Corporate Moochers - how to spot them

[Rhea]

What I meant was "stop posting."

If you mean that Bomb#20 or anyone else here is arguing that those people should not be valued, you're very mistaken.
If you mean something else, what do you mean?

If I didn't mean "stop posting" then I meant "get out."

That's harsh. Take a breath!

 

[Jayjay]

J842P - You have a point that actual Corporate Welfare is a real problem and should not be diluted. Yet this is still corporate welfare to a degree and here's why I say it:

The "supply and demand" says that the employees **MUST** look for work to receive benefits in many cases. Yet they aren't just getting a low-wage job that is only worth low wages. The Walmart Corp makes MASSIVE profits. The system is forcing these people to take any old job - I'd be okay with that except when someone is making a monstrous unreasonable profit off their labor. The government - that is the rest of us should join in the collective bargaining that says, you want these people, you pay them enough to not need public assistance for as long as you are making profits. If your company is not making a profit - if it's working for zero, then by all means, give the people some jobs. But when your CEO is making hundreds of times their wages, then you are ripping off the rest of the people by paying your worker so little that they need welfare.

I have a really really large problem with a company making profits - huge profits - while requiring aid from welfare to keep their employees alive.

The problem which you identified is to require beneficiaries to seek jobs to gain benefits. Remove that requirement and the problem of companies exploiting welfare goes away.

But instead, you'd rather switch it so that the govenrment subsidies are limited to those companies that are failing to make a decent profit? The government should subsidise the labor costs of failing businesses only? Isn't that an even bigger loophole for exploitation?

 

[Underseer]

Anyone who needs help should get help, period.

Republicans have been working for decades to make sure that the minimum wage did not keep up with the cost of living, and then worked to destroy unions which further undermined the earning potential of hourly employees. We have a large number of citizens with full time jobs who now need government handouts just to survive, and this is thanks to the tireless efforts of Republican voters and Republican politicians.

So now we're in a world where highly profitable corporations can get away with using the taxpayer to pad their profit margins.

We should just raise the minimum wage across the board. Yes, it would be better if the magic of the free market magically decided on its own to pay full time employees enough to live on, but since they won't, raising the minimum wage is the only way we can stop this massive ripoff of taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars.

Republicans of course want the taxpayer to be ripped off because they love big government and hate working class people, so they all oppose raising the minimum wage.

 

[ksen]

What I meant was "stop posting."

If you mean that Bomb#20 or anyone else here is arguing that those people should not be valued, you're very mistaken.
If you mean something else, what do you mean?

If I didn't mean "stop posting" then I meant "get out."

That's harsh. Take a breath!

Haha, I might have been a bit harsh.

Sorry Angra!

Oh, but that doesn't mean I'm going to spend time answering your irrelevant questions just because you feel compelled to defend Bomb#20's honor. He's a big boy and can handle himself.

 

[Rhea]

But instead, you'd rather switch it so that the govenrment subsidies are limited to those companies that are failing to make a decent profit? The government should subsidise the labor costs of failing businesses only? Isn't that an even bigger loophole for exploitation?

Is it your contention that Walmart is failing to make a decent profit?

 

[Jayjay]

Cost of employee to society = X (not starving, desperate or creating other externalities)
Cost to employee to business Y
Where Y < X, society is having to subsidise the business.

Simply put, someone has to pay for the employee to be a functional member of society. If the employer is claiming all their labour (the benefit of their presence) but not paying for the cost of their presence, then they are creating a negative externality.

The person would be present, whether they are employed or not. The base cost is not created by the employer. So really what you should be comparing is:

Cost of an unemployed person to society = Z
Cost of an employed person to society = X
Cost of employee to business = Y

Society is only subsidiing the business if Y < X-Z, i.e. the only externality here is the additional burden directly caused by the employment which may include commute, higher calorie consumption, more expensive housing, health hazards, and so on. But it does not include the basic survival costs.

 

[Jayjay]

But instead, you'd rather switch it so that the goverment subsidies are limited to those companies that are failing to make a decent profit? The government should subsidise the labor costs of failing businesses only? Isn't that an even bigger loophole for exploitation?

Is it your contention that Walmart is failing to make a decent profit?

No, I am asking if it makes sense to subsidize businesses that are not profitable? Let them go bankrupt.

