Ah, NAFTA, the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you, Slick Willie! You did a good job agreeing to that. And then you outdid yourself with your massive bank deregulation via the financial services modernization act! Best president ever!
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Serious Income Inequality
- Thread starter BenTheDemon
- Start date
This makes no sense. Outsourcing removes LOW-end manufacturing jobs, not mid-end. It's not like chinese or mexican workers are being paid close to american minimum wage. Had cheap jobs NOT left america, then the income inequality would be worse with more low-paid workers...
Outsourcing is good for an economy really... It also lowers costs of goods to make them more accessible to lower paid workers, stimulating the economy.
Honestly one of the factors that I think is the cause of the inequality being larger in the U.S. is the state of education. I think we can all agree that the the schooling system in america is one of the worst of any developed nation (if you don't think so, oh well). Right off the bat the kid who has enough money to go to a privite school has such an astronomical lead over the kid who goes to a school where the teachers read magazines and do nothing. Can the second kid work hard to educate himself? Yes, but it takes a lot more effort than the first kid who basicly has knowledge thrusted upon him. I truly believe that while improving education isn't an insta fix to the wage gap it is definately responsible for a part of it.
Banks were already basically deregulated without the FSMA because Glass-Stegall hadn't been effective (largely due to court challenges) since the 1960s, and if you think NAFTA trading partners are the main countries used for outsourcing from the US you're just plain wrong.
I'll give you that one point on NAFTA, largely because the jobs that were moved to China and India (among other countries) happened outside of NAFTA's scope, but the trade deficit it created forced us to import a lot more from other countries, which, in turn killed over 600,000 jobs (415,000 of which were high-paying manufacturing jobs). I also question you on the former point. Are you saying that commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies were merging into singular entities as early as the 1960's? Because that was the major point of FSMA (aka: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), to remove the Glass-Steagal barriers which prevented them from doing that. Were they doing it all along, and just happened to sign it into the law after the fact?
So... hemorrhaging jobs is GOOD for the economy? You'll have to explain that one to me. Sure, it's probably good for the top brass of major American companies, but then the rest of us suffer. It's all the more back-asswards when you consider that rather than putting caps on the most obscenely-skewed CEO-to-worker pay ratio in the world, we just cut loose a ton of low-paying jobs just to make ourselves look better. From a predatory capitalist standpoint I suppose it make sense, but not from any other. Cheaper goods? At what cost? Oh, I guess as long as we pass those costs on to someone else, it's okay then. Doesn't matter how they're being treated. Out of sight, out of mind.
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+outsourcing+is+good
This is economics 101 here. I could talk about trade specialization and mutual benefits from countries that outsource/are outsourced to, but you've probably already made up your mind and it wouldn't have a point.
If you read my earlier post in this thread, you find I don't agree with the gap between CEOs and workers. There is not one reason WHY this has occurred; you can't just say IT WAS OUTSOURCING! IF WE MAKE JOBS AMERICAN, WE'LL BE GOOD! If people are aware that CEOs make such massive amounts of money, and continue to buy such products, then there's nothing to be done. Products will be bought for expensive prices so long as they can be sold at high prices. At some point, if demand for products falls, people make pay cuts SOMEWHERE. We have a minimum wage (which some, including myself, think should be raised) that manufacturers can't pass. Cost-cutting has to come from somewhere. If enough pressure is put on CEOs, they will crack, but until then, it's still going.
It costs McDonald's somewhere around 13 cents for a drink and starbucks possibly twice that. We're talking about profits in the hundreds, even thousands of percents for some products, and people are willingly buying it. This should change. Stop spending $100 a month on TV and $50 on a phone, and we just might see some change...
Well, at least I can't fault you for being presumptuous.
Never did.
Where are you getting that I said you did? I was just using the concept to frame my argument about the inconsistency of your position on outsourcing, and how moving the spectrum by cutting off the lower wage jobs was antithetical to a healthy economy/society, especially when there are bigger fish to fry?
True. Maybe the CEO's should take a lesson from Japan and start by taking pay cuts themselves before hosing their workforce, thus creating unnecessary communication and security hurdles and spreading our model of mindless, unsustainable consumerism to the rest of the world. Or maybe they could start by dipping into the hoards of Bush tax break money they've been sitting on since 2001. Of course, this is assuming that these cost-cutting measures are legitimate efforts to make ends meet, and not merely a greed-motivated effort to sidestep taxes, regulations, and general liability for their own enrichment (because fuck those people in Bangladesh, it's not our problem anymore).
So... decrease demand on products to encourage even more outsourcing to cover the costs?
I would sincerely wish that anyone toying with the idea is giving it a lot of serious thought, but given that it's a corporation's sole responsibility to maximize profit, I certainly wouldn't hold my breath. Outsourcing jobs translates to a removal of opportunity. Sure, if you're legitimately hurting that badly, then by all means, explore the possibility, but through it all keep this question in mind: How are these poor sods you're laying off going to afford the lowered prices on your products if they don't even have jobs?
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I don't like that the american wage gap is so ridiculous. But I'll call out pseudo-economics when I see it, and I saw somebody in my earlier post that blames this entire thing on outsourcing, which doesn't make sense.
Taxing the rich also doesn't "tax the rich". Taxes get imposed on whatever party is less able to change their economic spending. If you "tax the rich", and the rich can raise prices on goods with no downfall, then goods prices are raised and they don't pay any more than they did before.
