New Study Confirms That American Workers Are Getting Ripped Off

[lpetrich]

So, yeah, american workers had a good run while Europe was recovering from WW2 and Asia was in deep shit.
And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Because you might be next.

 

[untermensche]

..And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Union wages have the tendency to draw all wages towards them.

If there are no high wages then all wages have the tendency to stagnate.

You support unions and desire their wages to go as high as possible.

To lift the wages of everyone.

Like union wages did for years back in the 50's and 60's.

That union lift is gone.

Thank you all you blind haters of unions.

 

[SimpleDon]

New Study Confirms That American Workers Are Getting Ripped Off

The system is free market capitalism.

I am sorry, but you are wrong.

Our economy is a mixed capitalist economy, part market based, part relying on professionalism, (ie doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, soldiers, FBI agents, teachers, priests, pilots, etc., who have a greater responsibility to the society than profit alone) and partly based on government control. This is the economy that has evolved over millennia, through trial and error, throwing out what doesn't work and keeping what does work.

And definitely one of the things that didn't work is a self-regulating, free market economy. If you have an example of a self-regulating, self-organizing free market that has existed at any time, anywhere in the history of man please list it here.

It is not too surprising that the marketplace, like society in general, has to be policed to punish bad and criminal behavior. What is surprising is that so many people believe that the marketplace doesn't have to be policed, that the marketplace can be free of laws and regulations and the enforcement of them because the marketplace has an innate property allows it to police itself. That there is no evidence of the marketplace having such an innate property seems to have enhanced this narrative rather than having diminished it, as you would expect.

The economy is driven by profit and return on investments, period.

No, sorry, but you are wrong again. The economy that we really have, not the one that you mistakenly believe or hope that we have, is driven by realized or anticipated demand. The difference is best illustrated by answering the question, which is more likely to result in a corporation making investments in increased production facilities, the fact that there is money available to invest or that there is unmet demand for the products that the corporation makes because they are producing the most that they can in their existing factories?

Jobs and rising standards of living are side effects.

No, again. The economy is based on consumption of goods and services produced in the economy. Consumption is based on demand for the goods and services and demand comes largely from the wages paid to the workers in the economy. The money that goes to the 2% is largely put into savings in banks, stocks, and bonds and removed from the economy of consumption. Savings benefits the individual but diminishes the economy as a whole.

Just answer this simple question, what is more likely to increase inflation, increased wages or increased savings? There is your answer. The one that produces inflation does so because it has the greatest impact on the economy. See, it is really simple.

But even if this was not true, the main purpose of the economy has to be to provide support and material well being for the greatest number of people in the society. And this is accomplished by increasing wages at the costs of profits, once we have provided enough profits for needed investments in job-producing production facilities. And the last time that I looked corporate profits were more than 7 times the amount of corporate investment. If this is not enough profits for you how much do you think that is needed? 10 times, 20? Why?

Economics is not fate. We don't have to accept the results produced by the economy if they don't suit us. You can see this by comparing mixed market economies around the world. Most notably there are very many highly developed industrial economies around the world with much lower national incomes per capita than the US who have eliminated the working poor, workers who live in poverty. It isn't a mystery even of how those economies have done this, they have higher wages for the vast majority of the workers in the society. They don't even have lower profits because the higher wages generate more consumption, more economic activity.

Wages and labor demand vary with supply and demand.

Again, no. This is another pipe dream of neoliberalism. Another point at which neoliberalism theory deviates from the economic reality. The neoliberal idea of a true labor market is aspirational rather than descriptive, it is the way that neoliberals wished that the economy worked or rather it is really more so the way that the neoliberals want us to believe that the economy worked to justify the suppression of wages to increase profits.

The irony of the idea of a true labor market is that a true market for labor where wages are the price of labor set by the supply and demand for labor doesn't exist. The ways in which the real labor market deviates from a true market for commodities are many, the ways that the real labor market resembles a market for commodities are few.

