Port strike and automation

[Loren Pechtel]

Ford/GM went bankrupt becasue of unions.

The auto industry faced a range of challenges, including mismanagement, failure to innovate, increased competition from foreign automakers, and the 2008 financial crisis, which all contributed to their bankruptcy. I agree that the unions played a role, but it wasn’t a major one.

It was a major one. US cars cost thousands of dollars extra to produce an equivalent product because of the unions, of course they couldn't compete.

 

[bilby]

I repeat

Yeah, you do.

It doesn't make you less wrong, though; Just more tedious.

I am right and you are wrong.

That's some compelling evidence, logic, and reasoning, right there.

 

[bilby]

Ford/GM went bankrupt becasue of unions.

The auto industry faced a range of challenges, including mismanagement, failure to innovate, increased competition from foreign automakers, and the 2008 financial crisis, which all contributed to their bankruptcy. I agree that the unions played a role, but it wasn’t a major one.

It was a major one. US cars cost thousands of dollars extra to produce an equivalent product because of the unions, of course they couldn't compete.

Mate, have you even seen an American car from twenty years ago? They couldn't compete because they were shit. Ugly, too.

Whenever I see a particularly ugly new car, I say "It looks like it was designed by an American". There's a reason why "European styling" is so often mentioned in car ads.

Give me a car with Italian lines, and German engineering, built by the Japanese.

American cars are huge, inefficient, and outdated. Which appeals only to American buyers. And that's after fifteen years of significant improvements.

 

[barbos]

Mate, have you even seen an American car from twenty years ago? They couldn't compete because they were shit. Ugly, too.

They were ugly becasue they could not afford good designers becasue all their money went to fat ass union workers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you meant a 14 million annual income, we're way beyond the 99th percentile so we're not talking about your charts any more, but the same principle applies. Andy Jassy gets 21 million a year to run Amazon. The market price of his inputs is dominated by whatever Bezos pays for the information his people feed to Jassy; the market price of the output -- the stream of decisions he makes -- is 21 million more than that. Whether Jassy's decisions are 21 million dollars better for Bezos' company than mine would be if I had Jassy's job, I'm not qualified to judge, but I'm pretty sure Bezos is. And since Jassy is directing deployment of a 600 billion dollar revenue stream, his decisions only need to be about 0.003% better than mine would be, for him to be producing 21 million dollars of wealth every year.

And this is why the very high pay. A tiny improvement in a very big number can be very worthwhile.

 

[laughing dog]

It is simply not possible for that labor's share of GDP in the US since the 1980s because of people are being replaced by automation because THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE WORKING.

What you are missing is that more is being done.

Some numbers for illustration only: We had 100 workers and machines equivalent of another 100. Now we have 150 and machines that are equivalent to 300. More workers, lower percent of productivity due to the workers.

I pointed out a fact that contradicts barbos’s written claim. Labor’s share of GDP did not decline because fewer people are working because there are more people working. Productivity is irrelevant to that reality based observation.

Your claim is akin to saying 2 + 2 = blue….

I corrected a premise about fact: the number of people working since the 1980s has not decreased but increased. Hence the hypothesized causation by barbos is false because it is based on a false premise.

<Whack! With a clue-by-4.>

You conveniently snipped away the part of my response that explained your error. That doesn't fix it.

There is nothing to fix - you appear unable to parse basic statetments. barbos's analysis is based
You committed a basic mistake: Comparing a percentage to an absolute value. I called you on it, you snipped my description of your error and you are now blaming me for your error. Are you a Republican?

I made no such comparison. Pointing out a premise is about a cause is false is not making a comparison. Please show my exact words in the sequence they appeared that makes you feel I compared anything, let alone a percentage to an absolute value so we can get to the bottom of your JD Vance imitation.

[Note: Somewhere in the quoting there is a nesting error, I'm not going to try to figure it out as the important parts are ok.]

Innermost quote: "labor's share". That's a percentage. "There are more people working." That's an absolute value. Your own words, all in one post. You can't say an absolute value is greater than a percentage.

The quote is from post 60 which is a response this explain in post 59 of "It declined becasue of decline in number of people involved in that becasue of automation.".