 

[Jayjay]

This really isn't that complicated. You have a society. It has costs, set at a minimum per person by that society. And it has labour. The labour is sold to meet the costs. If business A does not pay enough for the labour to meet the costs, then that cost has to be met by another business. There's lots of intermediate steps, but that's what it boils down to. So why on earth would a society want to charge businesses that do meet these costs to pay for the gap left by those that don't? You can rail on about whose costs they really are, what constitutes a subsidy, and where the moral responsibility lies, but in practice the businesses have to bear the cost, one way or another.

What you are arguing though is not "one way or the other", but a very specific way: that businesses should pay the living costs of each employee separately to them. This doesn't necessarily have to be the case. There are always going to be jobs that pay vastly more than the living costs of a person, and I don't see anythign wrong with evening the score by cutting a bit from the higher earning individuals and distributing it to the poor.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

What I meant was "stop posting."

If you mean that Bomb#20 or anyone else here is arguing that those people should not be valued, you're very mistaken.
If you mean something else, what do you mean?

If I didn't mean "stop posting" then I meant "get out."

That's harsh. Take a breath!

Haha, I might have been a bit harsh.

Sorry Angra!

Oh, but that doesn't mean I'm going to spend time answering your irrelevant questions just because you feel compelled to defend Bomb#20's honor. He's a big boy and can handle himself.

I was actually getting out, but now I feel like replying to that one.

1. The questions were relevant to the claims involved in the posts I was replying to. While my questions were not relevant to issue of alleged corporate moochers, leechers, or whatever, neither was the post of yours I was replying to, or those that followed it.
2. I don't feel compelled. No compulsion is involved. Sometimes I just choose to reply. By the way, do you often feel compelled to jump in and attack someone you disagree with?
3. Of course I know can handle himself. But so? When you intervene in threads and defend someone's position or a person, do you usually think that those already taking part cannot handle themselves and/or defend their views adequately?

 

[Togo]

This really isn't that complicated. You have a society. It has costs, set at a minimum per person by that society. And it has labour. The labour is sold to meet the costs. If business A does not pay enough for the labour to meet the costs, then that cost has to be met by another business. There's lots of intermediate steps, but that's what it boils down to. So why on earth would a society want to charge businesses that do meet these costs to pay for the gap left by those that don't? You can rail on about whose costs they really are, what constitutes a subsidy, and where the moral responsibility lies, but in practice the businesses have to bear the cost, one way or another.

What you are arguing though is not "one way or the other", but a very specific way: that businesses should pay the living costs of each employee separately to them. This doesn't necessarily have to be the case. There are always going to be jobs that pay vastly more than the living costs of a person, and I don't see anythign wrong with evening the score by cutting a bit from the higher earning individuals and distributing it to the poor.

Nor do I, which is why we pay people who are unemployed. However, you're not advocating giving money to the poor, but rather to workers employed by Wallmart. The maths is still the same - Wallmart is running a form of employment that requires subsidy from other businesses to function. It is consuming all of it's worker's labour, and not paying of it's worker's costs to society. Why increase the financial burden on well-paid employment that provides a net benefit to society in order to subsidy the viability of a business model that doesn't pay it's way?

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

 

[ksen]

I was actually getting out, but now I feel like replying to that one.

Shocker!!

1. The questions were relevant to the claims involved in the posts I was replying to. While my questions were not relevant to issue of alleged corporate moochers, leechers, or whatever, neither was the post of yours I was replying to, or those that followed it.
2. I don't feel compelled. No compulsion is involved. Sometimes I just choose to reply. By the way, do you often feel compelled to jump in and attack someone you disagree with?
3. Of course I know can handle himself. But so? When you intervene in threads and defend someone's position or a person, do you usually think that those already taking part cannot handle themselves and/or defend their views adequately?

Yeah, don't care.

 

[Jayjay]

What you are arguing though is not "one way or the other", but a very specific way: that businesses should pay the living costs of each employee separately to them. This doesn't necessarily have to be the case. There are always going to be jobs that pay vastly more than the living costs of a person, and I don't see anythign wrong with evening the score by cutting a bit from the higher earning individuals and distributing it to the poor.

Nor do I, which is why we pay people who are unemployed. However, you're not advocating giving money to the poor, but rather to workers employed by Wallmart. The maths is still the same - Wallmart is running a form of employment that requires subsidy from other businesses to function. It is consuming all of it's worker's labour, and not paying of it's worker's costs to society. Why increase the financial burden on well-paid employment that provides a net benefit to society in order to subsidy the viability of a business model that doesn't pay it's way?

