society.