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

 

[ZiprHead]

It is simply not possible for that labor's share of GDP in the US since the 1980s because of people are being replaced by automation because THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE WORKING.

What you are missing is that more is being done.

Some numbers for illustration only: We had 100 workers and machines equivalent of another 100. Now we have 150 and machines that are equivalent to 300. More workers, lower percent of productivity due to the workers.

I pointed out a fact that contradicts barbos’s written claim. Labor’s share of GDP did not decline because fewer people are working because there are more people working. Productivity is irrelevant to that reality based observation.

Your claim is akin to saying 2 + 2 = blue….

I corrected a premise about fact: the number of people working since the 1980s has not decreased but increased. Hence the hypothesized causation by barbos is false because it is based on a false premise.

<Whack! With a clue-by-4.>

You conveniently snipped away the part of my response that explained your error. That doesn't fix it.

There is nothing to fix - you appear unable to parse basic statetments. barbos's analysis is based
You committed a basic mistake: Comparing a percentage to an absolute value. I called you on it, you snipped my description of your error and you are now blaming me for your error. Are you a Republican?

I made no such comparison. Pointing out a premise is about a cause is false is not making a comparison. Please show my exact words in the sequence they appeared that makes you feel I compared anything, let alone a percentage to an absolute value so we can get to the bottom of your JD Vance imitation.

[Note: Somewhere in the quoting there is a nesting error, I'm not going to try to figure it out as the important parts are ok.]

Innermost quote: "labor's share". That's a percentage. "There are more people working." That's an absolute value. Your own words, all in one post. You can't say an absolute value is greater than a percentage.

Of course you can. Ten (working) people get half the pie (labor's share). Then it becomes twenty (working) people get a quarter of the pie (labor's share).

How do you not get this???

 

[ZiprHead]

Give me a car with Italian lines, and German engineering, built by the Japanese.

Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86. All three in one package.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is simply not possible for that labor's share of GDP in the US since the 1980s because of people are being replaced by automation because THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE WORKING.

The quote is from post 60 which is a response this explain in post 59 of "It declined becasue of decline in number of people involved in that becasue of automation.".

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

Barbos was wrong. But you are still using completely invalid math to support your position. You can't compare a percentage to a value. You have to know this, why do you persist with this derail?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is simply not possible for that labor's share of GDP in the US since the 1980s because of people are being replaced by automation because THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE WORKING.

What you are missing is that more is being done.

Some numbers for illustration only: We had 100 workers and machines equivalent of another 100. Now we have 150 and machines that are equivalent to 300. More workers, lower percent of productivity due to the workers.

I pointed out a fact that contradicts barbos’s written claim. Labor’s share of GDP did not decline because fewer people are working because there are more people working. Productivity is irrelevant to that reality based observation.

Your claim is akin to saying 2 + 2 = blue….

I corrected a premise about fact: the number of people working since the 1980s has not decreased but increased. Hence the hypothesized causation by barbos is false because it is based on a false premise.

<Whack! With a clue-by-4.>

You conveniently snipped away the part of my response that explained your error. That doesn't fix it.

There is nothing to fix - you appear unable to parse basic statetments. barbos's analysis is based
You committed a basic mistake: Comparing a percentage to an absolute value. I called you on it, you snipped my description of your error and you are now blaming me for your error. Are you a Republican?

I made no such comparison. Pointing out a premise is about a cause is false is not making a comparison. Please show my exact words in the sequence they appeared that makes you feel I compared anything, let alone a percentage to an absolute value so we can get to the bottom of your JD Vance imitation.

[Note: Somewhere in the quoting there is a nesting error, I'm not going to try to figure it out as the important parts are ok.]

Innermost quote: "labor's share". That's a percentage. "There are more people working." That's an absolute value. Your own words, all in one post. You can't say an absolute value is greater than a percentage.

Of course you can. Ten (working) people get half the pie (labor's share). Then it becomes twenty (working) people get a quarter of the pie (labor's share).

How do you not get this???

I get??? I've understood it all along, it's laughing dog that persists in muddying the waters.

