Labor Economics

9 to 5 if for suits.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

The thing with the exec suits is the wage per hour. If I worked twice the hours, I'd probably produce 50% more revenue (since additional hours are less useful than the first five or six). However, my additional revenue is probably in the millions of dollars. For an exec suit, if he worked zero hours (therefore earning infinite money per hour)... the corporation is unlikely to suffer much. More importantly, if he worked twice the hours, the revenue increase would likely be zero. So outside of the fact of him just simply existing, he basically almost doesn't affect revenue by number of hours worked beyond a very small amount (say like one or two hours a day and then anything beyond that is pointless). But salaries usually average at around 10 million for CE Os.

Oo, I wish you worked at my school. That would be awesome! My friends would be all, how do you know the janitor...?

I thought minimum wage was 7.25. Hm. Good attitude, either way.

I don't think communism is a good idea. Ever. Tried, failed, let's move on, bad idea is bad.

I am now known as Flyboy.

I'm not saying communism is a good idea. I'm saying that saying that consumer markets are completely ineffective at setting and maintaining proper price levels is in reality an argument for communism.

I don't agree that they're ineffective. I don't think that wage increases are automatically passed on to consumers. I think that if it was more profitable to raise prices they already would have been raised. I do fully agree that there's a theoretical point where input price increases HAVE to be passed on to consumers, but I disagree that this is the rule rather than the exception.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

It's an argument toward economic planning which by itself doesn't constitute communism. And I think Karmakin that you had the right of it when you said that if prices could go any higher, they already would have. That's mainly why I say that the pressure is always downwards. I guess you could find some strange case where it is not but generally that's how it works. A company wouldn't be selling at a price lower than he could charge for maximum revenue.

Technically there can be a situation where the total value add of a job falls under the total wage and as such a raise in the minimum wage gives that employer no choice but to raise prices.

But this seems to be really rare. (and probably even more rare now than before)

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Great. I go away to run an RP for a couple of hours and the thread explodes.

"Never underestimate the impact of scale-" Yeah, great Tom. that's completely ironic coming from you, considering how Economies of Scale is basically the reason why the country needs Socialized Healthcare, but that's an argument you're far too prone to just conveniently forgetting until the next time it comes up.

Scale does change how things work. I don't see any reason why it would change things in such a way that specifically works for your model, however.

Threadhop: Jesus christ Tom, thats a low freaking wage. How you do you survive? For comparison, my brother earned £978 for 155hours of working.my view of Major Tom has changed.

But but we were the worlds superpower and still the 5th largest economy in the world.

edited 31st Aug '11 11:17:46 PM by whaleofyournightmare

Dutch Lesbian

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#44350912 Bit of a discussion for why Corporate Taxes don't kill jobs, and Corporate Tax Breaks don't create them.

So, a real man lets a system weighted against giving him any negotiating power screw him over, and then he goes and tells everyone how ridiculous disparity in wealth are a good thing? That's your concept of manly pride? A small percentage of the population doing an ridiculously small fraction of the work yet owning a majority percentage of the wealth is a good thing?

I like you, Tom. Please stop making me use this reaction image.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Do you think I want to stay poor or in the end settle for some mediocrity wage as a middle class? I have greater aspirations than that. Better yet, if it takes me 30 years to achieve my dreams it will take me 30 years. So why advocate punishing something that I wish to strive for no matter how long it takes nor how much I have to work for it? My definition of success is not a 50,000 dollar a year managerial job, living month to month hoping my retirement fund doesn't dry up. I know I can do much better than that.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Tom, the entire point is that you're not going to be able to become rich in 30 years. Period. Barring, like, Green Rocks or something. Our system just doesn't work like that.

I'd enter into a blood pact with you on it too, but well, I don't know that I intend on living to 56 so it'd be a bit unfair.

Point is, people like me are trying to make it easier for people like you and I to break free from 50k as being a good salary. But you oppose any policy decision that actually moves towards that goal.

Your entire view of how the economy works-about your realistic economic possibilities and choices-is just kind of warped beyond belief, it's kind of sad.

edited 1st Sep '11 5:06:10 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Watch me.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Yeah, see, two things about that.

1.) What exactly do you bring to the labor market that the competititon does not? Same with the investment market, etc. Don't answer that, because we're not making this thread about you; it's a rhetorical question

2.) There's no foul for overestimating ones own abilities. So there's not a whole lot of correlation between people saying they're going to be big, and people actually being big.

