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Dan Price raises minimum wage at his company to $70,000 a year


LOL. The point in all cases is that he has not done the full $70,000 and says he won't do it for 3 years. This is gospel truth straight from Dan Price. It matters nothing to any of those points if he may have increased the salaries somewhat already.

And your argument defeats itself. If you are claiming he gets all the benefits from the raises he has already given, then it follows that he does not need to do the full raises over three years to get the benefits.
 

LOL. The point in all cases is that he has not done the full $70,000 and says he won't do it for 3 years. This is gospel truth straight from Dan Price. It matters nothing to any of those points if he may have increased the salaries somewhat already.

And your argument defeats itself. If you are claiming he gets all the benefits from the raises he has already given, then it follows that he does not need to do the full raises over three years to get the benefits.

We'll see if he carries through with it. What this is a different bonus structure which is normal, but at a higher rate than a normal bonus but since he's a smaller company. We'll see what happens if they don't reach the required revenue to pay for his increased wages.
 
Maybe . . . but 20% is not 200% which was my point against dismal's claims that there'd need to be a corresponding doubling of productivity which despite his more recent protestations has to mean a doubling of the work to be done which means a doubling of the revenue being generated. Because if staffing levels remain the same then it's impossible for the same amount of staff to be twice as productive if the amount of work needing to be done stays the same.

Assuming magic unicorns do not come and increase the revenue, there needs to be a more than a doubling of productivity to increase profit by paying someone double.

Unless payroll is your entire cost basis then no it doesn't. In a normal business a doubling of payroll, which isn't happening at Gravity btw, does not double your costs.

I will grant you that if magic unicorns come and increase the revenue enough you can pay people double and have the same profit.

You don't need magic unicorns to increase revenues. If more billable work is being done in the same time period than revenues will go up as you are able to bill for the additional work.

But unless it's the paying people double that causes the magic unicorns to come you still don't have an argument that increasing the salaries causes profits to go up.

Good thing no one is arguing that increasing salaries in isolation causes profits to go up.
 
Ksen, productivity would have to double to still maintain the same profit even in a revenue increasing scenario:

A business has $500k fixed costs, $1M employment costs, $500k other variable costs (based on amount of work done) and is able to generate $3M revenue, and receive a $1M profit

Let's double the amount of work without raising wages, we hire more people to do the work by doubling the number of employees we have: We now have $500k fixed costs, $2M employment costs, and $1M other variable costs, on $6M revenue, for $2.5M profit.

Now, let's double employee wages without hiring additional people to work. They must be able to do the work of 2x as many employees to generate the $6M in revenue to maintain the equivalent $2.5M profit, as employment costs jump to $2M without any additional bodies. If their productivity did not go up 2x, we'd have to hire additional people, increasing employment costs beyond $2M and thus reducing profits.
 
But the reason your costs didn't go up by 100% was that you didn't double everyone's salary just some. However dismal is right, unless you are hoping for spillover affects to smooth it out.
 
You don't need magic unicorns to increase revenues. If more billable work is being done in the same time period than revenues will go up as you are able to bill for the additional work.

You could hire more clerks at $35k to do the additional work. In order for profits to go up by paying clerks 70k they have to be more than 2x as productive as the guys you could hire at 35k.
 
Does sticking fast food into hot oil really benefit society all that much? People will make more food at home if the price rises even a little bit.

Does oily fast food benefit society all that much? The cost of health care for clogged arteries may exceed any benefit that fast food has for society....but seriously, the cost of labour has been addressed in many of our minimum wage threads.

Australia's minimum is currently $16.87 per hour or $640.90 per 38 hour week, which is significantly higher than the US even when adjusted for cost of living between the two nations is taken into account.

Yet the fast food industry in Australia is doing business and making profits at that minimum rate. And of course middle management and higher are not on minimum rates.

You realize that higher priced restaurant food is generally no more healthy?
 
Does oily fast food benefit society all that much? The cost of health care for clogged arteries may exceed any benefit that fast food has for society....but seriously, the cost of labour has been addressed in many of our minimum wage threads.