1. Labor is not a commodity.
2. Labor can't be separated from its supplier.
3. Labor can't be stored if it is not used, it is lost forever.
4. Labor if it’s not used deteriorates.
5. Labor when it's used improves.
6. There is no substitute for labor, and no, automation is not a substitute for labor.
7. Wages are set more by norms rather than the supply and demand for labor.
8. The demand for labor is not a regular, well behaved, downward sloping function as it would have to be to set wages.
9. A increase in wages increases the demand for labor because wages are the primary source of demand in the economy.
10. A decrease in wages decreases the demand for labor for the same reason.
11. Wages are inelastic in both directions, they don't go up or go down easily.
12. The ratio between the capital machines and the labor employed to run and to maintain the machines is fixed in the short term, you can't increase production by putting more workers on the same machine.
13. No employer hires more workers because wages are low.
14. No employer fires workers when wages are high.
15. Increasingly workers are specialized, it is hard to take a specialized worker into another industry or another specialization, workers are reluctant to move to take a different job because of the expense and the disruption involved, therefore employers enjoy monopoly advantage in their local area over employees.
16. A portion of the supply of labor is inelastic, they have to work, no matter what the wages are.
17. Another portion of the supply of labor is elastic, if wages are high they work, if wages are low they don't
18. There is a satisfaction to working beyond the wage.
19. Many people work for the satisfaction in one job even if they could earn a higher wage doing something different.
20. The supply of labor is not a regular, well behaved, upward sloping function as it would have to be to set wages.
21. Labor is provided by human beings, therefore the workers bring not only their labor-power but also their egos and their sense of fairness and justice to the workplace.
22. The perceived demand for cheap labor by employers is limitless because lower wages equals higher profits, when in fact it is a limiting factor for the overall economy because it lowers demand that lowers profits.
23. Economic growth comes from an increase in demand from an increase in the number of workers who are also consumers, any increases in the wage levels of the workers, this increase in demand spurring new investment and increases in the productivity of the workers.
24. The productivity of labor depends on how healthy and how motivated the labor force is, how well educated and trained the workers are, the range of the work assigned, the number of days and hours in a day worked, the safety of the job and the security of employment in the face of the business cycle, all of these factors not having much if anything to do with the wage level.
25. ... etc.

Wage rates depend on the relative negotiating power of the employers and the employees. It is disingenuous to permit large corporations to exist to negotiate from strength and then to remove the employee's ability to negotiate collectively and instead to pretend that individuals can successfully negotiate with these large corporations to obtain a wage that fully reflects the individual's contribution. It is disingenuous to tell the individuals that they have to pay for their college education as if they were the only ones who benefit from that education and then to tell them that they have no claim for a portion of the increased productivity that the education produces. It is disingenuous to tell the employee that he has to pay more for his health care out of an ever-shrinking paycheck because the prevailing economic theory requires that medical care becomes a profit-making business.

You will have to elaborate on what you mean by ripped off. Of course, there are systemic inequities.

Yes, you are correct, finally! There are systemic inequities. In fact, it is not wrong to say that income inequity is only systemic. That there is no innate economic principle or property that determines how the rewards from the operation of the economy are divided among the members of the society. Rather than being a function of economics, this division of income and wealth is left up to social mores and the government to determine. And this is how the American worker is getting ripped off.

Because so many people have the same flawed understanding of economics that you have, the American workers have handed the determination of who gets what portion of the economic rewards to the already wealthy and, surprise, they have decided that the already wealthy should get all of the rewards from innovation and greater productivity.

What does the typical American worker have today compared to 50 years ago? Computers, multiple family cars, a motorcycle, wireless devices and so on. The medical technology available today was unheard of in the 50s.

In the 1950s buying power middle class were a small house, a car, washer, dryer, black and white TV, and a two-week vacation. The variety of goods people can afford today was unthinkable in the 50s. The food 24/7 in supermarkets is staggering in context.

Workers are getting ripped off...yea tea yea. Get out your Castro beret and man the barricades.

Given your flawed understanding of the realities of economics, it is not surprising that you feel it important to lie to yourself like this.

You wouldn't be far off of the mark to assume that I believe you to be either self-serving in the beliefs you have exposed above if you are one of the already wealthy or to be one of the workers who doesn't know that they are being ripped off. Which is it?

 

[SimpleDon]

If worker productivity has increased by 500% in X years but worker standard of living has only increased by 100% in the same time that still means workers are being ripped off.

Workers usually have nothing to do with productivity increase (engineers, scientists have.)
And the increase in productivity does not always mean more product, usually, it means fewer workers and/or different products.

Productivity is defined in economics as producing a product with fewer hours worked. It is hard then to say that the workers have nothing to do with greater productivity.

And what industry exists where engineers are not workers?

If wages aren't raised in the face of greater productivity then the rewards from the productivity improvement go to the shareholders, either directly as dividends or indirectly as increased share prices, share inflation. If we can say anything about who contributes to increased productivity we can say that the shareholders had no contribution to the increased productivity. They didn't even provide the investment needed for the productivity increase, a common misconception. Their increased share value comes directly and solely when they sell the stock and it comes directly from the person who buys the stock, the same way that they became stockholders themselves, when they funded any inflated valuation of the stock to the pervous owners. The corporation doesn't receive any of this money, they fund the investments to improve the productivity of its workers either internally through retained earnings or by borrowing the money by selling bonds or going to a bank.

