Business Realities or What I Have Learned From the Internet.

[Nice Squirrel]

Here some things I have learned about business from internet forums.

• Corporations are not collectives, but are a collection on individuals working for a common goal even if those goals are multiple and in contradiction to each other.
• As a shareholder of a major corporation you can just show up in the corporate offices and participate in high level board meetings or pontificate at annual meetings having the CEOs listen and adopt your ideas.
• Without regulation business would do what is the best thing for society-at-large rather than short-term gain
• Business owners hire people automatically when they have extra money. (aka trickle down)
• An increase in wages or theft always results in massive layoffs and huge price increases.
• I can always start my own successful competing businesses if I am dissatisfied with the business practices of an industry.
• Without regulation, there would no unemployment.
• Retirement saving is easy if I quit smoking.
• If you raise the minimum wage there will be massive layoffs
• Raising the minimum wage slightly is the same as raising it to a million dollars an hour.
• If the end of a supply chain raises wages, everyone on the chain must raise them.
• Prices are only set by costs. A single cost raises and the price must rise.
• Profits are always razor thin and a slight rise in costs is catastrophic through the industry.
• Non-labor costs are not costs and do not exist.
• Small single-family farms dominate agriculture and government subsidies are of no consequence. They are completely independent.
• Obama socialized medicine and before this insurance prices never rose.
• Black teens are not angels and always steal.

I'm sure there are more. Add your own.

 

[ksen]

Can I get in on the ground floor of this business?

 

[coloradoatheist]

While we are going to extremes. How about the belief that corporate bathrooms use $100 bills as toilet paper and if they have to give up profits they will just have to stop using $100 bills as TP.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

What extremes? All of these have been argued.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Can I get in on the ground floor of this business?

Sure. We have a concrete ceiling for you. It's on the ground floor.

 

[ksen]

Here's one:

Advocating a policy that might reduce profits slightly means you believe there is an infinite pool of profits.

 

[coloradoatheist]

What extremes? All of these have been argued.

Who said that all black children steal?

 

[ksen]

The Law of Supply and Demand only applies to the non-executive labor market. For the executive labor market it is inversed.

 

[ksen]

Raising the MW can only be beneficial in a society without blacks, mexicans, muslims, hindis, or any other group that isn't white European that is homogenous.

 

[coloradoatheist]

The Law of Supply and Demand only applies to the non-executive labor market. For the executive labor market it is inversed.

And which one was that referring to?

 

[ksen]

Money equals righteousness.

- - - Updated - - -

The Law of Supply and Demand only applies to the non-executive labor market. For the executive labor market it is inversed.

And which one was that referring to?

Which one what?

 

[Trausti]

Looks like a list of straw man arguments. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur

 

[coloradoatheist]

Money equals righteousness.

- - - Updated - - -

And which one was that referring to?

Which one what?

You made a situation in regard to saying that supply and demand didn't apply to executives. I was trying to remember what it was and if it was only your belief that it was an issue of supply and demand.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here some things I have learned about business from internet forums.

Time to go back to school then.

Business owners hire people automatically when they have extra money. (aka trickle down)

Reality: Business owners hire when they have money *AND* see some way to turn another employee into more profit than the cost of hiring them.

An increase in wages or theft always results in massive layoffs and huge price increases.

I don't know where you found this one. I don't recall anyone arguing it.

Retirement saving is easy if I quit smoking.

At the lower end of the economic spectrum the savings are enough to fund retirement.

If you raise the minimum wage there will be massive layoffs
Raising the minimum wage slightly is the same as raising it to a million dollars an hour.

You flunked.

Nobody is saying $1/hr is the same as $1M/hr. Rather, we are deliberately exaggerating things to make it apparent what's happening. Your side keeps arguing that higher minimum wages mean more business and thus less unemployment. We bring up crazy-high minimum wage values as a simple rebuttal to this claim.

The first-order solution is that a higher minimum wage means higher unemployment. If you want to argue that unemployment will drop that means there are two factors at work and you also need to indicate what will cause the curve to inflect.

If the end of a supply chain raises wages, everyone on the chain must raise them.

And why would the people up the chain not also demand more?

Prices are only set by costs. A single cost raises and the price must rise.
Profits are always razor thin and a slight rise in costs is catastrophic through the industry.

In the long run prices are set by costs if there is no government protection against competition. (ie, patent, copyright or trademark.) If you charge too much someone will come along and undercut you.

Non-labor costs are not costs and do not exist.

Flunk again.

Something that's not a labor cost is somebody else's labor cost.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's one:

Advocating a policy that might reduce profits slightly means you believe there is an infinite pool of profits.

The pool must be infinite because you do not consider it a worthwhile endeavor to figure out what it will cost and if there is enough profit to fund it. Thus you consider the pool to have no limits--infinite.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Business owners hire people automatically when they have extra money. (aka trickle down)

Reality: Business owners hire when they have money *AND* see some way to turn another employee into more profit than the cost of hiring them.

Only half right. This is the ideal. Business hire extra people all the time, but the point was that just because business owners have more money, it does not mean they will hire more workers like Mitt Romney likes to say.

An increase in wages or theft always results in massive layoffs and huge price increases.

I don't know where you found this one. I don't recall anyone arguing it.

It has been argued over the years.

Retirement saving is easy if I quit smoking.

At the lower end of the economic spectrum the savings are enough to fund retirement.

it misses the realities of living on the lower end of the income spectrum where a car repair or illness can wipe out savings.

If you raise the minimum wage there will be massive layoffs
Raising the minimum wage slightly is the same as raising it to a million dollars an hour.

You flunked.

No this is one of the common claims. It has come up here and in Congress, "if we raise the minimum wage to X, why not just raise it to a million dollars?"

Nobody is saying $1/hr is the same as $1M/hr. Rather, we are deliberately exaggerating things to make it apparent what's happening. Your side keeps arguing that higher minimum wages mean more business and thus less unemployment. We bring up crazy-high minimum wage values as a simple rebuttal to this claim.

The first-order solution is that a higher minimum wage means higher unemployment. If you want to argue that unemployment will drop that means there are two factors at work and you also need to indicate what will cause the curve to inflect.

We had a poster argue that a 1 cent per hour raise would result in layoffs, as if a business that cannot afford 40 cents a week is viable.

If the end of a supply chain raises wages, everyone on the chain must raise them.

And why would the people up the chain not also demand more?

Yes, why? But that isn't the point. Prices are not just set by costs. Anyone who has set pricing in business knows this. Prices are set by many factors the most important being what the market will bear and what the consumer will pay.

Prices are only set by costs. A single cost raises and the price must rise.
Profits are always razor thin and a slight rise in costs is catastrophic through the industry.

In the long run prices are set by costs if there is no government protection against competition. (ie, patent, copyright or trademark.) If you charge too much someone will come along and undercut you.

See above. Costs are not the only determination in setting prices. I don't see why this is so hard to understand. You want to make a profit. Yes, you need to sell above costs to do so. Different products have different price points for many reasons other than costs. Many, many, many products and services aren't patented or trademarked. Some margins are thin, some are thick. In other words: costs are not the only factor in pricing.

 

[ksen]

If prices are set by costs why do Nike's still cost well over $100?

 

[dismal]

Looks like a list of straw man arguments. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur

Well, to be fair it's just the sort of list of shameless strawman arguments that one could learn at this particular part of the internet.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

If prices are set by costs why do Nike's still cost well over $100?

The UAW.

 

[Jokodo]

Raising the MW can only be beneficial in a society without blacks, mexicans, muslims, hindis, or any other group that isn't white European that is homogenous.

That's a funny one. It usually comes up whenever someone points out that this or that policy seems to work fine in this or that European country - "but they have a very homogenous population". No, they don't, you're only showing your ignorance here. I had one person try that for Switzerland on the old board. Turns out Switzerland has a proportionally larger immigrant population than the US by every conceivable measure - percentage of residents born outside of the country, percentage of residents with a foreign passport, percentage of residents that use a language not traditionally spoken in the country as their primary language (Spanish *is* traditionally spoken in the US), or non-Christian religious background. There are proportionally more Muslims in Switzerland than there are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahai'i, Scientologists, and every other non-Christian denomination (not including non-believers) put together in the US.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If prices are set by costs why do Nike's still cost well over $100?

Note the exception I specified: Government protection against competition.

Nike has a trademark.

People pay extra for the brand--partially because they trust the product, partially for the logo.