New Study Confirms That American Workers Are Getting Ripped Off

[Elixir]

Argue all you want - this is all you need to know.
Look particularly at individual costs... the US is clearly an outlier, and US healthcare vastly under-performs every country on the list that has UHC.

 

[untermensche]

Labor has a right to what it produces.

That is simply basic fairness.

But of course top down dictatorial control in a system makes any talk of fairness a joke.

And of course many support the arguments put forth by dictators.

Many are fully in support of dictators and look after the needs of dictators.

Just as many looked after the needs of Kings and Popes.

So the owners get no value from what they provide. Why should they provide anything?

The owner should be the workers.

That the system is set up so dictators can exist does not change the moral connection between the laborer and the fruits of labor.

The moral goal of humanity is to give the laborer as much of the fruits of their labor as possible.

Not to give some dictators the most possible.

Morality is on it's head in modern capitalism.

 

[untermensche]

Argue all you want - this is all you need to know.
Look particularly at individual costs... the US is clearly an outlier, and US healthcare vastly under-performs every country on the list that has UHC.

It is misleading in a system that is so filled with profit making entities.

All profit in a healthcare system is waste.

It is money that does not provide health care.

Subtract all the expenditures in the US system that end up as profit or as huge salaries and perks for executives and you will see that a lot less is actually spent on actual health care.

 

[lpetrich]

Employers will do almost anything to find workers to fill jobs — except pay them more

Billions of dollars are funneled to owners of capital in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, while laborers go begging for even the measliest wage increases. In recent days and weeks we’ve seen the process play out for the umpteenth time, as businesses grouse about a labor shortage even as job openings increase.

...
The rhetoric coming out of the employer lobby would leave one to believe that workers are somehow the guilty party in this — they simply won’t accept jobs that pay them less than they’re worth.

The underlying cause of the “labor shortage” is hiding in plain sight. It’s the long-term trend of funneling the gains from labor productivity not to the workforce, but to shareholders. As with any addiction, this process produces short-term euphoria, reflected in share prices, but long-term pathology, reflected in income inequality, poverty and social unrest.

Wall Street vs. Wages II: American's stock gets downrated because its management gave raises to some workers, and stock analysts claim that Chipotle's labor fraction of expenses, 27%, is too much.

 

[untermensche]

That is a serious problem with the current system.

Any money spent on things like workers is considered a waste to be reduced.

 

[zorq]

This is a fair question that really deserves more thought. Regardless of which side you are on.

Yes, the producers deserve more rewards for being smart and working hard. No argument there. But should they endlessly be rewarded all the additional productivity surpluses to the end of time?

The benefits of productivity should go to those who produce.

Note that machines are a source of production, the productivity from them goes to the owner of the machines.

You are wrong about machines.

The productivity that comes from machines isn't free productivity, it is leveraged productivity proportional to the efforts of the workers who use and maintain them. Prove me wrong if you can.

 

[bilby]

No, that's a separate thing. I'm talking about their including fairness of funding it.

A system with the tip-top, you beaut, super fantastic, best care in the world, but which only covers one person, while millions get no treatment (or sub-standard treatment) is inherently less good than a system that has a decent standard of care for all patients. There is a clear spectrum from 'worse' to 'better' that maps neatly to the spectrum from 'nobody is covered' to 'everybody is covered'.

And UHC seems to have a lot more substandard treatment.

If your system has some residents who are not able to get health care, then it is not as good as a system in which all residents are able to get health care. That this obvious fact is somehow controversial to you and to many other Americans, is a searing indictment of peoples ability to be persuaded of falsehoods by propagandists.

Plenty of people in UHC countries can't get adequate care. It's just the limit is availability rather than payment.

So you assert without evidence (as usual). But it's hard to see how any amount of care could be below the standard of 'none'.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Labor has a right to what it produces.

That is simply basic fairness.

But of course top down dictatorial control in a system makes any talk of fairness a joke.

And of course many support the arguments put forth by dictators.

Many are fully in support of dictators and look after the needs of dictators.

Just as many looked after the needs of Kings and Popes.

So the owners get no value from what they provide. Why should they provide anything?

The owners *don't* provide anything. That's the whole problem. On a small individual scale, owning something means having spent years contributing to society to provide proof that you deserve some share of societal resource: land, or food, or water, or service. When someone on such individual scales die, their contribution turns mostly into "learning money" for their kids, maybe some debt relief, and possibly some valued heirlooms coming down.

