Libtards

[cammerfe]

I jumped onto Craig's List a little while ago to post some stuff that's cluttering up the garage, and since I was there, i stopped, briefly, at the CL version of 'Anything Goes'.

I probably get in there every couple of months. The most singular thing I noticed was the ramp-up of vituperative hostility on the part of liberal-progressives who don't observe even the most basic rules of spelling and grammar. I suppose they've come out of the woodwork, based on the comments, because there has been a breath of sanity blowing in some quarters regarding pay and perks for organized labor.



KS

 

[Coherent]

Without organized labor forcing change in the past the rich would happily screw everyone and have you working 12 hour days in sweatshop conditions for $8 per hour. But w/e, It's their company so why not let them cheat their workers and exploit the system. Yay unrestricted capitalism. Anything for the dollar$.

The bottom 50% of the country has less combined wealth than the top 1%. Are the bottom 50% just a bunch of truly lazy slobs or does anyone else think the rich might simply be hogging everything. In the past few decades average pay for CEO's, board members and the other elites has gone up 10 fold or more. The pay for the workers has barely kept up with inflation if even that. Without their Loyal hardworking employees there wouldn't be a company to begin with. Isn't it only right that the workers get a fair share of the proceeds?

One thing that I do agree on is how the Illegals and immigrants in general have screwed the economy. They actively drive wages down by increasing competition for the few jobs that there are. It's supply and demand and the immigrants have blown the supply of workers way out of proportion. As a result non union employers can freely pay low wages because if you don't like it there's always somebody else out there willing to work for what they're paying. We do need some immigrants to do the truly distasteful jobs like fruit picking a janitorial work. What we don't need is a whole tide of them and their legal children competing with the rest of us in an already crippled job market.

 

[shagdrum]

Without organized labor forcing change in the past the rich would happily screw everyone and have you working 12 hour days in sweatshop conditions for $8 per hour.

Not really.

However, unions have cause lots of people to lose their jobs and entire industries to drastically shrink in size.

Unions should not, in any way, have coercive powers. When those powers are legally enshrined unions cease to serve a good function and are no better then the mob.

 

[Coherent]

Not really.

However, unions have cause lots of people to lose their jobs and entire industries to drastically shrink in size.

Unions should not, in any way, have coercive powers. When those powers are legally enshrined unions cease to serve a good function and are no better then the mob.

True. One current problem is how the union and out of control benefits are sinking usps. If the company really is going under and losing money then it only seems right for the workers to suffer a pay cut(assuming that the company elite ALSO take some meaningful paycuts). My main issue is with companies that are making a killing and still insist on screwing their workers through layoffs, hours reductions, pay cuts and outsourcing just so those at the top can get phatter bonu$e$.

However no matter how you look at it union members aren't the ones taking all the money. I mean the numbers don't lie. The bottom 85% of the population certainly aren't getting much of the money so who is? Why has so much of our wealth stagnated in the hands of a select few? Obviously the whole 'trickle down' theory is a failure.

 

[cammerfe]

With 'trickle-down' you've changed the entire focus of this thread.

Your original statement was somewhat factual so long as you emphasize 'in the past'. But you ignore the entire reason for the existence of any company. And that reason is NOT to 'make nice' for workers, but to provide a return on investment for stockholders.

When workers demand higher pay for a linear amount of work, the result is inflation. If you want more money, buy stock in your workplace, and work to make that place more profitable.

Looking at Alan Mullaly as an example, he deserves every cent of remuneration he receives. Instead of being taken into the toilet as the other 'big two' were, he's made a magnificent example of how a modern corporation should be run---while fighting (quietly) the UAW the whole time.

As someone who worked there some years ago, I can tell you that I never had an hourly job that took more than a minute or two to learn. And any job that takes two minutes to learn is only worth minimum wage plus five cents. Now check what the average hourly worker makes and do a comparison.

Enough said!

KS

 

[shagdrum]

"trickle down", properly understood, is the way the world works. Far from being proven a failure, it has been confirmed again and again. With out it, we would still be in the stone age.

However, since most don't understand it, it is easy for opportunistic elites to misrepresent the idea and make that straw man into a failure. This only engenders destructive resentment and allows the political elites to get us chasing our tails while they pursue their own ends at our expense.

The fact is that wealth (which is not the same as money) is simply not being generated right now. This is not due to corporate elites looking to exploit workers. It is due to collusion between well connected "too-big-to-fail" corporations and Washington as well as excessive regulatory burden. Fully 14% of our GDP is spent paying tribute to Washington by servicing regulatory burden.

