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Do Companies Punish Workers Who Take Vacations?
Hugh Pickens writes "Chad Brooks reports that a steady stream of research over the past year reveals that Americans aren't taking vacations and it's because they are afraid to take time off from work for fear of appearing less than dedicated to their employer with one survey showing that 70 percent of employees said they weren't using all their earned vacation days in 2011. 'You have this kind of fear of not wanting to be seen as a slacker,' says John de Graaf, executive director of Take Back Your Time, an organization focused on challenging the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine facing society. De Graaf adds that while some companies are good about encouraging employees to use earned time off, there also are some that aren't worried about the potential repercussions that may come from that nose-to-the-grindstone approach. 'They think, "If I burn someone out, I can always find someone else,"' says de Graaf. 'They think [employees] are expendable.' Even when they do take vacation, research shows many employees aren't leaving their work behind. In one study, 66 percent of surveyed employees said they would check and respond to email during their time off, and 29 percent expect to attend meetings virtually while on vacation. De Graaf is not optimistic anything will ever get done to free employees of their fear of taking time off. 'This is the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee any paid vacation time,' says de Graaf. 'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
It's very important to me to be able to fuck off from my job. I skip out early, I take days off, I ignore phone calls after hours. As long as I get the job done during the day, I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it. Life's too short to fret over the grindstone. Don't take life too seriously!
Who needs Ron Paul? The frontrunner is a venture capitalist.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just another facet of the fascism that is the corporatised USA.
We love the 1%.
having worked for a company that did punish employees who took vacations I can say the answer to this is yes..
Everyone was excited about how the economy is screaming and moving forward with 3x more postings than last year! ... the jobs were all insurance selling door to door, hotel maids, cocktail waitressing, etc. This was a professional job fair too and only one of the 40 employers had anything over 30k a year!
In that environment would you want to risk your job? Hell no! If I were making 50k a year I would feel fucking rich and be greatful to work 12 hours a day. In that environment where these poor saps would do anything to take your job to feed your kids you have to suck it up. This isn't 1999 anymore.
I remember 12 years ago when I was young, that many people called in sick once a month or took a vacation Friday etc. These folks got laid off in 2001 as soon as the shit hit hte fan. Until the economy improves and there are more jobs than applicants this will continue. In addition with Europe at risk of going into a full great depression if the banking system collapses I would say there is considerable risk right now. Even if the US economy is adding more low wage jobs now than before this will sharply reverse if citigroup, chase, and BOA all go out of business once every bank in Europe also collapses too. It is very serious until governments learn to live within their means.
http://saveie6.com/
Oh FFS - can we please stop diluting the important words in our language? It kind of skews people's perspective of actual famine. #getoffmylawn
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
If it ever gets this bad, please shoot me! :0)
'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
No, every other country isn't ruled by supersized multinational corporations who can co-opt every government process, override any legal review, and sidestep any political controversy, if they pay enough. America's government can be properly classified now as "Dollar." That, right there, is what is causing the problem -- it's not that the government doesn't understand, it's that the government doesn't care.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
While my job is largely production based, the unemployment rate is currently 8.5%
I think most people would rather not be seen as being in the bottom 50% of workers where they are for fear of layoffs or any sort of cutback.
I think most people would rather take a small increase in work-stress to forgo a lot of financial related stress down the road.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If you are capable and organized then your vacation time will be taken and your area of ownership will not suffer.
Understanding, capable, and organized bosses are also a huge help.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
USA USA USA!
Seriously though, what the hell is wrong with you guys? I live in Canada right beside you, and I'd get outright hostile at an interview if I was told there wasn't guaranteed vacation. I've never worked at a place that hasn't outright forced you to take vacation days. Literally, if you don't book them, they will book off arbitrary days towards the end of the year if they haven't been booked.
Those guys have mandatory vacation periods several weeks long. I envied that guy getting to take his vacation in the middle of crunch time.
The summary provides a lot of info on how employees view the situation, but it completely lacks any type of proof on whether or not companies are actually punishing workers for using vacation time. The part at the end about the U.S. being the only nation that doesn't guarantee vacation time is a red herring because if an employee has an employment contract that provides a certain amount of vacation time per year, then I would hazard to guess that being punished for actually using that vacation time would be a breech of contract.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Different cultures have different attitudes about work/life balance. I get the shakes if I'm away from work for more than a couple days.
Where I live we have 25 days of paid leave every year by law, i.e. five full weeks. People in white collar jobs typically have 6-7 weeks (employers use this to attract employees). Where I work I think the lowest number of days is 28 and then you get more with age up to about seven weeks worth of time of per year. Oh, and we only work 40 hours per week and we certainly don't take work home or with us when we go on vacation.
It's not that I feel like I can't take vacation, but with only 2 weeks/year, I feel like I need to save it for something special. If I had 4 weeks (or more), I'd be more likely to take more little trips here and there or even use vacation as a personal day to stay home, but as it is, I try to save up my vacation for a big trip.
I'd rather that my company moved to a paid time off pool for both sick and vacation days since I so rarely use sick days.
You can hate Ron Paul all you want and think he is a far right wing radical (he is), but he is right!
Seriously, the government, consumers, and banks have lived beyond their means. The only growth is consumption caused by yet more debt. Student loans are too high due to the government handing them out like candy enslaving the students in debt when they are done, which in return causes higher demand for employers to request degreed candidates and so on.
The best solution is to go into a depression, raise taxes high, cut spending, sell off Alaska and most of the US assets, cut military pay, for a decade or so. No one but Paul would have the balls for such a radical solution but it is no different htan anyone one of use with a family with LOTS of debt, loss of income, and risk of beig foreclosed or repoed. If you do not lower your lifestyle, sell your shit, and work 2 jobs for several years the bank will do all that for you on their terms rather than yours.
Ron Paul is honest and gives answers no one wants to hear.
http://saveie6.com/
Remember the office sitcom '9 to 5' ? yes, 9.00 in the morning to 05.00 in the evening. it depicted an office and the funny situations that happened in between the workers in the office. a privately owned office. it was a popular sitcom, due to depicting a lot of people's daily lives.
the catch here, is in the name of the sitcom - '9 to 5'. you see, back 20-25 years ago, the situation in america was so that you worked in private corporations in between those hours in general. actually not only in america - it was so in many other parts of the world (maybe except japan).
but look at it now - 7 in the evening is the normal time when work stops in almost entire private sector. in the last 25 years, somewhere in between, the hour we got out of work has gone from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and this did not happen only in america - almost any part of the world. wages ? they did not increase in proportion to inflation.
so we are working more, (25% more on average at least), but getting paid less. and everything is ship shape, as far as the current economic system and corporations are concerned.
would you expect paid vacations to be something that corporations would smile at, in such an environment ?
Read radical news here
I was always told that it looked bad if you didn't use all of your vacation. People that never go on vacation usually have something to hide (a mistake they don't want others finding out about). The only reason I don't use all of my vacation is that I'd rather cash in as much of it as possible to pay off those pesky student loans.
I take all my days every year, and I've got 28 PTO days per year on top of the usual holidays. Yes, I work in the US for a major corporation, but not to take your vacation days is ripping yourself off.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Tell me about it.
The harddrive holocaust last year threw us into a great data-storage depression; Can't even get a 1TB drive for under $100.
My company forces its employees to take vacations, because "banked" vacation time must be paid in full when employee leaves the company, and it can get very expensive to pay out a few month's worth of paychecks on top of losing a valuable resource. Now, having your work pile up while you're on vacation because there is no headcounts to replace you while you're away, is a while other issue.
Bow before me, for I am root.
We could just tax the rich and reduce our defense spending. Ron Paul would never do that, he would prove to be just as owned by the rich as the rest of them.
Mandatory vacations are supposed to be one of the first lines of fraud prevention at all companies. People who commit frauds at companies by doctoring the books are unable to do so while they are on vacation, and so the discrepencies in the accounts show up when they are not at their desk for a couple of weeks. US corporations are, once again, opening themselves wide open to fraud by not requiring mandatory vacations of their employees.
In a country with laws giving everyone 4 weeks paid leave and 10 public holidays a year employees get pressured to take their leave, as leave balances are liabilities on their books. If employees work on a public holiday they are usually given a day in leiu and paid time and a half or double time. I feel a bit short changed being a contractor and getting absolutely nothing but the much bigger pay cheque more than makes up for it.
It's unhealthy to work non-stop and it can't be good for your work. I always come back feeling recharged. Occasionally a colleague has had significant holiday remaining at the year-end and our bosses certainly weren't applauding, they told them to take it ASAP.
Employees not taking holidays is also a known fraud risk. Employees committing fraud commonly do not take holidays because they need to keep covering their tracks. The story can be similar for incompetent employees. If they're not at work for a week complaints are more likely to make it to someone who might start asking questions.
In high-risk jobs it's not unusual for week-long holiday breaks to be absolutely mandatory (one of the findings from the Bearings Bank collapse).
People do not take vacations because they don't have money to do so. Or they simply refuse to fly because of this whole security theater we got going on here...
I dunno if you knew this, but the United States is not a household.
if ron paul had his way, companies would effectively own their employees (to an even greater extent than they already do) and punish them more severely with no chance of the employees being able to do anything reactionary to it.
Please expound on that premise, replete with valid sourcing, or be thoroughly shunned.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If you don't enjoy your job, then that sucks.
I worked for the Australian branch of a multinational, when we got put under the management of the US branches.
Now this was done because we were putting our releases on time, on budget, while the US branches were constantly missing deadlines and getting hit by penalty payments. So we were basically moved to make their departments figures look better.
The US managers kept coming out, looking at what we were doing and how hard we were working, and immediately deciding that if they could take our 4 weeks annual leave off us, we'd be even more productive! They could not get their heads around the idea that we were able to put in that much effort because we knew that when crunch finished we'd be able to take a couple of weeks to rest and recover before the next sprint. If you don't get time off, then you've got to pace yourself.
We never got it through their heads, and eventually we were written off as culturally lazy, and sold off. Even though we were the ones hitting deadlines, and they were always running late.
Are people who work long hours and check in to keep things moving even while on vacation, rewarded more than those who go off the grid when not on the clock?
Imagine two people:
1) has family and makes a point to not work on vacation, lest they suffer the wrath of their spouse
2) is single, and tends to take stay-cations, gets bored and checks in to work to break up monotony
I don't understand the logic that would drive a manager to give the same reward to both individuals, when person 2 clearly works more. Sure, person 1 has more getting in the way of work, but that doesn't justify an inflated sense of worth on the job.
"If I burn someone out, I can always find someone else(.)"
In this economy, that's perfectly true.
You are free to not take any vacations days if you choose to do so. The rules are only so that you can take some vacations days. So I am happy about the freedom to chose (I took 11 out of my 20 days of vacation last year), than being without any protection if I want to take the full 20 days this year.
Please enlighten me why this in any way a negative thing compared to the US?
Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.
Perhaps other countries' businesses are more about making money for the stockholders and less about reminding the management that they have power over the working stiffs.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Worker abuse is common and this leads to burnout, poor work do to long hours and higher trun over.
I openly tell companies while interviewing that I will take all my available PTO every single year. I also tell them that I do not expect to work more than 40 hours in a week (and never more than 50) unless it's a 1 or 2x a year event.
If a company isn't up to these expectations during the interview they get visibly uncomfortable or tell you the interview is done right then and there. This is fine for me, no one should work for a company which demands you work more than 40 hours or won't let you take the time off you've earned.
However, I do my work and never miss deadlines (due to my own failure). I feel as long as I keep up my end of the bargain so should the company. Any that don't aren't worth my time.
---
I took a three week long summer vacation last year. I am taking 5 weeks this summer. I also take many long weekends and sometimes a random week off here and there. If you're not then you need to find a new job and fast.
Oh and no, I don't care how much you love your job there's no way you can love it more than vacation.
At my company, we did away with vacations. You get no vacation time. At. All.
But that was just for starters, we also did away with sick time. None.
Personal days? Don't make me laugh.
I am proud to say that was my initiative.
One might think this could have some impact on moral. But when asked during on camera interviews, how much would people have to pay you to leave? Some said at least double, and most said they couldn't even think of a number.
If you want to know how that's possible, then Google ROWE. Results Only Work Environment. And you'll understand why.
I give talks about our transition to ROWE, and it's been nothing but phenomenal.
David
David Whatley
The rich are rich in part because they investigate how taxes work, and use them to save money. Try to squeeze the rich, and they'll just move their wealth to where it is most beneficial to them, and you end up with zero taxes from more of them. "Tax the rich" is simple but incorrect.