Australia's minimum is currently $16.87 per hour or $640.90 per 38 hour week, which is significantly higher than the US even when adjusted for cost of living between the two nations is taken into account.

Yet the fast food industry in Australia is doing business and making profits at that minimum rate. And of course middle management and higher are not on minimum rates.

You realize that higher priced restaurant food is generally no more healthy?

Sure it is. People eat less of it, because it is expensive.
 
Assuming magic unicorns do not come and increase the revenue, there needs to be a more than a doubling of productivity to increase profit by paying someone double.

Unless payroll is your entire cost basis then no it doesn't. In a normal business a doubling of payroll, which isn't happening at Gravity btw, does not double your costs.

I will grant you that if magic unicorns come and increase the revenue enough you can pay people double and have the same profit.

You don't need magic unicorns to increase revenues. If more billable work is being done in the same time period than revenues will go up as you are able to bill for the additional work.

But unless it's the paying people double that causes the magic unicorns to come you still don't have an argument that increasing the salaries causes profits to go up.

Good thing no one is arguing that increasing salaries in isolation causes profits to go up.

I'm not arguing paying some people double causes all your costs to double. I'm arguing if you double the salaries of your records clerks all of your other costs and your revenues do not change. Hence in order to break even on the move the records processing clerks must be twice as productive.

If you are paying clerks 35k and have 10 clerks processing 100,000 records a week and then your soul tells you to pay clerks 70k if nothing else changes your profits go down. If your clerks become twice as productive and nothing else changes you can have 5 clerks being twice as productive still do the same 100,000 records. Only if you can get down to four clerks processing the same 100,000 records does your profit go up assuming all other costs and revenues stay the same.

If you want to assume the revenue unicorn shows up and drops another 100,000 records in your lap, sure you can make more money but the source of that money was not giving the clerks a raise it was the visit from the revenue unicorn.

If all other things are held constant the only way to make higher profit by giving the clerks a 2x wage increase is for the clerks to become more than 2x as productive.
 
Unless you have any evidence Mr. Price is currently engaging in such practices or is planning to outsource, none of that is relevant to this discussion. However, to be fair, almost none of the naysayer's or skeptics posts have been relevant to the discussion up to this point.

What makes you think that routine business decisions (whether to do something in-house or to outsource) are not being made at Mr. Price's company?
I see. You have no evidence about any of this.
 
Not at all. If they can't be disaggregated, the bolded bit is redundant and potentially misleading.
I'm mystified as to why you would believe such a thing. The bolded bit makes clear that they haven't been disaggregated; leaving it out would make it appear that they have been, which would be definitely misleading. Can you explain your reasoning?
I just did, but I can explain your mystification. Leaving it out would only make it appear they've been disaggregated if you assume the person leaving it out means two discrete quantities - which remains a projection of yours. Otherwise, addition of the bolded bit would sound like a clarification that she does indeed mean that.
A: The airplane was invented by Wilbur Wright.
B: Actually, by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
A: That's redundant and potentially misleading. Their contributions can't be disaggregated. If you mention Orville too then that makes it sound like each of them made discrete contributions that can be separated from each other, which isn't the case, so it's clearer to just say Wilbur invented it.

Not without additional demand for the product of labour.
What's your basis for that? If there's no additional demand but capital is flowing in, then prices will fall,
They might or might not. "Capital flowing in" means new factories and whatnot and/or additional investor money which investors want back and then some, all of which must come from revenue. You'd only drop your prices if the additional capital lowers unit production costs (for example by replacing labour) by more than the price drop, and whether that's the case has bugger all to do with your preconditions.
So what if the investors want their investment back? There are more of the goods being offered for sale; the buyers won't buy them all unless there's a price drop. The investors'll just have to choose between dropping the price or getting zero for unsold product.