The owners of a company, though, generally don't continue to contribute for said ownership. They don't continue to work, and oftentimes their ownership comes through merely "buying" a historic investment someone else made. That's the problem many of us have with the system: historic contributions never time out.

If the owners don't provide anything where does the stuff come from, the factory fairy? Even Marx recognized the problem, but his "answer" was to steal it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Argue all you want - this is all you need to know.
Look particularly at individual costs... the US is clearly an outlier, and US healthcare vastly under-performs every country on the list that has UHC.

1) The gap is closing in more recent data.

2) How accurate is the data in the first place? Remember, the US gets a lot of medical tourism by the wealthy. That's healthcare spending in the US.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Labor has a right to what it produces.

That is simply basic fairness.

But of course top down dictatorial control in a system makes any talk of fairness a joke.

And of course many support the arguments put forth by dictators.

Many are fully in support of dictators and look after the needs of dictators.

Just as many looked after the needs of Kings and Popes.

So the owners get no value from what they provide. Why should they provide anything?

The owner should be the workers.

That the system is set up so dictators can exist does not change the moral connection between the laborer and the fruits of labor.

The moral goal of humanity is to give the laborer as much of the fruits of their labor as possible.

Not to give some dictators the most possible.

Morality is on it's head in modern capitalism.

We've been over this many times. Your model is a disaster in anything other than a very static world.

Lets consider someone starting out in life. He's completed his education. What does he do?

A) Build a factory? With what, he doesn't have money.

B) Get a job? How? If the workers own the factories they aren't going to simply take on somebody new--that's giving the new guy a huge chunk of money.

C) Or do the workers only have voting control, not true ownership? Ok, he can get hired. But where? The workers will fare far better if they loot their business (distribute money to the workers instead of performing maintenance etc.) and then get a job elsewhere when their place eventually fails. (For an example of this in operation look at Venezuela. They looted their oil industry this way. Production has nosedived.)

And technology has changed. A factory producing something new really should be built. How? Nobody has the money to do it. And if they do we are back to case B.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is a fair question that really deserves more thought. Regardless of which side you are on.

Yes, the producers deserve more rewards for being smart and working hard. No argument there. But should they endlessly be rewarded all the additional productivity surpluses to the end of time?

The benefits of productivity should go to those who produce.

Note that machines are a source of production, the productivity from them goes to the owner of the machines.

You are wrong about machines.

The productivity that comes from machines isn't free productivity, it is leveraged productivity proportional to the efforts of the workers who use and maintain them. Prove me wrong if you can.

The worker gets paid for what he does.

Give him a better tool, he produces more due to that tool. The extra value belongs to the owner of the tool. If you give it to the worker why would the owner spend the money for the tool??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, that's a separate thing. I'm talking about their including fairness of funding it.



And UHC seems to have a lot more substandard treatment.



Plenty of people in UHC countries can't get adequate care. It's just the limit is availability rather than payment.

So you assert without evidence (as usual). But it's hard to see how any amount of care could be below the standard of 'none'.

The uninsured population in the US is hard to pin down but it looks to be about 5% of the population, plus another few percent who are illegals and thus wouldn't be covered even under a UHC system. At least 90% have insurance.

 

[bilby]

No, that's a separate thing. I'm talking about their including fairness of funding it.



And UHC seems to have a lot more substandard treatment.



Plenty of people in UHC countries can't get adequate care. It's just the limit is availability rather than payment.

So you assert without evidence (as usual). But it's hard to see how any amount of care could be below the standard of 'none'.

The uninsured population in the US is hard to pin down but it looks to be about 5% of the population, plus another few percent who are illegals and thus wouldn't be covered even under a UHC system. At least 90% have insurance.

Leaving up to 30 million people with nothing. Yay.

And whether 'illegals' would be covered depends on the system, and on who you call an 'illegal'; The NHS (at least for its first several decades) made no attempt to screen patients based on their 'legality' - your presence at a GP's surgery or at a hospital in the United Kingdom with a condition for which medical treatment was required was the only qualification needed. Citizenship and/or lawful residency wasn't even inquired about, much less acted upon.

'Medical tourism' was controlled for at the border, not at the medical facilities; You might be deported if you tried to enter the country for the primary purpose of obtaining free treatment from the NHS, but you would not be turned away from a hospital on the basis of your immigration status.

 

[DBT]

So you are okay with 4/5 of all the benefits of automation going to padding the CEO's/shareholders' pockets instead of the workers' and there is no way that we could ever call that a bad deal?