 

[barbos]

Give me a car with Italian lines, and German engineering, built by the Japanese.

Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86. All three in one package.

Subaru and not ugly? you must be kidding.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

Barbos was wrong. But you are still using completely invalid math to support your position. You can't compare a percentage to a value. You have to know this, why do you persist with this derail?

barbos's explanation is that labor's share of GDP fell because fewer people were working. I said that was not possible as a cause of the decline because cause did not exist (more peope were working not fewer). My comment did not offer an explanation for what happened to labor's share of GDP.

Interesting, technically, your "rebuttal" was invalid. Labor's share of GDP can expressed as the ratio of labor compensation per unit of labor divided by labor productivity where labor compensation includes all forms (direct and indirect) of renumeration to labor and productivity is GDP divided by labor. The only way "doing more with less" (your phrase) causes a decline in labor's share is when productivity grows faster than labor compensation per unit of labor. It is ridiculous to think that either the numerator or denominator did not change from the 1980s to the present. Your explanation ignored labor compensation per unit of labor - it was an incomplete explanation.

So not only did you misinterpret my comment but your explanation was lacking due to "invalid math".

Your persistent refusal/inability to comprehend is the cause and continuation of this derail. I find it fascinating that a moderator would instigate and continue a self-identified derail. Especially one that can charitably described as a "misinterpretation". Stopping this "derail" is easy - stop mischaracterizing my position.

 

[Bomb#20]

What is being counted that shouldn't be?

Don't know, you tell me. As far as i am concerned 100% of GDP is labor of some kind, always. Hence the article is BS.

A caveman eats a banana that fell off a wild banana plant. You're arguing that it was not the banana plant that produced the banana, but the caveman going to the effort of peeling it?

The labor is in finding it, not in peeling it.

Okay, are you arguing that it was not the banana plant that produced the banana, but the caveman going to the effort of finding it? So a forest with a lot of bananas on the ground because the hunter-gatherers have not yet started that gathering expedition has produced no more product than a drought-stricken forest with no bananas? Or do you agree with me that barbos is wrong?

 

[Gospel]

Labor share of GDP is 69%, so capital gets 31% share. If everyone got a 45% pay raise then capital share would be 0.

If there was no capital then labor would get something like $500/year (the approximate amount produced per capita in counties with almost no capital investment).

What is the appropriate share for capital given that the current level makes labor something like 150 times more productive, and labor gets something like 100x higher wages compared to not having access to that capital?

GDP doesn't fully measure wealth. My concern is not productivity, it's wealth distribution. Productivity has risen greatly yet wages have stagnated for the lower and middle classes.

Lower class certainly has. That always happens as societies develop--the market values skills over warm bodies. The spread between high skill and low skill is much wider than it was in the past and thus low skill is farther from the average. And the answer is not to simply pay them more--the result of that approach is more unemployment.

Higher wages don’t necessarily lead to job losses; in fact, they often improve worker productivity and contribute to greater economic stability. It’s not a one-sided outcome—higher wages can boost morale, increase spending power, and drive demand, which can lead to job growth rather than unemployment. I mean, where do you think their workers get their own personal goods from? Do they purchase goods shipped in from a habitable planet in the nearest star system?

The problem is the higher the wage the more incentive there is for the employer to find some other means of doing it. I watched it happen with my former employer, we repeatedly moved from a worker doing X to a worker tending a machine that does X. And we did things to reduce the total labor even needed. The spray department originally would take each piece and spray it. Let it dry, turn it over, spray it again. Eventually that was replaced with a track system. Parts would be hung from the track and go through the spray station--now the spray guy only sprayed, did nothing else. Since the parts were hanging all sides could be sprayed. (They were hung from the already-cut mounting holes.) The track then went up to the ceiling and wandered around inside a cage for a while, eventually descending to have the now-dry items removed. Less labor and fewer interactions--and the fewer interactions the lower the chance of damage.

Or look at what has happened with appliances. You pretty much do not repair them any more because rarely is it worth it. DIY types might do the easier things and that's pretty much it.