In my experience of 30+ years providing automation equipment in mining and mineral processing, the reasons for the applications of automation were to increase production or to improve quality of the product, not to replace workers. To introduce a new product is not considered to be an increase in productivity. Instead, introducing a new product usually reduces productivity until the labor force is trained to produce the new product. And then as the labor force is trained and does gain familiarity with the new product their productivity increases.

 

[SimpleDon]

The OECD has rigged the results before. (Their evaluation of UHC as superior uses a fudge factor of having UHC is 20% of the score.) Fool me twice, shame on me.

Yeah, shouldn't it be higher?

Apparently, you misunderstood.

Their report basically said that UHC is better because UHC is better. They just prettied it up with a supposed scoring of the merits of the various systems--but one of the five factors was "fairness"--in effect, whether they had UHC. Either they're too stupid to be playing with statistics in the first place, or they're not honest enough to be playing with them. Either way, don't bother.

As opposed to you who scores higher a for-profit medical system that costs much more and doesn't cover everyone in the country? This is better in what way?

 

[barbos]

So, yeah, american workers had a good run while Europe was recovering from WW2 and Asia was in deep shit.
And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Because you might be next.

I could not have possibly be next because I was way below that wage range.

 

[barbos]

..And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Union wages have the tendency to draw all wages towards them.

If there are no high wages then all wages have the tendency to stagnate.

You support unions and desire their wages to go as high as possible.

To lift the wages of everyone.

Like union wages did for years back in the 50's and 60's.

That union lift is gone.

Thank you all you blind haters of unions.

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

 

[barbos]

If worker productivity has increased by 500% in X years but worker standard of living has only increased by 100% in the same time that still means workers are being ripped off.

Workers usually have nothing to do with productivity increase (engineers, scientists have.)
And the increase in productivity does not always mean more product, usually, it means fewer workers and/or different products.

Productivity is defined in economics as producing a product with fewer hours worked. It is hard then to say that the workers have nothing to do with greater productivity.

And what industry exists where engineers are not workers?

If wages aren't raised in the face of greater productivity then the rewards from the productivity improvement go to the shareholders,

Nope, productivity is normally converted into lower prices
And engineers (the ones which design things) are paid to increase productivity.

 

[untermensche]

..And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Union wages have the tendency to draw all wages towards them.

If there are no high wages then all wages have the tendency to stagnate.

You support unions and desire their wages to go as high as possible.

To lift the wages of everyone.

Like union wages did for years back in the 50's and 60's.

That union lift is gone.

Thank you all you blind haters of unions.

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

You are blind.

The wrong is never when some worker is making a lot.

It is when some workers are making too little. Which is just about everybody under the current system.

It is specifically set up to pay workers as little as possible.

The only counter to it was unions.

Now there is no counter force to the force of capital.

And most suffer because of it.

 

[bilby]

..And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

Union wages have the tendency to draw all wages towards them.

If there are no high wages then all wages have the tendency to stagnate.

You support unions and desire their wages to go as high as possible.

To lift the wages of everyone.

Like union wages did for years back in the 50's and 60's.

That union lift is gone.

Thank you all you blind haters of unions.

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

Your logic is broken.

"I am unfairly underpaid, therefore I should campaign for everyone else to be unfairly underpaid" is a truly idiotic (but very human) idea.

You should hate the people who underpay you, not the people who are fortunate enough not to be underpaid.

If you were robbed in the street, would you prefer that steps were taken to prevent future robberies; Or would it be better if everyone else got robbed, so that the burden of crime didn't fall unfairly upon you?

Everyone deserves to be paid a fair price for their skills and knowledge. Arguing that if you are not, nobody else should be, is counterproductive and idiotic - and it's an incredibly common piece of idiocy even (perhaps particularly) amongst otherwise clever people.

Why do you say 'He should be paid less than me', when what you mean is 'I should be paid more than him'? Are you so strongly conditioned against asking for more, even when that's what you deserve?

 

[Jarhyn]

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

Your logic is broken.

"I am unfairly underpaid, therefore I should campaign for everyone else to be unfairly underpaid" is a truly idiotic (but very human) idea.

You should hate the people who underpay you, not the people who are fortunate enough not to be underpaid.

If you were robbed in the street, would you prefer that steps were taken to prevent future robberies; Or would it be better if everyone else got robbed, so that the burden of crime didn't fall unfairly upon you?