Besides which, again-the entire notion about wanting to get rid of the disparity of wealth is precisely to make it easier for you to get that super special awesome wealth in the first place. Unless you intend on having 40 billion dollars and then running around inner urban cities giving everyone the finger while setting flame to hundred dollar bills, the kinds of measures that liberals support would move you towards-not away from-your goals.

But hey, believe what you want. There's no use trying to reason with a fanatic.

Tomu, I am going to have to disagree with you on your assetment on Tom. I think hes got a bad case of Borninthewrongcenturyness. I think he still believes there is such a thing as the American Dream.

However, theres enough evidence to suggest that a minimum wage is a good thing

Dutch Lesbian

The American Dream... I did a speech on that for English. "I associate sitcoms, Ben Folds, and Starbucks with America. Not freedom, pride or joy."

But that's off-topic. Actually, should we create one? "Is the American Dream dead?"

Anyway, a MW would work wonders. For one thing, as a % of the populace, not many work on MW. Increasing that affects only those at the bottom, and has no effect on the middle or higher. It works.

Now now, we can't say. Maybe Tom will make it big. Maybe he won't. The odds are against him, but it's not impossible.

That said...for one of him or whoever else that does make it big, there will be hundreds of others who put in as much work or more as the winner does, and doesn't make it. That's thousands of man-hours over the course of many years. They've always been there; they're called the working poor, and I'd wager that they outnumber the unemployed. So if one guy out of many "wins" the get rich game and enjoys the benefits of his labour, what happens to the fruits of the hard work of all the other guys who don't win? That's right, they go to the pockets of those who are already rich, and who likely didn't have to work nearly as hard to maintain that wealth.

So the odds are against you, there have to be lots of losers, and the guys running the games always make out well? If I wanted to play that shit, I'd go to Vegas. Screw that. I'm happy with 20k a year and a little apartment with Internet.

I'm not advocating punishing it. Like Tomu pointed out, I'm probably more likely enabling it. Sure, the numbers attached to your bank account may be smaller, but the population of people with disposable income to purchase your product or your service or make value for your clients will increase. You'll be richer because resources will have been invested in the things that make your wealth matter.

Why are you advocating punishing me because I want to fight for my free time and decent wages for decent working hours, and I want them for everyone as soon as possible?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

To be fair in a couple of years there's going to be a bit of resurgence to the US (and to a lesser degree global) economy, as the boomer generation retires off and opens up those jobs to younger workers.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Well, for one, you're not there yet. It being punished doesn't matter to you yet because you're not a part of it. Secondly, if punishing it now makes it easier to achieve in the future, it gives you a better chance at success, even if that success isn't quite as amazing. Third, just as a general philosophy, it's better to work on improving what you have than improving what you want.

That doesn't mean you should give up on ever being rich, being in the top 1%, but you shouldn't continue to handicap yourself from ever getting there by trying to protect it.

edited 1st Sep '11 3:48:07 PM by Wulf

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

Well the other problem here I find is that the top 1% is... by definition the top 1%, meaning that there has be a lot of people below them. So you're not so much punishing the top 1% position by advocating more laissez faire economic policies, but you are necessitating the existence of massive poverty and wealth divide.

And from a utilitarian standpoint, it's pretty easy to see that there are marginal gains to utility to one person having an extra billion dollars, compared to a thousand people having an extra million dollars, or ten-thousand people having an extra 100,000 dollars. When that money is in distribution and creating jobs, blah blah blah, that's less the case, but when it's just being invested-to create more money for the investor-it's not actually accomplishing anything.

Savings versus spending and whatnot.

Well it's more about why the fractional reserve banking system made Europe more powerful, rather than weaker (I mean with the obvious flaws of usury and such with it). The point was that more of the resources of Europe were put into action, instead of left idling as raw "just in case" wealth by the rich. Rich could chuck their money into the bank where some of it would be used to do something useful instead of previously where it had very little chance of being useful.

So when you have a lot of rich sitting on a lot of wealth (what was it again in USA, 2 trillion?), that money represents manpower and resources that are doing nothing.

2 trillion was the spending gap attributable to the recession.

edited 2nd Sep '11 12:32:59 PM by TheyCallMeTomu