Sigh – The issue wasn’t the rise in wages; the real culprit was cost-cutting. And why do businesses cut costs? To boost profits. Eventually, at the so-called top of the pyramid, there comes a point when the pursuit of profits turns into greed, and greed escalates into gluttony.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

Barbos was wrong. But you are still using completely invalid math to support your position. You can't compare a percentage to a value. You have to know this, why do you persist with this derail?

barbos's explanation is that labor's share of GDP fell because fewer people were working. I said that was not possible as a cause of the decline because cause did not exist (more peope were working not fewer). My comment did not offer an explanation for what happened to labor's share of GDP.

Interesting, technically, your "rebuttal" was invalid. Labor's share of GDP can expressed as the ratio of labor compensation per unit of labor divided by labor productivity where labor compensation includes all forms (direct and indirect) of renumeration to labor and productivity is GDP divided by labor. The only way "doing more with less" (your phrase) causes a decline in labor's share is when productivity grows faster than labor compensation per unit of labor. It is ridiculous to think that either the numerator or denominator did not change from the 1980s to the present. Your explanation ignored labor compensation per unit of labor - it was an incomplete explanation.

So not only did you misinterpret my comment but your explanation was lacking due to "invalid math".

Your persistent refusal/inability to comprehend is the cause and continuation of this derail. I find it fascinating that a moderator would instigate and continue a self-identified derail. Especially one that can charitably described as a "misinterpretation". Stopping this "derail" is easy - stop mischaracterizing my position.

You're changing units here. GDP is not the same unit as per-capita GDP.

Percentage: $ to labor/total $. Units cancel, the result is a unitless number.

People working: unit is people.

And what you're adding now: $ per capita. Again, it has units.

None of these three can be compared because they are different units. What's bigger, 4kg or 6m?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What is being counted that shouldn't be?

Don't know, you tell me. As far as i am concerned 100% of GDP is labor of some kind, always. Hence the article is BS.

A caveman eats a banana that fell off a wild banana plant. You're arguing that it was not the banana plant that produced the banana, but the caveman going to the effort of peeling it?

The labor is in finding it, not in peeling it.

Okay, are you arguing that it was not the banana plant that produced the banana, but the caveman going to the effort of finding it? So a forest with a lot of bananas on the ground because the hunter-gatherers have not yet started that gathering expedition has produced no more product than a drought-stricken forest with no bananas? Or do you agree with me that barbos is wrong?

Both are simply potential until someone goes for them. And note the skill aspect: knowing to search in the green area rather than the drought-stricken area.

He is right--fundamentally, everything is labor. You don't pay the forest, you pay the caveman. Note that I am not saying that labor determines the value! Putting labor into something doesn't inherently create value. The market sets the price for an item. The labor needed sets the cost of the item. There is no guarantee that the cost is less than the price--it's just that when the cost exceeds the price people don't make the item.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

Barbos was wrong. But you are still using completely invalid math to support your position. You can't compare a percentage to a value. You have to know this, why do you persist with this derail?

barbos's explanation is that labor's share of GDP fell because fewer people were working. I said that was not possible as a cause of the decline because cause did not exist (more peope were working not fewer). My comment did not offer an explanation for what happened to labor's share of GDP.

Interesting, technically, your "rebuttal" was invalid. Labor's share of GDP can expressed as the ratio of labor compensation per unit of labor divided by labor productivity where labor compensation includes all forms (direct and indirect) of renumeration to labor and productivity is GDP divided by labor. The only way "doing more with less" (your phrase) causes a decline in labor's share is when productivity grows faster than labor compensation per unit of labor. It is ridiculous to think that either the numerator or denominator did not change from the 1980s to the present. Your explanation ignored labor compensation per unit of labor - it was an incomplete explanation.

So not only did you misinterpret my comment but your explanation was lacking due to "invalid math".

Your persistent refusal/inability to comprehend is the cause and continuation of this derail. I find it fascinating that a moderator would instigate and continue a self-identified derail. Especially one that can charitably described as a "misinterpretation". Stopping this "derail" is easy - stop mischaracterizing my position.

You're changing units here. GDP is not the same unit as per-capita GDP....

