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Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Fri 18 Sep 2009, 22:34:30
by rangerone314
Novus wrote:
Maddog78 wrote:
JoeW wrote:The dimwit companies specializing in IT are just glorified pimps, interested only in selling my skills to the highest bidder and seeing how much they can smack me around before I quit.


That makes me sad to read that.
I wish you good luck in the future.


Is what is really sad is JoeW's story is the norm not the exception.

It is a sign of the times the rich have declared war on the workers and it looks like they are winning. In the good old days there would be strikes and riots over such treatment.


Ah, the wonders of having a nice stable government that efficiently enforces the status quo of gradually choking the middle & working classes. A time was once this kind of abuse would have meant rich people being guillotined or burned down in the palaces.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Fri 18 Sep 2009, 23:08:28
by AgentR
rangerone314 wrote:Ah, the wonders of having a nice stable government that efficiently enforces the status quo of gradually choking the middle & working classes. A time was once this kind of abuse would have meant rich people being guillotined or burned down in the palaces.


Well, if half the working class wasn't vehemently seeking to obliterate the culture and lifestyles of the other half, maybe the rich wouldn't be so overly in control of the government.

But hey, stomping on gun nuts and lunatic evangelists is more important, no?

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Fri 18 Sep 2009, 23:53:44
by VZR1800
VMarcHart wrote:
vision-master wrote:
VMarcHart wrote:
vision-master wrote:...the yougner sheeple ppl have bought into the idea that unions are obsolete. Unions are for lazy non-skilled ppl. Well, keep the lone ranger attitude, while you get grinded into poverty, lose all yer benefits and get fired 'at will'. :)
Not that I think getting fire at will is cool, but unions mostly care for their members only, with blunt disregard to customer satisfaction. So much for keeping jobs, when nobody wants to buy the products. I.e, GM, school districts, etc.

As things evolve in life, no different than healthcare insurance companies becoming obsolete and costly, there's bound to be something better than unions, something that carries the good and ditches the bad.


:) See what I mean.
Yeah, but I'm not young, and hardly a sheeple, but that's just my opinion.


I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 19 Sep 2009, 09:08:57
by vision-master
Management always despises Unions. :lol:

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 19 Sep 2009, 12:23:01
by VZR1800
Neither my dad or I were ever management. 8)

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 19 Sep 2009, 13:14:57
by turner
Starvid wrote:Guys, comparative advantage doesn't make sense in a world of free capital flows. Sorry about that.

Let me give you a classic example. Imagine you can only produce two goods, wine and cloth, and there are only two countries in the world, Portugal and England. Portugal is better at producing both wine and cloth than England is, ie., they can produce both cheaper. But they can produce wine comparatively cheaper than they can produce cloth. In such a world, English capitalists will produce cloth and Portugese capitalists will produce wine, and then they will trade their products for mutual enrichment, according to the David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. So far so good.

But in a world with free capital flows, like our world, something very different will happen: all capitalists, English as well as Portugese, will hunt the highest risk-adjusted return in the entire world, which means all capital will flow to Portugal because that's where production of both cloth and wine is most efficient. England will be starved off capital. English workers will get cheaper cloth and cheaper wine, but that won't help because they will all be unemployed. The only solution is creating not only free movement of capital but also free movement of workers, so English workers can emigrate to Portugal where the jobs are, until equibrium is reached.

Now, what does this tell us? It tells us that what matters in the current world is not comparative advantage, but absolute advantage. This is not very alien when you get used to it. For example, corporations don't get orders because they have a comparative advantage but because they have the absolute advantage - they deliver the best product at the best price.


Yes you are right I should have said absolute advantage not comparative.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 19 Sep 2009, 19:43:05
by VMarcHart
VZR1800 wrote:I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions. May they all go the way of the Dodo! My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)
I don't automatically despise unions, but neither do they walk on water in my book.

Unions are great to protect against massive layoffs, or ensure management is passing some of the profits down the line, but they suck at keeping the company at the cutting edge. Again, see the automakers and the school districts.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 19 Sep 2009, 23:32:22
by rangerone314
VZR1800 wrote:I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)

I used to not like unions, but consider how easy it is for companies to act in concert against the best interests of workers and consumers. Read up on ADM if you need a lesson in corporate price fixing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Daniels_Midland#Price_fixing
In 1993, ADM was the subject of a lysine price fixing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. Senior ADM executives were indicted on criminal charges for engaging in price-fixing within the international lysine market. Three of ADM's top officials, including vice chairman Michael Andreas were eventually sentenced to federal prison in 1999. Moreover, in 1997, the company was fined $100 million, the largest antitrust fine in U.S. history at the time.[3] Mark Whitacre, FBI informant and whistleblower of the lysine price fixing conspiracy would also find himself in legal trouble for embezzling money from ADM during his time as an informant for the FBI.[4] In addition, according to ADM's 2005 annual report a settlement was reached under which ADM paid $400 million in 2005 to settle a class action antitrust suit.[5]

Using the investigation as an example, Ronald W. Cotterill of the Food Marketing Policy Center at the University of Connecticut shows that 100 percent or more of overcharges resulting from price fixing are passed through to consumers.[6]

The Informant is a nonfiction thriller book written by journalist Kurt Eichenwald and published in 2000 by Random House[7] that documents the mid-1990s lysine price-fixing conspiracy case and the involvement of Archer Daniels Midland executive Mark Whitacre. There is also a movie adaption of the book set for a September 18, 2009 release date.


