Maybe the average worker isn't working twice as hard as the 50's worker but by the article they are producing twice a much and thus twice as important to the company and the country as they were before at the same level of work. So by that metric people should be making twice as much even if they are working at the same rate.
Keynes forgot to calculate the fact that life simply isn't fair. You may be twice important to your company and to your nation that a person was in the 1930's but the people who have been given the keys to the economy will never allow your pay to reflect that. That is a basic tenant that must hold for Keynes prophecy to be true and the current system prevents it from happening. This isn't even about marxism or socialism. Ultimately each and every one of us are twice as important now as a worker was in 1930 but my value will not be realized, ever. All I can do is live my life the best I can and make what I make.
Sorry for the double reply, but I guess what I'm trying to say is.... I may have a few extra TVs, a 50% bigger house, and a game console that the 1930's family didn't have. But I would give it all up any day if I could afford to have either myself or my wife at home all day to take care of things as they did in the 1930's.
Only if you don't count leisure and child-rearing hours as a type of wealth, which I do. Once we went to dual income families, that effectively cut our quality of living by more than half.
The ball has been set in motion, and no president can really tell a large corporation that they will need to stop growing and do more with less. That would be presidential suicide, doesn't matter how good the intentions of the president may be. Look at the uproar over increasing minimum wage, which really amounts to a small hill of beans in the end. Consider the drastic measures that would need to be taken to change the course of the economy. It's simply too late I think. It will take a revolutionary war to change things and I think it is coming.
I thought I worked for the same company as you until you said the part about good pay. Also, in the Canadian side of my company there is also the feeling of not getting things done, although one thing is clear about Canadians, they are more forceful about working more hours than they are getting paid for.
By the article, at 60 hours a week you are filling three times your share towards the requirements of the economy right now. You should be getting paid three times the rate per hour as the 1930's person, at which point you could probably just work a 40 hour week and retire at 55. But you're not.
They also make a lot of comments about cheap components... Plastic dashboards, etc. I think it is a perfect commentary on the attitudes of US companies. Don't give the consumer more than you have to to sell a vehicle. Just keep it for yourself and your shareholders.
I'd rate you insightful if I had mod points. Basically in 1930 people still cared somewhat for each other. The CEO of a company cared for the employees working there and would never think of making 800x more than everyone else. Boards would never consider giving the CEO 800x more than everyone else. Times have sure changed.
People really have to let go of the Marxist label. Just because someone sees the possibility for an economy where more funds go to more people it just means they are less self-interested. It doesn't mean they are marxist.
I think there needs to be two totally independent economies. One economy is the one we know that is purely for profit. This economy needs to pay some sort of tax so that money flows into a 'public good' economy. If you are a company that does very little public good (say a computer game maker), then you pay high input to the public good economy. If you are a charitable organization that feeds the poor, then you can draw from the credits provided from the personal gain economy and operate on them. Any money that you take in is taxed at a very low rate and you can use those to operate as well. Think carbon credits but good-will credits.
The problem of course is how you rate good will. I think technology could have the answer to this. In theory if we could have a micro-voting system that accurately represented the values across all demographics then we would know what people consider important and could use that to guide the flow of money from one economy to the other.
Then you have to move my extended family as well. I stay where I am because our parents are here. If if weren't for having the parents nearby then I would have to leave childcare to people I don't trust, and generally run my family with less of a day to day support structure. Don't forget the concept that it takes a village to raise a child and the grandparents are a large part of that. Also, we have friends that increase our quality of life and my kids have friends as well. You're just going to separate everyone? I'll need a LOT of compensation to convince me that it's a good way to go.
"How about teaching them to get along with each other instead of perpetuating the bullying and pecking order first?" Because that would actually damage their ability to cope in the work world when they get older?
The other day I went for a motorcycle ride.. I'm not sure if it is the case for all motorcycles, but on this motorcycle there is a switch that turns on a final 'reserve' tank so that you know you need to go pronto to get gas. Well I went for a motorcycle ride and I ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. With great vigor I went to switch to my reserve tank only to find that it already WAS on the reserve tank.
And that, my friends, is why I would never want to have this procedure.
That's what I see.. There is obviously a problem with the widening wealth gap. Why are we ushering in companies like Uber and calling it progress? At least the 'monopolistic' taxi industry provides a living wage. We can't get rid of all our living wage jobs and then complain there are no jobs, and I for one want jobs for everyone. Those taxi drivers are the ones we should be protecting and defending if we want our society to work and we're shitting all over them. Maybe they're not perfect, but if you see the forest for the trees, they're more perfect then Uber.
It's hard to retort without going into specifics that I shouldn't go into. Let's just say that I have recent independent proof that the ideas were quite viable. I think more the issue is, in a large corporations you end up with managers that don't see the big picture. If you have a big idea it quite easily goes over their heads. Because your idea may not be quite in line with what your group does, you can be seen as a threat or a nuisance. A lot of managers really just want people who will be one hundred percent focused on working towards that group's goals.
I've never worked in a place where they told you where the 'new ideas' go. In fact in the places I have worked the job is very narrowly defined and people are discouraged from thinking outside of it. I've come up with some good ideas in the past and have been just told to 'do my job'. It's not like I was being told that because it was a bad idea, the reasons have always been something like, "well then we have to support it".
Well if by "sufficiently competent" you mean people who do their day job and spend a lot of their personal time learning modern skills like mobile app development, web development, and the like.. I know some of those. Admittedly, some sit on their duffs and go through the motions but I know a lot of go-getters but they're not finding anything.
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Maybe the average worker isn't working twice as hard as the 50's worker but by the article they are producing twice a much and thus twice as important to the company and the country as they were before at the same level of work. So by that metric people should be making twice as much even if they are working at the same rate.
Keynes forgot to calculate the fact that life simply isn't fair. You may be twice important to your company and to your nation that a person was in the 1930's but the people who have been given the keys to the economy will never allow your pay to reflect that. That is a basic tenant that must hold for Keynes prophecy to be true and the current system prevents it from happening. This isn't even about marxism or socialism. Ultimately each and every one of us are twice as important now as a worker was in 1930 but my value will not be realized, ever. All I can do is live my life the best I can and make what I make.
Sorry for the double reply, but I guess what I'm trying to say is.... I may have a few extra TVs, a 50% bigger house, and a game console that the 1930's family didn't have. But I would give it all up any day if I could afford to have either myself or my wife at home all day to take care of things as they did in the 1930's.
Only if you don't count leisure and child-rearing hours as a type of wealth, which I do. Once we went to dual income families, that effectively cut our quality of living by more than half.
The ball has been set in motion, and no president can really tell a large corporation that they will need to stop growing and do more with less. That would be presidential suicide, doesn't matter how good the intentions of the president may be. Look at the uproar over increasing minimum wage, which really amounts to a small hill of beans in the end. Consider the drastic measures that would need to be taken to change the course of the economy. It's simply too late I think. It will take a revolutionary war to change things and I think it is coming.
I thought I worked for the same company as you until you said the part about good pay. Also, in the Canadian side of my company there is also the feeling of not getting things done, although one thing is clear about Canadians, they are more forceful about working more hours than they are getting paid for.
By the article, at 60 hours a week you are filling three times your share towards the requirements of the economy right now. You should be getting paid three times the rate per hour as the 1930's person, at which point you could probably just work a 40 hour week and retire at 55. But you're not.
They also make a lot of comments about cheap components... Plastic dashboards, etc. I think it is a perfect commentary on the attitudes of US companies. Don't give the consumer more than you have to to sell a vehicle. Just keep it for yourself and your shareholders.
You're completely correct, except for the fact that the very summary explains that he was right.
I'd rate you insightful if I had mod points. Basically in 1930 people still cared somewhat for each other. The CEO of a company cared for the employees working there and would never think of making 800x more than everyone else. Boards would never consider giving the CEO 800x more than everyone else. Times have sure changed.
People really have to let go of the Marxist label. Just because someone sees the possibility for an economy where more funds go to more people it just means they are less self-interested. It doesn't mean they are marxist.
I don't know, to me this simply says that we will be more productive if we do what we are natural at and love what we do. How could that be incorrect?
I think there needs to be two totally independent economies. One economy is the one we know that is purely for profit. This economy needs to pay some sort of tax so that money flows into a 'public good' economy. If you are a company that does very little public good (say a computer game maker), then you pay high input to the public good economy. If you are a charitable organization that feeds the poor, then you can draw from the credits provided from the personal gain economy and operate on them. Any money that you take in is taxed at a very low rate and you can use those to operate as well. Think carbon credits but good-will credits.
The problem of course is how you rate good will. I think technology could have the answer to this. In theory if we could have a micro-voting system that accurately represented the values across all demographics then we would know what people consider important and could use that to guide the flow of money from one economy to the other.
It seems to me that the original study assumed that people would, you know, help one another live instead of only helping themselves live.
Then you have to move my extended family as well. I stay where I am because our parents are here. If if weren't for having the parents nearby then I would have to leave childcare to people I don't trust, and generally run my family with less of a day to day support structure. Don't forget the concept that it takes a village to raise a child and the grandparents are a large part of that. Also, we have friends that increase our quality of life and my kids have friends as well. You're just going to separate everyone? I'll need a LOT of compensation to convince me that it's a good way to go.
This is why I generally don't like competitive people. They really do wreck it for all of us.
"Since the missile arrived in Cuba in 2014, U.S. requests for its return have gone unheeded."
But boy do they giggle like school girls every time the next request comes in.
Apple computers were a bitch because you actually had to type 'LOAD' and 'RUN', and then they invented the hello program and that was over forever.
"How about teaching them to get along with each other instead of perpetuating the bullying and pecking order first?" Because that would actually damage their ability to cope in the work world when they get older?
I was going to say there will always be free Solitaire, but I guess Microsoft took that away too didn't they.
The other day I went for a motorcycle ride.. I'm not sure if it is the case for all motorcycles, but on this motorcycle there is a switch that turns on a final 'reserve' tank so that you know you need to go pronto to get gas. Well I went for a motorcycle ride and I ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. With great vigor I went to switch to my reserve tank only to find that it already WAS on the reserve tank.
And that, my friends, is why I would never want to have this procedure.
That's what I see.. There is obviously a problem with the widening wealth gap. Why are we ushering in companies like Uber and calling it progress? At least the 'monopolistic' taxi industry provides a living wage. We can't get rid of all our living wage jobs and then complain there are no jobs, and I for one want jobs for everyone. Those taxi drivers are the ones we should be protecting and defending if we want our society to work and we're shitting all over them. Maybe they're not perfect, but if you see the forest for the trees, they're more perfect then Uber.
It's hard to retort without going into specifics that I shouldn't go into. Let's just say that I have recent independent proof that the ideas were quite viable. I think more the issue is, in a large corporations you end up with managers that don't see the big picture. If you have a big idea it quite easily goes over their heads. Because your idea may not be quite in line with what your group does, you can be seen as a threat or a nuisance. A lot of managers really just want people who will be one hundred percent focused on working towards that group's goals.
I've never worked in a place where they told you where the 'new ideas' go. In fact in the places I have worked the job is very narrowly defined and people are discouraged from thinking outside of it. I've come up with some good ideas in the past and have been just told to 'do my job'. It's not like I was being told that because it was a bad idea, the reasons have always been something like, "well then we have to support it".
Well if by "sufficiently competent" you mean people who do their day job and spend a lot of their personal time learning modern skills like mobile app development, web development, and the like.. I know some of those. Admittedly, some sit on their duffs and go through the motions but I know a lot of go-getters but they're not finding anything.