Now, reducing defense spending is fine, and that's actually a large part of Paul's platform from what I've seen. I think he's said that the largest portion of the trillion dollar cut he wants to do comes from stopping the current military actions.
I used my vacation time this year. First time in 13 years I've actually taken a full vacation. Two weeks later I was let go. Luckily I have a new job already but this is a very real problem.
As for the reason I was let go? It was trumped up BS. I was a model employee, multiple promotions, commendations etc. Never had I been under any disciplinary action.
I've been with the company and (its successors in interest -- yes it's been bought three times) long enough that I supposedly get 5 weeks of vacation per year. However, there is a clear expectation that I will check email while on vacation (or holiday). I also have been called in for insignificant issues while I was on vacation -- told I had to come back in. If I go out of town, I'm expected to take a laptop with me so I can remote in to handle issues that come up. Vacation... I wish.
Then you have nothing to lose by voting for him.
This is what capitalism does. Profits become more important than people.
In the U.S. you are also punished for taking time off for being sick. I actually had a co-worker told that she had to keep her accrued vacation time above 20 hours (vacation time and sick time are the same pool) because the company felt that she was taking too much time off even though she was only taking what she had accrued. So if she was hovering around 20 hours accrued and got the Flu, tough...better come to work and infect your co-workers. It's stupid. Corporate policy is based around what makes for the best quarterly report. Never mind that those decisions will cost the company in the long run as long as the numbers have been maximized for the quarterly report. The hubris of the corporate overlords is bolstered by the support of the state which says that we are "at will" employees that can be let go at any time without prior notice or reason. This is the result of runaway capitalism. We are returning to the robber barons of the turn of the last century.
I mean close all the loopholes. Including moving out of the country. If they ever want to come back to visit family they will owe that tax bill. The rich are rich because they bribe politicians to make loopholes for them.
I doubt any sane person objects to cutting fruitless wars.
There are those who are afraid, and there are those who think their job is just short term. I've found that by giving a 90 day notice of an upcoming vacation tends to make the more nervous bosses less so. I follow up every 30 days stating in my email, that on such and such a date I'll be taking some time off.
I even reminded the Management that they'd need to assign someone to cover for me early enough for me to bring my stand-in up to speed. No action.
As we got down to the last few weeks before I was scheduled to leave, my immediate manager started dropping hints that this wasn't a good time to be out of the office. I replied that that was why it was important to have someone cover for me.
About a week before I'm scheduled for time off, I get called into a meeting with every suit above me right up to the senior VP. They go on at great length about how important the work I'm doing is, how critical etc. to the Company, and what a poor time it will be for me to be gone. I make understanding noises. Finally they ask me if I'm going to reschedule my time off. I tell them that we have travel booked, hotels, all that.
They then dial up the "we really, really, really need you here" stuff. So I fold: "Well, if that's how it is we'll just have to tell the wedding guests they're on their own and call off the wedding." Silence.
I'm reliably informed that the partying at the reception went on nearly till dawn. We weren't there.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I certainly agree that employees that use their vacation days are at a disadvantage. Who are you more likely to promote? Joe Schmoe who 'abandons his post' for two weeks a year, or John Doe who hasn't taken so much as a sick day in ages and never takes vacation? You don't have to cross-train someone to hold down John's side of the fort for a week or two at a time, so promoting him will save you a few man-hours of time in the future. In the mean time, you'll keep telling Joe he can't take vacation because someone else on the far other end of the vacation always has the two weeks he wants reserved off....
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
And are your staff currently standing on the office roof theatening to jump off?
They exchanged it for a program where you "ask your manager for time off". Fine if you are a confident employee with a good manager and a good relationship with them. Not fine if you are timid or have a bad manager and bad relationship with them. Fine for the company because they win either way.
I believe he means libertarian policies would lead to a new age of robber-barons. With government protection employers would abuse employees even more is probably his thought.
Personally, I agree. The employer has too much power compared to the employee without some sort of group action, either government or unions.
Maybe I'm biased being in Alaska, but it is no longer a territory that can just be sold off. It is a full fledged state in the union.
*returns from Googling*
You say you have no vacation time, I say you have unlimited vacation time. Normal companies will bitch out employees for not hitting milestones as well; the difference is that in yours, that's all they care about.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Oh no, this work environment is not open to abuse or doesn't foster abuse, no, not at all.
I'll be sure to ask a prospective employer if they employ ROWE.
And avoid them.
--
BMO
The OP mentioned that the US is the only rich country in the world where the government doesn't guarantee paid time off from one's job. Who cares? Whether it's a legal right or a company policy, if you're afraid to take it off for fear of being viewed as a slacker, then you won't take time off. My company gives me paid time off, and I take it. I have no idea whether I'm seen as a slacker or not, and I don't care. If I take too much time off, I have to take it unpaid, and they let me do that, too.
Ron Paul would never do that? Doesn't he want to close military bases around the world and move freed money to SS to keep it afloat?
You could confiscate the wealth of top n% and it wouldn't make a dent in debt. Total net worth of the richest 1% is what, few hundred billion? a trillion? Currently the US runs deficits to the tune of approx $1.5T - that's every year.
Stopping producers from leaving the country? It worked so well for the Soviet Union...
Why do you think anybody would think anything "ronpaulisanidiot" has to say about Ron Paul is the slightest bit credible?
Your anonymous posts were actually slightly more credible, to those posters who couldn't immediately recognize you.
So I, as an employer, can pile on results I expect to take eighty hours a week of work and my employees will be grateful for having the flexibility in their time where they can sleep and, maybe, take a weekend? Sounds great! Where do i sign up?
That is all.
Ours has 160 hours of vacation time for new hires, up to 240 hours per year after a few years. PTO is separate from vacation time. Sabbatical (twenty business days) every four years. And we're still productive.
Every other "wealthy" country in the world is going broke even faster than the United States. Why not hobble our economy even more with silly work rules?
The fact of the matter is at a big company (usually) there's no evil overlord saying "fuck these people out of their PTO". For one that guy is personally liable and it gets quite expensive if the employees sue. What instead usually happens is that this type of policy is local to a specific department of pointed haired evil troll boss. This guy "gets results" and gets ahead on the backs of his employees. If you've worked long enough you've probably had both types of bosses. Of course, this type of boss is actually _bad_ for the company as it creates a short term gain by exchanging it for morale and eventual turnover. If the manager gets a promotion, he doesn't care, the dept. health is someone elses issue. (And perversely it looks better for him "hey, that dept. ran great when _I_ was there!").
So how does an institution fight this? By punishing the managers. We have a rule where if the employee hits X hours of vacation they are then just paid out instead of getting more. X is a large #, like it would take more than a year of no vacation to get there. If you get close to X, the first thing that happens is your boss's boss sees this and says "how come Bob is maxing hours?". Its his fault. So managers are trained to make sure they track employee vacation and ensure they're taking it in reasonable chunks.
There's always exceptions, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons IMO for denying vacation. For instance, 2 guys are already out of a 4 man team. Probably not a good time for the other two to leave. Or your big product launch is next month and you need everyone around. These are generally not an issue with proper scheduling. Another good thing good companies will do is just close down certain weeks of the year, like Xmas to New years, or 4th of july weekend, etc. Most people are gone, so the ones who didn't take PTO will just goof off anyways. Give less PTO, but more standard holidays.
Anyways, doesn't have to be all doom and gloom if the managers have their shit together.
The best solution is to go into a depression, raise taxes high, cut spending, sell off Alaska and most of the US assets, cut military pay, for a decade or so.
Wait...what? Think about what you just said for a while. How is that going to make our nation more wealthy over the long term? Sell off our assets? Sell our land? Tax everyone so that no international trade even exists?
That sounds like a recipe some other nation would suggest for the US. Of course your neighbor's going to tell you to sell him your front lawn! He'll charge you rent to park you car!
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
The producers already had their jobs shipped to China. These are the robber barons we are talking about.
There are far more rich people than there are people bribing politicians to change tax codes. Part of becoming rich is being very aware of what's happening to your money and what your options are. No matter what "loopholes" you think there are, people with a rich mindset will maximize what they get for their money, and find the most profitable places to hold & flow it.
Already in the current situation, if you owe a tax bill and try to enter the USA, they can and do come down on you hard. It's not that the rich are not paying money owed to the IRS, they pay what they owe and keep what they owe (relatively) small. Remember that the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars, as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N.
(It did sound like you were saying Ron Paul would never reduce defense spending. If you only meant he wouldn't tax the rich, I believe that's correct, as he wants to eliminate most federal taxes.)
It wasn't the only cause but it was a combination of lack of training, not working over 60 hours a week, and then taking 7 days of vacation in a row.
I'm saving very hard. I'm looking forward to the day I am safe and don't care. I won't quit. I'll just stop putting out the effort while remaining positive and pleasant.
Looks to be about three years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You mean answers like "No we won't treat that child of an illegal immigrant at the hospital"?
He seriously wouldn't agree that you simply treat children regardless of their circumstances during on the GOP debates. Took him almost 5 minutes to come around to a 'maybe but it depends' type of answer.
Ron Paul is right on somethings but he's frigging loony on too many more to be taken seriously.
How about Iran can have a nuclear bomb. Really? you think that's a good idea?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
you mean VULTURE capitalist, right?
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
it doesn't mean the laws of economics don't apply. When the government runs a deficit (especially when it's not offset by the gdp growth bought that way, eg. everywhere around the world today) it confiscates the purchasing power of its currency holders/users in one way or another because it either has to increase taxes to service the debt or to print money to fill the gap/inflate the debt away. No matter how you slice it, both ways are nothing more than a tax on purchasing power that affects the people who saved their whole lives for a retirement and the people on a fixed income the most. The wealthy will do just fine, it's the bottom that is invariably assraped.
Yes, you can pretend it doesn't work that way, especially when you have that petrodollar thing, but the math is a bitch and you can cheat it only so long.
Blatantly untrue. They didn't do it before the Bush cuts devastated the economy, and they wouldn't do it if it was raised back to those levels.
We are talking about Federal Taxes. You could argue they would move to another country..but then why haven't they done so already?
reducing defense spending isn't nice. It will hurt entire industries.
Current military actions are winding down. Frankly I don't think he really wants to be president, I think he wants to continue to make even more money from having a base of supporters who don't stop to think what his doing with the money. Every time he gets close, he says slightly loonier things until he falls back to where he is a 'hopeful'.
I'm probably wrong their, but it certainly matches his pattern.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
SS is fine, stop believe thing fucking lies and do some actual research.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
so it's an act of congress away from being sold off.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I doubt any sane person objects to cutting fruitless wars.
What's the difference between a fruitful and fruitless war? They're all war and wind up in our troops committing atrocities and crimes against humanity.
I'm against war. Period. And any person who claims to respect life should hate war as well. War can produce nothing but wasted resources and lives.
Having said that, maybe the world needs a police force. Some international organization to say "no" to war, crimes against humanity, tyranny, and genocide. I liken how the US took out OBL to an example of what such "police force" ought to look like. No war, just a one-off act of justice.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Why not?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Funny, something like 1/3 of the current debt was accumulated *solely* due to due to the Bush tax cuts. Of that roughly a quarter was due to the uber rich. That's right around a trillion dollars.
Call it 1/15th of the debt. That's hardly 'not a dent'. And that's just ONE friggin bill that we let expire and poof a trillion dollars is now not added to the deficit. Over and over and over.
While we can't cut/tax our way out of this mess, you have to have people with money paying their fair share too. GE paying ZERO in taxes.
Here's a radical suggestion. Increase the taxes on corporations and they will start reducing their tax burden by 'investing' in their equipment, factories and other deductible expenses. Right now, these corporations are simply sitting on the money not doing anything with it. Call their bluff and tax it so they start spending it to offset the taxes.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
and every time I tried to take a day off I got the hairy eye-ball from the boss.
Every year they raised my pay a few % and in the last maybe 6-8 years of work, when things were booming and companies couldn't hire engineers fast enough, and were paying ridiculous "signing bonuses", I suggested to HR that they offer a little more time off instead of jacking up pay every year. I always got a blank stare as if I was speaking some sort of alien language.
While working for HP they used to march all of us into big presentations every year at annual raise time. They would proceed to tell us with pride how their HR people sat down with the HR people from every other large engineering employer in the bay area and came up with standardized job descriptions and salary/benefits. They never said it directly, but to anyone with a brain they were saying "don't bother to look for work somewhere else because you won't get a better deal".
Of course you can't take your lousy week or two of vacation time. Start doing that and you mark yourself as ready to be kicked to the curb when the stock price drops $2/share and the $20M/year CEO's brilliant answer is to lay off a bunch of engineers. No wonder the economy sucks. Between the fuckwit politicians and the fuckwit CEOs it's a wonder we are ALL living in cardboard boxes under an overpass somewhere.