Ah. Why would people who approve of capitalism think determining wages by how little you can get away with paying is a negative?
I'm not sure they do, but the people they need to sell it to do.
So when an unbeliever argues with theists, he should accept all the theists' superstitions because the people he needs to sell atheism to accept them?
On the contrary! It'd be dishonest like quaint parables of wages set by the worker's contribution when you really believe that employers pay as little as the labour market lets them get away with and that's fine and dandy.
As far as I can see it's not a quaint parable they don't believe; it's a prediction of the equilibrium price that "as little as the market lets them get away with" tends to adjust to over time. There appears to be some confusion about which of the two prices the claim is about. There also appears to be some confusion about the undisaggregatable absolute contribution versus the in principle measurable marginal contribution.

If a worker is offered two jobs at a 70K salary, one of them with two weeks of vacation each year and frequent overtime, the other with a month's vacation each year and no more than 8 hours work a day, so he chooses to take a job from employer #2 and hangs employer #1 out to dry, do you think that's one of capitalism's negative features?
Certainly, though it's by far the lesser evil given the human costs and employer/employee ratios.
Good lord, why? Do you long for the era of 12-hour workdays with Sundays and Christmas off? Or perhaps for the era of loyal retainers putting their feudal lord's interests ahead of their own? What the heck is negative about a worker being able to minimize the amount of trouble and inconvenience he has to go to to achieve a given standard of living?
Quote restored in full, response redundant.
Huh? How the hell does that address the question I asked? I snipped it because it appeared to be utterly irrelevant.

A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.
B. Good lord, why do you think gay sex is a negative?
A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.

Are you satisfied that A has explained why he feels gay sex is a negative?
 
Does oily fast food benefit society all that much? The cost of health care for clogged arteries may exceed any benefit that fast food has for society....but seriously, the cost of labour has been addressed in many of our minimum wage threads.

Australia's minimum is currently $16.87 per hour or $640.90 per 38 hour week, which is significantly higher than the US even when adjusted for cost of living between the two nations is taken into account.

Yet the fast food industry in Australia is doing business and making profits at that minimum rate. And of course middle management and higher are not on minimum rates.

You realize that higher priced restaurant food is generally no more healthy?

Depends on which restaurants you are talking about. Some are, some are not. Either way, the minimum pay rate here is significantly higher than in the US but our economy does not suffer for that reason.
 
I'm mystified as to why you would believe such a thing. The bolded bit makes clear that they haven't been disaggregated; leaving it out would make it appear that they have been, which would be definitely misleading. Can you explain your reasoning?
I just did, but I can explain your mystification. Leaving it out would only make it appear they've been disaggregated if you assume the person leaving it out means two discrete quantities - which remains a projection of yours. Otherwise, addition of the bolded bit would sound like a clarification that she does indeed mean that.
A: The airplane was invented by Wilbur Wright.
B: Actually, by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
A: That's redundant and potentially misleading. Their contributions can't be disaggregated. If you mention Orville too then that makes it sound like each of them made discrete contributions that can be separated from each other, which isn't the case, so it's clearer to just say Wilbur invented it.
Nah, the first bit's still your projection. More like :

Wilbur Wright: I don't get a fair share of the credit for the airplane.
B: So you're claiming to be it's sole inventor? Or perhaps you'd like to tell us what % you invented?
Wilbur Wright: ..WTF?

Not without additional demand for the product of labour.
What's your basis for that? If there's no additional demand but capital is flowing in, then prices will fall,
They might or might not. "Capital flowing in" means new factories and whatnot and/or additional investor money which investors want back and then some, all of which must come from revenue. You'd only drop your prices if the additional capital lowers unit production costs (for example by replacing labour) by more than the price drop, and whether that's the case has bugger all to do with your preconditions.
So what if the investors want their investment back? There are more of the goods being offered for sale; the buyers won't buy them all unless there's a price drop. The investors'll just have to choose between dropping the price or getting zero for unsold product.
No they just won't because they also have the option of not investing. What I said -"You'd only drop your prices if the additional capital lowers unit production costs by [etc]"- and, if not, the "capital flowing in" assumption doesn't hold either.