Once again, you are mistaken. I changed no units.

Labor's share of GDP = labor compensation / GDP. That is its definition.

Algebraically, dividing the numerator and denominator by the amount of labor yield

Labor's share of GDP = { labor compensation /(amount of labor)} / {(GDP/ (amount of labor)}.

The amount of labor is not the population because not all of the population is in the labor force. Nor is all of the labor force employed.

So there was no explicit or implicit mention of per-capita GDP in my response. NONE.

GDP/ amount of labor is a macroeconomic measure of labor productivity.

So, labor's share of GDP = per labor unit compensation / macroeconomic labor productivity.

Which means that the basic math shows that labor's share of GDP moves over time based on the relative growth rates of the numerator and denominator.


Nothing you have written addresses my basic point about the original claim that a decline in the number of people working caused the decline in labor's share of income from the 1980's to 2020's. I said that causal factor was not possible because the number of people working increased. In other words, the hypothesized factual cause did not exist. It doesn't matter what the hypothesized causal factor was supposed to affect because it did not fucking occur at all.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know why you are ignoring the clear context of my comment. The only comparison in my observation is there more people are working compared to fewer. It has been explained a number of times but you persist in your bizarre interpretation.

Barbos was wrong. But you are still using completely invalid math to support your position. You can't compare a percentage to a value. You have to know this, why do you persist with this derail?

barbos's explanation is that labor's share of GDP fell because fewer people were working. I said that was not possible as a cause of the decline because cause did not exist (more peope were working not fewer). My comment did not offer an explanation for what happened to labor's share of GDP.

Interesting, technically, your "rebuttal" was invalid. Labor's share of GDP can expressed as the ratio of labor compensation per unit of labor divided by labor productivity where labor compensation includes all forms (direct and indirect) of renumeration to labor and productivity is GDP divided by labor. The only way "doing more with less" (your phrase) causes a decline in labor's share is when productivity grows faster than labor compensation per unit of labor. It is ridiculous to think that either the numerator or denominator did not change from the 1980s to the present. Your explanation ignored labor compensation per unit of labor - it was an incomplete explanation.

So not only did you misinterpret my comment but your explanation was lacking due to "invalid math".

Your persistent refusal/inability to comprehend is the cause and continuation of this derail. I find it fascinating that a moderator would instigate and continue a self-identified derail. Especially one that can charitably described as a "misinterpretation". Stopping this "derail" is easy - stop mischaracterizing my position.

You're changing units here. GDP is not the same unit as per-capita GDP....

Once again, you are mistaken. I changed no units.

You "changed" no units because you simply omitted them.

Labor's share of GDP = labor compensation / GDP. That is its definition.

Algebraically, dividing the numerator and denominator by the amount of labor yield

Labor's share of GDP = { labor compensation /(amount of labor)} / {(GDP/ (amount of labor)}.

The amount of labor is not the population because not all of the population is in the labor force. Nor is all of the labor force employed.

So there was no explicit or implicit mention of per-capita GDP in my response. NONE.

GDP/ amount of labor is a macroeconomic measure of labor productivity.

So, labor's share of GDP = per labor unit compensation / macroeconomic labor productivity.

Which means that the basic math shows that labor's share of GDP moves over time based on the relative growth rates of the numerator and denominator.

Go back through this and put units on your terms.

Nothing you have written addresses my basic point about the original claim that a decline in the number of people working caused the decline in labor's share of income from the 1980's to 2020's. I said that causal factor was not possible because the number of people working increased. In other words, the hypothesized factual cause did not exist. It doesn't matter what the hypothesized causal factor was supposed to affect because it did not fucking occur at all.

Barbos was wrong. But that doesn't make your rebuttal correct.

 

[barbos]

Barbos was wrong.

No, I am never wrong, so you are wrong.

 

[laughing dog]

You "changed" no units because you simply omitted them.

Nope. I compared more people to fewer people.

Go back through this and put units on your terms.

Don’t need to, since it is a ratio,

Barbos was wrong. But that doesn't make your rebuttal correct.

No, the fact the number of people working did not decline made it correct.