I'm definitely NOT steering my son toward a career in engineering and would never recommend anyone else living in the US to do so.
(I've long suspected that many workers overestimate the amount of time they spend at the office . . . or at least engaged in productive work.)
For one, it doesn't matter. Being in the office at 7pm and seen is what matters.
Two, you're in the Midwest? Interesting. Location matters too - cultural norms. To put it bluntly, hay seed - you're a lazy slacker. I thought you farm boys got up at 3am, milked the chickens, fed the cows, had breakfast and then went to work.
And then worked until 11 PM, came home, had dinner, got 3.5 hours of sleep and then went right back to milking your chickens.
And then went and voted Republican.
Wow, all the sudden Ron Paul appears? WTF?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
it doesn't mean the laws of economics don't apply
It does mean that those stupid "household" analogies don't apply, though. The laws of economics are vastly different for governments than they are for households.
There have been countless stories on the subject and they all point to the same thing -- insane work hours primarily to present an image of someone who works hard. The cost to their health and their humanity all be damned. The government officially encourages a return to sane work habits and schedules, but the government workers aren't setting a great example. An ex-girlfriend I know works for the Japanese government, works insane hours despite her current bad health and says her boss works until 3am and comes in to work at 10am.
Why is there a decline in birth rates? Why are there more old people than young people? What is the long term cost and prognosis of this? Yeah... just look to the Japanese to see what we're in for if this keeps going on.
Ron Paul hates all kinds of government "intervention", including employee protection laws. He would see those gutted, or outright removed.
true, but they also make that much more too.
in 1970 the average middle class salary was something like $20, today it is $21. The average CEO in 1970 made $300,000 now it is $5 million.
The rich are rich because they fire 3,000 middle income earners so they can pay themselves millions in bonuses. What did goldman sachs do with their bailout? pay out hundreds of millions in bonuses to their employees. The employees that trashed the company got paid bonuses for doing just that.
That is why the rich are rich. because they say fuck you it's mine you don't matter to everyone else.
A simple fact if your earning less than $100k a year you are most likely spending 98% of your income. you literally can't spend any more. As your income goes up the amount you spend as a percentage goes way down. you can tax the rich simply because they have enough money to actually tax.
The only way out of this mess is sound fiscial planning. It took a republican congress and clinton to setup a decent plan. a plan that last less than 2 years before a republican decide the government had to much money and started cutting taxes before the debt was paid off. you can't cut taxes until after we are in the black. you cut spending and pay down debt. but no one including Ron Paul actually supports paying down debt for more than a couple of years.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Ron Paul and every other Presidential candidate can say anything they want, but the reality is that they have to get Congress and the Senate to
A) Bring it up for a vote.
B) Pass it in both houses.
99.8% will never be brought up and most of the rest will fail.
Not defending Ron Paul on this but...
Considering that the US is the only nation on Earth to use nuclear weapons against another nation, twice, do you think it is a good idea that the US has nuclear arms?
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
This deluge of dilution is utterly intolerable!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
California law treats vacation as accrued wages. If you don't take your vacation days, the employer must pay you for them at the end of employment.
Still, many employers prefer to pay than let their employees take time off.
of very common behavior in humans:
- lack of empathy
- control others by fear
on one end, on the other
- fear, dependency and paranoia
So, co-dependent.
Has been present for ages, will it ever change even now, with resources getting limited?
They pay for more in absolute dollars but they pay a far lower tax rate.
When you add in fixed taxes and license fees, the difference is even more dramatic.
Top 400 familes pay about 17.5% total tax load.
The top 2.67% pay about 23% total tax load
The folks at 60% to 80% pay about 40% total tax load.
The folks at 20% (poverty) pay about 25% total tax load.
To the wealthy, $3.70 in gasoline taxes for a tank of gasoline is basically a 0% rate. To the poor, $3.70 in gasoline taxes is about 5% of their weekly income.
Same for cigarette, phone taxes, booze, sales tax, etc.
Property tax appears in your rent or in your mortgage. It runs from about 5% for the poor (but lower as they share housing) to about 3% for the middle class to about 2% for the wealthy.
I.e.
A $1000/year property tax bill embedded in their rent for a poor person is a huge chunk of their income.
A $30,000 tax bill for the top 2.67% is about 2%.
The poor spend most of their income on taxable purchases. The wealthy do not. So an 8% sales tax load hits the poor for 8% of their income while it hits the wealthy for under 1%.
Google "who pays state taxes" and also look here http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html#table3
The media owned by the wealthy has really been pushing the propaganda that the lower 50% of income earners pay no taxes.
But the more accurate statement is the bottom 50% pay low or no federal income taxes ( tho that changes big time this year now that hte earned income tax credit has been removed) while the wealthy pay a much lower percentage of their income as taxes.
It is accurate to say they pay more taxes in absolute dollars. But did you realize if the tax bill for running the country was divided evenly, it works out to over $11,000 per citizen? More like $33,000 per working person. And that's ignoring social security taxes.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Take more vacations to remote places where there is no connectivity. I take at least 2 weeks every year out in the woods where I cannot be contacted.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I mean close all the loopholes. Including moving out of the country. If they ever want to come back to visit family they will owe that tax bill.
Wow. Just wow! I was at a loss for words for several minutes after reading this. With all of the talk about slippery slopes and freedom on /. and someone even modded this as insightful. And talk about taking away any incentive to be successful. Who sets the threshold for what is "rich". Compared to many parts of the world people in the US living on $15K/year are living lavishly.
At my company, vacation days, sick days, holidays are rolled up into PTO -- paid time off. The company tends to view PTO as theirs, not the employees. We have to take PTO on holidays (and usually the day after) and if we don't have time in the bank, too bad, it's now unPTO. We can no longer sell back PTO (there went the nice Christmas money). Give your two weeks notice and they buy back any unused PTO at 80%. There's a limit to how much PTO we can carry over from one year to the next (and it's not much). Managers are required to spend 4 of 8 PTO hours on-site, working, until they're down to the new limit. They're also required to spend at least 8 PTO hours per week, but it can't be the same day each week, nor are they allowed to bookend their weekends (Friday one week, Monday the next).
But if I do up and decide to take PTO on short notice (as in, that day), no one says a damn thing.
Is this just a US thing?
Here in the UK I can't imagine this ever occurring, any company doing such a thing would quite rapidly lose staff. In fact all of my employers have generally actively encouraged holiday taking (on the basis that accrued holiday in one year often doesn't get carried over to the next year).
How much holiday do you guys get over the pond anyway? I think the average for office workers here (not counting contractors of course) has gotta be about 25 days + public holidays.
. . IF I could get it! I have 15 days a year off, but trying to take any of them is like pulling teeth. My boss has an excuse for every season.
Winter - We're not getting much done because of the weather, so we need to work every chance we get.
Spring - We need to work more to make up for a bad Winter.
Summer - This is our best time of year to get a lot done. Let's work over if possible.
Fall - We're behind. Nobody can take off from now until the end of the year.
I have to put my foot down every time and demand to be off.
Please expound on that premise, replete with valid sourcing, or be thoroughly shunned.
the ron paul followers repeat endlessly that the biggest thing holding back business is "government regulations". ron paul promises to kill the epa, the federal reserve, the irs, and every other government agency that has anything to do with receiving or spending money. the result is that companies will become even stronger in this country than they already are, with no agencies having any power whatsoever to counter their actions. worker wages will plummet and unemployment will rise. employees will go from "resources" as they currently are to "property" that can be bought, sold, and discarded. the wage slavery that we are currently enduring will be replaced with outright human ownership - classical slavery.
if you want sources, go look at what ron paul's superpac - "revolutionpac" - has to say about their lord and savior. they'll tell you what they want him to do as president - never mind that most of what he wants to do is not within the constitutional power limits of the president to do on his own - it doesn't take a neurosurgeon to figure out what would happen if his wishes were actually filled.
and of course, if he accomplished his "government small enough to drown in a bathtub" - which would of coruse be a one-person government of only him - then there would no longer be a legislative or judicial branch to slow down his "progress" or prevent him from making himself ruler-for-life.
The rich are rich because they bribe politicians to make loopholes for them.
I disagree... The rich get richer/stay rich because they hire people to find loopholes for them. Bribing politicians to make loopholes is mostly for corporate finance -- this is how rich corporations get richer/stay rich. Of course, the corporate veil is one of the techniques used by the rich to stay rich, but that's another matter....
Please expound on how libertarian policies will not lead to this, replete with valid sourcing, or be thoroughly shunned.
Last I heard, South Korea was the worst in this regard. Well there's another fine thing where the US isn't no. 1...
Yeah SS is fine. As long as it can actually cash in its treasuries of course...
I'd be way too busy traveling, chasing women
You are doing it wrong. If you win the powerball, you don't have to chase women, they chase you.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Most comments seem to origin in the US. Some contributors may be interested in the situation in Europe. Here the data for the three biggest European economies.
-------------------
Paid Leave
European Union requires all its member states to guarantee by law minimally four weeks of paid leave for all employees.
Average paid holiday days per year for full-time employees in 2008:
- Germany 30 days, plus 10.5 days public holidays
- France 25 days, plus 11 days public holidays
- United Kingdom 24.7 days, plus 8 days public holidays
-------
Working hours
Actual average weekly work hours for full-time employees in Europe
- United Kingdom 40,9 hours (2008)
- Germany 38.8 hours (2010)
- France 38,4 hours (2008)
-------------------
And no, my experience in four European countries (UK, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic) suggests that workers are not punished in any way if they take their vacations.
Technology should make us more productive, e.g. able to respond to situations from a distance. (Consider how much easier it has become to discuss things with a colleagues, since the invention of the cellphone.)
Increased productivity should mean that people get time off and are able to do the things important to them. But it now also means that they're able to work very long hours. This correlates with a high unemployment rate, which suggests that the fear of being fired translates into working another person's job, for little or no pay.
The evidence is that the USA's relatively free market approach to employment practices is failing the workers. Is there a simple solution? Of course not. But some guaranteed conditions would be nice, like four weeks' annual leave.
It must be possible to make it uneconomical to penalise people for taking leave: if anyone loses or leaves their job when they are owed guaranteed leave (e.g. more than a few weeks' leave), or accumulates more than a certain amount of leave (e.g. two years'), then they receive a proportional payment e.g. triple time. You'd have to find a way to make sure this didn't just push people to become casuals and contractors. Not too hard: e.g. if you work more than 160 hours in a month for a given employer, you start accruing leave benefits. Yes, increased regulation would make it more expensive to hire people --- but only for employers who were expecting to exploit their employees.
My scheme is simplistic, but it aims to push a failing system in the right direction. There needs to be some momentum to help employees obtain a payoff from increased productivity, because at the moment they aren't getting it.
They didn't do it before the Bush cuts devastated the economy
Tax cuts devastated... the economy?
Perhaps you are unaware of this, but the federal governments budget is not the economy.
Note to self: Geekoid says thing when even he knows he doesnt know what he is talking about (how could he have not?)
"His name was James Damore."
Nobody likes to work. We do it to get a paycheck. It's the United States of America - one of the last places on earth that you can make as much money as you want if you work hard enough. We seem to have adopted the stance that making money is a bad thing. That "the man" is crushing us. You all sound like a bunchy of whiny babies. Move to France or Canada if you are so sick of the US. I'm proud to have started with nothing and worked myself in something. It was tough, but it was my choice. Now my tax dollars pay for people to be unemployed for years and, if they are employed, for them to whine about how hard it is to have a job where you have to call in on your vacation. Boo freaking hoo.
Spoken like a true American Republican, with no sense of empathy for other people at all.
Yes sir, we are all just a bunch of whiny babies who deserve nothing better than to be the 21st century equivalent of slaves for you and your ilk.
If people like this sort of thinking, then vote GOP. If not, then vote anyone but them.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Do Companies Punish Workers Who Take Vacations?
In my experience the answer to that question is "no". Every place I've ever worked has strongly encouraged employees to take all available vacation time. And if you really feel the need to have more time off just ask for unpaid time.
It isn't really "the company" that punishes those who work shorter hours and take lots of time off. Some employees are very ambitious and work their butts off for every promotion, you can compete with them or decide not to, your choice.
How do you handle the issue where almost no company really knows how to rate performance of software or office work.
Why you think that can't be abused by slightly and constant increasing performance demand until some has to work 12 hours a day, every day is beyond me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Years ago when I worked at IBM (actually IGS, IBM Global Services) the "utilization rate" target of 103% of 2100 hours per year meant that ALL time off-- sick time, holidays, vacation, education & training-- had to be covered by "billable" time (even if only for blue-dollar projects)... so any time off had to be covered by O/T... but, unlike Comp Time, there's a cap of 3 to 5 weeks.