Do you think the CEOs are working harder now than they did in a previous era? Guess what. Their job has probably gotten easier with technology too. Making good decisions is easier when you have more pertinent information.

The workers contributed nothing to that automation, why should they reap the benefits? (Those of us involved in making the automation already got paychecks for doing so.)

Ultimately you can't have a large percentage of the population without incomes, without means of support, with no hope of a better life. Especially if those who are in that position see how the other half live, seemingly limitless money, property, luxury and boundless excess.

 

[barbos]

So you are okay with 4/5 of all the benefits of automation going to padding the CEO's/shareholders' pockets instead of the workers' and there is no way that we could ever call that a bad deal?

Do you think the CEOs are working harder now than they did in a previous era? Guess what. Their job has probably gotten easier with technology too. Making good decisions is easier when you have more pertinent information.

The workers contributed nothing to that automation, why should they reap the benefits? (Those of us involved in making the automation already got paychecks for doing so.)

Ultimately you can't have a large percentage of the population without incomes, without means of support, with no hope of a better life. Especially if those who are in that position see how the other half live, seemingly limitless money, property, luxury and boundless excess.

Exactly, that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.

 

[zorq]

You are wrong about machines.

The productivity that comes from machines isn't free productivity, it is leveraged productivity proportional to the efforts of the workers who use and maintain them. Prove me wrong if you can.

The worker gets paid for what he does.

Give him a better tool, he produces more due to that tool. The extra value belongs to the owner of the tool. If you give it to the worker why would the owner spend the money for the tool??

First of all you are moving the goal posts. I'm not saying give all the extra production value to the worker, I'm saying give the SAME CUT to the worker he enjoyed before. Not only does the worker get the same cut for the same effort, the managers get the same cut for putting in the SAME EFFORT they put in before too. Don't act like the owners won't benefit from this. The increased production means increased income which means increased profit. It is STILL a good decision to give your workers tools even if they have the SAME CUT. (I swear that you are being deliberately obtuse to mess with me. I know you understand economics better than this last post indicates.) Even though the cut is the same everyone is making more money!

There is always going to be a cut. There has always been a cut. There have always been tools that affect production. You keep trying to justify changing the traditional cut when NOTHING has actually changed.


But you want to sell me on the idea that upgrading the factory floor means the workers should automatically have their wages frozen. It just doesn't follow.


PS. You want to know what happens if the owner DOESN'T invest in new tools and technology that can improve their efficiency? Their company goes out of business when their more efficient competitor who invested in the new technology undercuts their prices. In a competitive environment, ignoring new tools is a death sentence for a company. They really have no choice. If the managers are too stupid to upgrade, they deserve the death of their company. (It's a shame they never seem to feel any pain from their failures with golden parachutes popping open every time a Fortune 500 manager fails.)

 

[DBT]

Ultimately you can't have a large percentage of the population without incomes, without means of support, with no hope of a better life. Especially if those who are in that position see how the other half live, seemingly limitless money, property, luxury and boundless excess.

Exactly, that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.

Sorry, I can't see the connection between what I said and ''that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.''

 

[barbos]

Ultimately you can't have a large percentage of the population without incomes, without means of support, with no hope of a better life. Especially if those who are in that position see how the other half live, seemingly limitless money, property, luxury and boundless excess.

Exactly, that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.

Sorry, I can't see the connection between what I said and ''that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.''

Come on, try harder. Rich folk don't exist in a vacuum. Virtually everything their companies produce is consumed by ordinary folk.

 

[DBT]

Sorry, I can't see the connection between what I said and ''that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.''

Come on, try harder. Rich folk don't exist in a vacuum. Virtually everything their companies produce is consumed by ordinary folk.

My point was about disenfranchised workers, disillusioned workers....workers who's wages have stagnated for decades while the rich get ever richer......seeing little chance of improvement in pay and conditions, not that they can buy their knick knacks at bargain prices because producers have moved their factories to the Philippines because wage cost is low and profits greater.

 

[barbos]

Sorry, I can't see the connection between what I said and ''that's why a lot (not all) rich folk deserve their money. Ordinary folk reap their benefit through being able to buy better and cheaper products.''

Come on, try harder. Rich folk don't exist in a vacuum. Virtually everything their companies produce is consumed by ordinary folk.

My point was about disenfranchised workers, disillusioned workers....workers who's wages have stagnated for decades while the rich get ever richer......seeing little chance of improvement in pay and conditions.

Well, if you assume that the myth about disenfranchised workers is true.