Ah. Why would people who approve of capitalism think determining wages by how little you can get away with paying is a negative?
I'm not sure they do, but the people they need to sell it to do.
So when an unbeliever argues with theists, he should accept all the theists' superstitions because the people he needs to sell atheism to accept them?
On the contrary! It'd be dishonest like quaint parables of wages set by the worker's contribution when you really believe that employers pay as little as the labour market lets them get away with and that's fine and dandy.
As far as I can see it's not a quaint parable they don't believe; it's a prediction of the equilibrium price that "as little as the market lets them get away with" tends to adjust to over time. There appears to be some confusion about which of the two prices the claim is about. There also appears to be some confusion about the undisaggregatable absolute contribution versus the in principle measurable marginal contribution.

If a worker is offered two jobs at a 70K salary, one of them with two weeks of vacation each year and frequent overtime, the other with a month's vacation each year and no more than 8 hours work a day, so he chooses to take a job from employer #2 and hangs employer #1 out to dry, do you think that's one of capitalism's negative features?
Certainly, though it's by far the lesser evil given the human costs and employer/employee ratios.
Good lord, why? Do you long for the era of 12-hour workdays with Sundays and Christmas off? Or perhaps for the era of loyal retainers putting their feudal lord's interests ahead of their own? What the heck is negative about a worker being able to minimize the amount of trouble and inconvenience he has to go to to achieve a given standard of living?
Quote restored in full, response redundant.
Huh? How the hell does that address the question I asked? I snipped it because it appeared to be utterly irrelevant.

A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.
B. Good lord, why do you think gay sex is a negative?
A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.

Are you satisfied that A has explained why he feels gay sex is a negative?
Of course not and nor should I be. The comparison of negatives was YOURS (anti-capitalists biased about negatives affecting their "ingroup" vs "outgroup" blah blah). Remember?
 
I just did, but I can explain your mystification. Leaving it out would only make it appear they've been disaggregated if you assume the person leaving it out means two discrete quantities - which remains a projection of yours. Otherwise, addition of the bolded bit would sound like a clarification that she does indeed mean that.
A: The airplane was invented by Wilbur Wright.
B: Actually, by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
A: That's redundant and potentially misleading. Their contributions can't be disaggregated. If you mention Orville too then that makes it sound like each of them made discrete contributions that can be separated from each other, which isn't the case, so it's clearer to just say Wilbur invented it.
Nah, the first bit's still your projection. More like :

Wilbur Wright: I don't get a fair share of the credit for the airplane.
B: So you're claiming to be it's sole inventor? Or perhaps you'd like to tell us what % you invented?
Wilbur Wright: ..WTF?
Dude! Here's what you wrote.

Funny thing is, this guy's actually doing something like what capitalism groupies claim capitalism does : paying workers a fair share of the revenue the company generates

Oh, sorry, my bad. That's not what you wrote. What you actually wrote was:

Funny thing is, this guy's actually doing something like what capitalism groupies claim capitalism does : paying workers according to the revenue they generate

So no. Not more like your version of Wilbur and Orville. Less like your version. More like my version. Exactly like my version.

So what if the investors want their investment back? There are more of the goods being offered for sale; the buyers won't buy them all unless there's a price drop. The investors'll just have to choose between dropping the price or getting zero for unsold product.
No they just won't because they also have the option of not investing. What I said -"You'd only drop your prices if the additional capital lowers unit production costs by [etc]"- and, if not, the "capital flowing in" assumption doesn't hold either.
So your theory is what? That if investors observe that businesses of a certain type earn a return on investment that's the average business's ROI plus X, but, due to the law of diminishing returns, they calculate that additional investment in that type of business will only achieve X/2 more ROI than average, in order to hold out for X they will choose not to invest in that type of business? Where exactly is it that you think they will be parking their investment capital while they're waiting for some method of dropping unit production costs that will make it possible for them to get the full amount X over average ROI that the existing businesses of that type achieve? If the investors go ahead and invest even though they'll have to cut prices then they'll get X/2 over average; if capital doesn't flow in because they choose the option of not investing then they'll get zero over average.

If a worker is offered two jobs at a 70K salary, one of them with two weeks of vacation each year and frequent overtime, the other with a month's vacation each year and no more than 8 hours work a day, so he chooses to take a job from employer #2 and hangs employer #1 out to dry, do you think that's one of capitalism's negative features?
Certainly, though it's by far the lesser evil given the human costs and employer/employee ratios.
Good lord, why? Do you long for the era of 12-hour workdays with Sundays and Christmas off? Or perhaps for the era of loyal retainers putting their feudal lord's interests ahead of their own? What the heck is negative about a worker being able to minimize the amount of trouble and inconvenience he has to go to to achieve a given standard of living?
Quote restored in full, response redundant.
Huh? How the hell does that address the question I asked? I snipped it because it appeared to be utterly irrelevant.

A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.
B. Good lord, why do you think gay sex is a negative?
A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.

Are you satisfied that A has explained why he feels gay sex is a negative?
Of course not and nor should I be.
Correct. Likewise, of course I'm not satisfied that you've explained why my above scenario is a negative, when all you've said is it's a lesser evil than something else. Nor should I be.

The comparison of negatives was YOURS (anti-capitalists biased about negatives affecting their "ingroup" vs "outgroup" blah blah). Remember?
"The comparison of negatives"? I didn't compare negatives. What I compared was something widely but erroneously regarded as a negative with another thing widely regarded as a positive that I figured only an insane person or a slaver would regard as a negative. But you took me by surprise and said you thought the latter was a negative too. So now in order to continue my line of argument I need to find out why you regard it as a negative feature of capitalism for a worker to be able to choose a job that leaves him with more leisure time. But you won't tell me why you "certainly" think that's one of capitalism's negative features; instead you're persistently giving me the runaround. I understand that people don't like being cross-examined; but you strike me as one of the guys who's here to argue, not to preach. So argue already.
 
I just did, but I can explain your mystification. Leaving it out would only make it appear they've been disaggregated if you assume the person leaving it out means two discrete quantities - which remains a projection of yours. Otherwise, addition of the bolded bit would sound like a clarification that she does indeed mean that.
A: The airplane was invented by Wilbur Wright.
B: Actually, by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
A: That's redundant and potentially misleading. Their contributions can't be disaggregated. If you mention Orville too then that makes it sound like each of them made discrete contributions that can be separated from each other, which isn't the case, so it's clearer to just say Wilbur invented it.
Nah, the first bit's still your projection. More like :

Wilbur Wright: I don't get a fair share of the credit for the airplane.
B: So you're claiming to be it's sole inventor? Or perhaps you'd like to tell us what % you invented?
Wilbur Wright: ..WTF?
Dude! Here's what you wrote.

Funny thing is, this guy's actually doing something like what capitalism groupies claim capitalism does : paying workers a fair share of the revenue the company generates

Oh, sorry, my bad. That's not what you wrote. What you actually wrote was:

Funny thing is, this guy's actually doing something like what capitalism groupies claim capitalism does : paying workers according to the revenue they generate

So no. Not more like your version of Wilbur and Orville. Less like your version. More like my version. Exactly like my version.
Well, no. One more obviously than the other doesn't mean what your version says, but that the other does remains your projection. Also, people who tout the idea that workers are paid in proportion to their contribution don't mean from revenue which can't be disaggregated either. Otherwise the "charity", "publicity stunt" etc pejoratives make no sense. So I mean what I said in the first place though your paraphrase would do.

So what if the investors want their investment back? There are more of the goods being offered for sale; the buyers won't buy them all unless there's a price drop. The investors'll just have to choose between dropping the price or getting zero for unsold product.
No they just won't because they also have the option of not investing. What I said -"You'd only drop your prices if the additional capital lowers unit production costs by [etc]"- and, if not, the "capital flowing in" assumption doesn't hold either.
So your theory is what?
What I said : you'd only drop your prices if additional capital lowers unit production cost by more than price drop. Otherwise you might gain market share (ie sell more units) without any more profit, especially after additional capital expediture and/or interest is subtracted from revenue. Firms and investors take that gamble or not, but "capital flowing in"-therefore more production-therefore more labour consumed- can't be assumed.