Everyone deserves to be paid a fair price for their skills and knowledge. Arguing that if you are not, nobody else should be, is counterproductive and idiotic - and it's an incredibly common piece of idiocy even (perhaps particularly) amongst otherwise clever people.

Why do you say 'He should be paid less than me', when what you mean is 'I should be paid more than him'? Are you so strongly conditioned against asking for more, even when that's what you deserve?

It all comes back to the same basic evolutionary assumption of a zero sum game: if someone can't be made better, might as well just make everyone else worse off because then you will be most successful again so as to be king of the mud pit rather than peasant in paradise.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(Mods: This is a dupe but I posted a bug report that links to it so please do not remove it for now.)

It would not be some dictator doing the hiring.

It would be the will of the group. And all decisions would be in the open for all to see. There are no decisions made by dictators in secret.

And the will of the group is not a greedy blind entity.

That is a single dictator. Or small group of dictators.

The dictator wants as few workers as possible to work as hard as possible.

The individual in the group wants to make things easy for themselves, not as difficult as possible. And the only way to do that is to make it easy for everyone.

Your approach does nothing to address the problem he's pointing out. Nobody at the company benefits from hiring another worker enough to make up for what they lost in capital by hiring him.

It is nothing like the current system that pays workers as little as possible.

It will be a system where workers are paid as much as possible.

And just like the dictators now like to work very little, they like best when they profit and do no work at all, the workers in control will want the same thing.

Which means they will hire as many workers as possible.

Your support for dictatorship is not only disloyal to humanity, it is also a way to make the lives of workers as difficult as possible.

It is pure common sense that the way to make the lives of workers as easy as possible requires empowering workers and eliminating dictators.

You're preaching, not addressing the point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It would not be some dictator doing the hiring.

It would be the will of the group. And all decisions would be in the open for all to see. There are no decisions made by dictators in secret.

And the will of the group is not a greedy blind entity.

That is a single dictator. Or small group of dictators.

The dictator wants as few workers as possible to work as hard as possible.

The individual in the group wants to make things easy for themselves, not as difficult as possible. And the only way to do that is to make it easy for everyone.

Your approach does nothing to address the problem he's pointing out. Nobody at the company benefits from hiring another worker enough to make up for what they lost in capital by hiring him.

It is nothing like the current system that pays workers as little as possible.

It will be a system where workers are paid as much as possible.

And just like the dictators now like to work very little, they like best when they profit and do no work at all, the workers in control will want the same thing.

Which means they will hire as many workers as possible.

Your support for dictatorship is not only disloyal to humanity, it is also a way to make the lives of workers as difficult as possible.

It is pure common sense that the way to make the lives of workers as easy as possible requires empowering workers and eliminating dictators.

You're preaching, not addressing the point.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Eventually we will reach a point where there are not enough jobs for many people and something else will have to be done. I used to feel the answer would be UBI, but now I'm more inclined towards a system of government jobs--things that would be nice to have done but which aren't actually economic to do. That's for down the road, though, we haven't reached the point where there aren't enough jobs.

The official stats are overrated. In Australia, for example, you qualify as being employed if you do one hour of paid work a week. It keeps the employment figures looking reasonable, when in reality many casual workers are underemployed.

I agree the stats are inflated. That doesn't mean the economy can't generate enough jobs, but rather it means we haven't anything like fully recovered from 2008.

- - - Updated - - -

Apparently, you misunderstood.

Their report basically said that UHC is better because UHC is better. They just prettied it up with a supposed scoring of the merits of the various systems--but one of the five factors was "fairness"--in effect, whether they had UHC. Either they're too stupid to be playing with statistics in the first place, or they're not honest enough to be playing with them. Either way, don't bother.

As opposed to you who scores higher a for-profit medical system that costs much more and doesn't cover everyone in the country? This is better in what way?

It was supposedly comparing the outcomes.

 

[untermensche]

It is nothing like the current system that pays workers as little as possible.

It will be a system where workers are paid as much as possible.

And just like the dictators now like to work very little, they like best when they profit and do no work at all, the workers in control will want the same thing.

Which means they will hire as many workers as possible.

Your support for dictatorship is not only disloyal to humanity, it is also a way to make the lives of workers as difficult as possible.

It is pure common sense that the way to make the lives of workers as easy as possible requires empowering workers and eliminating dictators.

You're preaching, not addressing the point.

You're dancing. Avoiding my clear points.

You have no answer.

You support dictatorship.

I'm sorry if you think people that dislike dictators are preaching.