It does not subsidize viability of businesses, because the requirement that businesses have to "pay their own way" by taking responsibility for the entirety of their employees' living costs (and not just the externalities) is a fallacy. Your math only shows that all the businesses in a society have to pay enough that the living costs of every member of that society are covered (or else that society will go down the crapper real quick). It doesn't follow that businesses have to pay out every employee's living costs individually; the first condition can be met even if the costs are distributed.

I'd like to turn your question around and ask, why shouldn't paying some employees less than their living costs be a viable business model, if the business pays enough to cover its own externalities and is otherwise ethical.

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

It's not only about Wal-Mart that has a profit margin to be viable anyway, but also marginal businesses who don't have that luxury.

 

[ksen]

I'd just like to note for the record that Wal-Mart doesn't need these low wages to stay profitable. They would still be quite profitable if they payed their employees a living wage. They are just choosing not to because they are greedy pigs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

No, the reality is that when you eliminate a bad job a good one doesn't magically take it's place.

 

[Bomb#20]

My argument is that there is no point having such employers around. As a society, it's only worth having around employers who pay the Z of their employees, their cost to society. That isn't because of a moral judgement, or fine feelings, it's to stop other, more successful businesses having to support the losers who can't meet their costs.

And that's the problem with what Wallmart is doing. They displace other businesses to provide employment on a subsidised basis, relying on other businesses (via the taxpayer) to help them meet their employment costs. They're moochers, or more accuarately, leeches.

Yes. It's amazing to see the argument that people dying in streets is a valid business model still. But it's not.

You two are of course welcome to build an echo chamber and go "La la la I can't hear you" at any input that doesn't hew to the true faith; but that does not entitle you to make groundless accusations against the infidel. Where is it you think you saw "the argument that people dying in streets is a valid business model still"? You are misrepresenting the arguments that have been made to you and that you have not rebutted. You appear to be doing so as an ad hominem, in order to give yourself permission not to apply critical thought to your own beliefs, exactly as Underseer did in post #38.

Society today says we don't let people die, and the corollary is that if you want to make money, especially loads and loads of it, you have to abide by the costs of today's society that agrees with this.

The corollary of what society today says is that you have to abide by whatever portion of the costs of today's society that today's society chooses to assign to you. I.e., you have to pay at least minimum wage. That's why they call it "minimum". It does not follow, however, from what society today says, that you have to pay however much of the costs of today's society the left defines to be rightfully yours based on a fairy tale of their own authorship containing factual untruths and appeals to their idiosyncratic metaphysics. Nor does it follow that if society disregards that fairy tale when computing what you have to abide by, you are a mooch.

But the society that says we don't do that doesn't want you mooching off of the folks who are preventing it.

You don't get to employ as if people are disposable _and_also_ live and sell in the environment of safe living. Not without being known as a moocher and a leech.

You don't get to deny the divinity of Jesus and withhold your tithe to the One True Church of God without being "known" as a freeloading cheating Satan-Worshiping Christ-Killer, if that's how society chooses to categorize those who don't pattern their lives after whatever drivel society believes. But society's opinion on this point is not evidence that any of what society says about you is correct.

Any time you wish to start offering facts into evidence to support your contention that failure to pay enough for "decent safe housing, decent safe food and decent safe healthcare" implies you're a moocher and a leech, knock yourself out.

 

[Canard DuJour]

It does not subsidize viability of businesses, because the requirement that businesses have to "pay their own way" by taking responsibility for the entirety of their employees' living costs (and not just the externalities) is a fallacy. Your math only shows that all the businesses in a society have to pay enough that the living costs of every member of that society are covered (or else that society will go down the crapper real quick). It doesn't follow that businesses have to pay out every employee's living costs individually; the first condition can be met even if the costs are distributed.

Costs thus distributed ARE subsidised. It's what 'subsidised' means. The idea that their viability isn't subsidised because their costs are subsidised is just nonsense.

 

[EricK]

Why, when people argue for a single payer healthcare system, do they not complain that this just subsidises businesses and allows them to pay wages which don't allow their employees to purchase health insurance?