This situation only benefits Big Business at the expense of small business which can't afford the cost of these regulations.

 

[Coherent]

With 'trickle-down' you've changed the entire focus of this thread.

Your original statement was somewhat factual so long as you emphasize 'in the past'. But you ignore the entire reason for the existence of any company. And that reason is NOT to 'make nice' for workers, but to provide a return on investment for stockholders.

When workers demand higher pay for a linear amount of work, the result is inflation. If you want more money, buy stock in your workplace, and work to make that place more profitable.

Looking at Alan Mullaly as an example, he deserves every cent of remuneration he receives. Instead of being taken into the toilet as the other 'big two' were, he's made a magnificent example of how a modern corporation should be run---while fighting (quietly) the UAW the whole time.

As someone who worked there some years ago, I can tell you that I never had an hourly job that took more than a minute or two to learn. And any job that takes two minutes to learn is only worth minimum wage plus five cents. Now check what the average hourly worker makes and do a comparison.

Enough said!

KS

Shouldn't the hard work itself count for something? Even if the job wasn't that hard to learn shouldn't one still get credit for getting up every day and putting in the work? I'm not saying that they should be getting $25 per hour or more to do one task all day everyday as some unions would demand. However a fair wage of around $12-15 per hour depending on the work doesn't seem like too much to ask for. I just don't buy into the whole "if the job isn't intellectually challenging it should pay crap" argument.

You can hardly live on minimum wage unless you:
-Live at home still
-Have no dependents at all
-Maybe you could rent a small 1 room apartment and stay alive if you're lucky.

Bump it up to $12-15 per hour and it becomes a whole lot easier for people to support themselves.

 

[cammerfe]

Minimum pay jobs are a way of entry into the work place. Instead of staying at that level, improve yourself and make yourself worth more. A good example, where I worked at T&C Livonia. I was less than 50 feet from a giant screw-machine department. My own job, as I said, took me less than a minute to learn, and even learning to set my own tools took only a few minutes to master. But in the screw machine department, I'm sure that learning to be proficient would have been a matter of several months of effort. By any objective valuation, the screw machine jobs should have been worth several times as much. But that didn't suit the UAW, so the 'line' jobs were grossly overpaid, while specialist jobs were undervalued. Such artificial jacking-around is typical in union-atmosphere situations.

If the unions would, in today's workplace situations, keep their hands off things, let jobs pay what they should, and give incentive for workers to improve themselves instead of artificially 'leveling' things, the job situation would be far more in the real world.

KS

 

[shagdrum]

Shouldn't the hard work itself count for something?

When you start asking questions about some ideal state ("shouldn't..."), the question becomes meaningless because it removes itself from reality.

How the world "should" work is irrelevant. What matters is how it does work.

Policy built around pie in the sky illusions only creates more suffering and hardship.

Besides, who says that hard work doesn't count for something? It may not matter as much, or in the ways you think it should. But you are not God. No one is. We cannot change the way the world works and only tyranny results when men try to do so.

Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

 

[shagdrum]

There are costs to increasing minimum wage. Job loss is one of them. Also, increased cost of living. Bumping the minimum wage up only increases prices for everything and gets more people laid off, in the long run. It is not, "a whole lot easier for people to support themselves." In fact, it becomes quite the opposite.

There is no economic argument for raising the minimum wage, meaning there is no argument based in reality.

Instead, we get moralizing. It is very dangerous when faux moral arguments trump reality.

Henry Hazlitt famously broke down economics into one simple lesson;

The art of economics consists of looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for app groups.​

Without starting at that basic point, any discussion or minimum wage is nothing more the childish wishful thinking.

 

[foxpaws]

When workers demand higher pay for a linear amount of work, the result is inflation. If you want more money, buy stock in your workplace, and work to make that place more profitable.

KS - I just had to chime in here so people know DO NOT DO THIS...

You are already heavily leveraged in your work - since your income comes from there.

If you buy stock in where you work (unless it is at a highly discounted rate), you will have too much invested in what you do.

Most stockbrokers will tell you to diversify... If you work in automotive, and your paycheck is dependent on the automotive industry - you shouldn't be buying stock in automotive. If automotive starts to fail - not only is your job in jeopardy - but your stock will also go down...

Think of the Qwest problem - the people who worked at Qwest had to put their retirement funds in Qwest - then Qwest tanked - so they took pay cuts, or were laid off, and their stock was worth next to nothing - so they weren't making as much money and their retirement fund was in terrible shape as well.

 

[shagdrum]

Good points, Foxy.