No, decrease demand on products to show that people aren't willing to blindly throw away their money that's going straight to the pockets of executives at thousands of percent profit. There's room in the system for both consumer and producer benefit, and people are showing how much they're willing to pay is greater than what they should be paying.
Really, I say this is economics 101 because it is. I took an economics class for my major and sure can't call myself an expert, but I'm just trying to set things that other people have gotten wrong straight. Economics is really interesting and should be studied before looking at a situation politically.
"The middle class of a country is what makes that country."
I'm not sure where I read this quote but personally I think it's true. It's the middle class that works in all the factories and powers the countries economy forward.
It's not the rich people. It's the middle class. Having such a small middle class is terrible for a country and will have bad results.
I'm not sure where I read this quote but personally I think it's true. It's the middle class that works in all the factories and powers the countries economy forward.
It's not the rich people. It's the middle class. Having such a small middle class is terrible for a country and will have bad results.
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An unfortunate reality, but I don't believe I ever mentioned "taxing the rich" either. Although to that point there are other ways you can discourage greed-motivated outsourcing, like tax incentives for people who keep jobs here, just to name one. In the meantime, would you care to address the points I actually made in the segment that you quoted?
Truth be told, I don't know how this turned from a discussion on wealth inequality to the price of goods, though I suppose the two are related. Perhaps if wages weren't so low in the first place we'd have no problem paying higher prices for them, especially knowing they were made well and that they went through the path of least possible cruelty and exploitation. Still there is something to be said about curbing our mindless consumerism. There are only so many resources in the world to waste on the production of worthless trinkets, and there's only so many times that plastic can be recycled until it becomes unusable, toxic slag. I just can't shake the notion that turning this discussion into the price of goods is like tidying up a house that's in the path of a tsunami.
That's all well and good, but you still have yet to convince me how excising an entire class of job opportunities is good for our economy. To that point, might I add that big business loves unemployment. The cost of labor falls because suddenly you have hundreds if not thousands of people now ravenously clawing for the same low-wage, zero-benefits job. Lower paying jobs means more people going into debt, which means more money being paid out as interest to financial institutions. It works for business, but not for the rest of us.
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I gleaned it from your bit about "bush tax breaks"
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+outsourcing+is+good
Removal of low-paying jobs is GOOD for an economy. It encourages people to get educated, well-paying jobs. Outsourcing is not the removal of an entire CLASS though--we still manufacture things that it is cheapter to manufacture here, such as aircraft, cars, and other industrial equipment. These jobs still exist. Outsourcing jobs that are more expensive to do in america is good because it promotes economic efficiency, which is good for the world
Then you gleaned something that wasn't there. I was referring to a sum of money, not advocating for a change in policy.
The more times you do this, the more times you come across as a condescending prick. If you can't tell me yourself, then don't even bother pushing search results on me. I humored you once and read some of those articles (largely from right wing shill sources like Wall Street Journal) and I'm not buying it. Get a clue.
My god, is anything other than what you quoted even sinking in or resonating with you? Or are you just deliberately ignoring anything I'm bringing up that's inconvenient for you? Yes, because nothing can ever go wrong with outsourcing, and everyone who does it always has the best intentions in mind, except for the buttload of people they just left without work, and the Chinese factory employees who are treated like slaves.
Ugh. I'm done.
I would like to know at one point my family members, many of whom are small business owners (and which I will become at some point), go from being useful and productive middle class folks (gag me on class-ism- we have enough class warFAIRIES around the world) to evil and incompetent executives hoarding the money experienced whiners, in their industry-relevant infinite wisdom, assure us is all there waiting to be distributed.
That aside, here's a quick Q&A.
What is the difference between wealth and income?
This is actually a very important question. In fact, it is the most important. Income is what you earn from your labors measured on what is usually an annualized basis. Wealth is the sum total of all of your assets minus your liabilities. People with high incomes can have low wealth (Bill Gates in the first few years of Microsoft comparing income relative to wealth), and people with high wealth can have low incomes (Bill Gates today comparing income relative to wealth).
The ability of income relative to wealth to change over time is called "mobility."
When people say they want to punish the rich by addressing income inequality, they are attacking the wrong thing. They are attacking productive labor, not accumulated assets. Incidentally, I don't support attacking either. My preference is for consumption taxes plus a very small minimum baseline to pay for legitimate public goods and necessary legal infrastructure to enforce contracts.
Why is there income inequality?
Because some jobs require more skills than others, and employers are willing to pay more for employees with those skills.
Why do executives make many times more than greeters or stock clerks?
Because greeters and stock clerks can always be replaced by pulling people off the street and executives usually cannot. Managing 20+ people and all of the overhead it takes for them to perform their jobs is a skill demanding much more than what the average person on the street possesses. For example, if you did not understand that last sentence you are not qualified to be an executive. If executives fail, the business fails, and *everyone* loses their shirt. If the skillset of a competent executive is 300 times rarer than the skillset of the entry level worker, the Board of Directors are likely to pay that executive that amount.
What are "market forces"?
This is the hardest concept for most people to grasp, because it usually sounds like a kind of voodoo or faith-based assumption. Market forces can basically be drilled down to enlightened self-interest in the aggregate. When you look for work, or for an education, you are seeking a set of skills you believe will carry you through to your economic or personal goals. In so doing, you either create your own firm and look for others to staff it once it grows, or you look for firms willing to assess your skills and hire you for them. You have a certain Demand for what your life should be, and you seek to find someone that can Supply it. Whether this Supply comes from an employer hiring you or from people you hire, the principle is the same. You are willing to be paid / pay a certain price to achieve your economic / personal goals. So is everyone else in the market. As people get matched up as employers and employees and firms compete for similar finite interests, a general sense of value is created. A market equilibrium price. Changes in Supply and Demand ["market forces" as people traditionally think of them] dictate these equilibrium prices for labor, specific goods, intellectual property, etc.