 

[barbos]

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

Your logic is broken.

"I am unfairly underpaid, therefore I should campaign for everyone else to be unfairly underpaid" is a truly idiotic (but very human) idea.

You should hate the people who underpay you, not the people who are fortunate enough not to be underpaid.

Nope, it's your logic which is broken. I realize that if I take union auto workers $100k as an untouchable standard of fairness then postdoc would have to be paid $150k professor $300k and wallmart cashier 50k which is clearly unsustainable. $100k for assembly line workers is ridiculous, it does not have any basis in market economy. its basis is in union corruption and outreach.

 

[bilby]

My hate is not blind, I can see that something is wrong when assembly line auto worker gets more than a postdoc or even professor.

Your logic is broken.

"I am unfairly underpaid, therefore I should campaign for everyone else to be unfairly underpaid" is a truly idiotic (but very human) idea.

You should hate the people who underpay you, not the people who are fortunate enough not to be underpaid.

Nope, it's your logic which is broken. I realize that if I take union auto workers $100k as a untouchable standard of fairness then postdoc would have to be paid $150k professor $300k and wallmart cashier 50k which is clearly unsustainable. $100k for assembly line workers is ridiculous, it does not have any basis in market economy.

I see nothing obviously 'ridiculous' nor obviously unsustainable about any of those rates of pay. Lots of people earn that kind of money, and even more, without doing anything as skillful or as productive as those various jobs.

The economy as a whole is clearly sufficiently productive to pay those rates - as long as the ratio of profits to wages is allowed to return to pre-automation levels. And whether that should happen is a purely arbitrary political decision, not an economic one.

 

[DBT]

Why call it a myth? Jobs have been lost due to companies relocating offshore. Wages for ordinary workers have stagnated for decades. Jobs have disappeared because of computerization and mechanization.


These are not myths. The relevant information and evidence is easy to find.

Well, job loss and relocation is a natural process of economically unsustainable wage growth among said workers plus automation.
So, yeah, american workers had a good run while Europe was recovering from WW2 and Asia was in deep shit.
And frankly why should I give a damn about these $100K/year union workers being fired?

It's not a natural process. The process is driven by a desire for profit, high incomes for CEO's, board of directors, shareholder returns. A decent income for ordinary workers is low on their scale of importance. Hence relocation.

There is no shortage of wealth flowing to the top of the heap.

 

[lpetrich]

There is a limit to how much of a raise that one can give everybody: the gross domestic product per worker. For the US, that is about $115,000 per year, and for 52 weeks per year, 5 days per week, and 8 hours per day, that is $55/hour.

The proposed raise of minimum wage to $15 is less than 1/3 of that, something that puts into perspective certain people's howls that it will lead to economic Götterdämmerung.

 

[barbos]

Nope, it's your logic which is broken. I realize that if I take union auto workers $100k as a untouchable standard of fairness then postdoc would have to be paid $150k professor $300k and wallmart cashier 50k which is clearly unsustainable. $100k for assembly line workers is ridiculous, it does not have any basis in market economy.

I see nothing obviously 'ridiculous' nor obviously unsustainable about any of those rates of pay. Lots of people earn that kind of money, and even more, without doing anything as skillful or as productive as those various jobs.

The economy as a whole is clearly sufficiently productive to pay those rates - as long as the ratio of profits to wages is allowed to return to pre-automation levels. And whether that should happen is a purely arbitrary political decision, not an economic one.

Really? you're basically saying here "giving 100% raise to everybody is no problem"
Well, technically it's no problem if you accept corresponding 100% inflation.

 

[DBT]

Nope, it's your logic which is broken. I realize that if I take union auto workers $100k as a untouchable standard of fairness then postdoc would have to be paid $150k professor $300k and wallmart cashier 50k which is clearly unsustainable. $100k for assembly line workers is ridiculous, it does not have any basis in market economy.

I see nothing obviously 'ridiculous' nor obviously unsustainable about any of those rates of pay. Lots of people earn that kind of money, and even more, without doing anything as skillful or as productive as those various jobs.

The economy as a whole is clearly sufficiently productive to pay those rates - as long as the ratio of profits to wages is allowed to return to pre-automation levels. And whether that should happen is a purely arbitrary political decision, not an economic one.

Really? you're basically saying here "giving 100% raise to everybody is no problem"
Well, technically it's no problem if you accept corresponding 100% inflation.

Once upon a time the ratio between the highest earners and the lowest was not as great as it is now, yet it did not create a problem with excessive rates of inflation.

Scandinavian nations are more equatable....including their happiness rating being higher than many other countries