Where do you think the idea of investing in your own company comes from?

Could it be an idea from when you used to work for one company your entire life?

 

[cammerfe]

"Stockbrokers...diversify"

Tree munts ago I cou'n't even spel stockbroker and now I ARE one!

'Buy lotsa things' Can you say churning?

KS

 

[fossten]

Shouldn't the hard work itself count for something? Even if the job wasn't that hard to learn shouldn't one still get credit for getting up every day and putting in the work? I'm not saying that they should be getting $25 per hour or more to do one task all day everyday as some unions would demand. However a fair wage of around $12-15 per hour depending on the work doesn't seem like too much to ask for. I just don't buy into the whole "if the job isn't intellectually challenging it should pay crap" argument.

You can hardly live on minimum wage unless you:
-Live at home still
-Have no dependents at all
-Maybe you could rent a small 1 room apartment and stay alive if you're lucky.

Bump it up to $12-15 per hour and it becomes a whole lot easier for people to support themselves.

Hell, why not make it $50 an hour?

$125 an hour?

Hell, let's make it $10,000 an hour and we'll all be rich! Yay!

 

[foxpaws]

"Stockbrokers...diversify"

Tree munts ago I cou'n't even spel stockbroker and now I ARE one!

'Buy lotsa things' Can you say churning?

KS

Wow - KS, I hand off some good advice from my financial adviser, and you trash it - glad to see that you really do want to help people. Crap - I have been rather removed lately - thanks for reminding me why I have been absent.

Shag - I am sure in the old days it was to give employees an opportunity to be 'part of the process' and share in the rewards of a company doing well. That changed to having a captive market for your stock, and being able to weasel out of pension plan commitments. Why do you think that the UAW wants to divest itself of the stock it holds in GM as soon as it can.

If boards always had long term growth and employee interests at heart, it would be a good thing... Work hard, see your stock grow. But, with all the manipulation that goes on behind those boardroom doors, along with the volatility of the market, it is best not to be too exposed in one company/industry.

 

[cammerfe]

The Old Dazzle-Baffle Trick

Foxy, you're right, I was being too sarcastic. But with all due respect, Luv, owning stock in the company you work for doesn't preclude diversifying.

For each of your points just above, you are making a giant leap from what was said to some peripheral, not 'on-point' point. Cum-on, Luv. You have a better head than that. Don't try to baffle us with bull s h i t just because you can't dazzle us with brilliance!

KS

 

[foxpaws]

KS - how many people here do you think can be overtly exposed in their portfolios by being too heavily invested in what they do? Especially in their retirement portfolio?

If you work for $20 an hour at company xyz, it sure behooves you not to have much invested in their stock. If xyz goes bankrupt... you lose your job, and the stock you once had is worthless...

So, sweetheart - you can continue to pretend that owning stock in the company you work for doesn't preclude diversifying, but, when your portfolio is fairly small, and it is usually your retirement funds, you don't invest in who you work for, or usually, for the industry you work in. You are already heavily invested, your job, your time, is an investment.

Your advice is terrible for people who don't make what a CEO makes, and whose stock holdings are mostly in their retirement account - i.e. a lot like the people who post here.

 

[Coherent]

Hell, why not make it $50 an hour?

$125 an hour?

Hell, let's make it $10,000 an hour and we'll all be rich! Yay!

It's not about everyone being rich. It's about the rich being slightly less rich and there being more middle class people rather than poor people. I mean hey if you want a country where the top 5% own 99% everything............

 

[shagdrum]

It's about the rich being slightly less rich and there being more middle class people rather than poor people.

Where are you getting the impression that there are more poor then there are middle class?

The argument that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" is a lie and is only reinforced by blatantly misleading and cherry picked statistics.

 

[Coherent]

Where are you getting the impression that there are more poor then there are middle class?

The argument that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" is a lie and is only reinforced by blatantly misleading and cherry picked statistics.

I wasn't inferring that there are more poor than middle class now. However the country is certainly headed that way. The middle class just keep getting laid off, hours cut, and screwed in general while the super wealthy plunder at will while enjoying tax loopholes and almost no accountability.

Also the "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" argument is entirely valid. Just look at the stats. Over the past few decades the rich have seen their pay increase massively. Almost everybody else has either stayed the same or gone down.

The bottom 40% of the country has less than 1% of the total wealth. The top 1% control around 20%. By simple logic we can see that if even 5% of that 20% was evenly spread among the poor the result would be a MASSIVE increase in their standard of living while the wealthy would hardly feel it. That's a sad statistic no matter how you look at or try to explain it. Are the bottom 40% simply ALL lazy bums who just don't wanna work hard?