What if I don't want to do anything at all as my personal / economic goal?
You won't find anyone willing to purchase that, but you may find people who think you a capable slave if your repayment to them is in the form of a vote for a handout. If you can't morally abide serfdom, hunger is a powerful motivator.
But there are a lot of stupid people out there!
Who are you to judge? If there's no demand for their personal / economic goal, they'll be forced by circumstance to change it. Donald Trump went bankrupt twice. The invention of Sticky Notes was by accident. Nothing has proven more stupid over time than inflexible systems, and mandates are by definition inflexible.
Why does the free market work?
Because the free market is the worst system of capital and labor allocation ever devised, except for all the other systems of so doing.
Alternatives Proposed and Implemented:
Command and Control Economy: Welcome to Gulagville. Make sure to salute the Dear Leader on your way to the worker's paradise! This philosophy lost the Cold War because it was economically illiterate. It is a blessing that it is now isolated to places like North Korea and Cuba.
Democratic Socialism/Nationalized Industries: It turns out that Human Decisions - Accountability = Government. For every incompetent executive that loses their shirt, there is a government department head that never will as the cost of their incompetence is socialized. Thus why if Apple's website failed to work on Day 1 they would be laughed out of the industry, but healthcare.gov can be a hacker's paradise to this day and no one behind it suffers the kind of consequences they would in the market. And yet as foolish as the US Government is, health care bureaucracies in other nations can have people dying on government beds of dehydration and festering in their own waste, and the citizens there accept it as an inherent cost of having a "modern" (socialized) health care system backed by VaporWare government promises.
They don't have a free market. Their choices are to be wealthy and capable of making private arrangements, or to bribe public officials to ensure their needs are met, or to be forced into the government's system. If the government's system fails, the government is an interested party and cannot effectively intervene to address the wrong. The free market has the advantage of letting government do what is necessary from outside the actual industries to hold them accountable for serious wrongs. Governments should be fiscally responsible, but it is true that you cannot "run them like a business," which is something said far too often by people who share my general philosophy. It is difficult to run an abstraction like contract enforcement or national defense poorly - that's why governments are fairly effective when tasked with them.
Income Inequality is a fact of life:
Mandating the proper ratio of CEO to worker pay has been tried. All sorts of tinkering and interventions have been tried in order to try and force a desired economic outcome to achieve generalized feel-goodery. These all fail because ultimately they are arbitrary decisions based on limited knowledge. The more flexible an economy is to adjust to market forces (which again, is just you pursuing you multiplied by everyone acting in the same way), the more likely it is the society will accumulate greater individual wealth. The United States has a *cell phone* program for the poor. The biggest health problem among the poor in the United States is *obesity,* not starvation. Clearly material poverty of the kind traditionally thought of in history is something the United States has basically eradicated. Income inequality doesn't matter when the baseline standard of living is one and a half cars, a cell phone, reliable shelter, and three squares a day.
Embezzlement, Fraud, Theft, Extortion, Corruption, and Price-Fixing are realms where governments can address monopolized advantages or wrongdoing. Governments should have no say in the ratio of CEO to worker pay or similar metrics, because no ideal ratio exists for all industries or even any specific one. If it is so unfair it offends the employee's conscience, they are free to pursue other employment from someone who will pursue their skills and didn't ask for as much from that organization's BOD. They may yet discover that the boss that asked for more is actually more competent.
That aside, here's a quick Q&A.
What is the difference between wealth and income?
This is actually a very important question. In fact, it is the most important. Income is what you earn from your labors measured on what is usually an annualized basis. Wealth is the sum total of all of your assets minus your liabilities. People with high incomes can have low wealth (Bill Gates in the first few years of Microsoft comparing income relative to wealth), and people with high wealth can have low incomes (Bill Gates today comparing income relative to wealth).
The ability of income relative to wealth to change over time is called "mobility."
When people say they want to punish the rich by addressing income inequality, they are attacking the wrong thing. They are attacking productive labor, not accumulated assets. Incidentally, I don't support attacking either. My preference is for consumption taxes plus a very small minimum baseline to pay for legitimate public goods and necessary legal infrastructure to enforce contracts.
Why is there income inequality?
Because some jobs require more skills than others, and employers are willing to pay more for employees with those skills.
Why do executives make many times more than greeters or stock clerks?
Because greeters and stock clerks can always be replaced by pulling people off the street and executives usually cannot. Managing 20+ people and all of the overhead it takes for them to perform their jobs is a skill demanding much more than what the average person on the street possesses. For example, if you did not understand that last sentence you are not qualified to be an executive. If executives fail, the business fails, and *everyone* loses their shirt. If the skillset of a competent executive is 300 times rarer than the skillset of the entry level worker, the Board of Directors are likely to pay that executive that amount.
What are "market forces"?
This is the hardest concept for most people to grasp, because it usually sounds like a kind of voodoo or faith-based assumption. Market forces can basically be drilled down to enlightened self-interest in the aggregate. When you look for work, or for an education, you are seeking a set of skills you believe will carry you through to your economic or personal goals. In so doing, you either create your own firm and look for others to staff it once it grows, or you look for firms willing to assess your skills and hire you for them. You have a certain Demand for what your life should be, and you seek to find someone that can Supply it. Whether this Supply comes from an employer hiring you or from people you hire, the principle is the same. You are willing to be paid / pay a certain price to achieve your economic / personal goals. So is everyone else in the market. As people get matched up as employers and employees and firms compete for similar finite interests, a general sense of value is created. A market equilibrium price. Changes in Supply and Demand ["market forces" as people traditionally think of them] dictate these equilibrium prices for labor, specific goods, intellectual property, etc.