And -as I also said- additional capital might, equally, reduce labour consumption anyway.

That if investors observe that businesses of a certain type earn a return on investment that's the average business's ROI plus X, but, due to the law of diminishing returns, they calculate that additional investment in that type of business will only achieve X/2 more ROI than average, in order to hold out for X they will choose not to invest in that type of business? Where exactly is it that you think they will be parking their investment capital while they're waiting for some method of dropping unit production costs that will make it possible for them to get the full amount X over average ROI that the existing businesses of that type achieve? If the investors go ahead and invest even though they'll have to cut prices then they'll get X/2 over average; if capital doesn't flow in because they choose the option of not investing then they'll get zero over average.

If a worker is offered two jobs at a 70K salary, one of them with two weeks of vacation each year and frequent overtime, the other with a month's vacation each year and no more than 8 hours work a day, so he chooses to take a job from employer #2 and hangs employer #1 out to dry, do you think that's one of capitalism's negative features?
Certainly, though it's by far the lesser evil given the human costs and employer/employee ratios.
Good lord, why? Do you long for the era of 12-hour workdays with Sundays and Christmas off? Or perhaps for the era of loyal retainers putting their feudal lord's interests ahead of their own? What the heck is negative about a worker being able to minimize the amount of trouble and inconvenience he has to go to to achieve a given standard of living?
Quote restored in full, response redundant.
Huh? How the hell does that address the question I asked? I snipped it because it appeared to be utterly irrelevant.

A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.
B. Good lord, why do you think gay sex is a negative?
A. Gay sex is certainly a negative, though by far the lesser evil than pedophilia.

Are you satisfied that A has explained why he feels gay sex is a negative?
Of course not and nor should I be.
Correct. Likewise, of course I'm not satisfied that you've explained why my above scenario is a negative, when all you've said is it's a lesser evil than something else. Nor should I be.

The comparison of negatives was YOURS (anti-capitalists biased about negatives affecting their "ingroup" vs "outgroup" blah blah). Remember?
"The comparison of negatives"? I didn't compare negatives. What I compared was something widely but erroneously regarded as a negative with another thing widely regarded as a positive that I figured only an insane person or a slaver would regard as a negative. But you took me by surprise and said you thought the latter was a negative too. So now in order to continue my line of argument I need to find out why you regard it as a negative feature of capitalism for a worker to be able to choose a job that leaves him with more leisure time.
But I don't. The other negative I impute is the employer who can't offer as good conditions being "hung out to dry" (as you put it) by the prospective employee. That is a negative (specifically a negative feature of capitalism, which is what you asked about) but by far the lesser one than the awful alternatives of which you've kindly provided examples. Both are negative consequences of the labour-capital antagonism inherent in capitalsim which people condemn for reasons that have bugger all to do with "outgroups". Perhaps you didn't think said employer being "hung out to dry" was a negative, but then WTF were/are you on about?
 
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Well, no. One more obviously than the other doesn't mean what your version says, but that the other does remains your projection. Also, people who tout the idea that workers are paid in proportion to their contribution don't mean from revenue which can't be disaggregated either. Otherwise the "charity", "publicity stunt" etc pejoratives make no sense. So I mean what I said in the first place though your paraphrase would do.
Sorry about the delay. What I wrote wasn't a paraphrase; it was a non-paraphrase that showed what you'd have to have written in order for your line of argument to make sense. If you're suggesting the two are roughly equivalent, there's no logical basis for that opinion; they don't magically become interchangeable because of third parties' views about what's proportional to what.

In any event, "charity" isn't a pejorative. There's nothing wrong with charity. Charity is a good thing. People called it charity not to criticize Price but because they're trying to understand the psychology behind his unusual decision and that's what seemed the most plausible to them. "Publicity stunt" is a bit of a pejorative, but again it was offered in an attempt to understand Price's motivation. (And frankly, it was a pretty implausible guess.)

What I said : you'd only drop your prices if additional capital lowers unit production cost by more than price drop. Otherwise you might gain market share (ie sell more units) without any more profit, especially after additional capital expediture and/or interest is subtracted from revenue. Firms and investors take that gamble or not, but "capital flowing in"-therefore more production-therefore more labour consumed- can't be assumed.
You're just repeating yourself without pointing out any error in the counterargument I offered.

And -as I also said- additional capital might, equally, reduce labour consumption anyway.
That could be an indirect result under some conditions, yes. But it's unlikely that such scenarios are what the "capitalism groupies" you heard had in mind -- they were more likely talking about direct effects in ordinary situations.

"The comparison of negatives"? I didn't compare negatives. What I compared was something widely but erroneously regarded as a negative with another thing widely regarded as a positive that I figured only an insane person or a slaver would regard as a negative. But you took me by surprise and said you thought the latter was a negative too. So now in order to continue my line of argument I need to find out why you regard it as a negative feature of capitalism for a worker to be able to choose a job that leaves him with more leisure time.
But I don't. The other negative I impute is the employer who can't offer as good conditions being "hung out to dry" (as you put it) by the prospective employee. That is a negative (specifically a negative feature of capitalism, which is what you asked about) but by far the lesser one than the awful alternatives of which you've kindly provided examples.
Oh, I see what you're getting at. But I'm not seeing why you think that's a negative feature specifically of capitalism. An employer hung out to dry is a consequence of there being two jobs people want done and only one person available with the necessary skill set who hasn't already been deployed to higher-priority tasks. How do you figure any other economic system isn't going to run up against the same problem? At least with capitalism the severity of the problem will tend to be alleviated by price signals that will motivate people to try to acquire the required skills.

Both are negative consequences of the labour-capital antagonism inherent in capitalsim which people condemn for reasons that have bugger all to do with "outgroups".
Labor-capital antagonism is inherent in any system where capital goes beyond hand-tools and goats. Any piece of capital that needs two or more people to cooperate in order for it to be used is going to be deployed according to somebody's decisions, and those decisions will antagonize the laborers who disagree with them. It's not as though labor didn't mind being ordered around by Soviet commissars. It's not as though labor didn't mind voting on how to run "their" newly-seized factory while Spanish Anarchists stood around holding guns and observing how each worker voted. Even if factory-seizers somewhere one day improbably selflessly yield up their power and allow the factory workers to vote by secret ballot, it's not as though the outvoted minority of labor won't mind being ordered around by the capital-controlling majority of labor. People condemn capitalism for labor-capital antagonism because they believe in fairy tales. (And when you unroll the fairy tales, more likely than not the reason a specific fairy tale is the one they believe in will turn out to have a great deal to do with outgroups.)

Perhaps you didn't think said employer being "hung out to dry" was a negative, but then WTF were/are you on about?
An employer being "hung out to dry" is an inevitable fact of the post-neolithic human condition. What I do not regard as a negative is the question of which of two employers will be the one hung out to dry getting settled by the criterion of which one leaves a leisure-preferring employee more leisure time. Do you regard that as a negative?
 
Oh this thread again.
There was recent The Daily Show episode where they sent one of their "correspondents" to get people to sign a petition for $13.5K/hour minimum wage (13.5 thousands US dollars and hour). That was pretty funny and somewhat related to this discussion.
 
Oh this thread again.
There was recent The Daily Show episode where they sent one of their "correspondents" to get people to sign a petition for $13.5K/hour minimum wage (13.5 thousands US dollars and hour). That was pretty funny and somewhat related to this discussion.

I would call that a bad example as people could have overlooked the decimal place. $80/hr would be a better choice for looking for fools.
 
The fact remains that inequality in income and wealth is growing to epic proportions, and if it is not addressed, whatever form that takes, it will become socially and economically unsustainable in the long term, if it hasn't already.
 
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