 

[cammerfe]

KS - how many people here do you think can be overtly exposed in their portfolios by being too heavily invested in what they do? Especially in their retirement portfolio?

If you work for $20 an hour at company xyz, it sure behooves you not to have much invested in their stock. If xyz goes bankrupt... you lose your job, and the stock you once had is worthless...

So, sweetheart - you can continue to pretend that owning stock in the company you work for doesn't preclude diversifying, but, when your portfolio is fairly small, and it is usually your retirement funds, you don't invest in who you work for, or usually, for the industry you work in. You are already heavily invested, your job, your time, is an investment.

Your advice is terrible for people who don't make what a CEO makes, and whose stock holdings are mostly in their retirement account - i.e. a lot like the people who post here.

I can't tell you how it makes my little heart flutter when you call me sweetheart!

I am supposing that the people who frequent this forum all have enough sense to work for a company that has smart enough management that they don't put themselves and their companies in the toilet and then end up as the equivalent of 'government motors'.

And our liberal rag newspapers here locally offer us a story every once in a while about some poor cuss who, although working in a menial job, managed to save about a zillion dollars. So I think it quite likely that, with a little fore-thought it should be possible both to invest in the place where you work and STILL diversify. I repeat that portfolio diversity is not precluded by investing in your own company.

The reason that 'the working man' is told by the goons at the head of his (mandatory) union that he shouldn't own stock is that it will make him all the more reluctant to strike when the union finds it necessary to bludgeon the company. (The cost to the worker is such, in a strike, that by the time he gets back what he lost by being 'out', it's time for 'bargaining' once again.)

Even though I luv you, you make me very tired when you spout that liberal progressive drivel.

Ken

(By the way 'overt means 'not hidden or secret'. I think you really meant---'over-exposed'.
KS

 

[04SCTLS]

It's not about everyone being rich. It's about the rich being slightly less rich and there being more middle class people rather than poor people. I mean hey if you want a country where the top 5% own 99% everything............

Money is something that has to be earned by competition and production of valuable goods and services that people want.
We got kicked out of the Garden of Eden for wickedness to work and die.
Our poor may be idle but are rich by world standards.
That's why despite how bad things are here people buy US treasuries and securities because things are worse in most of the rest of the world.

 

[cammerfe]

Money is something that has to be earned by competition and production of valuable goods and services that people want.
We got kicked out of the Garden of Eden for wickedness to work and die.
Our poor may be idle but are rich by world standards.
That's why despite how bad things are here people buy US treasuries and securities because things are worse in most of the rest of the world.

Plus one!! (I wondered how long it would take for you to weigh in after I used that title)

KS

 

[foxpaws]

Oh snookums...

This isn't my advice, this is advice from my financial adviser, who has been published all over the place - WSJ, Bloomburg, Atlantic Monthly, Reuters.... others.

It doesn't have anything to do with being liberal or conservative - it has to do with good fiscal health. Your fiscal health.

I have no idea of the management practices at the places who employee the people on this site, it doesn't matter. Do not be overly (yep - typo first time) exposed in one industry. You are already massively exposed in the industry in which you work - especially if you are in middle to lower income brackets. There is no reason for you to be subject to even more risk by investing in that company's stock.

Oh, shag- you are wrong when it comes to accumulated wealth and where it is massing. For a few decades now the upper couple of percent have been amassing a lot of wealth, while the lower 50% has been losing wealth, as a percentage of wealth available.

Now, in terms of dollar amounts - everyone in all economic levels has more dollars - but, in terms of percentages, the scales are tipping towards the few at the top, especially those in the top 1%.

 

[Coherent]

Money is something that has to be earned by competition and production of valuable goods and services that people want.
We got kicked out of the Garden of Eden for wickedness to work and die.
Our poor may be idle but are rich by world standards.
That's why despite how bad things are here people buy US treasuries and securities because things are worse in most of the rest of the world.

True in that we do have it better than most of the world. However that doesn't mean we should just be complacent and say 'well it could be worse'. With just a bit of tweaking in our wealth distribution thinks could be so much better.

Let me ask this. Why do we have minimum wage laws? Shouldn't competition and the free market and all that stuff determine how much everybody makes? Couldn't it be that maybe we need some government oversight and regulations because the wealthy can't be trusted to reliably do the right thing?

Btw just today there's a new headline out that 1/6 of our country lives in poverty. Go trickle down economics! InB4 responses about how the poor have food, a car and a house with air conditioning so all is peachy