What if I don't want to do anything at all as my personal / economic goal?
You won't find anyone willing to purchase that, but you may find people who think you a capable slave if your repayment to them is in the form of a vote for a handout. If you can't morally abide serfdom, hunger is a powerful motivator.
But there are a lot of stupid people out there!
Who are you to judge? If there's no demand for their personal / economic goal, they'll be forced by circumstance to change it. Donald Trump went bankrupt twice. The invention of Sticky Notes was by accident. Nothing has proven more stupid over time than inflexible systems, and mandates are by definition inflexible.
Why does the free market work?
Because the free market is the worst system of capital and labor allocation ever devised, except for all the other systems of so doing.
Alternatives Proposed and Implemented:
Command and Control Economy: Welcome to Gulagville. Make sure to salute the Dear Leader on your way to the worker's paradise! This philosophy lost the Cold War because it was economically illiterate. It is a blessing that it is now isolated to places like North Korea and Cuba.
Democratic Socialism/Nationalized Industries: It turns out that Human Decisions - Accountability = Government. For every incompetent executive that loses their shirt, there is a government department head that never will as the cost of their incompetence is socialized. Thus why if Apple's website failed to work on Day 1 they would be laughed out of the industry, but healthcare.gov can be a hacker's paradise to this day and no one behind it suffers the kind of consequences they would in the market. And yet as foolish as the US Government is, health care bureaucracies in other nations can have people dying on government beds of dehydration and festering in their own waste, and the citizens there accept it as an inherent cost of having a "modern" (socialized) health care system backed by VaporWare government promises.
They don't have a free market. Their choices are to be wealthy and capable of making private arrangements, or to bribe public officials to ensure their needs are met, or to be forced into the government's system. If the government's system fails, the government is an interested party and cannot effectively intervene to address the wrong. The free market has the advantage of letting government do what is necessary from outside the actual industries to hold them accountable for serious wrongs. Governments should be fiscally responsible, but it is true that you cannot "run them like a business," which is something said far too often by people who share my general philosophy. It is difficult to run an abstraction like contract enforcement or national defense poorly - that's why governments are fairly effective when tasked with them.
Income Inequality is a fact of life:
Mandating the proper ratio of CEO to worker pay has been tried. All sorts of tinkering and interventions have been tried in order to try and force a desired economic outcome to achieve generalized feel-goodery. These all fail because ultimately they are arbitrary decisions based on limited knowledge. The more flexible an economy is to adjust to market forces (which again, is just you pursuing you multiplied by everyone acting in the same way), the more likely it is the society will accumulate greater individual wealth. The United States has a *cell phone* program for the poor. The biggest health problem among the poor in the United States is *obesity,* not starvation. Clearly material poverty of the kind traditionally thought of in history is something the United States has basically eradicated. Income inequality doesn't matter when the baseline standard of living is one and a half cars, a cell phone, reliable shelter, and three squares a day.
Embezzlement, Fraud, Theft, Extortion, Corruption, and Price-Fixing are realms where governments can address monopolized advantages or wrongdoing. Governments should have no say in the ratio of CEO to worker pay or similar metrics, because no ideal ratio exists for all industries or even any specific one. If it is so unfair it offends the employee's conscience, they are free to pursue other employment from someone who will pursue their skills and didn't ask for as much from that organization's BOD. They may yet discover that the boss that asked for more is actually more competent.
xenu
Banned deucer.
what a reductionist thing to say on a pokemon forum
Deck Knight I liked basically everything you said except for this. The salary of these CEOs in question is not 300 times of an entry-level worker; it's 300 times the AVERAGE worker. Factory hand, engineer, receptionist, janitor, all averaged together. The exorbitant amount of bonuses at the top, top percentile is ridiculous; do you think there's any way to limit or curb this?
Do you have a source for the 300 times CEO thing? To me, I don't really see why you think that the granted founders, owners, operators, and those who work hardest shouldn't be paid that much more anyway, as they do a lot of things in addition to all that.
Jobs will be done wherever labour is cheapest whenever companies think it's financially viable to locate them there. Those jobs were going anyway. Also a trade deficit doesn't force you to import, a trade deficit exists because you import, and as a rule wealthy countries import and poor ones export -- for a wealthy country to remain as such it must innovate.
Merging into singular entities? no. But there were loopholes like subsidiaries and patchy state level regulations that made them extremely closely connected by the 1990s, far more closely connected than was intended.
I have read some bullshit in my time, but at least this was well-written bullshit, therefore entertaining to read at the very least. I didn't think I would come back to this topic, but I guess I just couldn't resist my own masochistic tendencies (which, incidentally, I imagine will one day be the death of me).
Where to begin?
The base of what you're saying is correct on a hypothetical level, but the rest is just stupid, regurgitated talking points drilled into your head by other people. I mean, don't get me wrong, you start off strong, but you strawman people's basic issue with income inequality. The problem is not "person x has more skills than I do." Skilled labor only makes a handful of times more than the unskilled. Here, I still see the insistence that people are demanding a 1:1 worker to executive pay ratio. Not the least bit true. What's actually being demanded is for workers to be paid fairly for their time without having to also apply for government assistance or to take a second or third job just to make ends meet. If you ask the richest people in Australia if they feel they're suffering in their riches because they actually have to pay their employees a living wage, they'd probably laugh at you.
Japan would probably tell you the same thing.
The key problem with income/wealth inequality is that the 65 richest people have more wealth AND income than the rest of the entire planet. Those same people (at least the ones living here) have the ability to assert their dominance in the political spectrum by controlling the conversation and acquiring fealty from our so-called leaders after the elections. Seems a little off balance, don't you think? I don't mind rich people, so long as they're not lobbying my government to gain special rights and privileges or polluting the only planet we have to the point where it can no longer sustain human life (while denying outright that it's even happening). It's just a shame that A&E cancelled "Hoarders," because I can think of 65 people on this planet that could each use an episode.
If you'll allow me to use an anecdotal example to put things into perspective, a good friend of mine used to work at Stanley Steemer. The CEO cut his employees' salaries in half because sales sucked and he needed to make a 3 million dollar super bowl ad. My buddy stopped being able to both pay rent and fill his car with gas in order to get to work, but the CEO's big problem was that he had to sell ONE OF HIS ISLANDS. THAT is income inequality in a nutshell.
Obviously you're right about small businesses. A mom and pop pizza place isn't going to be able to abide by a specific ratio of owner:worker salary, but like every other law lately, they can be left out. You can make the entire thing based on market capital and yearly net sales figures. Just let me state for the record that not only does all the justified bitching toward corporate entities not apply to small business owners such as yourself or your family (since, to my knowledge, you are not wealth hoarders with a massive lobbying arm, nor are you committing unspeakable crimes against nature and humanity), but also know that the tax code is, in fact, rigged against you and favoring large companies. I would also have to guess that your business is not a big player in the six major industries that control policy in this country (banking, telecom, energy, agriculture, defense, and pharmaceuticals). As far as I know, your business has done nothing wrong. Your indignity is somewhat understandable, but ultimately aimed at nothing.
On that note, I had to laugh at your assertion that only a government employee could be shielded from accountability for their fuck-ups. It would be even more funny, except for the fact that no other entity on the planet is shielded from accountability more than the typical American/multinational CEO. I could point you to BP, which got a slap on the wrist for their criminal negligence, then exploited government ties to the manufacturers of Corexit to cover up the sheen without actually cleaning it up, and running a media blackout on cleanup workers who were denied protection from the toxic sludge they were exposed to. I could also point you to HSBC (although it's based in the UK, its largest branch is in the US) which funneled billions of dollars to drug cartels and terrorists, later to be fined pocket change. Need I also point out the cartel of banks that crashed the global economy and the housing market by gambling with other people's money, only to be bailed out by the taxpayers with no strings attached and no new rules to prevent them from doing it all over again? I could also point you to Bayer who knowingly sold HIV tainted drugs to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Other notable examples include Chevron, DeBeers, Haliburton, Pfizer, Monsanto -- or I could just end the list here and say you get the picture. Point is, in a country without a double-standard on justice these companies probably wouldn't even exist anymore by now. In the real world, though, they're still profitable enough that if the head honchos of each one were to cut their total wealth in half they would each still have more money than they could ever hope to know what to do with in their lifetimes.
I would like you to show me specific instances where attempts to cap CEO pay in this country have been tried and failed (and please post the actual sources where you're getting your information, don't just link a "lmgtfy," that's just lazy and dickish). Show them to me, and I can tell you exactly why such measures will fail each and every single time. Our government is bought. Wealth is privatized and risk is socialized. Embezzlement, fraud, theft, extortion, corruption and price fixing are realms where this government rarely, if ever, addresses to an appropriate degree. We don't have a free market, we have corporatism. In a world where money is speech and bribes can be called "campaign contributions" we are not represented in the slightest. You think Social Democracy is where this happens? I won't pretend that it's not possible, but in a corporatist oligarchy like this where government basically answers to big business well over half the time, any executive with the means who wants to stay competitive would be stupid NOT to buy a politician.
Regarding the numbers, take a good look at this page. Click on any highlighted country, and compare it to the US. This source is mostly meant for the benefit of Kingpoleon to sift through, but you're privy to it if you'd like. Of course, I've seen sources with numbers all over the place. Some say it's over 300:1, some say it's above around 200:1, depends on the methodology. Why, then, does every other country's ratio fall so far below ours? Is every other country underpaying its CEO's, or are ours the most greedy and childish people on the planet? Talk about income inequality, right? In all honesty, though, as I've said before, it's a scam. Even for the CEO's who mean well and are legitimately working their assess off, it's hard to say "no" to that kind of money.
Now, take a look at this and then as a backup, take a look at the Great Gatsby Curve.
Now, this is not to suggest that lower CEO-pay by country is the sole cause to higher socioeconomic mobility through the same metric (as some with far closer ratios have even less mobility that us), but the two appear to be inexorably related to one another. Additionally, I think you'll find that many of the nations with a closer ratio (in the "ratio by country" link I posted) do have much better upward mobility. For reference, the UK is one country who pays to educate those laid off by technological innovations to work those new jobs. Here, the companies force early retirement and then, in Detroit's case, take away everyone's pensions.
As for your claim that traditional poverty has been outright eradicated? Um... no it hasn't. Sorry, but I don't think you and I are looking at the same country here. Just because the "mainstream" view of poverty isn't poor in a Dickensian sensibility, it is foolish to trivialize their suffering. It's even more important to consider just how easily they could lose what little they have. One leukemia diagnosis or broken bone would be an economic death sentence. If you still think the poor have it pretty good, try taking that opinion to rural Arkansas or Mississippi where people don't have running water, heat, or four steady walls around them. Tell that to the homeless population who works full time (which is why the "free cell phones" thing exists (started by Ronald Reagan, and translated to cell phones under Bush because it makes more sense, is cheaper, and more efficient to give someone a cell phone than a home landline), so they have a method of contact for an interview. They don't get fucking iPhones).
We all live in our bubbles. It's hard to really get a grasp of what poverty is in this country without seeing it firsthand. Actual poverty is being too poor to even make it to soup kitchens. Actual poverty means living in places that make trailer homes look like the Ritz Carlton. The face of "mainstream" poverty in this country may be obesity, but that's because junk food is subsidized and dirt cheap while whole, organic food is heavily taxed. These people may not be hungry, but they're anything but healthy.
Also, take into account geographical and social lockdowns on mobility. If you're born in an inner city neighborhood to a poor family and the only thing you ever know is drugs, guns, and gangs, the odds of you making it out of that life are so infinitely small in this country that you're pretty much fucked no matter how hard you try. What business do you know that's going to open up in such squalid, crime-ridden hellholes to create new opportunities for these people?
The main problem I have with your position is that you don't seem to have any misgivings with the way things are, and blithely defend it as being "just the way things are." You don't seem to have any problem with allowing "rational self interest" to guide humanity's future, when time and time again it has showed us what it leads to: Industry consolidation, cronyism, exploitation, environmental destruction, human rights violations, restriction of choice, and general squalor. "Oh, but can't a government also cause these things?" Sure, and it often has throughout history. Just look at all of the countries we invaded, overthrew, or messed around in since the end of World War II in order to stop the real or imagined threat of spreading communism. The difference is that a government can be voted out. A government can be held accountable by its citizens (provided the country isn't full of vapid, demoralized, apathetic shlubs). Politicians can be impeached (however impossible that may be today in the US). Corporate BOD's aren't elected by the general public, and their only interest is profit, all other things be damned. What is profitable is too often not in our best interest.
How to fix things? If I knew the answer I would be working to implement them, not arguing on a forum. Just look at countries like Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark, Finland, and Australia. Surely they must be doing something right (use those countries as a metric for deciding an equitable pay ratio). I would expatriate today to live in any of those countries if I had the means, but those means are just too far out of my grasp at the moment, and it would be a logistical nightmare to boot. If that "rational self interest" you champion means that 40 different countries have to be destabilized and fucked over for our benefit, that's a self-interest that needs to be eschewed from the public consciousness.
Addendum: Your ideas regarding the functionality of a nationalized healthcare system are poorly researched and just plain incorrect. Look at the World Health Organization's ranking of healthcare quality by nation and see if you can still make those claims. The UK, with all of its faults, not only has a better baseline healthcare system that the US, but also much cheaper. Everything except prescriptions are free and a one-month supply of medication is, like, 3 pounds. In the US, medication for crohn's disease without insurance costs $9,000 for a 2 month supply. We have an unwillingness in this country to negotiate the price of drugs, supplies, and services. Everything is massively overpriced to the point where not having insurance means bankruptcy or death, and we largely have lobbying and corruption at local, state and federal levels to thank for that.
Speaking of drug prices, did you know that here in Arizona the only scorpion whose venom is potent enough to potentially kill another human being is the Bark Scorpion? Because of this, instances of envenomation are so rare that the company that sells the antivenom charges somewhere in the neighborhood of $13,000 per injection. Get that? We don't save people's lives in this country unless someone can turn a profit. People whose lives are on the line are considered a market. Say what you will about how the system works, that's fucking sick on a fundamental level.
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BenTheDemon
Banned deucer.
Deck Knight
Free markets don't exist, because law cannot be upheld in a TRUE Free Market, because any law passed is a market restriction.
Every market has some restrictions, though some are less restricted than others. Usually, the more free a market, the less free the people, as restrictions in the market are there to protect the intrests of the common people.
We produce enough food (globally) to completely decimate world hunger, but Capitalism values profit over people.
I was talking to Theorymon in IRC about GMOs. One rationalization large corporations make for unregulated GMO production is that it could curb world hunger. Whenever I hear that, I call bullshit! Even if GMOs were to help world hunger, why do these large companies patent their new species? Because they care only about profit.
To me, that is absolutely profane, so I am a proud Socialist!
Free markets don't exist, because law cannot be upheld in a TRUE Free Market, because any law passed is a market restriction.
Every market has some restrictions, though some are less restricted than others. Usually, the more free a market, the less free the people, as restrictions in the market are there to protect the intrests of the common people.
We produce enough food (globally) to completely decimate world hunger, but Capitalism values profit over people.
I was talking to Theorymon in IRC about GMOs. One rationalization large corporations make for unregulated GMO production is that it could curb world hunger. Whenever I hear that, I call bullshit! Even if GMOs were to help world hunger, why do these large companies patent their new species? Because they care only about profit.
To me, that is absolutely profane, so I am a proud Socialist!
The biggest contributor to the wealth / income inequality in the United States is that we have allowed businesses to give shitty wages for lower end service jobs for far too long, and because of this, middle end income jobs are also suffering because all jobs are taken in context vs. minimum wage. "You should be glad I give you $15 an hour for your factory work! That's twice as much as minimum wage!!"
