More than half of Americans own stock, directly or indirectly. It was up to 2/3s before the 08 crash. I fully encourage others to invest as I have, to take ownership of the means of production (I've lived on half my take-home pay for nearly 20 years now, and it definitely adds up).
However, keep in mind that one equal portion of all the publicly traded stock in the US is only about the same as a year's median wage, and the earnings on that are only about 5%. That's not going to make a real difference.
The topic is the US, friend. Yes, East Elbonia sucks, but then those jobs are often the best available in-country, so there's no easy answers there.
In a properly free market, do you really think the most odious jobs would fetch the lowest pay?
Supply and demand, friend, supply and demand. Jobs that few people can do will pay more than jobs anyone can do, even if they'd only do it as a last resort. (Truly odious jobs do command a premium, of course, but only relative to similar, less-odious work).
Labor will capture it's fair share when unemployment is actually 0%. That is, everyone who needs or wants a job has one
You don't deserve a job as a reward for breathing. You must contribute something that others in society want or need enough to pay for. If you have no skills that enable you to do that (and that's a moving target, as automation progresses), you shouldn't expect a job. You could reasonably expect help with the cost of training, however, and the US is in this weird place where we encourage people who need vocational training to instead go to college and get no job skills and $50k in debt. That's certainly a serious issue we need to fix.
A useful concept here is "Social Tech Level". We have the tech for safe nuclear plants, but we may lack the social tech. Much as, say, Panama had the tech to maintain the canal for many years before it had the social tech. You need both the technical know-how, and enough resources left over after corruption to actually fund it.
For all our competing systems of government, we don't seem to have made much progress in "social tech level" in the past 100 years. If anything, the basic systems of administration haven't improved in this regard, but the skill in corrupting them has gone way up (whether corporate corruption or good old fashioned Old Boys Network corruption).
Whether Socialist, Communist, or Capitalist, each in it's own way we can't seem to get the job done, so I think it's something quite distinct from economic system. I think there's just a problem of administration, transparency, and reporting results to solve. E.g., I don't care if the road gets built by the mayor's nephew, I care whether it's build on-time and to-spec, and how much it cost - if it merely cost more than it should, that's the least-bad problem. Cost-cutting is a good thing, but it takes a back seat to getting the actual job done.
Did I cite him as an authority? No. He's simply: correct. You seem obsessed with being very grown up. What stake do you have in how adults enjoy their free time anyhow? Certainly adults who obsess over entertainment as the expense of having a productive career are hurting themselves and society, but once the job is done for the day? To each his own.
I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that
Other than jealousy and envy, who cares? You're not making less because they're making more, same with pro athletes and movie stars.
The US GDP is about $60k per citizen right now. Total salaries of all US workers will always be close to GDP - that's just how it works (those retired on a government check get paid from those working, so that nets out). We're simply not that far off from perfectly equal distribution, which makes sense: what we produce is what we consume, give or take some net imports. Only by increased efficiency (technology) do we sustainable improve standard of living for all.
* The government is totally corrupted by corporations and no longer represents the people; and * We need to give the government more power to regulate corporations... often in the same post! With the current system of elections, the government is useless in regulating except in the most basic and broad ways (way the are directly obvious to voters), and needs to be prevented from doing anything more, as it doesn't (and won't) act in our interests with an additional power.
Also, your "they terk our jerbs" rant makes you look like a fool, just so you know.
Socialism focuses on giving "the rest of us" more of the benefits of our labor.
You keep missing my entire point: you're already getting 90%+ of the benefits of your labor! There really is just a tiny slice of the pie left going to capital and management*. Socialism in practice works by borrowing money (not only Socialism, of course) to live beyond your means - not economically sustainable. The one exception being countries with huge net exports of natural resources, for them it's a good model (Norway: there's a reason they don't want the Euro).
As for the rest, I'm mostly quoting the Dalai Lama and the core beliefs of a large religion (and a few confused hippies in the US). He's quite a happy guy all things considered, and quite rational with thoroughly reasoned arguments for his beliefs (and perhaps the only theocrat in history to end his own theocracy). The bit about "righteous is better than just is better than fair" is a core Christian belief, but one shared by most adults.
*The big exception being "bailouts", which are the worst sort of government corruption, and threaten to destroy America out right if they become normal. We barely survived the Bushbama bailouts to the investment banks and GM, not sure we'd survive corruption at that scale again soon.