Mind you, if you fell short of the utilization rate target, your PBC rating would seldom-- if ever-- get above a "3"... which impacted variable pay.
Let's not get into how the company made business decisions on garbage data (CLAIMS) on green-dollar contracts where the consultants (in GBS) cannot claim more than, say, forty hours out of a 60-80 hour week.
IBM obviously isn't alone in this crap. After getting caught in a RIFtide I ended up as a contractor at Verizon... and, in early 2009, Verizon decided, unilaterally, to cut billing rates by 10%.
Being a contractor... well, there's no paid vacation. Or holidays. So you really want to work holidays.
Also, these days, being a contractor emulates inter-galactic vacuum since the pay rates tend to be crappy despite the history, some decades back, of contractors being paid significantly higher than FTEs because they were temporary (though there's no such thing as a "permanent" job any longer).
I guess we're supposed to feel threatened in order to get the most out of us.
Employees should PUNISH EMPLOYERS who don't let them take vacations.
"Wealthy. You keep using that word."
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Yes, I should qualify that I was talking specifically about federal income taxes, since all the "tax the rich" rhetoric is typically focused just on income taxes for the higher brackets. I agree that other taxes like sales & "vice" taxes have a disproportionate effect on the poor and aren't a good idea when many people are going down in financial standing.
It is accurate to say they pay more taxes in absolute dollars. But did you realize if the tax bill for running the country was divided evenly, it works out to over $11,000 per citizen? More like $33,000 per working person. And that's ignoring social security taxes.
Right. I'm not advocating tax breaks for the rich, I'm just saying that increasing taxes on the rich is not some easy catch-all fix. As the numbers above show, the rich are already picking up slack that is HUGE to a poor person (though not enough to placate some). Plus as others have mentioned, even a 100% income tax on the wealthiest 1% (or even more) wouldn't phase the federal yearly deficits, so different means than just "tax the rich" must be pursued.
I remember more problem for not taking vacation than anything else. (Job was cool, no family... so work was family).
At the end of the year usual convocation on the staff manager office... With obligation to take the whole 5 weeks at once (usually end november/ december to hybernate)... Sometimes could negociate to be paid a 13th month instead but it was a grey area...
When the law oblige you to give your employee the vacations... there is nothing companies can do against it... (without triggering a legal shitstorm at every inspection of the books)
I believe he means libertarian policies would lead to a new age of robber-barons.
The age of "robber barons" was one of the most beneficial ever for the American middle class. We have another name for that age.. the Industrial Revolution.
"His name was James Damore."
He would see them moved to the States, which already have employee protection laws.
"His name was James Damore."
Yeah, while you technically have "unlimited" vacation time, your setup is widely open to abuse, and in the wrong hands, could be quite indistinguishable from slavery.
I don't want to imply that you, yourself, are doing bad here, I just wanted to point out the dangers if this thing gets into the wrong hands.
Remind me, which is the more developed country again?
Wow, in 12 years in the workforce it has never once occurred to me not to use all my vacation time, and I've also always insisted on comp time for traveling on weekends. I understand the reasoning (and as a work at home type I probably do too much work at odd hours) but most people need time off to recharge. As long as you prove your worth during your days on this shouldn't be an issue.
Maybe you can shove your post's title up your ass. This "Be happy you have a job" bullshit is nothing short of pure evil. It's like saying, "Be happy you can be fucked up the ass!"
We seem to have adopted the stance that making money is a bad thing.
No, we didn't. We adopted the CORRECT stance that abusing others to make money is a bad thing.
Vacation time does not mean actually going somewhere for leisure. It means not going to work, and getting paid. Truthfully such should be called paid time off.
Especially IT workers because they're often in a horizontal department that touches every single other department, and furthermore IT folks tend to be expensive so there are usually some functions you will perform that have no human redundancies. Smaller companies may only have one programmer or one admin. If there is a problem that crops up during your vacation, even a small one, they will expect you to answer your phone and talk them through fixing it. Usually it's not the company itself that is discouraging you from taking vacation time and actually using it as intended, it's more likely a manager that wants to meet deadlines and doesn't feel bad about making you lose some vacation time to do it.
But it drives me up the fucking wall when I go on vacation and get calls about stupid shit that I would normally handle, but that anybody with a brain could figure out pretty easily. That just means you're lazy and value the 30 minutes it would take you to figure it out on your own more than you value not interrupting my vacation. If I'm the network guy and a core switch catches on fire, then I definitely want you to call me before you start fucking with it, but otherwise just tell people they'll have to wait til next week, it won't be the end of the world.
Not really.
It is akin to buying a house. You can owe 3 to 4 years of salary to pay it back. The problem is you keep borrowing more and more and never ever make a payment. That is where the US is right now and Greece. Why did Greece collapse? Easy it couldn't pay the bare minimum interest let alone its principal.
Go Google Wienmar Germany? They printed off their own money just like the US is and hyperinflation hit and people would actually skip work because the price of milk would rise by the end of the afternoon and people burned money because it was cheaper than firewood and a worthless currency it was. Hitler came into power as a result.
The only reason we do not have hyperinflation right now is that we are in a depression with a strong pull towards deflation which will cure our economic problems. So Bernanke prints more money to artificially inflate it. Meanwhile only the rich are getting the money and we are seeing food and gas prices double yet are wages are going down. Let everything go down in price to reflect our lower status and pay back our debt. Then it will come back the natural way.
http://saveie6.com/
Yes, I was being hyperbolic to make a point and get attention.... :D
We did away with formal vacation time, sick time, etc.
You have unlimited amounts of it.
ROWE is a system where an employeer treats their employees like competent adults who know how to manage their time.
Does everyone know how to do that? No. And those people fail to get good results under ROWE and get fired.
Is measuring results hard? It's as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You can do 360 Reviews and all that BS if you want. Or you can keep it more informal, like we do.
ROWE increases productivity and employee's become amazingly loyal.
The biggest difficulty with it is for the boss(es) who feel like they are somehow losing control. Who fear that the day after they start ROWE no one will come into the office anymore. Know what really happens? People come into the office, they get work done, and they feel far, far less stress.
It is amazing. Its simple. It works. And of all the BS systems that have come and gone, this is the one that just flat out does what it says.
We'd never consider going back. Ever.
David Whatley
Apparently Best Buy is a ROWE company. The ROWE website gorowe.com features them as a shining example of ROWE.
And that's all anyone really needs to know.
--
BMO
when you follow the two hour rule.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/business/two-hour-rule.htm
Years ago when I worked at IBM (actually IGS, IBM Global Services) the "utilization rate" target of 103% of 2100 hours per year meant that ALL time off-- sick time, holidays, vacation, education & training-- had to be covered by "billable" time (even if only for blue-dollar projects)... so any time off had to be covered by O/T... but, unlike Comp Time, there's a cap of 3 to 5 weeks.
You must have been there years ago - now you're required to work 10% overtime. IBM seriously sucks as an employer these days.
ROWE was initiated at Best Buy internally and has grown way past that. It may be the one great thing Best Buy ever came up with.
You can be snarky about it. Or... educate yourself.
Actually, I don't care either way. For those of us who live it, there is absolutely no going back. Ever.
David Whatley
It is the same as selling your BMW for a beater to raise cash to pay off credit cards and working a 2nd job and selling your large home for a more modest one etc.
After you survive the sting you can then save again and be rich. However spending on a credit only makes you appear richer and this is what Europe and the US is doing right now.
The problem is the US will go bankrupt by 2020. It is not sustainable and China and the creditors will take over the country like they did in Greece and force the US to sell its assets. If not then sanctions would cripple this nation even more. It will get that bad and I am not paranoid. It is simple mathmatics.
The short term benefits are 2 fold
1. The extra cash will not just sit there. It will go to the banks which in return will look for other ways to spend and invest it. With the US no longer selling treasury bonds maybe just maybe they will make loans for business lines of credit to hire people.
2. When you take a loan out or when an employer signs your paycheck you both compete with the federal government. Who will win? The US of course as treasury bonds are a safer bet. Employers NEVER use profit to pay its employees. Its just lines of credit if you take any finance 101 course in college.
Of course a recession will be the immediate result but the government will no longer have to print money to counter deflation like it is now. We are in a depression hidden by the printing of money. This is not sustainable at all.
Clinton did this and it created the 1990s boom. During the S&L scandal businesses could not get loans to keep people employed and expand as they couldn't compete with the government. With the cash infusion and no longer safe treasuries as plentiful more was loaned out again. See how that works?
http://saveie6.com/
My manager's always on my back for having too much leave up my sleeve. They want us to keep our accrued leave to a minimum.
Americans are simply stupid.... Or is that stupidly simple ?
No culture.
Apart from Bootsy Collins that is !
"Remember that the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars, as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N."
I have spent many hours analyzing the IRS statistics, and while in absolute dollars the rich do pay more, the richest ($10M+/yr AGI) actually pay a lower percentage of their income than those in the next lower income brackets ($500k-$10M). When payroll taxes, sales taxes and other taxes are taken into account and a nominal allowance is made for necessary expenses ($7k/yr), with the tax rate is calculated on the remaining income, the US tax structure is quite regressive, with tax rates actually falling as a percentage of income until one gets above $200k, then remaining constant +/-1.1% of income before dropping about 2% for those in the $10M+ category. On the basis of percentage of income after covering $7k of living expenses, the total tax rate remains well above 50% for all returns below $30k AGI (a majority of all returns), and above a 2/3 share for those earning less than $17k (well over 1/4 of all returns).
The apparent unfairness of the fact that the rich pay more in absolute dollars is vitiated by the fact that they also have a wildly disproportionate share of income. Looking at federal income tax alone, the bottom 46.8% of returns have 10.6% of the income (AGI,2007), while the top 0.1% have 12.7%. (After all taxes about 11.8% bottom vs. 11% top.)
See: In Depth Analysis of American Income and Taxation for more insight.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Wage slave educations.
of a post in the subject line, and the other part in the main body.
It's not very bright, but everybody is doing it so it must be fashionable.
I was recently laid-off from a job less than a month after taking a 2 week vacation. This was a once-in-a-lifetime, on-my-bucket-list trip that I had told my boss about before I was even hired. I'm sure the layoff was planned before I went on vacation, and I'm sure it's not the only reason I got the ax - but I also know it was a factor.
Best Buy has a long standing reputation of being abusive towards its employees including firing their most knowledgeable people, because they cost too much.
I am not being merely snarky. I am saying that if Best Buy is a shining example of ROWE, you'd have to be nuts to like ROWE as an employee. Obviously since you are an employer, you love ROWE if it means you get to squeeze that last drop of blood out of your employees.
--
BMO
"But that was just for starters, we also did away with sick time. None."
Comcast tried that. I made sure I came in sick as hell. Pleauge sick. and held back the puke as long as possible.
I then ran to the executives office to ask him a question and puked all over his desk, papers, laptop.
Spread the love, puke on the bastards.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Americans bitch about their jobs not being satisfying, and then bitch about how all those jobs get outsourced.
Maybe the "awesome government" is preventing such investment?
We have a president that has prevented oil exploration/drilling, stopped the Keystone pipeline from starting, did his best to prevent Boeing from opening a plant in SC. Why would ANY business attempt to invest anything in the US when we have a dictator in the White House? Yes, dictator. The courts constantly overturn his executive orders and he just rewrites them again.
Liberalism has completly failed and you are suggesting more of it. No wonder this country is in the shape it is.
It's a constitutional amendment from being sold off. The Supreme Court held back in the late 1800s that there is no mechanism by which a state can leave the union. I forget the actual case, but it was around debts accumulated by Texas after it seceded in the Civil War.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Based solely on the published income tax brackets, Americans have the mistaken impression that their overall tax system is progressive. This isn't true. An example of this thinking is illustrated by the parent comment:
Point 1: "the top N% pay FAR more in absolute tax dollars...", this is generally true.
Point 2: "...as well as more in percentage of their income, than the bottom 100-N%, for pretty much any value of N", this is baloney.
In fact, there are a number of flat and regressive taxes in the US, such that each quintile of tax payers pays taxes roughly in proportion to their income, as noted by the Citizens For Tax Justice report: America's Tax System Is Not As Progressive As You Think .