Simply put, minimum wage in this country is fucking laughable. When I think of what a minimum wage should be, I feel as though it should meet the following criteria in order to be valid.
One person working a 40 hour work week at a minimum wage job should be able to afford, by themselves with no outside assistance (meaning you shouldn't have to have a multi-person household), the ability to:
But when you get down to it, these things... these basics of life are hardly within reach to a minimum wage worker.
I'll take my own expenses as an example:
I pay $500 a month in rent + ~$150 in electric + water + gas every month. I live in a one bedroom one bathroom apartment that is basically one step above "total shit hole".
I spend on average $6 for dinner for myself (it actually costs my girlfriend and I about $12 per meal to cook at home), and spend about $20 on lunch + breakfast foods for the week (I buy a bag of cereal a week, milk, some lunch meat and bread and some soda).
I'm probably one of the few people who know exactly how much they drive on a week to week basis but I actually keep track of that sort of thing, on average I drive around 200-250 miles per week splitting the difference let's go with 225. I drive a car that gets a hefty 34 MPG so I use approximately 7 gallons of gas per week, give or take 1 gallon. Gas has been pretty steadily $3.15 here so in a month that's $90 a month in gasoline.
I pay roughly $100 in car insurance for a car that I already own (thank god for not having car payments)
My phone bill is $33 a month
I pay $60 a month for 60 Mbps internet.
So, tallying all of that up, it comes to $995 for me to exist for 1 month.
Let's round that up to a clean $1000
What does a minimum wage worker make a month at 40 hours a week? Minimum wage is $7.35 here in Missouri, so $1176 pre-tax. My girlfriend actually has a 40 hour a week minimum wage job so I know exactly how much she gets taxed. She is consistently taxed at 16% (yes, I know that a good amount of this will be returned to her at the end of the year, but about 10% of that is social security which is not).
So after taxes, a minimum wage worker, working 40 hours a week, is paid $987 a month
NOT EVEN ENOUGH TO PAY FOR THE BARE MINIMUM MONTHLY EXPENSES. AND I LIVE FAR FROM AN EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE.
Simply put a minimum wage worker can't even afford to live, let alone save anything, or you know HAVE ANY KIND OF A LIFE WHATSOEVER. It could be argued that maybe I'm "splurging" on internet + a cell phone... but really, it's fucking 2014... are those REALLY considered splurges?
And this is all compounded by the fact that many minimum wage businesses will avoid giving workers full time hours like the fucking plague.
I have had 6 minimum wage jobs in my life. A grand total of 1 routinely gave me 40 hours a week. The rest of the jobs all attempted to give me roughly 30-34 a week, depending on their needs specifically in order to gain the most out of me while still withholding full-time employee benefits.
And what was I supposed to do? In the so-called grand free market I'd be able to just not sell my services to these employers. But that only works when i'm not desperate to be able to feed myself. The employers have all of the power and I have no choice but to submit because otherwise I will be homeless.
Give businesses incentives to develop in lower income communities? FUCK businesses. They CREATE lower income communities. And those who are taken advantage of for their labor have no recourse because they can't not work. They'd fucking starve if they did. This is the minimum wage job culture in america. This is the problem. I thank the God I don't believe in every fucking day that i am lucky enough to be smart enough to avoid working for minimum wage.
Simply put, minimum wage in this country is fucking laughable. When I think of what a minimum wage should be, I feel as though it should meet the following criteria in order to be valid.
One person working a 40 hour work week at a minimum wage job should be able to afford, by themselves with no outside assistance (meaning you shouldn't have to have a multi-person household), the ability to:
- Have an apartment that is equipped with the following appliances - Stove / Refrigerator / Television / Washer & Dryer (Or have a laundromat within say a 5 mile radius (1 mile radius if you don't believe that having a car is something that should be afforded on minimum wage)
- Have a car (one that runs and can be maintained, not necessarily a new one)
- Have insurance for said car
- Have the ability to never go hungry (this means 3 meals a day 7 days a week)
- Have a cell phone
- Have a computer of some sort (even if it's a glorified facebook machine). With even the most basic internet access. You can't be a part of today's society without this.
But when you get down to it, these things... these basics of life are hardly within reach to a minimum wage worker.
I'll take my own expenses as an example:
I pay $500 a month in rent + ~$150 in electric + water + gas every month. I live in a one bedroom one bathroom apartment that is basically one step above "total shit hole".
I spend on average $6 for dinner for myself (it actually costs my girlfriend and I about $12 per meal to cook at home), and spend about $20 on lunch + breakfast foods for the week (I buy a bag of cereal a week, milk, some lunch meat and bread and some soda).
I'm probably one of the few people who know exactly how much they drive on a week to week basis but I actually keep track of that sort of thing, on average I drive around 200-250 miles per week splitting the difference let's go with 225. I drive a car that gets a hefty 34 MPG so I use approximately 7 gallons of gas per week, give or take 1 gallon. Gas has been pretty steadily $3.15 here so in a month that's $90 a month in gasoline.
I pay roughly $100 in car insurance for a car that I already own (thank god for not having car payments)
My phone bill is $33 a month
I pay $60 a month for 60 Mbps internet.
So, tallying all of that up, it comes to $995 for me to exist for 1 month.
Let's round that up to a clean $1000
What does a minimum wage worker make a month at 40 hours a week? Minimum wage is $7.35 here in Missouri, so $1176 pre-tax. My girlfriend actually has a 40 hour a week minimum wage job so I know exactly how much she gets taxed. She is consistently taxed at 16% (yes, I know that a good amount of this will be returned to her at the end of the year, but about 10% of that is social security which is not).