Companies DO NOT function according to capitalistic theory. Anyone here think government regulations and unions are NOT needed to rein in bad behavior like ADM? One might note it was by sheer luck that ADM got caught; it is almost a certainty that a lot of corporations get away with a lot more that we don't know about because the don't get caught.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 10:22:24
by jdmartin
VZR1800 wrote:I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)


Why? I'm interested to read why someone who is/has never been part of management despises unions.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 10:25:08
by vision-master
jdmartin wrote:
VZR1800 wrote:I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)


Why? I'm interested to read why someone who is/has never been part of management despises unions.


Management wanabees?

Fell on head at birth? :lol:

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 13:26:04
by jdmartin
VMarcHart wrote:
VZR1800 wrote:I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions. May they all go the way of the Dodo! My dad is 67 and feels the same way. 8)
I don't automatically despise unions, but neither do they walk on water in my book.

Unions are great to protect against massive layoffs, or ensure management is passing some of the profits down the line, but they suck at keeping the company at the cutting edge. Again, see the automakers and the school districts.


A does not equal B in your equation. A corporation does not *have* to be an evil, bloodsucking leach, nor does a union have to be a hindrance on quality & development. The troubles of GM and Chrysler are just as easily traceable to shoddy engineering and corner-cutting by management as they are to union demands. Example: mid-90's GM 3.8 engines used, like lots of cars, plastic upper intakes. The design routed hot exhaust through the intake, which made the intake brittle, causing it to fail and draw coolant into the engine, damaging &/or destroying the engine. Whose fault is that - the guy who put it on the car, the guy who engineered it, or the management team that approved the design?

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 18:24:03
by AgentR
If you acknowledge GW is poster boy... you need to acknowledge BO as Mr. Slick of Class Inc.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Tue 18 Apr 2017, 19:22:54
by Subjectivist
Something I have noticed, people are much more optimistic about work and their futures for the first time in years.

A survey by Bankrate has found that more Americans are becoming more optimistic about their retirement savings, according to this article on MarketWatch. This is the first time after six years of conducting the annual survey that more people voiced confidence about their retirement prospects. “The stock market has been on quite a tear,” which would explain the rising optimism among retirement savers, says a financial analyst with Bankrate. “That account balance looks a lot better, and that could be contributing to that comfort people have with what they’ve accumulated.”


https://www.benefitnews.com/news/worker ... in-6-years

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Tue 18 Apr 2017, 19:47:55
by Hawkcreek
VMarcHart wrote:Unions are great to protect against massive layoffs, or ensure management is passing some of the profits down the line, but they suck at keeping the company at the cutting edge. Again, see the automakers and the school districts.

Unions are not designed to keep the company at the cutting edge. That is an engineering job.
Unions are designed to prevent the company from abusing the workers.
If you learn about the early history of unions, you will know why they exist. They worked fine until they got too powerful, and had too much money involved.
Kind of like cops - they were ok until they were given total power over the average person. When the gov gutted the Bill of rights, we lost everything. Now they feel the need to use that power, and have been given permission to do so.
I checked out and commissioned many industrial installations, and have always found the union worker installations were much better quality than non-union.
Its hard to beat a true 4 year apprenticeship with six months or a year of trade school.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sat 22 Apr 2017, 18:49:38
by Outcast_Searcher
Hawkcreek wrote:
VMarcHart wrote:I checked out and commissioned many industrial installations, and have always found the union worker installations were much better quality than non-union.
Its hard to beat a true 4 year apprenticeship with six months or a year of trade school.

So clearly there is the need for balance.

The issue I have with unions is they make it nearly impossible to fire people in some cases, which leads to abuse of the company by the workers.

The A&P unionized grocery store went under at some point. Given my friends who worked there and were unhappy with the people who slept on the job, but could not be fired is an example. Another friend working on the unionized railroad got so sick of that he started knocking down doors to get to the sleepers and threaten them with physical destruction. (Not hard to guess who got disciplined. He decided to retire soon after that). And the financial position of the US railroads overall isn't exactly stellar.

So surely there's a way to have unions protect workers from being "abused" without making it where union work overall is so expensive that it drives many unionized companies right out of business, due partially to such abuses being too widespread.

Re: US wage earners make less now than 10 years ago

Unread postPosted: Sun 23 Apr 2017, 01:30:33
by Hawkcreek
If you look at places where unions have not been demonized by the media for 50 years, it seems they still work pretty well.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/#67eeb9406b78
German car makers produce what the whole world agrees are quality automobiles (Mercedes, BMW, VW, etc), and still pays its workers more than double what American auto workers earn.
The quality comes from union training, the good pay comes from union bargaining.
The manufacturer still makes a good profit.
In the USA, the elite have worked very hard to kill unions, and have almost succeeded. Now most Americans are convinced that unions are the reason that we are not very competitive in the world market. Victims of an excellent propaganda machine. But how many times has that machine every told of anything positive about unions?
Day after day, you only hear of how hard it is to fire poor workers. The real problems with American industry comes primarily from poor decisions by management. Did the workers really decide to introduce a car like the Vega?
Unions still screw up and sometimes condone featherbedding and lazy workers, but when they have been defeated in every way for the last 3 or 4 decades, I can understand a bit of petulance.