 

[Togo]

It does not subsidize viability of businesses, because the requirement that businesses have to "pay their own way" by taking responsibility for the entirety of their employees' living costs (and not just the externalities) is a fallacy. Your math only shows that all the businesses in a society have to pay enough that the living costs of every member of that society are covered (or else that society will go down the crapper real quick). It doesn't follow that businesses have to pay out every employee's living costs individually; the first condition can be met even if the costs are distributed.



I'd like to turn your question around and ask, why shouldn't paying some employees less than their living costs be a viable business model, if the business pays enough to cover its own externalities and is otherwise ethical.

Because it is ultimately acting as a drain on other businesses, which have to pay the amount it isn't providing. That makes them less profitable, and makes the area less attractive and less condusive to setting up such businesses. It's bad for exactly the same reason that any other business subsidy is bad.

If you can come up with a reason why business A should have to pay the expenses of the employees of business B, I'm all ears. But in the absence of such a reason, it's reasonable to call business B a mooch.

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

It's not only about Wal-Mart that has a profit margin to be viable anyway, but also marginal businesses who don't have that luxury.

If that really is the issue, then there is no reason why you wouldn't agree that WallMart is being a mooch. Then we can deal with those other businesses separately.

Any time you wish to start offering facts into evidence to support your contention that failure to pay enough for "decent safe housing, decent safe food and decent safe healthcare" implies you're a moocher and a leech, knock yourself out.

I've offered plenty. You've not replied.

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

No, the reality is that when you eliminate a bad job a good one doesn't magically take it's place.

Nor do magic pixies magically gun down your former customers to magically stop them shopping elsewhere. In practice, the closure of a burger joint or a grocery store, or any other FMCG outlet (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) doesn't do much to reduce the demand for the product. You close a several thousand square foot superstore, then someone, somewhere, will do more business as a result.

If you disagree, and think that all minimum wage businesses will just close and none of those jobs will just disappear, then we can discuss that, but you'll need some kind of reason for thinking that will be the outcome.

And even then, all it proves is that those businesses would never have been viable without subsidy, because you're claiming that neither they nor anyone else can run a business in that niche without one.

 

[Jayjay]

It does not subsidize viability of businesses, because the requirement that businesses have to "pay their own way" by taking responsibility for the entirety of their employees' living costs (and not just the externalities) is a fallacy. Your math only shows that all the businesses in a society have to pay enough that the living costs of every member of that society are covered (or else that society will go down the crapper real quick). It doesn't follow that businesses have to pay out every employee's living costs individually; the first condition can be met even if the costs are distributed.

Costs thus distributed ARE subsidised. It's what 'subsidised' means. The idea that their viability isn't subsidised because their costs are subsidised is just nonsense.

It is not a subsidy to the employer because that cost is not the responsibility of the employer to begin with. Whether it is a subsidy to someone else is irrelevant to this discussion.

 

[Jayjay]

Because it is ultimately acting as a drain on other businesses, which have to pay the amount it isn't providing. That makes them less profitable, and makes the area less attractive and less condusive to setting up such businesses. It's bad for exactly the same reason that any other business subsidy is bad.

If you can come up with a reason why business A should have to pay the expenses of the employees of business B, I'm all ears. But in the absence of such a reason, it's reasonable to call business B a mooch.

I am not saying that business A should have to pay the expenses of business B. The living costs of a person aren't an expense of either business, they are a cost that society as a whole has to be able to cover somehow; what I'm saing is that the mere coincidence that company B happens to employ a person is not a rational basis to dump the entirety of that person's living costs to company B.

Now, as for your first point that it's bad to be burdening business plans that have different kind of salary structure, consider for example wall street financial companies who have very few highly paid employees, and make obscene profits. Why do you think that these companies are superior or more desirable to have than, say, factories, shops or restaurants?

The mistake you're making is assuming that the alternative to WallMart paying below minimum wage is unemployment.

It's not only about Wal-Mart that has a profit margin to be viable anyway, but also marginal businesses who don't have that luxury.

If that really is the issue, then there is no reason why you wouldn't agree that WallMart is being a mooch. Then we can deal with those other businesses separately.

Walmart is not being a mooch (in terms of their low salaries anyway) because those costs aren't Walmart's problem. Walmart is adding some cost (such as cost of daily comunute, including use of public infrasturcture, higher likelihood of getting sick or injured on the job, higher calories requirements to stay alive, etc. etc.) but those costs are only a fraction of a "living wage".