Bracket----avg-$ %$---%tax 1st--20---12500 3.5---2.0 2nd--20---25300 7.1---5.2 3rd--20---40700 11.6--10.3 4th--20---66300 19.0--19.0 Next-10--100000 14.3--15.1 Next--5--140000 10.2--11.2 Next--4--241000 14.2--15.6 Top---1-1254000 20.3--21.5Luke, help me take this mask off
Iran signed a treaty saying that they wouldn't try to build nuclear weapons and that all of their nuclear facilities would be open to the IAEA. They can bail out of it as North Korea did, but that's only going to raise suspicions further and basically confirm that the program is not for peaceful purposes.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
What do you think it will do to the US's credit rating if the federal government doesn't pay those off. The consequences of not paying are worse than paying it is.
I'd love to just work 10% overtime... an extra 4 hours a week? Definitely beat the extra 10+ I am expected to work.
>Yes, I was being hyperbolic to make a point and get attention.... :D
And furthermore, if you like ROWE so much, why don't you go fill in the ROWE article on Wikipedia with some actual facts or state some actual facts here instead of shouting complete utter nonsense?
1. How does it keep managers from being abusive?
2. How does "no paid time off" not translate into no time off?
3. How is management expected to come up with metrics to measure productivity when every way of measuring productivity I've seen come down the pike consist of 1 part actual measurement and 99 parts BS?
4. If informal metrics (like you say you use) are used, how are YOY comparisons made? How does that combat favoritism and backstabbing?
5. Like other people have asked, how does this not mean unrealistic expectations over time? You can only pile on geometric rates of improvement for so long.
But I suspect that you will answer none of these.
--
BMO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opk4x7jzRS4
Have gnu, will travel.
One advantage of saving up leave is if you leave your job, you get it all paid out. I believe a lot of people save up leave because if they get fired, made redundant or decide to move to another employer, they get a lump sum payout. This can be seen as a "bonus" if you move to another job, or a bit of extra money to help in the period between jobs.
Serfs Up !
Sparticus
> creditors will take over the country like they did in Greece and force the US to sell its assets.
One big, huge difference -- US debt is denominated in our own currency. We could, with complete legality, have the Fed print 400 trillion dollars, lend it to the federal government at 0% interest, and use it to pay off those same foreign creditors. Greece couldn't do that, because it doesn't control its own currency.
Also, unlike Greece, the US is STILL sitting on more natural resources than just about any other country on earth (Canada probably beats us per-capita, though).
States have sovereignty.
You cannot sell off a state. The fact that you think you can means you obviously haven't thought this shit out.
If you don't have the money you don't have a choice. Well if you ignore the "print it" option, since the consequences of that are as bad as just honestly defaulting.
They reduced the number of hours we could bank. It used to be 220. Now it's down to 160. I have worked there 17 years so I earn a whole PTO day every 2 weeks.
So I take my fucking time to keep it down under 160. Fortunately, I don't get a lot of flak for that.
However, I did have to come in to work on my vacation in December. That sucked ass . . . we are so understaffed that basically only one of us can be an expert on any given area. We don't have time to properly cross-train, and every time someone leaves, they eliminate the position instead of replacing the worker.
I'm hoping that as the job market recovers I can get the fuck out of here. I've reached the point where I think the company is starting to peak and is now going downhill. Management is starting to make stupid, panicky decisions. And the company has started repeatedly walking back promised comp time and raises. After promising them.
If we can ever get employment back up (meaning if we can ever get the stupid Tea Party fucks out of the way and get the economy to actually grow) I think a lot of American employers will be in a very strange position that they haven't had to deal with for a couple of decades -- the employer's market.
But first, we've got to stop practicing supply-side economics. It's cancer for the workers (and frankly for the customers as well).
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I did this for years, and now I'm a contractor. I'm a W2 for a contracting company which is very, very good to its staff.
They encourage us to take our vacations.
And if we wind up working for a company which wants access to us while we're on vacation, they've got a policy that every call while on vacation is paid by the hour on top of vacation pay, at a slight premium rate, plus the vacation hours back. So if I wind up working on vacation, I get:
- vacation hours paid for worked hours
- premium paid time for those hours
- a refund on vacation time (e.g., 4 hours worked = refund of 4 hours of vacation).
Because tech staff are at a premium, this works - and the consultancy is very much able to say, with a straight face, that they work on behalf of their staff. No one likes getting called on vacation, but if it's going to happen, make it a costly choice for the caller.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
I got a BS speeding ticket the other day and it had me thinking similar to this.
I'm stuck with a crap part time job for the time being, and the ticket was $110, or about a quarter of my paycheck if I'm lucky to get the hours.
To me, this is a SEVERE punishment.
To most other people, this is staying home one friday night.
How is that fair or even?
If I interviewed with you and you explained your company's ROWE doctrine to me, I'd drop you like a hot potato and move on to the next opportunity.
You might conjecture that's because I fear I'm not productive enough for you, or simply couldn't measure up. On the other hand, consider for a moment that maybe I'm more than qualified, productive and motivated -- but that I think your ROWE doctrine is a kind of employer's mind-game. It's an invisible goal-post that you've planted, an ambiguous promise. I have no interest in that kind of bullshit. No contract means no breach, right?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Ron Paul is an actual doctor, and he has treated a large number of people without expecting any sort of compensation. He believes that the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to compel a hospital to provide care. There is no real argument against this.
I use all my vacation time every year. I get 3 weeks off and I take two in summer for vacation in a place I love where I can spend all day doing what I love. I also pursue this passion at home on summer weekends but it's not the same. I'll take a few days here and there over the year to use for that. While away for two weeks, hundreds of miles from the office, I have my laptop and work phone with me. I check my email every morning and evening and respond to the important things. I'll call in for conference calls and such if I'm not in the middle of some awesome activity. I like to stay in the loop and keep things on track as there's really nobody at work who can completely fill my shoes, so I'll get calls or emails for information or various things.
One year I offered to drive over 500 miles overnight to fix a crisis in the office but my boss insisted we never spoke and if I showed up he'd tell me to leave. The crisis was resolved, though it took a couple days to completely recover from what should have been at most a one day problem until back to 100%.
Now I'm been punished as well. Health benefits have been cut. Costs a lot more if you use it and the fine print basically reads "don't get sick or hurt". 401k was cut way back as well. These applied to everyone though as blanket cost savings and essentially a pay cut for all of us. Overall though I don't believe my employer punishes those who use vacation time. I actually have a flexible schedule. I often work longer hours but it's because things need to be done and I choose to put in the extra time to keep things moving smoothly, my choice and not because my boss demands it. If I need to take some time off I can always take it, I've never been turned down. Even if I had no vacation time I have never been turned down for taking unpaid time off. They know if I request it it's important to me and I'd never take time off when the company was in a bad position for me to be gone. Overall I can't complain too much about that. I don't feel there's any prejudice, but that may be different at other places.
Right now, these corporations are simply sitting on the money not doing anything with it. Call their bluff and tax it so they start spending it to offset the taxes.
They're doing something with that money... they're paying billions and billions out in dividends that are taxed at 15% with no FICA which is another 7.65%.
You lost me when you made an analogy between a government's finances and a person's finances. I know Ron Paul and many others make this analogy, but it is still incorrect.
Read this and other entries from Krugman like it:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/keynesophobia/
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Most employers want you to take your vacation because unused vacation accrues as a liability on their books. I think the real problem is that employees don't want to take the time off. I work for a very large software company, which now requires that we take the last week or so of the year off. It is a problem for the company that SW engineers tend not to take the vacation that they are entitled to, and it is not good either for the employee or the employer's balance sheet. While it feels paternalistic for them to tell me I must take vacation then, I have to admit they were right (at least in my case).
"The wealthy pay a much lower percentage of their income as taxes"
Table 1 in your link says differently. Also your tax load quotes seem way off -- it says top 1%'s share of total income taxes is 36.7% to your 25% by the top 2.67.
I am in India and have a few friends and relatives working in USA. My observation is that in US employees consider taking long vacations to be equivalent to proving to their employer that they are not critical to the business and work can go on without them. There have been cases where when the time for layoff's came the priority list consisted of all the employees on long vacations or scheduled to take long vacations.
With employees Not taking vacations and leaves accumulating HR policies have changes in the last decade to have a fixed upper bound on the number of leaves ( I know of a few cases where people nearing retirement took year long paid vacations due to the number of accumulated leaves).
To Share Is To care
I get punished when I take vacation, but not directly by my company. I get punished because I know that when I leave the office, nothing will get done. If I take two weeks off, I have to come back and take care of my own responsibilities, plus all of the problems that built up for two weeks while I was gone. It makes me not want to come back to work after vacations. It's not that I work with a bunch of idiots, per se. The problem is that my company has way more work than we can handle. We're trying to hire like crazy, but the new people aren't up to speed and the experience people are depended on way too much while the new people are spooled up.
I agree with this to a point. I mean, that's how I'd describe my current job. I don't DISLIKE it that much. By contrast, there are SO many other career options out there I have no interest in, to the point where I'd probably rather be on govt. assistance and living out of a cardboard box on the street corner than doing some of them every day. It's not a place I usually look forward to going, but often, it's really not bad at all once I'm there and get involved with whatever's needed that day. Specific PROJECTS I have to tackle there are often actually fun, but interacting with some of the other employees or doing dull but necessary work like coding bills or scanning in paper documents? Not so much.
On the other hand? All the people who swear they'd "never work another day in their life" if they were financially able, I don't quite relate to either. It would be great for a while, but like a lot of retirees say after they retire, life just gets kind of boring. You start losing track of basics like what day of the week it is, and you start feeling a little bit guilty that all around you, everyone else seems to be working while you just walk past, or make use of their services. You have a need to feel like you're "useful" in some way ... like you're accomplishing tasks that other people need accomplished.
Also, I've spent enough time around some of the "independently wealthy" people who spend all their time playing with toys and having fun to know they come across pretty shallow. They tend to rub me the wrong way, and not out of jealousy. It's more a sense that they really have no ambitions or goals. Thanks to the life they've voluntarily placed themselves in, they start assigning an artificially high level of importance to things that simply aren't that important.
Here's a radical suggestion. Increase the taxes on corporations and they will start reducing their tax burden by 'investing' in their equipment, factories and other deductible expenses. Right now, these corporations are simply sitting on the money not doing anything with it. Call their bluff and tax it so they start spending it to offset the taxes.
You're living in some fantasy world. They already do that. That is WHY GE paid no taxes. Not because there was no tax rate, but because they reinvested everything. They may not have reinvested the way you wanted them to, but they did. Any corporation paying zero in taxes (there are many) pays zero because they use that money in ways which makes it non-taxable.
He is incorrect. We arent borrowing from ourselves. We are borrowing agaisnt the bank and some peoples 401ks. We owe to the very few
http://saveie6.com/
The problem is that then the "group" doing the action has too much power compared to the employee....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Why are banks willing to write 30-year mortgage notes at under 4% if hyperinflation is just around the corner?
so quick recap; most americans, hate their jobs, never take holidays, have no healthcare, live in a fascist police state ruled by megabuck corporations, surrounded by mobs of nutters with tons of guns..
and think the whole world's jealous of them,
cool, I'm in!
How about Iran can have a nuclear bomb. Really? you think that's a good idea?
I think it poses zero threat to the US, and so is none of our fucking business. So what if they have one? They couldn't use it in anyway that would threaten us. It wouldn't even be MAD. It would just be Iran's Assured Destruction.
The idea that every little detail of every other nation's foreign and domestic policy is a matter for the US President is "friggin loony."
Where do you think the money to pay for them will come from?
the US is STILL sitting on more natural resources than just about any other country on earth
Shh... don't let them know. Nope, nothing here but the Gobi Desert.
If what you're saying is true (and if it is, I'm not even quite sure how you found time to read this article on Slashdot and post a reply?) ... you *really* need to sit back, think about what you just wrote, and ask yourself if that's REALLY how you want your life to be from here forward!
First of all, I would assume and hope you're getting paid pretty well for working all those 18 hour days and having so much responsibility. That means, you're simply not doing something right if you haven't been able to put aside some of that money in savings, in case you DO need to switch jobs and don't have a check for a while. (So that situation you're so afraid of, of being out of work for 3 years and not knowing how you were going to sleep or eat shouldn't have to happen again.)
Second, yep, fewer and fewer businesses have any loyalty to employees, but that should be a 2-way street! If they view you as that "expendable", then why work so hard for them?! Do the basics outlined in your job description, and not anything more unless you actually WANT to do it. If, like you say, they "throw you to the curb" thinking they can get someone a lot cheaper to do the same or better, LET THEM. Either they're right and you were simply getting paid too much for the value you actually brought to their table, or (much more likely) they'll fail a few times in a row and start adjusting their expectations and/or pay scale as they learn how wrong they were.
