What do you want to do with the little people?

[Loren Pechtel]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

If that value goes to the worker instead of the owner of the tool there's no point in spending the money on the better tools and there would be no progress. You're being a luddite here.

 

[Swammerdami]

Thus the question is really whether "substandard" wages is better than no wages. You're saying no wages is better.

Even poor people have great value for free time or leisure. This is especially true when the person is responsible for someone else, e.g. his/her child. So yes, except if it impacts survival, no job will often be preferable to a substandard wage.

 

[bilby]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

If that value goes to the worker instead of the owner of the tool there's no point in spending the money on the better tools and there would be no progress. You're being a luddite here.

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

 

[laughing dog]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

Wait minute, didn't you say the economy works the same way it did in the 1500s in a different thread? And how do tools make anything without a worker?

 

[Rhea]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

If that value goes to the worker instead of the owner of the tool there's no point in spending the money on the better tools and there would be no progress. You're being a luddite here.

No, Loren. I said what I said.

I work in Manufacturing. I have for 30 years.
I DESIGN the tools.
Do you think I don’t actually know whether the workers are contributing more than they did 20 years ago?

I stood next to them 20 years ago. I stand next to them now. I give them tools, train them on the tools and measure their performance on the tools. Do you have a better box seat to this? Please share.

I said what I said. You have no qualification to gainsay my experience.

The workers are DOING MORE and they are doing it with more discernment, more finesse, more productivity than they did 20 years go.

 

[Rhea]

Thus the question is really whether "substandard" wages is better than no wages. You're saying no wages is better.

This is you saying that a person who has a choice between starving slowly and starving quickly is making a statement of contentment with starvation when they choose to starve more slowly.

See? The take the underpaying job! Therefore it is not underpaying! And we should not do anything about that! It’s a choice!

 

[DBT]

Low as it is, minimum wage was put in place for a reason.....

To keep blacks out of the labor force.

Is that a joke?

 

[DBT]

There are companies that fail for any number of reasons, bad management, too much competition, market saturation, etc, so they fail. The suppliers expect to be paid, they are not going to subsidize a failing company, the service providers expect to be paid, they are not going to subsidize a failing company....yet workers are supposed to work for unsustainable rates because its 'better than nothing?'' Like workers have no real value? Having no real value in your eyes, they should take whatever crap they are given and be satisfied?

Nothing in your response addresses my point. The better jobs you envision don't exist, you're driving them out of the labor market entirely.

It does address your objections...having made no point, you don't want to acknowledge the errors in your position. The issue is a power imbalance between individual workers and employers preventing better pay and conditions being negotiated...unless collective bargaining and action is in place. This was an issue long before mechanization. That jobs are disappearing because of mechanization is another issue.

 

[bilby]

Low as it is, minimum wage was put in place for a reason.....

To keep blacks out of the labor force.

Is that a joke?

No, it's just a typical Seppo assumption that the US is the entire world, and that their reasons for doing things are therefore universal.

Seppos often think that the world is horribly racist, not because it is, but because the USA is. You cannot persuade them that racism is a much less important and significant motivation in the eest of the world, because they don't know that there is a 'rest of the world'. And if you do somehow manage to persuade them to look outside their borders, they just find some examples of racism, and declare that as it exists everywhere, it's the same everywhere.

Which is nonsense, but pretty much impossible to counter.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think about all these people who are against progressive taxation or universal income or raised minimum wages, and I wonder
(a) what is it you think will happen to all of these people? You think they'll suddenly become suitable for college? or
(b) are you actually okay if they all just die?
(c) what are justifiable reasons to allow someone to live (or be raised in) abject poverty?
(d) if we don't think that, what should we DO to plan for them to continue living without abject poverty?
(e) other? What else? What do you think should happen to them?

Nobody has any responsibility for other people. People are responsible for themselves. So I'm not sure what we're supposed to allow or not. Yes, it's ok for them to just die. People have to be allowed to make whatever decisions they want in life.

I'm for generous welfare. When people are at the bottom of their luck they should get money from the state. No questions asked. Why? Because if we don't we force them into a life of crime, which costs society more.

But people on welfare should be poor. We want people to feel encouraged to get educated, to move to where there is jobs. We don't want to trap people into a circle of doom by allowing them to stay in an financially untenable situation.

I live in Scandinavia where welfare is very generous. So I see everyday how it works. It works just fine. It's a good system.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Thirteen pages Rhea and your "opponents", while they have yet to come straight out and say, pen them all into their own shitty little neighborhoods and forget about them have certainly danced around the borders or genuinely lack understanding of the question being asked. Perhaps "aptitude" is the key word here. People who do not have the aptitude to perform well in any job. They are not lazy. They try hard. They just have below average abilities both mentally and physically. They innately suck at everything: in mathematics, in science, in verbal expression, in paragraph comprehension, in word knowledge, in mechanical comprehension. They struggled to make it through high school with a 2.0 average and know enough about themselves to know that attending even a vocational tech school would likely result in failure and a few thousand dollars of debt they cannot even begin to pay off.
And the rest of the folks with circumstances that affect their welfare.

Should those with higher incomes all chip in and pay for that voc tech school, provide for them a decent life: proper housing, the medical care high income earners enjoy, food the average family can afford? Or should they be left to the mercy of slumlords, only emergency medical care, and just enough of the cheapest food available to keep them alive yet unhealthy, in many cases now too unhealthy to perform even unskilled manual labor?

 

[Gun Nut]

Regarding the top half of your post...
Oil only became the chief fossil fuel we use for energy AFTER WE PUT MILLIONS OF LOGGERS OUT OF WORK!!!!
The computer you are using right now put MILLIONS of TELEPHONE OPERATORS OUT OF WORK!!!!!

If the jobs that exist today are frozen.. disallowed to be changed by the natural progression of society... then we will watch the world go by like modern neanderthals.

regarding the second part of your post....

They could be used for scientific research... cosmetic and pharmaceutical testing... we could tap into them for energy (the Matrix style coppertop).... or Kentucky Fried Movie style tapping for oil.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

Wait minute, didn't you say the economy works the same way it did in the 1500s in a different thread? And how do tools make anything without a worker?

You're not rebutting.

Tools have always added value. Better tools add more value. The value of the tools needed to add additional value is escalating rapidly, that's what's eating up the money you think should go to the workers.

All that's changed is the scale.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So do I think minimum wage earners are contributing NO MORE to the profits than they were 20 years ago in constant dollars?
I can see that they ARE contributing more. They are making more widgets at lower cost and corporate profits are going up. They are working faster, they are working smarter. They are learning new tools of automation and process control. They are discerning more in their inspections, and operating more complex measurement equipment. This allows the company to make a higher margin. Earn more money - more profit.

You're overlooking the real change here--they have better tools. It's not that the workers are making more, it's their tools are making more.

If that value goes to the worker instead of the owner of the tool there's no point in spending the money on the better tools and there would be no progress. You're being a luddite here.

No, Loren. I said what I said.

I work in Manufacturing. I have for 30 years.
I DESIGN the tools.
Do you think I don’t actually know whether the workers are contributing more than they did 20 years ago?

I stood next to them 20 years ago. I stand next to them now. I give them tools, train them on the tools and measure their performance on the tools. Do you have a better box seat to this? Please share.

I said what I said. You have no qualification to gainsay my experience.

The workers are DOING MORE and they are doing it with more discernment, more finesse, more productivity than they did 20 years go.

I'm on the software side instead of the hardware. I haven't seen a change in the skill of the workers, I have seen many tasks go from the worker doing the work to the worker feeding the machine that does the work and I have seen many tasks stripped of supporting work. (For example, going from spraying each piece to a belt bringing each piece in front of the worker so all the worker does is stand still and spray, no time lost handling the product. The human does the skilled work, the machinery the grunt work.) The shop floor systems still have to be as idiot-friendly as always.

 

[DBT]

Tools without people to work them stand idle. There are no tools without the people who build them. Money alone does not mine raw materials, process or build.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Low as it is, minimum wage was put in place for a reason.....

To keep blacks out of the labor force.

Is that a joke?

Not at all. It was explicitly racist when it was implemented.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Regarding the top half of your post...
Oil only became the chief fossil fuel we use for energy AFTER WE PUT MILLIONS OF LOGGERS OUT OF WORK!!!!
The computer you are using right now put MILLIONS of TELEPHONE OPERATORS OUT OF WORK!!!!!

If the jobs that exist today are frozen.. disallowed to be changed by the natural progression of society... then we will watch the world go by like modern neanderthals.

regarding the second part of your post....

They could be used for scientific research... cosmetic and pharmaceutical testing... we could tap into them for energy (the Matrix style coppertop).... or Kentucky Fried Movie style tapping for oil.

Disagree on point #1--the loggers were put out of work by running out of trees to log. And it was far more a switch to coal than to oil. Oil came later.

 

[DBT]

Is that a joke?

Not at all. It was explicitly racist when it was implemented.

Maybe, maybe not. You need to support the claim.

 

[Trausti]

The 'owner of the tool' and the 'worker' need not be different people.

For the most part, the reason that they are different people is that the owner of the tool had wealthy ancestors, and the worker didn't.

Ned Ludd wasn't wrong to be angry about technology destroying his income; He was wrong to think destroying the technology was the answer. A better answer would have been to demand a share in the technology. There's no tablets of stone anywhere that have "the owner is entitled to everything" written on them by the gods; And no reason other than tradition why having wealthy grandparents should correlate so strongly with having wealth today.

Except most wealth isn't inherited.

What is inherited are attitudes.

Intelligence/behavior is inherited. A fun example is that the descendants of the Chinese gentry/nobles dispossessed during the Great Leap Forward / Cultural Revolution now make up much of China’s current rich elite.