So after taxes, a minimum wage worker, working 40 hours a week, is paid $987 a month
NOT EVEN ENOUGH TO PAY FOR THE BARE MINIMUM MONTHLY EXPENSES. AND I LIVE FAR FROM AN EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE.
Simply put a minimum wage worker can't even afford to live, let alone save anything, or you know HAVE ANY KIND OF A LIFE WHATSOEVER. It could be argued that maybe I'm "splurging" on internet + a cell phone... but really, it's fucking 2014... are those REALLY considered splurges?
And this is all compounded by the fact that many minimum wage businesses will avoid giving workers full time hours like the fucking plague.
I have had 6 minimum wage jobs in my life. A grand total of 1 routinely gave me 40 hours a week. The rest of the jobs all attempted to give me roughly 30-34 a week, depending on their needs specifically in order to gain the most out of me while still withholding full-time employee benefits.
And what was I supposed to do? In the so-called grand free market I'd be able to just not sell my services to these employers. But that only works when i'm not desperate to be able to feed myself. The employers have all of the power and I have no choice but to submit because otherwise I will be homeless.
Give businesses incentives to develop in lower income communities? FUCK businesses. They CREATE lower income communities. And those who are taken advantage of for their labor have no recourse because they can't not work. They'd fucking starve if they did. This is the minimum wage job culture in america. This is the problem. I thank the God I don't believe in every fucking day that i am lucky enough to be smart enough to avoid working for minimum wage.
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Something that could alleviate some of the inequality is raising the minimum wage. The problem with that is that it may be almost impossible to pass that law, with it not being politically expedient. (i'm Australian, and don't really know the political situation in US is) but i dont think that the mojarity of minimum wage earners actually vote.
Furthermore, raising the minimum wage makes it more expensive for businesses to produce, the result of this is that the business either has to take a cut in profits or pass the price increase onto consumers. This makes the costs of living higher for everyone. The worst potential result of raising the minimum wage is that some businesses won't be to make a profit/ compete with other businesses, particularly foreign companies exporting into america. The result of this is that they will have to cut workers, and no matter how bad a minimum wage job is, not having any job is worse. An example of high costs of production forcing a business out is in australia, where the car manufacturers are all leaving by 2017. The result of this is that about 50,000 people are losing their jobs. the reasons that the car companies cited for moving production offshore si that the cost of production are to high, and they will make more money by producing cars in countries like thailand.
on the positve side, raising the minimum wage would not only increase the material living standards of minimum wage workers, but also increase the amount of money that is in the economic system. this is because the workers now have more money to spend. this increases the level of economic activity in the economy as a whole. Without actually doing some resaerch it would be difficult to see how raising the minimum wage would affect the economy, and the amount that it should be raised etc.
This article is a fairly decent look at the issue, it however quite one sided, and about 2 years old
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/7_raise_the_minimum_wage_a_lot
Furthermore, raising the minimum wage makes it more expensive for businesses to produce, the result of this is that the business either has to take a cut in profits or pass the price increase onto consumers. This makes the costs of living higher for everyone. The worst potential result of raising the minimum wage is that some businesses won't be to make a profit/ compete with other businesses, particularly foreign companies exporting into america. The result of this is that they will have to cut workers, and no matter how bad a minimum wage job is, not having any job is worse. An example of high costs of production forcing a business out is in australia, where the car manufacturers are all leaving by 2017. The result of this is that about 50,000 people are losing their jobs. the reasons that the car companies cited for moving production offshore si that the cost of production are to high, and they will make more money by producing cars in countries like thailand.
on the positve side, raising the minimum wage would not only increase the material living standards of minimum wage workers, but also increase the amount of money that is in the economic system. this is because the workers now have more money to spend. this increases the level of economic activity in the economy as a whole. Without actually doing some resaerch it would be difficult to see how raising the minimum wage would affect the economy, and the amount that it should be raised etc.
This article is a fairly decent look at the issue, it however quite one sided, and about 2 years old
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/7_raise_the_minimum_wage_a_lot
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Being smart doesn't exactly preclude anyone from being forced to work for minimum wage sometimes. :/ Man, fuck my life.
This is why you couple raising minimum wage with a simultaneous raising of import tariffs to make production offshore less profitable than it is in the United States. (oh, also, NAFTA is ass.)
xenu
Banned deucer.
that's a catch-22 for all but the largest producers. pro-tip: if you don't wanna worsen income inequality, don't raise costs for small businesses.
edit: yeah this is basically a recipe for unemployment. you're telling firms "we're going to raise domestic costs for you" but "outsourcing isn't an option". producers will obviously not sacrifice their profit margin, so they'll end up laying off more workers to even out wage costs. you also forget that many firms producing within the united states import the bulk of their raw materials (even essential commodities like oil, iron ore, etc) so you'll be raising their costs-per-unit, compressing their profit margin from the top WHILE putting wage pressure on the bottom of the pyramid (i.e the swathes of entry-level, minimum wage workers). what's a firm to do? fire people, that's what.
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Raw materials are under different provisions than finished goods when it comes to import tariffs. Leave raw materials low and produced materials high. That keeps production in the States without completely ram-rodding employers from both ends.
And if your business' profit margins are so slim that you can't afford to pay your employees livable wages then maybe your business model needs improving and maybe you deserve less profits.
And if your business' profit margins are so slim that you can't afford to pay your employees livable wages then maybe your business model needs improving and maybe you deserve less profits.