And third? Maybe you need to spend less time worrying about customers running into these mistakes you're concerned about, and more time documenting procedures so OTHERS can do some of these tasks properly? It sounds like right now, a lot of people are getting paid to screw things up that you're putting in all these insane hours correcting. You've got to break that cycle, even IF it means a temporary drop in customer satisfaction ....
He is incorrect.
Who's the National Bureau of Economic Research going to agree with?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I can't imagine ever working in a "workplace" environment or for someone as an employee ever again. Trying to please a boss or not taking vacation to "appear" one way or another is fuckng baffling to me. I'll respect you for it, but my life is about; family, outdoors and well, life. "Work" (I own a small business and bust my ass at it) is a distant second priority with clearly defined boundrys.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Property tax appears in your rent or in your mortgage. It runs from about 5% for the poor (but lower as they share housing) to about 3% for the middle class to about 2% for the wealthy.
Funny, I'm not "poor" by my income, but property taxes take about 10% of my income... Any that's nowhere near as expensive as it gets in this state in middle class neighborhoods. Of course I live in a socialist welfare state so they have to pay for that somehow, by keeping the middle class down.
It is accurate to say they pay more taxes in absolute dollars. But did you realize if the tax bill for running the country was divided evenly, it works out to over $11,000 per citizen? More like $33,000 per working person. And that's ignoring social security taxes.
Glad someone beside myself has mentioned these numbers. I've run the numbers similarly, broken down by per capita, per adult, and per working age adult. I think taxes should be charged per person. divided evenly. THat would encourage poor and lower class people to take an interest in politics and lower taxes/smaller government. It would be fixed very quickly if people making $20k/yr were required to pay $11k-$33k in federal taxes on top of state taxes.
...anytime I want. No I won't reschedule my vacation either. No I won't answer the fuckin' email or cell phone. Don't like it, fuck off. I will bust my ass working every day, I'll work overtime nights & weekends if required, but my vacation is my vacation. If any employer disagrees with that, then fuck them, I'll find a new job.
I may not have worded a post as you did, but I agree in concept. I'm near retirement in the workforce and I can tell you that things have actually gotten better. I have to listen to everyone around me complain ("whine") about their long hours and their lack of appreciation, etc. The one common thing between them: they are young and have nothing to compare the current environment to. Why "when I was their age" I had to sit next to a chain smoker, work 60+ hours per week, and got no appreciation. But you know what? It was just normal. I worked hard and supported my family. The sense of entitlement I am surrounded by these days makes me sad and worry about our country's future as a super power. The pendulum always swings, though, and I envision that our current cushy working conditions are short lived. I wish I were going to be working long enough to see some of the young ones around have to truly put an effort into a career. I've a feeling that most would simply quit and move back in with their parents.
Considering your logic means the only country in any danger from them is Japan, it doesn't seem the world has too much worry about as a whole.
We used it to END a war, not to start one, or to attack anybody because according to the " user", the " receiver" is an infidel.
American has solved this with the trend to make everyone a TEMP WORKER. Vacation? nope. But we'll let you go in three months, enjoy your Vacation then...
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/12/news/companies/home_depot_hiring/index.htm?iid=HP_Highlight&hpt=hp_t1
My wife got punished for taking maternity leave.
Yes, that's illegal. And yes, it happened. And yes, her boss was smart enough to move my wife into a new job that was just good enough on paper to be considered a horizontal move (and thus meeting the letter of the law), but in actuality a really shitty job (violating the spirit). The only good part, for my wife, is that she's got a much better boss now, and has the possibility of advancement. When you've got a small infant at home, you're happy to have a job at all, but trying to make your mark in a new position while learning the new ropes is in reality impossible. My wife got the short end of the stick by a real jerk of a former boss.
.
I was once told by my manager that I could take vacation when, and only when, the project I was working on was finished. It was a two-year project that was dreamed up by my non-technical manager (the CIO, believe it or not) without my input (or the technical input from any other technology people in the company) and was doomed to failure because it would never work. My manager was looking for a scapegoat to assign blame to, as he finally realized his pet project was the fiasco I told him it would be.
Meanwhile, I am getting emails from Human Resources telling me that I have to take my vacation time or lose it.
It is a no win situation for technical people.
Netflix has the right solution on this topic......
It does mean that those stupid "household" analogies don't apply, though. The laws of economics are vastly different for governments than they are for households.
That's right, if you fuck up, it affects only your household. If the government fucks up it affects us all.
I usually get deathly ill about once a year... so have to save my 10 vacation-sick days for illness. F'ing hate this country. At least in China we had golden weeks 3 times per year (though I don't think they are even doing that anymore)
Also takes 1 whole year to accumulate the 10 sick-vacation days... so if my deathly illness happens toward the beginning of the year this time, I'm shit out of luck.
Historically (and notable when compared to some other countries), Americans have an attitude that hard work cleanses the spirit and invigorates the mind and body--which is why if you give an American time off then often they will spend it "working on the house, gardening, studying" or some other productive task. Other cultures derisively refer to this as Americans "living to work, rather than working to live". Though it isn't strictly a work thing, you see it also in the way that Americans handle their play time, as well--they feel guilty if that time isn't "well spent" with some intense play, or intense relaxation--if that makes sense--, or intense shopping, etc. The sense of time-managament figures prominently into how sociologists measure cultures against one another (there are cultures where time is something decidedly finite, not to be "wasted", and other cultures where "wasting time" is a foreign concept).
Americans are hardly unique in how they manage their work/life balance; some Asians cultures have similar attitudes, parts of Northern Europe, Canada, and so on. Americans are probably disproportionately derided because the American culture has higher visibility through media/internet.
If my employer punished people for taking vacations, I'd find another job. That's what it means to be a professional - your protection as an employee is the threat you'll take your skills somewhere else. If you can't make that threat credibly it means your employer isn't getting his money's worth, and you need to do something about that.
The people who don't take holidays are yes-men or little bitches, who are worried that their incompetence will be brought up in a public arena (the water cooler) in their absence.
Correction on the gasoline tax. .5% (not 5%). vs 0%.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
My company makes it clear they don't like granting vacation. New hires get a few days off, if they survive the probation period -and the company is fast to fire and drag in fresh meat.
A fair number of us, however, were employees acquired through the purchase of another company. Even though we are grandfathered in, we lose because we've been with the acquisition for a decade or more in many cases, and the company maxes out vacations for people at this level.
We get a max of about 28 days. If you take it, you are liable to find they've hired somebody to replace you while you were gone, or that the position was eliminated. Or find that projects got assigned while you are away and deliberately set to violate the due date before you got back. It is very common for other teams to find out someone is out and dump projects on them hours or minutes before the SLA timer runs out, so the SLA failure violation goes to the unaware recipient and not the person who actually dragged feet. They come in later and pull the projects back but the "failure" stays with the person who had the project at the time it went past due. This is a shitty system and is sanctioned by management. Survival of the fittest is how it was described to me. They have 3000 resumes on file. If somebody gets fired, they can hire several immigrant workers (they only hire such) to replace that person and even if two thirds of the new hires flop, they still get out ahead and probably for less money.
In light of these games, few dare take the time off. On the other hand, if you don't take it, the days to not rollover to the following year so you lose them. This is because you cannot have more than the 28 base days in a year and extras would be more than that, so you lose them automatically.
There is no option to bank vacation days, sell them to other employees, cash them out, or anything. You just lose them.
In the old days, before we were bought out, the relationship between management and workers was completely different. The company urged everyone to take time, pestered them to do so, protected their backs while they were out, and if something went wrong and you had to come in or work on a holiday, you'd get paid double time for the day and granted a flex day to use later. I miss that, but heck I would settle for an employer who just didn't begrudge the hell out of the workers and what they promise to give to the workers.
And every day I pass a bridge with dozens of homeless sleeping underneath and am reminded how lucky I am to just have a job at all. Shrug.
Sig for hire.
I see how you get that. You misunderstood the numbers or what I'm saying...
While paying a tax rate of 18% for the wealthiest americans
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/07/25/the-400-richest-americans-pay-an-18-tax-rate/
and a tax rate of 24% for the top 1% of americans
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/
The share of federal taxes they pay is 36%.
They reason they pay a lower rate but a higher share of taxes is that they take much more than their share of the countries income.
The top 1% has 40% of the nation's wealth and takes home 24% of the entire countries income. They took just 9% in the 1970's.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/?mobile=nc
---
Let me put it this way.. if these trends continue, by 2040 they will have 75% of the nations income. At that point- since they took most of the income, they would pay even more of the income tax even if their income tax rate fell even further.
---
And let me put it another way....
If you take home a FOURTH of the nation's income, and everyone doesn't really pay taxes on the first 6k of their income, then you will pay a THIRD of the total taxes.
--- .000185% on the top 1%.
Had an error in my post above. The gas tax on the poor is 1.6%, not 5%. And it's still
--- .5%. The bottom half of the top 1% are basically poor compared to the top .5%.
And FYI, the top 1% is really just a cover for the top
$380k per year income. (bottom of the top .5%) .5%)
Millions to Multi millions per year in income (top of the top
http://www.lcurve.org/
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Why don't you back that up with citations? As a former zealot and current Ron Paul supporter, I'm familiar with some of the ideas you are referring to but you would do your argument significant service by referencing sources.
Some of my favorites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
For more good wiki-walking fun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_paradox#Economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economics_laws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economics_terminology
I once reported to an asshole that wanted to call me in the hospital the day I was undergoing an emergency angioplasty. Some of my co-workers put him in his place. He would call in from his vacation across the country to join in a group discussion...but then he could be heard snoring over the speaker-phone. What a phony POS. Yes, I got riffed later on...wasn't a team player (I consider that a compliment...I actually got stuff done)...but I'm better off for it and after taking an early retirement (and other recommended life-style changes), my heart disease is virtually cured (but that employer wound up paying for 3 PTCAs before I got smart). Eff'm!
My second job was writing the overnight rollover system for AVCO Financial Services in London Ontario (summer 1988.) I spent six months at 40 hours a week writing it.
That was pretty much the last time in my career I only worked 40 hours a week until around 2001-2002 when I was often too sick with migraines to put in the long hours any more.
I can only think of two times I didn't have a manager try to demand I reschedule my long-booked vacation because of some "emergency."
So yes, managers don't forget when you won't sacrifice your ENTIRE life for "the good of the company."
Fuck the company. All it ever did for me is sign a paycheque. After nearly 30 years of contracting, I have no delusions that any company of substantial size has ANY respect for the IT team, or that even a so-called "permanent" job will last longer than the project that you are hired to work on.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When I started programming I needed to learn, so, without networking available, I used to go in for a 1/2 day on Saturday to code and explore. A co-worker came to me one day and said I was making him look bad because I came in on Saturdays. I invited him to join me and he said he didn't want too. I said, no problem and continued to go in on Saturdays. I didn't care how he looked and I wasn't going to slow down because of how someone else felt about my effort.
The issue is that many who want to get ahead and those who love what they do will work harder than others and, I would argue, everything else being equal, deserve more - this is what the market is about.
Twenty years after starting I ran organizations of 200 or so people. I never held anything against anyone who took their vacation. I didn't reward anyone who worked more hours than others simply because they worked more hours. I rewarded those who contributed the most to the mission. Often, those were the people who worked more hours but this wasn't always the case. Some of the people who took the most time off were top contributors to the mission. I never had the time to pay attention to who was working what hours because I was too busy paying attention to our deliverables. If I managed my organizations based on how many hours people worked I would not have lasted in my position.
The only time I worried about hours worked was for non-exempt people who were racking up overtime without any increased output - but out of 200 people I only had two or three who were paid by the hour.
Take your vacation days a day or two at a time. Don't take two or three weeks off all at once! That's a silly thing to do anyway, and I'd bet money you're doing that so that you can accommodate _other people_. Don't take two weeks off. Wait until you can take off a Quarter or even a Year, and use it to do something real. Until you get there, just take micro-vacations spaced out as often as the time accrues, so that you don't get to December, and --oops-- you *have to* take two weeks off or more at the same time *everybody else* "has to" do it.
Another thing I always strive to negotiate for is 9/80. Basically we know going in that we don't work 8 hour days. But we're still supposed to be doing 40 hour weeks as a baseline. So here's a compromise that works really well: Work nine hour days, planned. But, every second week, you take a Friday or a Monday off. Three day weekend every two weeks is better for me than one big vacation (which you also still get.)
Replying to both you and demonlapin if we reach the point where we can't pay our bills as a nation we're screwed and we'll probably take most of the rest of the world down with us. It would probably issue in a new dark age.
The total debt right now is large but it was larger as a percentage of GDP right after WW II and we worked our way out of that. We can do it again. Of course the top marginal tax rate back in the 1950's was over 90%. That didn't cause our economy to collapse. A tax increase and reduction in military spending would take care of most of the problem.