You're supposed to outgrow "fair" by age 8 or so, you know. The world's not supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be righteous, or failing that, just. Fair is pretty lame: imagine a court system in which guilt or innocence was judged by a perfectly fair coin flip. Totally impartial, unbiased, fair, and stupid.
CEOs, movie actors, and professional athletes all get paid a lot, and for the same reason, but there are so few of each we're not getting less because of it. Is it just? Hard to say: they have a large audience, and when they do well at their jobs they do make a lot of people happy. The idiots get paid well too, but that's life for you.
But if you keep obsessing on targets of envy or outrage, you'll always be unhappy, as there will always be guys like that. Get over it, if you want to be happy. Better to focus on a system that makes your life better, most people's life better, than to focus on taking away from people. The more you learn to feel joy in the success of others, and the more you do to help others be successful (even those who don't deserve it), the happier you'll be.
P/E is how you deduce earnings from valuations (which are no more crazy than they were since the invention of the publically traded corporation in the 1600s).
Another metric would be executive compensation to median wage
That has everything to do with envy and jealousy, and little to do with how much people actually get paid. If the CEO get paid 300x what the median worker does, but his company has 100,000 employees? Again, math.
It's funny you mention bubbles. We seem to have a lot of them. That would be capital sucking royally at it's job.
And almost always they're broke afterwards. Bailouts are the exception, not the norm.
Perhaps once the more egregious abuses are hammered out and the question can be discussed rationally and publically
So right, you don't actually care if it's already fair, you just want to parrot talking points like a poorly-written chatbot. Fair enough, you're normal for/. these days.
Critics who treat "adult" as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Doesn't matter how you feel, that's pretty cut n dry in the eyes of the law
Fucking stupid laws that hurt society should be changed. Punishing stupid fan-hating companies that take advantage of such nonsense is a good start. Just because somethings technically legal, doesn't mean you're not a total dick for doing it.
Silva does not seem to understand that searches at the border are, by definition, reasonable and therefore exempt from the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.
What kind of totalitarian fascist drivel are you spouting there, man? Reasonable? Are you insane? The US Constitution as Amended is perfectly clear that you need a specific reason that a specific person might be guilty of something, as reviewed by a judge, before you can search them. There's no "unless we're scared" exception in there. I checked. Twice.
* Border checks are usually an unconstitutional search. * TSA searches are clearly unconstitutional * Searches required before entering a courthouse: blatantly unconstitutional
The only argument for any of these obviously unconstitutional searches is "but we're scared!" Tough shit: no such exception.
But there I go again, pretending the UC Constitution is somehow relevant to the 21st century US. Silly me.
Define "fair share" please. Seriously, pick a percentage. Most business require significant capital, and choosing investments wisely is vital to the economy (see bubbles for why), so capital should get more than 0%, right? So what's the labor/capital ratio for pre-salary profits that seems right to you - what part to labor as pay, what part to capital as net profits? 80% labor? More?
Once you've committed to a number, look up total US corporate earnings as a percentage of total US salaries, and see if we're actually that different from what you think is fair (publically traded companies are about half of the US economy, and the P/E of the S&P500 is a good stand-in for that). Of course, most small business owners also work their asses off, so you might want to give them some credit (that's the non-public-stock half of the economy).
Willing to do the homework, or just want to rant in ignorance?
Oh, I see, you think the problems are "tiny", which means you've never actually interacted with the FDA, you just know that it's Orthodox Leftist Creed to support it unto death, as with every government program except the military.
Nice flamebait from a kid who still hasn't mastered the "Shift" key, but you present no actual argument as to why we couldn't replace the EPA with a new agency more focused on it's actual mission, and less on power-for-the-sake-of-power.
Yes, yes, I get it, "property is theft" and all that. It's an old song. Funny thing is, any productive use of land can be construed as damaging to someone else, if you try hard enough. If the goal is to prevent economic growth, there's always a way to succeed.
How about instead we form an agency to enable you to do anything reasonable with your land, by providing you a reasonable way to go about it? Its no wonder we've had economic stagnation for so long, with a generation or two raised to believe that "the only reason people own the land is because at some point in history someone stole it" and that "profit" is a bad word and so on. Sheesh.
"EPA is underfunded" you say? And you take the EPA's word for that? Of course you do: for a totalitarian statist, the right answer to every question is "more government".
A better alternative: the EPA just sucks at its mission. Get rid of it. Replace it with something better.
A neo-con is, in modern times, a conservative who believes in a strong US presence in the Middle-East to defend Israel. "Many early neoconservative thinkers were Zionist and published articles in Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee"
The term, while sometimes used legitimately, has become a way to be openly anti-Semitic while slipping that past the censors. People have picked up it being associated with criticisms of Bush and used it as a pejorative without realizing the implications. Please do realize.
Couldn't agree more. The EPA needs to die. We will certainly need some sort of agency to replace it, but one with a useful charter and none of the same people involved. Sure, decades later we'll be back here, but we'll have decades of sanity.
Personally I'd like to see more focus on "an oil spill happened, so EPA crews and equipment moved into place to protect the environment" than "the department of telling you you can't put your land to productive use". I doubt it's possible given modern DC, but it sure would be nice to have an agency that told a chemical plant "your emissions can't exceed X, so go hire engineers clever enough to make that true" instead of "you must buy this scrubber coincidentally only produced in the district of the concresscritter who earmarked it".
The latter is the downside of getting congress in the mix - it's an infuriating problem to engineers in the field.
Discrimination based on wage is totally legit, though. That's what shocks me about open age discrimination: you're inviting a lawsuit when you could just make a lowball offer.
I think what's really going on in these cases is worse: it's an extremely exploitive company that relies on hiring people with so little experience they don't realize it's not normal or acceptable to treat employees like shit.
They have always been able to change jobs. The L1 program is basically slave labor - no need to pay prevailing wage, no provision to switch jobs. For an H1-B, your new employer just needs to sponsor you, but e.g. any large software house does that routinely. It's not free, and H1-B software devs tend to be paid less by about the amount the legal work costs. Getting a new H1-B for someone not on one is a huge pain - one lottery a year with about a 30% chance - but that's different.
I can at least understand the shooting becoming the top story for a while (if it bleeds it leads), but it's obvious how far the news media has fallen when "the Pope is Catholic" is headline news.
Slashdot Mirror
More than half of Americans own stock, directly or indirectly. It was up to 2/3s before the 08 crash. I fully encourage others to invest as I have, to take ownership of the means of production (I've lived on half my take-home pay for nearly 20 years now, and it definitely adds up).
However, keep in mind that one equal portion of all the publicly traded stock in the US is only about the same as a year's median wage, and the earnings on that are only about 5%. That's not going to make a real difference.
The topic is the US, friend. Yes, East Elbonia sucks, but then those jobs are often the best available in-country, so there's no easy answers there.
In a properly free market, do you really think the most odious jobs would fetch the lowest pay?
Supply and demand, friend, supply and demand. Jobs that few people can do will pay more than jobs anyone can do, even if they'd only do it as a last resort. (Truly odious jobs do command a premium, of course, but only relative to similar, less-odious work).
Labor will capture it's fair share when unemployment is actually 0%. That is, everyone who needs or wants a job has one
You don't deserve a job as a reward for breathing. You must contribute something that others in society want or need enough to pay for. If you have no skills that enable you to do that (and that's a moving target, as automation progresses), you shouldn't expect a job. You could reasonably expect help with the cost of training, however, and the US is in this weird place where we encourage people who need vocational training to instead go to college and get no job skills and $50k in debt. That's certainly a serious issue we need to fix.
A useful concept here is "Social Tech Level". We have the tech for safe nuclear plants, but we may lack the social tech. Much as, say, Panama had the tech to maintain the canal for many years before it had the social tech. You need both the technical know-how, and enough resources left over after corruption to actually fund it.
For all our competing systems of government, we don't seem to have made much progress in "social tech level" in the past 100 years. If anything, the basic systems of administration haven't improved in this regard, but the skill in corrupting them has gone way up (whether corporate corruption or good old fashioned Old Boys Network corruption).
Whether Socialist, Communist, or Capitalist, each in it's own way we can't seem to get the job done, so I think it's something quite distinct from economic system. I think there's just a problem of administration, transparency, and reporting results to solve. E.g., I don't care if the road gets built by the mayor's nephew, I care whether it's build on-time and to-spec, and how much it cost - if it merely cost more than it should, that's the least-bad problem. Cost-cutting is a good thing, but it takes a back seat to getting the actual job done.
Did I cite him as an authority? No. He's simply: correct. You seem obsessed with being very grown up. What stake do you have in how adults enjoy their free time anyhow? Certainly adults who obsess over entertainment as the expense of having a productive career are hurting themselves and society, but once the job is done for the day? To each his own.
I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that
Other than jealousy and envy, who cares? You're not making less because they're making more, same with pro athletes and movie stars.
The US GDP is about $60k per citizen right now. Total salaries of all US workers will always be close to GDP - that's just how it works (those retired on a government check get paid from those working, so that nets out). We're simply not that far off from perfectly equal distribution, which makes sense: what we produce is what we consume, give or take some net imports. Only by increased efficiency (technology) do we sustainable improve standard of living for all.
It's funny, every week on Slashdot I see both
* The government is totally corrupted by corporations and no longer represents the people; and ... often in the same post! With the current system of elections, the government is useless in regulating except in the most basic and broad ways (way the are directly obvious to voters), and needs to be prevented from doing anything more, as it doesn't (and won't) act in our interests with an additional power.
* We need to give the government more power to regulate corporations
Also, your "they terk our jerbs" rant makes you look like a fool, just so you know.
Socialism focuses on giving "the rest of us" more of the benefits of our labor.
You keep missing my entire point: you're already getting 90%+ of the benefits of your labor! There really is just a tiny slice of the pie left going to capital and management*. Socialism in practice works by borrowing money (not only Socialism, of course) to live beyond your means - not economically sustainable. The one exception being countries with huge net exports of natural resources, for them it's a good model (Norway: there's a reason they don't want the Euro).
As for the rest, I'm mostly quoting the Dalai Lama and the core beliefs of a large religion (and a few confused hippies in the US). He's quite a happy guy all things considered, and quite rational with thoroughly reasoned arguments for his beliefs (and perhaps the only theocrat in history to end his own theocracy). The bit about "righteous is better than just is better than fair" is a core Christian belief, but one shared by most adults.
*The big exception being "bailouts", which are the worst sort of government corruption, and threaten to destroy America out right if they become normal. We barely survived the Bushbama bailouts to the investment banks and GM, not sure we'd survive corruption at that scale again soon.
You're supposed to outgrow "fair" by age 8 or so, you know. The world's not supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be righteous, or failing that, just. Fair is pretty lame: imagine a court system in which guilt or innocence was judged by a perfectly fair coin flip. Totally impartial, unbiased, fair, and stupid.
CEOs, movie actors, and professional athletes all get paid a lot, and for the same reason, but there are so few of each we're not getting less because of it. Is it just? Hard to say: they have a large audience, and when they do well at their jobs they do make a lot of people happy. The idiots get paid well too, but that's life for you.
But if you keep obsessing on targets of envy or outrage, you'll always be unhappy, as there will always be guys like that. Get over it, if you want to be happy. Better to focus on a system that makes your life better, most people's life better, than to focus on taking away from people. The more you learn to feel joy in the success of others, and the more you do to help others be successful (even those who don't deserve it), the happier you'll be.
P/E is how you deduce earnings from valuations (which are no more crazy than they were since the invention of the publically traded corporation in the 1600s).
Another metric would be executive compensation to median wage
That has everything to do with envy and jealousy, and little to do with how much people actually get paid. If the CEO get paid 300x what the median worker does, but his company has 100,000 employees? Again, math.
It's funny you mention bubbles. We seem to have a lot of them. That would be capital sucking royally at it's job.
And almost always they're broke afterwards. Bailouts are the exception, not the norm.
Perhaps once the more egregious abuses are hammered out and the question can be discussed rationally and publically
So right, you don't actually care if it's already fair, you just want to parrot talking points like a poorly-written chatbot. Fair enough, you're normal for /. these days.
And just such an adult wrote
Critics who treat "adult" as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Grow up kid, and put aside your fears.
Pokémon was a brand aimed at children, what, 20 years ago? Those kids done growed up. It's an adult thing as much as anything these days, just like most of gaming, superheroes, and so on.
Doesn't matter how you feel, that's pretty cut n dry in the eyes of the law
Fucking stupid laws that hurt society should be changed. Punishing stupid fan-hating companies that take advantage of such nonsense is a good start. Just because somethings technically legal, doesn't mean you're not a total dick for doing it.
Silva does not seem to understand that searches at the border are, by definition, reasonable and therefore exempt from the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.
What kind of totalitarian fascist drivel are you spouting there, man? Reasonable? Are you insane? The US Constitution as Amended is perfectly clear that you need a specific reason that a specific person might be guilty of something, as reviewed by a judge, before you can search them. There's no "unless we're scared" exception in there. I checked. Twice.
* Border checks are usually an unconstitutional search.
* TSA searches are clearly unconstitutional
* Searches required before entering a courthouse: blatantly unconstitutional
The only argument for any of these obviously unconstitutional searches is "but we're scared!" Tough shit: no such exception.
But there I go again, pretending the UC Constitution is somehow relevant to the 21st century US. Silly me.
Man, 16 years of butthurt and still hurting? Have you tried some salve or cream or something?
Define "fair share" please. Seriously, pick a percentage. Most business require significant capital, and choosing investments wisely is vital to the economy (see bubbles for why), so capital should get more than 0%, right? So what's the labor/capital ratio for pre-salary profits that seems right to you - what part to labor as pay, what part to capital as net profits? 80% labor? More?
Once you've committed to a number, look up total US corporate earnings as a percentage of total US salaries, and see if we're actually that different from what you think is fair (publically traded companies are about half of the US economy, and the P/E of the S&P500 is a good stand-in for that). Of course, most small business owners also work their asses off, so you might want to give them some credit (that's the non-public-stock half of the economy).
Willing to do the homework, or just want to rant in ignorance?
Oh, I see, you think the problems are "tiny", which means you've never actually interacted with the FDA, you just know that it's Orthodox Leftist Creed to support it unto death, as with every government program except the military.
Nice flamebait from a kid who still hasn't mastered the "Shift" key, but you present no actual argument as to why we couldn't replace the EPA with a new agency more focused on it's actual mission, and less on power-for-the-sake-of-power.
Yes, yes, I get it, "property is theft" and all that. It's an old song. Funny thing is, any productive use of land can be construed as damaging to someone else, if you try hard enough. If the goal is to prevent economic growth, there's always a way to succeed.
How about instead we form an agency to enable you to do anything reasonable with your land, by providing you a reasonable way to go about it? Its no wonder we've had economic stagnation for so long, with a generation or two raised to believe that "the only reason people own the land is because at some point in history someone stole it" and that "profit" is a bad word and so on. Sheesh.
"EPA is underfunded" you say? And you take the EPA's word for that? Of course you do: for a totalitarian statist, the right answer to every question is "more government".
A better alternative: the EPA just sucks at its mission. Get rid of it. Replace it with something better.
A neo-con is, in modern times, a conservative who believes in a strong US presence in the Middle-East to defend Israel. "Many early neoconservative thinkers were Zionist and published articles in Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee"
The term, while sometimes used legitimately, has become a way to be openly anti-Semitic while slipping that past the censors. People have picked up it being associated with criticisms of Bush and used it as a pejorative without realizing the implications. Please do realize.
You do know that "neo-con" is a thinly-veiled way to say "Jew", right? Say what you want, but be mindful of the company you keep.
Couldn't agree more. The EPA needs to die. We will certainly need some sort of agency to replace it, but one with a useful charter and none of the same people involved. Sure, decades later we'll be back here, but we'll have decades of sanity.
Personally I'd like to see more focus on "an oil spill happened, so EPA crews and equipment moved into place to protect the environment" than "the department of telling you you can't put your land to productive use". I doubt it's possible given modern DC, but it sure would be nice to have an agency that told a chemical plant "your emissions can't exceed X, so go hire engineers clever enough to make that true" instead of "you must buy this scrubber coincidentally only produced in the district of the concresscritter who earmarked it".
The latter is the downside of getting congress in the mix - it's an infuriating problem to engineers in the field.
Discrimination based on wage is totally legit, though. That's what shocks me about open age discrimination: you're inviting a lawsuit when you could just make a lowball offer.
I think what's really going on in these cases is worse: it's an extremely exploitive company that relies on hiring people with so little experience they don't realize it's not normal or acceptable to treat employees like shit.
They have always been able to change jobs. The L1 program is basically slave labor - no need to pay prevailing wage, no provision to switch jobs. For an H1-B, your new employer just needs to sponsor you, but e.g. any large software house does that routinely. It's not free, and H1-B software devs tend to be paid less by about the amount the legal work costs. Getting a new H1-B for someone not on one is a huge pain - one lottery a year with about a 30% chance - but that's different.
I can at least understand the shooting becoming the top story for a while (if it bleeds it leads), but it's obvious how far the news media has fallen when "the Pope is Catholic" is headline news.