Portrait of a 47% moocher

[coloradoatheist]

No one's saying a leader isn't important.

However, a leader isn't worth 300x times what the people actually doing the work are worth.

Unter believes that if a company makes $.01 then they are stealing $.01 from at least one of the workers.

 

[ksen]

So? That's unter's dream scenario.

Over here in reality we're currently living under a system where the majority of people working can't afford to live on what they're earning. How about we talk about that instead of what internet poster untermensche may or may not want to see happen maybe sometime off in the future.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De-unter.ogg

 

[untermensche]

You don't need dictators to have organization.

You need dictators if your plan is to take from others what is rightfully theirs.

A leader is very important part of an organization. And organizations use a a hierarchical design to make fast designs, grow and change quickly.

You mix things up.

Leadership is not dictatorial command.

Most capitalists are not leaders. They are dictatorial bullies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Good point. People expect so much more these days. Internet access, cell service (with its own internet service), electronic gadgets everywhere, including cars, which makes them heavier and necessitates more horsepower, bigger cars, bigger houses etc.

People want more because they are told they want more. 80% of the crap my TV can do is utterly useless to me. All the crap they're putting into new vehicles, I have the same opinion of. People buy twice as much house as they need because unless you have something custom built, that's all they build for the most part.
Further, while safety does add cost to many of our products and services, manufacturing of those products is a lot leaner than it was in the sixties.

Who wants to watch a movie on their phone? I mean really.

I do agree there is a lot of crap out there.

However, the new cars have major safety engineering that the old ones don't--and that's not crap.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People want more because they are told they want more.

Um, OK, you don't want more.

Please send me your laptop and car.

That's not a rebuttal.

A quick thought turns up several people we know with a computer & tablet & smart phone.

Very few people need both a laptop & a desktop computer other than for work reasons.

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You miss my point--you're comparing apples to watermelons and complaining that you can't get the same size.

The old lifestyle you dream of was pretty poor by modern standards.

Bullshit!!

It was pretty good for many workers. One worker could support a family and a household.

Yes, it was worse for minorities and women, but for people with a job it was better.

Fewer hours and a greater ability to survive.

It's pretty good for many workers now. It's just the ones that suffer aren't so invisible anymore.

 

[Jayjay]

A leader is very important part of an organization. And organizations use a a hierarchical design to make fast designs, grow and change quickly.

You mix things up.

Leadership is not dictatorial command.

Most capitalists are not leaders. They are dictatorial bullies.

A capitalist isn't necessarily either. He's just making money, others can do the leading and bullying.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Too bad improving technology doesn't make better things cheaper.

Lets look at things a bit:

Remember, my wife is foreign-born. At first her only communication with her relatives was by letter. The arrival of a letter was an important thing to her. IIRC 60-something cents to reply. Eventually phone became an option, there were some short calls--the cost of a call being similar to what she earned in the same period. Letters were up to 80-something cents. Then the IP-based phone cards came along--and she hasn't written a letter since. The price of a letter buys nearly an hour of talking--and figure twice that because they also had to buy a stamp to reply. She doesn't even use the cards much anymore, the people she talks with frequently all have equipment that will run Skype--and in computer-to-computer mode it's free. Even when she pays for a call it's now a tiny fraction of what she could earn in the same period of time. Cost simply isn't a factor anymore.

Or another example:

For many years I was 140 miles from the main office that I worked for. I drove that route frequently. Now I'm working for one of the guys I used to work for in a building less than a mile from the old building--and I've been up there once in more than a year and that was only because remote control software does not handle dragging well. When you're going to spend a good part of the day dragging things it's better to be there.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

According to some people this device is part of what makes people need 3 or 4 jobs to try to make ends meet.

If computers existed in the 1960's most homes would have had one, and it wouldn't have caused another person to have to go to work.

The real earning power of white males was much higher than it is now. Mostly because of the strength of unions that helped wages keep pace with a rising cost of living.

Yes, blacks and women were paid less, but that didn't put money into white male workers pockets. It was profit.

Home computers didn't exist in the 60s because very few people indeed could afford one and the few that could wasn't enough of a market to make software that people would want to use at home. I had a computer in the 80s--IIRC something like two months of household income. I recently had to replace my laptop because the old one wouldn't run Win 7 and the software I need won't run on XP. This is a quite beefy laptop--and yet around a week's household income.

Your dream time was good because we were the only real industrial powerhouse of the world--we exported the poverty. We can't do that anymore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Talking about average size simply means those who are very rich built incredibly large homes.

People were not living in shacks in the 1950's and 60's.

Now many of those old homes are divided and rented out to multiple families.

Again when you talk about average household size what that means is fewer people are having a whole lot of children, but there were many families with 1 to 2 children in the 1950's and 60's.

Today’s new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973, and the living space per person has doubled over last 40 years

You leave out the crucial words; on average.

Again, the affluent are living in much larger homes. There are many more mansions.

And many more homeless. Especially children.

The mean and median size increase track together nicely, which disputes your assertion.

No it doesn't. The median has just shifted upward because more larger homes are being built. The middle moves closer to the top if the numbers at the top increase.

And none of this takes into account how many of these homes are second or third or tenth homes.

Reality check:

I just looked up the house I grew up in. It's smaller than anything I see advertized in new housing developments these days--and my parents were both professors. That was middle class life back then. The lot is about 10% larger than ours, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No one's saying a leader isn't important.

However, a leader isn't worth 300x times what the people actually doing the work are worth.

It depends on what that leader does.

Lets say he manages to improve things by 1%. Worth 300x?? In a typical industry it's breakeven if there are 10,000 people under him.

 

[untermensche]

I just looked up the house I grew up in. It's smaller than anything I see advertized in new housing developments these days--and my parents were both professors. That was middle class life back then. The lot is about 10% larger than ours, though.

So now we have two people working to live in a slightly larger house.

In one way it is slight progress. The house is slightly larger.

In one way it is a major setback. Now two people must work to make ends meet.

On the whole it is not progress.

And that would be fine, but at the same time profits and productivity have increased.

If we had a system with a more equitable distribution of wealth, more than the top would be making progress. They progress incredibly at the cost of everybody else going backward.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I just looked up the house I grew up in. It's smaller than anything I see advertized in new housing developments these days--and my parents were both professors. That was middle class life back then. The lot is about 10% larger than ours, though.

So now we have two people working to live in a slightly larger house.

In one way it is slight progress. The house is slightly larger.

In one way it is a major setback. Now two people must work to make ends meet.

On the whole it is not progress.

And that would be fine, but at the same time profits and productivity have increased.

If we had a system with a more equitable distribution of wealth, more than the top would be making progress. They progress incredibly at the cost of everybody else going backward.

Amazing how you filter everything through your preconceived notions and fail to understand the message.

I said the house was smaller than anything I see being built these days. How do you get "slightly" from this? Our first house was 50% larger, our current house is more than twice as large. (We both have more home-office needs than my parents did not and we have space for her parents.) And did you not notice that I said they were both professors? (Admittedly, she was part time.)

 

[ksen]

Amazing how you filter everything through your preconceived notions and fail to understand the message.

Yes, amazing. :ironicat:

 

[Axulus]

A middle class family used to be able to get by just fine on one income. I know...I grew up in just such a family. My father never went to college, but wound up in a management position that allowed us to afford a nice house on the water with a boat. Mom went to college but didn't need to work, so she stayed home until us kids were old enough, and then (after a few classes to get back up to speed) went back to work in health care. All three kids went to college, and nobody graduated with student loan debt.


Fast forward until today, and it would be difficult to replicate that sort of life with one income no matter which spouse was working.

It would be effectively impossible to replicate a 60s lifestyle--because our standards are much higher now than then. An awful lot of 60s level products are nowhere near modern standards.

Yep - just as one example, companies and executives would be criminally prosecuted if they made a car today at the standards of the 60's. Tell all the additional people in the 60's who died in vehicle accident how wonderful their life was:

Also, expectations have risen greatly:

Another unintended consequence is that families do increasingly need two earners for a middle-class lifestyle, while only one was required for the 1950s' or 1960s' version. But here's the catch: Today's middle-class lifestyle is a lot richer. If people want to duplicate their parents' lifestyles, they can unplug their air conditioners, sell one of their cars, discard their [big screen HDTVs, end their cellphone service and dump the smartphone], and stop sending all their kids to college.

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-01-24/local/me-21504_1_family-income

 

[ksen]

That's a stupid article and that will always be a stupid argument.

 

[coloradoatheist]

A leader is very important part of an organization. And organizations use a a hierarchical design to make fast designs, grow and change quickly.

You mix things up.

Leadership is not dictatorial command.

Most capitalists are not leaders. They are dictatorial bullies.

Who are you defining as the capitalist here? The CEOs, stock holders, or the bankers lending them money?

 

[Ford]

Yep - just as one example, companies and executives would be criminally prosecuted if they made a car today at the standards of the 60's. Tell all the additional people in the 60's who died in vehicle accident how wonderful their life was

Thank you for providing a convenient chart which proves a point I made earlier. Notice that vehicle deaths didn't just plunge after the 60s.

Another unintended consequence is that families do increasingly need two earners for a middle-class lifestyle, while only one was required for the 1950s' or 1960s' version. But here's the catch: Today's middle-class lifestyle is a lot richer. If people want to duplicate their parents' lifestyles, they can unplug their air conditioners, sell one of their cars, discard their [big screen HDTVs, end their cellphone service and dump the smartphone], and stop sending all their kids to college.

And if people in the 50s and 60s wanted to duplicate their parent's lifestyles, they'd have to get rid of the television altogether, as well as the refrigerator, trade their '57 Chevy for a Tin Lizzie, and instead of sending the kids to college send them off to work 12 hour days in a factory.


The idea that the reason we need two or more incomes to support a middle class family is because our lives are so much more lavish is bunk. The life of a middle class family living on a single income in the 60s is far more lavish than that of a middle class family living prior to the Depression.

 

[Togo]

That's a stupid article and that will always be a stupid argument.

It's just a rehash of the 'but they have bread and circuses!' argument.

 

[untermensche]

You mix things up.

Leadership is not dictatorial command.

Most capitalists are not leaders. They are dictatorial bullies.

Who are you defining as the capitalist here? The CEOs, stock holders, or the bankers lending them money?

Stock holders are not capitalists unless they own enough to control something.

They are contributors to the capitalist system, but all they are doing is handing over money and hoping things work out. And with the bursting of the economic bubbles that constantly arise many of these stock holders lose everything.

A capitalist is somebody who uses money to exploit something for their gain, be it some natural resource or human beings.

There is no requirement that these people have any leadership abilities. All they need is money and personal greed.

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Amazing how you filter everything through your preconceived notions and fail to understand the message.

I said the house was smaller than anything I see being built these days. How do you get "slightly" from this? Our first house was 50% larger, our current house is more than twice as large. (We both have more home-office needs than my parents did not and we have space for her parents.) And did you not notice that I said they were both professors? (Admittedly, she was part time.)

If only the world revolved around you and your incredible rise.