See reply to nedlohs above.
People are spineless weak cowards. Take your fucking vacation time! You've earned it, it's yours, it's healthy, and it's fun! If your company is hinting even in the slightest that taking your vacation days will make you seem less like a team player, you need to drop that company like a bad habit. Alternatively, or perhaps as well, call your union to let them know that this shit is not acceptable.
Move sig!
As a Brit worker, I get generous holidays (US: 'vacations') and am forced to take them. But the company policy is 'One Life' - treat your co-workers as kindly as family, take your work enthusiasms home to your own family: there shouldn't be a strain. The training doesn't suit me (prefer Jekyll/Hyde personas), but it's a good point - maybe USians do this naturally, so need less time off?
Or a nice little tax loophole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
I am, unfortunately, stuck in a bottom rung job. I get paid minimum wage. I don't get any paid time off. Or sick days. We are expected not to get sick. If we are sick one day, we have to call six hours prior to our shift and find a replacement. If we can't, then we are "encouraged" to come in. The hours are absolutely terrible, and you never know what your next week will be like, whether you'll be on first or second shift. I get one thirty minute break per day. I am not permitted any more time. I am "encouraged" not to take breaks. I've been called the past three of my last six days off to see if I could come in and work.
My employer expects maximum effort. They claim I should put 120% into my job, "like I'm being paid".
Needless to say, this is what, I think, represents the attitude of most employers. They think people are machines to be abused for their purpose. It's not long before I leave my current employment. I hope their business fails. They deserve it.
That's only a loophole in the sense that the fiction of corporate personhood allows you to pretend that passing money from your right hand to your left hand is spending it. Legally, they spent the money so it wasn't taxable. Nothing my parent suggested would change that. He suggested the status quo as a solution for the status quo.
If you want to end corporate personhood (the only way to really fix the broken system), I'm all for it.
And it works, if you have good management. I have merely acceptable management, and they tend to assume that if we are getting everything done then we are capable of doing more. Under your system, they would just increase expectations until people were unable to take vacation, but not so much that anyone who worked every day could not meet them, and simply replace the ones who weren't able to deal with that. Not every worker is, or can be, irreplaceable.
Typical US attitude: Live to work
Typical EU attitude: Work to live
That, my friends, is the key!
It would be a shame if your battery was flat... and your forgot the cord.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
If you're just a worker drone and clock puncher then I can see that. However if you're at the executive level and daily decisions have a large impact on hundreds or even thousands of people, that is a whole different level of responsibility.
Companies, in the US anyway, do not punish workers for taking vacation. They punish workers for under-performance, and rightfully so.
It just so happens that under-performers are more likely to take shorter and more frequent time off, which makes them appear to be less motivated. But, correlation is not causation.
But, it's okay. Every organization needs engineers at the lower end of the performance spectrum, just like every society needs people to pick cotton and flip hamburgers. There are shit jobs in every technical organization that need to get done. Sure, someone else could do them, but their time is better spent on flagship and mission-critical projects.
These low performers are easy to let go in a cash crunch.
I like my job because in a lot of ways my hobbies (computers) are my job. Of course I've been a contractor for the last 13 years and leave when I'm burned out or there is a re-org I don't like. My vacation is unpaid but I've always been in a position to make it up + working before or after the vacation. Taking a vacation between gigs seemed like a great idea until I realized I spent part of my vacation job hunting. That is one way to really destroy the vacation buzz.
My employers in the UK have had zero problems with me having time off even including nearly a month off in one go. Must suck living in a country where you're expected to be your employer's slave.
he wants the government reduced to a single employee who is not paid by citizens but rather by their own existing wealth.
Ron Paul wants monarchy?
Also, where does Ron Paul think he'll find a person who wants to be in sole control of the government, and pay for it by his own vast wealth?
Oh. Forget I asked.
In the US, at least. Here in Europe you HAVE to take your days off. Period.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38588550
Land of the free... To sack at will... To push to the edge... To ignore scientific research on workers...
I'm not a slacker. I actually tend towards being a workaholic. But I don't judge people solely on the effort they put into the job. When approached correctly, a slacker will improve. The best managers know how to inspire people with their infectious optimism and positive thinking. Doing extra work isn't that bad when/if you're appreciated for it.
In the country I live in there are laws against burnout. Companies burning out people pay dearly for damages they cause.
A healthy company is so much more that the good financial results.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
You're example proves my point. Provide them incentives (and penalties) that encourage even more investment.
Lowering their tax rates makes it *less* likely they will spend investment money because it doesn't save them as much due to the lower taxes.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
'This is the only wealthy country in the world that does not guarantee any paid vacation time,' says de Graaf. 'Every other country understands that this makes people healthier and creates a better workforce.'"
"The Now Habit" by Dr. Neil Fiore is a self help book for managing procrastination. One of the most interesting things I have read in it is that workaholics are NOT high achievers.
The big difference ( shown by research ) between high achievers and workaholics is that high achievers "play hard and work hard"......they take their leisure time seriously, they know its value in making them capable of working hard and they take more time off than other people with giving themselves their blessing to do so, without guilt.
I work to live, I don't live to work.
Quick answer - no.
Slightly longer answer - No and I have wondered about it for a while.
Full answer - The USA has amply demonstrated that it is unsuitable for its self-selected rol of global policeman. It has shown a mixture of arrogance and huge amounts of money to try and supplant the ICC, UN, International Red Cross and more. Its leadership has stated that the Geneva Convention is only relevant when they feel like it and some regimes can do no wrong and others can do no right. It has shown capriciousness in making and breaking friendships and feels that its legal system takes precedence over everyone else's.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Everyone knows that Americans are lazy workers and that's why we need to outsource work to nations where people have the proper appreciation for a day's work and why we need to import foreign labor for doing everything from high tech jobs to picking tomatoes in a field.
Clearly, this is Communist propaganda.
It's a shame Slashdot is permitting its bandwidth to promote Marxism.
I was just getting ready to ask for another weeks vacation. I've been with the company for 10 years.
It does mean that those stupid "household" analogies don't apply, though. The laws of economics are vastly different for governments than they are for households.
The laws of economics are vastly different for *countries* vs. households, but less so for governments vs. households. For example, a country doesn't have a budget, and doesn't improve it's economy by cutting expenses or trying to work longer hours; it needs to invest in facilities that produce goods and services people are willing to pay for. The government of that country, however, does have a budget, and can balance it by cutting expenses or raising taxes.
Yes they do and thats not all they punish for. They punish for being sick, being injured, being older, having too much vacation time. For getting slower but thats the same as getting older i guess.
Jack of all trades,master of none
My boss encourages me to make sure I use all my vacation time (31 days/year). In fact Human Resources will be giving him a stern talking-to if he doesn't do that.
Of course, he can veto our vacation requests if a high-profile project is planned and we can't find a suitable replacement or if our schedules clash. In those cases, we sit down and work everything out collectively.
I'll take my unionized 34.5 hour a week, decently-paid, double pay for overtime job right here in "socialist" Europe. You Americans can keep your soul-destroying workplaces to yourself.
Eat the rich.
..What you can expect to happen when you get back (or while you were gone).
As the sole IT person for a facility, and being on call 24/7, I worry any time I take time off. There are so many complicated, critical processes (well, complicated to the rest of the staff), that it is incredibly difficult to feel safe with the idea knowing that "everything is fine" - because, quite frankly, it usually isn't.
Case in point: Last year I decided to finally try to take a "vacation". I took a week off. I didn't GO anywhere, of course; I just didn't go to work.
Monday: innumerable calls, 2 office visits (one for more than an hour).
Tuesday: innumerable calls, 4 office visits.
Wednesday: innumerable calls, 3 office visits.
It was at that point that my boss "encouraged" the staff to try to solve problems on their own rather than relying on me as a crutch. I still got called, of course, but most of the problems went ignored or stop-gap solutions were put into place.
Nearly everything I was called in for was due to PEBKAC. The Monday call was due to work being done by a CONSULTANT causing problems.
Sick days follow similar descriptors.
I've been at this facility for over 5 years. I've never taken a "real" vacation. This year, I'm changing that. My health has been declining quite a bit as of late, so I'm going to finally use my vacation days for real vacations (I get 15 days vacation time now thanks to my length of employment). The question I'm asking myself right now, is this: Should I turn off my cell phone?
Completely agree and let me add that people who don't take off mess it up for everyone. Its a horrible cycle when ass holes work their way to the top, burn out early, and create a cycle of this competitive get ahead mentality. Don't work this hard for anyone other than yourself! Especially in IT! If you can smile and your technology skills are good then your are not expendable. I work at a great company but I see this and it pisses me off to the nth degree. It never ends even after work as they even try to get you to volunteer have office parties, happy hours, etc. Let the other guy get ahead and when you are on your own time figure out how to follow your dreams with the resources you have.
I hate to point this out, but the CEO's of today are the generation that gave us Hippies and "Tune in, turn on, and drop out"
This is what you get when you put hippies in charge, they take all they can and leave a mess for some one else to clean up.
prevented oil exploration/drilling
So in the wake of the worst oil spill in our nations history...you'd do what? Keep on drilling with wild abandon? Or put things on hold to try and figure out 'why' it happened so we can try and prevent it from happening again? Of course you also know that we don't have enough oil to remotely make a dent in our needs right? ANWR would supply a 'single' years worth of oil if we could get all of it out. Spread that out over 20 years and that's 5% per year...or $0.20/gallon roughly at current prices. It's just not worth it.
stopped the Keystone pipeline from starting
Despite the fact that it will create relatively few jobs? They 'claimed' 250,000 jobs, but independent studies put it closer to 5000-6000 jobs. Perhaps it's not worth the investment and risk to critical water aquifers for such a small thing? Funny how someone would decide to investigate the potential returns on investment before allowing something to go forward. Where I come from that's called 'sound business management'.
prevent Boeing from opening a plant in SC
And have them put it in Washington state instead. Net effect on jobs? ZERO. What's your point?
we have a dictator in the White House? Yes, dictator.
You mean one who spies on Americans? Tortures people? Lies about it? Covers it up? Gives fat contracts to political supporters? Yes Bush was a disaster. Obama has sadly continued some of these policies but seriously? Dictator just confirms your wild racist opposition in spite of clear evidence refuting your claims. Yes, you are racist. Or would you like to retract the dictator hyperbole?
Liberalism has completly failed
Really? How so? Our current debt crisis is almost ENTIRELY of GOP/Convservative making. Without the Bush tax cuts we would literally have NO National Debt right now. Literally none. Are there costs associated with 'liberal' programs like SocSec and Medicare? Sure. But SocSec is perfectly fine for decades and if we start slowly fixing it now it won't cost much of anything over time to resolve. Even if we do nothing it will pay 75% of benefits for well over 70 years into the future. Hardly 'broken'.
Medicare? Itself isn't really that big a problem, but healthcare costs are making it massively overextended. Solutions by the GOP so far are to simply end Medicare and force seniors to buy insurance on the private market. How do you think that will happen? Who is going to insure a 70 year old?
Even if you believe medicare is massively screwed up, then there's lots of room for improvement to fix it's financial issues.
'Liberalism' has built the middle class in this country. Without it we'd all still be living in company towns paying for company food at company stores.
We need controls on the free market because left to their own devices bad things happen. Or can't you remember 3-4 years ago?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
That's an inherently unfair way of looking at it. You can only get that sorting all revenue affecting items over the last 10 years, putting the tax cuts at the top, and then cutting them off entirely to claim they are the main cause. It would be just as unfair to put medicaid spending at the top and claiming it's the primary cause.
If the tax cuts reduce revenue by 5% (and it's hard to come up with number for this, because you can't say what revenue would have been without those cuts, because the economy would not have been the same) then the tax cuts only contributed to 5% of the deficit as well.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
LOL...I'm not rich, nor anywhere NEAR retired, and honestly, I rarely know what day of the week it is...I really do lose track.
Except for Fridays....I usually get clear headed about that.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
elsewhere though:
> "Americans are hardly unique in how they manage their work/life balance"
A few years ago when I was on active duty in the Air Force, we were entitled to a seemingly generous 30 day per year annual leave policy. I suppose that is still so. Anyway, taking leave amounts to getting approval in advance, which like any other job, means your boss has to decide whether he/she can afford for you to be away. Apparently, the program I was on was important because we (I and the other hundred or people working on the program) were told that if we submitted a request for leave of more than one week, it had to be accompanied by a letter describing why our job was so unimportant that we could be away from it by more than that. A couple years later when I was due for a change of assignment, I was offered the opportunity to stay on this program. I declined. Somehow, it survived without me.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
The only way it issues a new dark age is if the US resorts to its military to get out of the problem. Otherwise we just have a huge ass depression until the world realizes that not having a huge drain on resources involved actually is better after all.
