Remember the company that instituted a $70,000 minimum wage? Problems are brewing.

[untermensche]

That is your religion.

Then quit complaining about how much the CEOs make.

The complaint is that insane CEO pay with no connection to anything real like performance causes the pay of real workers to be lower.

And of course the complaint is that CEO's are not necessary and are actually destructive.

Top down dictatorial institutions are not necessary and are destructive.

 

[Canard DuJour]

But it is a popular capitalist meme.

"Greed is good!"

It is really just capitalist dogma.

Um, you know Gordon Gekko was a fictional character, don't you? Are you under the impression that the movie maker who put the greed speech in his mouth was a capitalist? You know that movie was made by Oliver Stone, don't you? The conviction that it's a popular capitalist meme that "Greed is good!" is a popular anticapitalist meme.

However..

To this day, he [Michael Douglas] cannot get over “the number of people who came up to me, telling me, ‘you’re the guy that got me into this’.” Incredibly, for many traders, Gekko was a role model.

 

[Bomb#20]

I watched it. What's your point? When in that video did Friedman say unionization shouldn't be allowed?

Your contention is that Friedman doesn't oppose unions? This is what you took away from this video, that Friedman doesn't oppose unions? If he is a secret supporter of unions why would he have so carefully constructed his strawman that the self-described purpose of the unions is to protect low wage workers and to increase employment? Do you believe that he is correct? Or is it a just a strawman he has created so that he can prove that the unions have failed to achieve these two goals?
<snip>
Are profits the most important thing, are they the purpose of the economy?

===== Continued below =====​

===== Continued from above =====​

<more snip>

Generally, that hope is mistaken.

Why do you say that? Because when people are voluntarily acting jointly with each other for mutual benefit by doing what they want to do rather than by doing what you wish they'd do, you don't classify it as "cooperating"?

Not addressed to me.

None of it was addressed to you!

Dude, you obviously put a lot of thought and effort into that extended segmented post, so I take it you want me to engage with you. That's unfortunate, because it would be a waste of my time. Your reading comprehension and your commitment to accuracy when it comes to characterizing other people's positions are not up to the level required for a useful discussion. As far as I can tell, you simply do not give enough of a damn whether you're telling the truth when you describe your opponents' views to put two minutes into examining whether your first impressions of them are correct before you put two hours into attacking them. I have better things to do with my life than repeatedly correct your incessant "Have you stopped beating your wife?" misrepresentations.

Your contention is that Friedman doesn't oppose unions? This is what you took away from this video, that Friedman doesn't oppose unions? If he is a secret supporter of unions<snip>

FYI, this may be an alien concept to your evidently authoritarian mentality, but other people find themselves able to not support something without wanting to get rid of it. I'm not a secret supporter of the Dallas Cowboys and yet, somehow, it's perfectly okay with me if they aren't disbanded. My contention is what I contended. Do not try to paraphrase me. You aren't competent at it.

He believed that the economy and our society hadn't changed since the 19th century.

Actually, do not try to paraphrase anyone.

Oh, and since at this point you're no doubt thinking of writing a "tu quoque",

I would get rid of trade unions and go to one company, one union for large companies. And one union, one type of business, for smaller companies. I would negotiate wages at the national or state level instead of company by company. These two things will take a lot of the contention out of the process and allow the companies and its union to cooperate because interests more closely align.

Are you paying attention, Achwienichtig? Do you see who it is that wants to get rid of independent unions?

I don't want to get rid of independent unions. I want to reduce some of the contention between the unions and the companies. I want to negotiate wages at the national or state level, not between the local unions and the companies. I want to eliminate the trade unions and have an union for each company. The union and the company will have many more interests in common.

That's what getting rid of independent unions is. If the workers in some trade at a company don't want to be in the overall union and want their own union, tough luck. If the workers at some company want to negotiate independently of the national or state level, tough luck. You're getting rid of the unions the workers want and assigning the workers to the unions you want them to be in. The unions you're advocating are the archetype of dependent unions. They're what socialist and "anarchist" governments always set up.

 

[KeepTalking]

People leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, but it is often because they do not feel they are adequately compensate for their work. There is nothing new here, it is likely business as usual for any company. My company pays all employees (at least in IT) exceptionally well, but we have still had two good IT employees leave for greener pastures in the last month. This shit happens all the time, it is a non-story.

I'm going to disagree a bit. This is not business as usual, and people leaving for greener pastures.

The case of Gravity is not, but my point was that if the CEO had not increased the pay of all employees, they would likely have had just as many people leave, if not more, for greener pastures. No one would have written a story about that, because that is business as usual. But there really is very little difference, either way they lose a couple of employees, so there should have been no story in this case either.

This is people leaving based on the idea that they're getting compensated just fine, but that other people in the company don't deserve to be compensated just fine. There's this odd notion floating around here that if a person doing job X is getting paid more than the going rate, something is terribly wrong and also terribly unfair.


Well last time I checked, "fair" isn't part of capitalism.


There are talented actors and writers working their asses off in Hollywood waiting tables and waiting for a chance to audition for a bit part on a TV show. The Kardashians get handed not just one, but several TV series despite having no talent at all. Millions of dollars are thrown at an already rich family for no other reason than spoiled rich kids can sometimes make entertaining television just by being themselves.


Is that fair? No, but hey...capitalism, right? Kim and Khloe and the other kids are getting paid well beyond what they'd be if they weren't already rich and famous, but that's okay because capitalism.


Some tech employees getting paid well beyond what they'd be if they weren't working for one rogue CEO? OMG call the capitalism police! Unfairness at ten o'clock high!

QFT

 

[KeepTalking]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but those of you on the economic right didn't say "this will lead to a couple of the company's employees leaving."

It was more along the lines of "this experiment will fail, the company will go down in flames, the building will fall over and sink into the swamp, and we'll all be able to hold this up as a shining example of what happens when you try to pay a 'living wage' to lowly workers who don't deserve it. Yeah, unrestrained capitalism wins!"


So far two people have quit. Not exactly a disaster.

We said there would be problems, we still don't know all of what will happen.

This is not a problem, this is business as usual! People quit good jobs every day because of a sense of unfairness. What no one on your side of the argument has shown is that absolutely no one would have quit if the CEO had not made this change, or even that fewer people would have quit over the same time period.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Then quit complaining about how much the CEOs make.

The complaint is that insane CEO pay with no connection to anything real like performance causes the pay of real workers to be lower.

Look at the effect of distributing the CEOs pay across all the workers--it's usually a pretty small amount.

And of course the complaint is that CEO's are not necessary and are actually destructive.

The evidence is clearly against you here. While I have seen a company function without an effective CEO it was because the people immediately under him were able to work together and run the company, although it did cause stagnation because they couldn't accomplish company-wide innovation. Once there was a failure at that level things went to shit. Pretty much the same workers, ineffective management, the company no longer exists.

Top down dictatorial institutions are not necessary and are destructive.

What you need is the people making the decisions being able to see the big picture. When you have a few people working together doing basically the same thing it's easy enough for them to all see the big picture. When you have a bunch of people with quite variable skill sets working together it simply isn't possible for all of them to see the big picture.

Even if you try the nonsensical idea of training them all (that's an awful lot of training that accomplishes nothing but make you happy as they won't actually be using those skills for anything) there's also the time they must spend looking at the big picture to understand it. A large company that tries to use this model will not accomplish anything because they'll be spending all their time on disseminating the information needed to make the decisions.

 

[ksen]

Look at the effect of distributing the CEOs pay across all the workers--it's usually a pretty small amount.

In Gravity's case the CEO was able to raise worker's salaries up to $70,000 by taking a pay cut.

 

[Axulus]

We said there would be problems, we still don't know all of what will happen.

This is not a problem, this is business as usual! People quit good jobs every day because of a sense of unfairness. What no one on your side of the argument has shown is that absolutely no one would have quit if the CEO had not made this change, or even that fewer people would have quit over the same time period.

We don't have to show any such thing. It was the supporters of the pay increase that said it would dramatically lower turnover and increase productivity and therefore might even pay for itself. The status quo or business as usual was expected to change.

 

[ksen]

This is not a problem, this is business as usual! People quit good jobs every day because of a sense of unfairness. What no one on your side of the argument has shown is that absolutely no one would have quit if the CEO had not made this change, or even that fewer people would have quit over the same time period.

We don't have to show any such thing. It was the supporters of the pay increase that said it would dramatically lower turnover and increase productivity and therefore might even pay for itself. The status quo or business as usual was expected to change.

Well, the guy gets snubbed at parties now by his former business pals because they say he makes them look like stingy twats so I'd consider that a positive change.

 

[KeepTalking]

This is not a problem, this is business as usual! People quit good jobs every day because of a sense of unfairness. What no one on your side of the argument has shown is that absolutely no one would have quit if the CEO had not made this change, or even that fewer people would have quit over the same time period.

We don't have to show any such thing. It was the supporters of the pay increase that said it would dramatically lower turnover and increase productivity and therefore might even pay for itself. The status quo or business as usual was expected to change.

Any the statement was made on your side that "Problems are brewing", that is a positive statement that requires support. Show that employee turnover rate has increased, or at the very least not declined, and you MAY have a point. After that, we can discuss whether a longer period of time needs to be examined with regard to employee turnover, like say 1-3 years, since the increases are being phased in over a three year period.

For now, however, I am just calling bullshit on the "problems are brewing" statement in as far as it relates to the salary increase.

 

[laughing dog]

This is not a problem, this is business as usual! People quit good jobs every day because of a sense of unfairness. What no one on your side of the argument has shown is that absolutely no one would have quit if the CEO had not made this change, or even that fewer people would have quit over the same time period.

We don't have to show any such thing. It was the supporters of the pay increase that said it would dramatically lower turnover and increase productivity and therefore might even pay for itself. The status quo or business as usual was expected to change.

So, do you have any evidence about the rate of turnover or productivity? Or do you think 6 months is not enough time to make a reasonable assessment?

 

[ksen]

The $70,000 minimum wage is paying off for that Seattle company

Gravity Payments, that Seattle credit-card-payments processing company that said all its employees would earn at least $70,000 in three years, is defying the doomsayers.

Revenue is growing at twice the rate it was before Chief Executive Dan Price made his announcement this spring, according to a report on Inc.com. Profits have doubled. Customer retention is up, despite some who left because they disagreed with the decision or feared service would suffer. (Price said he’d make up the extra cost by cutting his own $1.1 million pay.)

Barely any employees have left — although some outsiders, including some commenting on a MarketWatch article about the decision earlier this year, warned that employees could start putting in less effort because everyone is being paid the same regardless.

huh

 

[ZiprHead]

Huh indeed.

 

[Rhea]

Hunh. Is it some strange rainbow magic?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Doesnt make any sesne, why would anyone stay a a job where somebody makes the same pay as you?

 

[coloradoatheist]

Doesnt make any sesne, why would anyone stay a a job where somebody makes the same pay as you?

Some people will be okay with it, some won't. So they can find people who believe in that culture. Dismal's argument was weren't they raising the pay now instead of phasing it in?