And military spending isn't the actual problem. SS isn't the actual problem either. Health care spending is the problem. All the US has to do is get health care costs down to those of any other wealthy country on a per capita basis and the entire budget problem goes away.
That's an inherently unfair way of looking at it.
Actually it's not. CBO projections at the time showed this very point. [linky][http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/bushtaxcuts_anniversary.html]
Notice the relative flatline over time comparing debt to GDP. Meaning it's under control and manageable.
All that and we had the worst economic performance post WWII. And if you try to say "well it would have been worse" then Obama gets to use it as a rational defense of his policies recovering from the recession.
The Bush Tax cuts did not work and have basically bankrupted us.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
People who work every day they can and remote into the office on the others are sometimes the people who refuse to let other people see what they are working on. Google "John Rusnak" as an example. My brother works for an offshore subsidiary of a US bank and he and his colleagues often have to take mandatory time off so that other people can be familiar with their files.
Defense department contractors and their employees are very likely to encourage fruitless wars. Those same people tend to be quite sane.
The Master (Angelo Rossitto) in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, "Not shit, energy!"
Actually, that's not why.
If things are actually working as they are, it sounds pretty amazing.
I'd still have to have some open and candid discussions with lower level employees about how things end up working in reality before I'd accept an offer at one of those places. But managed in the right hands, it sounds pretty liberating.
Question though: What about the managers and stuff? Do they have the same freedom to come and go as the employees do, or are they kinda supposed to stay?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the ROWE stuff doesn't extend to the salespeople.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Bull fucking shit. Or are they going to be moved to the states, just like the Consumer Protection Laws were? You know how that worked out, right? A lot of the large companies moved overnight to whichever states were willing to gut their consumer protection laws and legalize buttrape by corporations.
Moving that stuff to the States would just be starting off a giant race to the bottom. Enjoy turning America into a 3rd world country.
No, the stupid "household" analogies don't apply. Your example doesn't show shit about how governments actually work. Further, it doesn't explain anything about what happens when a government also cuts their spending during the bad times. You know, when the government is really the only actor of size who could keep some demand afloat? But no, lets just ignore all that. Go into recession/depression, cut government spending. Cut funding to every aid program out there. Cut funding to education. Make it so that people who now need those aid programs can't get them, because of budget cuts.
I'm sure that'll work out real well. Like, Somalia well.
And yet, if a government decides to cut its budgets in time of recession/depression, then who is left to pick up the slack? If governments cut funding to their aid programs at a time when more people actually need them, what happens?
tho that changes big time this year now that hte earned income tax credit has been removed
Citation needed. Or do you mean the payroll tax rollback that expires in March?
-l
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My own company lumps all annual leave into a single pool per employee, suffers a high turnover rate and doesn't replace positions. I not only have to worry about taking off for vacation, I have to worry about taking leave for medical reasons despite worsening chronic issues.
Will they pay for an internet connection in the middle of the amazon?
Dudes, (and dudettes), anymore, your boss can (and will) fire you for taking bathroom breaks--when you're working from home in the evenings.
I had a boss that said anyone on salary who worked less than 12 hour days should be fired and hourly workers who only put in 40 hour weeks should be charged for a week of vacation. I typically put in 4 14 hour days, 10 hours on Fridays, and at LEAST 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday. This was IN THE OFFICE TIME. the rest was called "Modem-time" and was expected, if not 100% logged.
I swear those were 90+ hour weeks. And then we were all outsourced anyway.
Clinton passed NAFTA, stuffed the treasury while national infrastructure decayed, and let the dot com bubble occur.
You're an idiot who needs to take Macroeconomics 101 before mouthing off like a retard tea partier.
Seriously, if the picture in the US is as bad as some of you are painting, move. Seriously. I mean to another country. The rest of the western world is just no where near as fucked up. At the very least, drop any delusions that this is something we are all suffering under. No, it's just you. We don't know why you put up with it, but you really don't have to.
I'm an Australian engineer. My boss is always kind and courteous to me (and would be in trouble if he wasn't). He isn't out to screw me, he is part of the team. We are encouraged to take the 4 weeks of leave we accrue annually (it rolls over if you don't take it and there are thresholds where they start whinging at you to take it). We get paid overtime, and any doctoring of timesheets to work past the overtime caps is strictly discouraged. Actually, in truth, getting overtime as an engineer is fairly rare, but there is usually a TOIL system or equivalent such that you are only working the hours you are paid for on average. There are constant campaigns reminding people about work-life balance. There is even one day of the week where overtime is basically not approved and you get in trouble if you stay back to work on a project (meant so that even in busy times, you see your family occasionally). Work on weekends, while not totally prohibited, is extremely rare (i've never done it in 3 years). It requires special approval and they have to pay 1.5x your hourly rate.
I'm not trying to boast here, just trying to counter the hopeless view some of you have that it is the same everywhere and you should just cop it.
5-50 years down the road you find out that you're way less productive than the European companies that give their employees a month of vacation a year, and you're wondering how they do it. It's simple. Stop thinking that everything in the world is (1) dependant on money, and (2) can be modelled as a linear function.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Yeah, who should we believe? The Nobel prize winning economist or the guy on the internet message board?
Regular people are lazy. As an engineer, I'm efficient.
Absolutely! They keep demanding that I come back! And believe me - that is terrible punishment!
No, I was referring to the EITC. I looked around and it looks like my poor friend may have been misinformed by the library.
The IRS shows no change in the EITC for this year. She had been told it was cancelled starting this year and her taxes on her $12,000 annual income would go up by about $500 by the free tax preparation service at the library.
From here: http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=233839,00.html
Tax Year 2012 maximum credit:
$475 with no qualifying children
It looks like her taxes will still be lowered by $475 if she makes up to $13,980.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's the thing though... all his bluster about "liberty" notwithstanding, Ron Paul doesn't really care about your freedoms at all. He'd be happy to have the states outlaw abortion, marijuana, etc. He's just an old-school "state's rights" conservative who figured out how to spin his message to appeal to college kids and Internet libertarians.
He did the same thing with far-right extremists in the 80s and 90s. That worked well in rural Texas, but racist and survivalist rhetoric doesn't play so well on the national stage these days.
Apparently most economists disagree with him including the Bureau. Bernanke himself has told Obama to STOP SPENDING because the crises will shift to banks to treasury bonds next.
http://saveie6.com/
I agree, you can't just cut expenses without considering the consequences.
Bull fucking shit. Or are they going to be moved to the states
Spoken like someone that doesnt even bother to know what they are talking about.
For example, most of the country has state minimum wages that are equal to or higher than federal minimum wages. Only 4 states (Minnesota, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Georgia) have minimum wage laws that are below the federal level, while 18 have minimum wages higher than the federal level.
Waiving your hands declaring things to be true doesnt make them so. The pathetic part is that you are already capable of knowing the facts since you are on the internet and can fucking look things up instead of ignorantly towing the party line of the never-ending lies of the corrupt politicians that have already stolen your future.
"His name was James Damore."
Okay-- it's the "Making Work Pay" tax credit. $400 a year. It is cancelled as of this year.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
how do you justify moderating the above comment as troll? just because you disagree with someone who calls out ron paul for his anti-worker platform doesn't mean that the commenter is trolling. if you are too much of a fuckwit coward to reply to it because you know you can't say anything meaningful in response, fine. but you are a terrible sack of shit posing as a "libertarian" when you instead retaliate to the comment by making it less visible on slashdot. you are, at best, as bad as the bury brigades that garnered so much negative attention on digg.com not too long ago.
FYI, I was promoted to director of engineering at Fujitsu Microelectronics during that 22+ year career as "a chair-warmer". I too received stock options (most of which are handed out in lieu of cash and ultimately not worth the paper they are printed on, which is why they are given to engineers).
The fact that you make so many assumptions about me reveals you to be like some of the managers that I worked under. Managers who think they know everything and who don't give a shit about the people under them are exactly the reason I left engineering and will not steer my son toward it.
Ask yourself this- would you give your little speech about chairwarmers to applicants for engineering positions? Do you tell them that they'll be kicked to the curb next year if sales/revenues/etc. drop off? If not, why not? It appears that you hire engineers based on specific work projections for the coming year. Do you tell the people you're hiring that they are being hired for a year or are they given the impression that they are getting into a career? Why aren't you hiring people on a contractual basis instead of as employees? Why is it that you end up hiring so many "chair-warmers"- is the problem with the engineer or with the manager?
I have nothing but sympathy for the people who work/suffer under you.
That article does NOT provide a CBO projection. It's someone's graph based on numbers from the CBO. Americanprogress.org has a very definite agenda in favor of social spending. If not, they might have done a similar graph, with and without Medicare part D instead of with and without the cuts. Or do what the heritage foundation did and make a graph showing the CBO projections for revenue and total spending which shows that the the spending increases are much larger than the revenue decreases. I don't trust their uptick in projected revenue, as despite it being a good idea, the bush tax cuts will almost certainly not be allowed to expire.
Picking one specific item whose magnitude is greater than the deficit and blaming it alone for the deficit, is inherently unfair. It's picking the one thing you don't like and blaming it.
Also, it's impossible to prove the Bush Tax cuts did not work. I'm not saying it would have been worse, I'm saying it's inherently unknowable. However, the CBO models used to justify stimulus are definitively wrong, since they projected better unemployment without stimulus than we actually got with stimulus. If your models bear no relation to reality they are invalid. I mention this because I've seen many spirited defenses of stimulus which rely on CBO reports which amount to putting the same numbers into the same model and getting the same results which have already been proven wrong.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Spoken like someone that doesnt even bother to know what they are talking about.
Which is the response one would get from someone who doesn't bother to learn from history. Read my thing again. When individual states were allowed to set their own consumer protection laws, big companies and banks migrated overnight to the states that would gut their laws the quickest. Ever wonder why just about every company is incorporated in Delaware? Or why just about every credit card company is headquartered in South Dakota?
Waiving your hands declaring things to be true doesnt make them so.
So why do you get to wave your hands and declare things to be true? Further, history backs ME up on this. Not you. But sure, keep on calling me pathetic, and ignoring history. I just hope that when it does come to bite you in the ass, you've decided to ruin a different country, not the US.
Picking one specific item whose magnitude is greater than the deficit and blaming it alone for the deficit, is inherently unfair.
you know what is even worse? Picking a study that has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Are we looking at massive red ink for quite a while? Sure. Care to guess where that red ink came from? Tax cuts, a housing bubble pushed by both parties, deregulation pushed by the GOP (and agreed to by Dems) and the biggest economic collapse since the great depression. All of which happened under the GOP watch.
Also, it's impossible to prove the Bush Tax cuts did not work
Actually it is. You have the tax cuts and you have the lowest economic growth in any period in decades.
Were there other things that happened? Sure. But if you're saying that those *other* things are what caused the low economic growth, then you're saying "it would have been worse without the tax cuts".
It's basic economics. You put a change into the system and then you see the outputs of the system and compare it to *decades* of past performance. If the measured period is the lowest in decades, it's pretty clearly a failed policy.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
If I'd told them earlier it was our wedding, they might have rationalized themselves around to insisting that I come back to work, as it was they were thinking about how they'd look if the word got out.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
ACtually it depends on the employee.
If they seem to be taking vacation when a projects is hot and all people are needed then they should definitely be punished.
We had one guy whose project was sort of key to the overall success of the bigger project. He decided to take off on vacation essentially unannounced.
What I did was to do his work and when he came back he no longer had the project and he just goofed off until we got a firing boss to notice and he was gone.
Everyone on the team got the bonus except for him. Good riddance.
The thing is we are as certain as we can be that any major economic bubble bursting slows down the economy. We are also as certain as possible that major damaging events disrupt the markets. The tech bubble and 9/11 would have had a slowdown in the economy with or without the tax cuts. We can't actually say what would have happened if the tax cuts aren't there. The inability to do controlled experiments is a fundamental weakness in any form of economic modeling. Hence, I said it was inherently unknowable. You seem to prefer to throw your preferred interpretation out there and because it can't be proven either, claim that it's true. You do not understand what is and what is not evidence.
You have demonstrated a clear set of partisan blinders in other ways. Tax cuts and bursting of the housing bubble did indead contribute to the deficits. Bush, however, was not some great deregulator. The number of regulations on the books and regulators running them increased during his watch. Even if some particular set of regulations was removed, it's impossible to prove that deregulation had a greater impact than all the new regulations. You clearly are looking for any way you can blame the Republicans and absolve Democrats.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari