What I don't understand is your failure to see the contradiction in your point about companies having the ability to push wages lower and lower, and yet this demonstrably not happening. That's easy to see:
- 75% of employed teenagers make more than the minimum wage;
- in 1979, 13.4% of hourly-paid workers made minimum wage. By 2009 that fell to 4.9% (tho it rose to 6.0% with the econominc downturn);
- 96.2% of workers aged 25 or older make more than the minimum wage.
So where is this power that companies supposedly have to push wages down at will? (source for all of the above is US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, which you can find here http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010tbls.htm).
I guess on reading your post again that the key point is where you say companies could push down wages if they could find people willing to accept lower wages, which is of course true, but also points out why, in practice, they can't: there aren't people willing to accept lower wages, due to the supply and demand for labor. Would every company pay minimum wage or less if they could? Certainly! But of course they can't: they are constrained by the laws of supply and demand. You can see this play out in real time in China, where rising demand for labor is leading to increased wages, in some areas significantly so. What do companies do? Start looking for cheaper labor in places like Vietnam. And what's the net result? All wages rise.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with truck systems (ie company stores, whereby workers are paid in currency able to be used only to buy the employer's goods) - it's a voluntary arrangement between consenting adults, after all. The problem with running every single economic system through the lens of the Industrial Revolution is to miss the point that the entire Industrial Revolution was a period of massive but temporary change, which ultimately benefited far, far more people than it harmed. Were some people unable to adapt quickly enough, or at all? Yes. But by much of the logic I've seen applied, the anti-change faction (and the government of the US, as it currently stands) would have the taxpayer massively fund the horse and buggy industry in order to protect its workers from being "disrupted" by the introduction of the automobile. All that does is delay the inevitable pain for the workers, and makes their day of reckoning that much worse.The Industrial Revolution, and the horrible conditions many workers found themselves in, was an example of the market finding its new equilibrium, and should not be taken as evidence of what would perpetually happen to a market left alone. Deep, fundamental transitions like this happen, and it takes time for market forces to adapt. That, however, does not mean that an absence of deep regulation (like the deep regulation found in the current state of the economy) results in perpetual and infinite power on the part of employers, to the detriment of the employees. It just cannot sustainably happen in a free market.
Nobody "puts you in a position" whereby you have a mortgage to pay! Surely you voluntarily accepted the mortgage and its terms!
Your point about minimum wage employers not providing health care may be entirely relevant to that small portion of the population which makes minimum wage, but the vast, vast majority of employers pay more than minimum wage (see above), and also provide health care. Hell, 87% of employees without even a high school diploma make more than minimum wage (same source as above)!
What you seem to be suggesting is that the government should somehow engage in price controls to force prices up such that wages should increase. That's been tried before, in all cases with disastrous results for the people, disproportionately so to the poorest people. Any attempt at price controls (including minimum wage) has negative o
PS: to your first paragraph: if you give away for free money which you print, but then leave the interest rate at essentially zero, there's very little motivation for banks to lend. They're better of hoarding the free money until interest rates go up, and only then lending. This is what appears to be happening. If you want to get all the money off the sidelines, you need to increase the interest rate, and give the hoarders a reason to put the money into play...
I'd love to reply in detail, but I can't at the moment. Suffice it to say, you continue to make assumptions about my beliefs and positions without me having ever given you reason for such beliefs.
Briefly:
I'm opposed to the existence of the Fed full stop. It is an impediment to a free currency market, has demonstrably undermined the validity of the US fiat currency, etc.;
Yes, I believe that all the banks and other businesses that should have failed ought to have failed. I'm not in favor of any bailouts, as I said before. The sooner the economy hits rock bottom, the sooner it will start to correct, only so-called "stimuluses" and bailouts have been delaying that day of much needed reckoning. I don't see where I've come out in favor of oil companies or aristocrats, or anything else you're on about in this paragraph. What the Fed is doing, in attempting to keep interest rates down to spur speculation such that the bubble can continue is, in my always humble opinion, criminal;
No, I'm opposed to the "defense" budget (that's in quotation marks because it seems to me the budget has served the purposes of "offense" for the past few decades) almost in its entirety. The US was never intended to have a standing army and its military mis-adventures would be laughable were so many lives not lost (on both sides). In fact, I agree with pretty much everything you say in this paragraph;
Again, your last paragraph puts a lot of words in my mouth which were put there by you, not me. Social Security is not likely to last much longer whether I like it or not. I think you're perhaps missing the fact that people do not pay into Social Security for their own use, like a deposit account, but that rather the current workers pay for the current retirees' benefits, like a massive ponzi scheme. Consider this: when Social Security was set up, there were about 30 workers paying for every 1 retiree's benefits. Currently that ratio is about 3 to 1. It's on the verge of becoming 2 to 1. Where I'll agree with you is that the people who participated in the system in good faith appear to consistently be the ones who lose out. That's the same with public sector unions, which are facing in excess of $1 trillion in unfunded pension obligations: the workers didn't create the situation - the politicians in bed with the union administrators did.
Anyway, gotta run. I don't think we're that far apart philosophically, if you'd bother to read my posts rather than make assumptions about my positions on these issues.
I'm glad your vitriol is as impotent as your philosophy! It's also amusing to me to read the assumptions you blindly make of me, simply because I disagree with you about something, and resort to name-calling - the red flag of the weak argument.
But relax: when you get to high school, you may have the opportunity to learn more about economics and markets, and I think you'll be surprised.
Ya, that's why just 7.6% of workers choose to be in a union (and it is, after all, a choice, except when it's a closed shop and the worker has no choice whatsoever except to pay the union tax).
I've twice worked in a union and both times I wished I could opt out (I couldn't - they were closed shops). The contempt they breed for efficiency and the premium they put on time served at the expense of merit could only be viewed favorably by the lazy and indolent. The second time I worked in a union, I quit and started my own business competing directly with them. There were a million efficiencies to be had, simply by not explicitly rewarding laziness. The union shop went out of business pretty damn quickly afterwards...
Wow. I'd like to respond but it's not at all clear to me what point it is you're trying to make. I'll try, tho...
If by "banks fraudulently lending out 20x the money they ultimately got either from workers or their private, government-backed cartel, the Federal Reserve" you mean "do I oppose the fractional reserve system, whereby banks can, as an example, lend $100 for each $10 in deposits they take in", my answer would be no, I'm not opposed to that. I'm most certainly opposed to bailouts of any sort: if an investor takes a risk and that risk comes to pass, it's the investor's neck which should be on the line, not the taxpayer! Whenever you come across the term "systemic risk", know you're about to get screwed.
As to the balance of your post, I'm about as far removed from supporting welfare of any sort, corporate included. And, for the record, I do not lick scum...
I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of your ability to compete (which is not to say I can determine if it's misplaced or not). But asking others to pay your way because you won't is about as far removed from "fair" as it gets.
"For everyone working at a job, 10 are waiting for him to get fired."
Which country do you live in that has a 90.9% unemployment rate?!? And how, exactly, do "corporations dictate salaries"? Are you not voluntarily employed?
I certainly see the appeal of the world view which posits that you have no control over your life and the world is a terrible place and woe is me and everyone is against me and I cannot compete and therefore need to be subsidized, but seriously: give your head a shake - it is impossible for corporations to dictate salaries. If it were possible, why would any salary be > $0? Why would a company offer you a higher salary to join them? The alternate reality (employers pay employees in company currency, blah blah blah) you posit cannot exist, and doesn't exist not because of laws or unions but because of market operations.
As for healthcare and retirement and all the other things you expect an employer to give you and think by some divine right you "deserve", how about providing for yourself, rather than expecting to be provided for and swaddled, cradle to grave?
Every time you pick a product because it is less expensive than a competing product, you are undermining your fundamental argument, because you get to vote on what your priorities are each and every time you buy something. If you want your philosophy to be logically consistent, always buy the most expensive item, such that there's more money available for the proletariat. Never buy a cheaper, better product made in a foreign country, etc. Because the fundamental (rather basic) economic point you are missing is that profit margins are not infinite - they are instead subject to competitive pressures. What this means, practically speaking, is that a company can no more pay their employees infinite wages as they can price their wares infinitely high. And any expense of a company is passed along to the customers, full stop, also because there are not infinite margins (notable exception: government). It makes me think of similarly ill-informed people who call for high corporate tax rates, without realizing that what they are actually calling for is higher prices - those same people tend (like virtually all people) to find the lowest price possible.
Profit margins reach an equilibrium point whereby investors are willing to invest and customers are willing to buy and people are willing to work. They don't just magically appear because your utopia demands them.There's constant pressure on profit margins (a good thing!), and consumers, not corporations or employees, are really driving the bus by sending signals to companies via their purchasing decisions.
"people need their jobs far more than employers need an individual worker"
I disagree with this statement, and all you need to look at to prove it isn't correct is the fact that the overwhelming majority of jobs pay more than minimum wage. This means that companies willingly pay more than they are legally obligated to in order to obtain their labor force. They also willingly provide additional vacation time beyond that legally mandated and health and dental benefits and a variety of other perks. They don't have to do any of this, legally. They have to do these things because they need employees more than the employees need them. If that wasn't the case, all companies would pay minimum wage and be turning away scores of applicants. Does this mean companies are altruistic? Certainly not! It simply means that competitive market pressures create more favourable results than any law will (or, for that matter, any union will).
As to your point about banning corporations as a legal entity, I tend to agree with you. The only real point of a "corporation", and the reason they were created, was to absolve owners (ie shareholders) of legal responsibility for the actions of the corporation, thus allowing widespread share ownership among people who do not have an active interest in managing the corporation or otherwise being held accountable, and in the process opening up an ocean of capital to companies.
Note, however, that the legal fiction of "corporations" is not the flip-side of unions: the opposite of a union would be if it was legal for competiting companies to collude with each other to fix the wages they will pay to employees, something which is already (rightfully) illegal.
In all cases, unions act for the benefit of the few to the detriment of the many.
Unions are on their deathbed for a damn good reason: they don't benefit companies, and they don't benefit union members. The only party they benefit are union administrators. What they ultimately are, and what their single purpose is, is (what should be an illegal) restraint of the free trade of labor.
Does someone have a gun to your head forcing you to work at these places you're complaining about? If you don't like it, find another job or start your own company. If you lack the marketable skills to do either of those, suck it up or go work for the government, the only part of the economy which retains a significant union workforce (US: 36.8% vs 7.6% in the private sector, with predictable results).
Also, I don't understand how "'big wireless' is being greedy and forcing workers to settle for less and less over time" - don't union members agree to settlement offers?
Firstly, I don't think anyone here knows what was in the contract. Maybe it was covered. Maybe it was excluded. Maybe the specific contract language excludes this loss. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. You don't either.
Secondly, Sony's insurance broker is the one who is paid to ensure Sony gets the coverage they need. If coverage was available but the broker didn't present it as an option to Sony, then the broker is going to face a very expensive errors and omissions claim.
Thirdly, the purpose of all insurance is to rent a balance sheet from insurance companies to use in the event of an insured loss. But that doesn't mean you don't have to take steps to mitigate exposures (as others have pointed out). That's really the reason for things like deductibles: to make sure the insured has some skin in the game and shares a vested interest in protecting the balance sheet being rented.
What's interesting to note is that, as far as I know, Zurich was one of the subscribers on the policy in question. Usually in these cases, there is a single contract underwritten by various insurers at various percentages of the policy. If that's the case here, then it is curious that only Zurich has chosen to decline the loss.
I'd get into it with you, but I'm getting rather exhausted discussing these types of issues with people missing a fundamental understanding of economics. Suffice it to say: Canada has been systematically reducing its various tax rates and cutting government services since the mid-90s. The consequences? GDP grew. Tax revenuesincreased. Unemployment went from 12% to 6%. The dollar went from being worth $0.67 USD to about $1.04 USD. Government deficits were eliminated (until recent economic downturn) and the country ran surpluses. Government debt as a percentage of GDP went from 70% at its peak in 1995 (about where the US is today) to about 22% (pre-downturn - it's now around 31%). You really need to stop equating tax rate with tax revenue, and also take into consideration the demonstrable fact that higher tax = less productivity and less innovation and less capital for the private sector (you know, the sector that produces jobs and prosperity)...
To change to 4 columns: in iGoogle: Options-->iGoogle settings. Scroll to bottom. Click "Export" button next to "Export iGoogle settings to your computer:" This will download an xml file to your computer. Open the xml file using gedit or somesuch and do a find and replace, replacing all instances of "THREE_" with "FOUR_". Save as iGoogle-settings-modified.xml (or whatever name you wish). Go back to Options-->iGoogle settings and click "Choose File" under "Import iGoogle settings from a file:" Select your modified xml file, click "Upload" and you're good to go.
What, exactly, about Canada's last election makes you think Canada has become a nation about to go bankrupt (which is what the OP's sig refers to)? The NDP may have made some gains via protest votes in Quebec, but they don't have their hands anywhere near the levers of power, so there's no real threat of bankrupting Canada...
"America will continue to decline until "lavish spending promises" no longer win elections. You can't run an empire by spending more gold than you take in."
FTFY.
Also, don't confuse "tax rate" with "tax revenue" - they are not the same and do not move in lockstep. For a good example, see capital gains taxes: when the rate has been reduced, revenue has increased.
Yes, you're quite correct. I used "there" to mean "in contact with the object containing the DNA or fingerprint" but should have been more specific. In my defense, it's been an awfully long day of lounging...
I've been using 64 bit Ubuntu since building this machine, which was perhaps 4 years ago now (actually I think 6.04 was the first version I installed, so that would make it April 2006 or so). The only time I've had to manually compile something is when there hasn't been a version of the particular progam available in the repos or otherwise, and generally that's been programs that haven't been available for 32 bit repos either. Also when I specifically want to include compile-time flags which aren't set by default (again, that applies equally to 32 bit versions). But I honestly can't recall the last time I had to compile something due to my computer running 64 bit - I'm not sure I've ever had to. I had to install the ia-32 libs way back before firefox released 64 bit for linux, but otherwise it's been smooth sailing. Of course, this machine is using an AMD chip, not Intel, and if I recall they handle 32 bit differently. YM has clearly V'd.
Then just unpack it (ie double-click on it) and redirect your current firefox launcher to the new "firefox" file (right click on the launcher, select "Properties", click the "Browse" button next to "Command" and point it at the file called "firefox" in the folder you unpacked). No coding required.
If you want flash, you can download the 64 bit linux version here:
I disagree with virtually every word of your post, and am no big fan of "poor me/the world is all wrong" self pity, but I will agree with the "life=job" comment: About six weeks ago I concluded I had an irreconcilable philosophical difference with the direction the company, where I had worked for the past nine years, had taken (a very large global company in the financial sector). Now, this wasn't an "I reject corporations!" or some other rallying cry of those who have a poor understanding of economics. I simply concluded the company was making repeated decisions which I considered sub-optimal/ill-considered and that other senior leaders did not share my vision of the way forward. So I resigned.
The first two weeks without a job were terrible. Not for lack of money - I can remain unemployed for the foreseeable future if I so desire - but for the loss of identity. I didn't realize, until that point, just how much of my identity was wrapped up in a job I was deeply and passionately committed to (and which, upon reflection, consumed a lot of my life).
Now, after some weeks of reflection, I have begun to separate myself from my "work self", and it has been both difficult at times and deeply rewarding at other times. But I'm definitely a different "me" now. I used to wake up and immediately start thinking of the various projects I was managing and what needed to be done that day. I still wake up and think about what projects I need to work on today, but they're of the "feed yourself occasionally", "take a shower", "make a pot of coffee" variety now.
None of which is to say that I blame "society" or my former employer or anyone else: I chose to work there and commit to the job in the way I did. I'm just saying that it seemed in retrospect pretty easy for me to get a bit lost in it all and not realize how absorbed and obsessed I'd become, and that I became unable (or maybe I just didn't want) to consider a less-frenetic alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting post - thanks for your reply.
What I don't understand is your failure to see the contradiction in your point about companies having the ability to push wages lower and lower, and yet this demonstrably not happening. That's easy to see:
- 75% of employed teenagers make more than the minimum wage;
- in 1979, 13.4% of hourly-paid workers made minimum wage. By 2009 that fell to 4.9% (tho it rose to 6.0% with the econominc downturn);
- 96.2% of workers aged 25 or older make more than the minimum wage.
So where is this power that companies supposedly have to push wages down at will? (source for all of the above is US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, which you can find here http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2010tbls.htm).
I guess on reading your post again that the key point is where you say companies could push down wages if they could find people willing to accept lower wages, which is of course true, but also points out why, in practice, they can't: there aren't people willing to accept lower wages, due to the supply and demand for labor. Would every company pay minimum wage or less if they could? Certainly! But of course they can't: they are constrained by the laws of supply and demand. You can see this play out in real time in China, where rising demand for labor is leading to increased wages, in some areas significantly so. What do companies do? Start looking for cheaper labor in places like Vietnam. And what's the net result? All wages rise.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with truck systems (ie company stores, whereby workers are paid in currency able to be used only to buy the employer's goods) - it's a voluntary arrangement between consenting adults, after all. The problem with running every single economic system through the lens of the Industrial Revolution is to miss the point that the entire Industrial Revolution was a period of massive but temporary change, which ultimately benefited far, far more people than it harmed. Were some people unable to adapt quickly enough, or at all? Yes. But by much of the logic I've seen applied, the anti-change faction (and the government of the US, as it currently stands) would have the taxpayer massively fund the horse and buggy industry in order to protect its workers from being "disrupted" by the introduction of the automobile. All that does is delay the inevitable pain for the workers, and makes their day of reckoning that much worse.The Industrial Revolution, and the horrible conditions many workers found themselves in, was an example of the market finding its new equilibrium, and should not be taken as evidence of what would perpetually happen to a market left alone. Deep, fundamental transitions like this happen, and it takes time for market forces to adapt. That, however, does not mean that an absence of deep regulation (like the deep regulation found in the current state of the economy) results in perpetual and infinite power on the part of employers, to the detriment of the employees. It just cannot sustainably happen in a free market.
Nobody "puts you in a position" whereby you have a mortgage to pay! Surely you voluntarily accepted the mortgage and its terms!
Your point about minimum wage employers not providing health care may be entirely relevant to that small portion of the population which makes minimum wage, but the vast, vast majority of employers pay more than minimum wage (see above), and also provide health care. Hell, 87% of employees without even a high school diploma make more than minimum wage (same source as above)!
What you seem to be suggesting is that the government should somehow engage in price controls to force prices up such that wages should increase. That's been tried before, in all cases with disastrous results for the people, disproportionately so to the poorest people. Any attempt at price controls (including minimum wage) has negative o
Waiting for Dr Bob to chime in to inform us that, had the little monkey just had the proper adjustment, none of this would have ever happened...
PS: to your first paragraph: if you give away for free money which you print, but then leave the interest rate at essentially zero, there's very little motivation for banks to lend. They're better of hoarding the free money until interest rates go up, and only then lending. This is what appears to be happening. If you want to get all the money off the sidelines, you need to increase the interest rate, and give the hoarders a reason to put the money into play...
I'd love to reply in detail, but I can't at the moment. Suffice it to say, you continue to make assumptions about my beliefs and positions without me having ever given you reason for such beliefs.
Briefly:
I'm opposed to the existence of the Fed full stop. It is an impediment to a free currency market, has demonstrably undermined the validity of the US fiat currency, etc.;
Yes, I believe that all the banks and other businesses that should have failed ought to have failed. I'm not in favor of any bailouts, as I said before. The sooner the economy hits rock bottom, the sooner it will start to correct, only so-called "stimuluses" and bailouts have been delaying that day of much needed reckoning. I don't see where I've come out in favor of oil companies or aristocrats, or anything else you're on about in this paragraph. What the Fed is doing, in attempting to keep interest rates down to spur speculation such that the bubble can continue is, in my always humble opinion, criminal;
No, I'm opposed to the "defense" budget (that's in quotation marks because it seems to me the budget has served the purposes of "offense" for the past few decades) almost in its entirety. The US was never intended to have a standing army and its military mis-adventures would be laughable were so many lives not lost (on both sides). In fact, I agree with pretty much everything you say in this paragraph;
Again, your last paragraph puts a lot of words in my mouth which were put there by you, not me. Social Security is not likely to last much longer whether I like it or not. I think you're perhaps missing the fact that people do not pay into Social Security for their own use, like a deposit account, but that rather the current workers pay for the current retirees' benefits, like a massive ponzi scheme. Consider this: when Social Security was set up, there were about 30 workers paying for every 1 retiree's benefits. Currently that ratio is about 3 to 1. It's on the verge of becoming 2 to 1. Where I'll agree with you is that the people who participated in the system in good faith appear to consistently be the ones who lose out. That's the same with public sector unions, which are facing in excess of $1 trillion in unfunded pension obligations: the workers didn't create the situation - the politicians in bed with the union administrators did.
Anyway, gotta run. I don't think we're that far apart philosophically, if you'd bother to read my posts rather than make assumptions about my positions on these issues.
I'm glad your vitriol is as impotent as your philosophy! It's also amusing to me to read the assumptions you blindly make of me, simply because I disagree with you about something, and resort to name-calling - the red flag of the weak argument.
But relax: when you get to high school, you may have the opportunity to learn more about economics and markets, and I think you'll be surprised.
In the meantime, I hope you get well, sincerely.
Ya, that's why just 7.6% of workers choose to be in a union (and it is, after all, a choice, except when it's a closed shop and the worker has no choice whatsoever except to pay the union tax).
I've twice worked in a union and both times I wished I could opt out (I couldn't - they were closed shops). The contempt they breed for efficiency and the premium they put on time served at the expense of merit could only be viewed favorably by the lazy and indolent. The second time I worked in a union, I quit and started my own business competing directly with them. There were a million efficiencies to be had, simply by not explicitly rewarding laziness. The union shop went out of business pretty damn quickly afterwards...
Wow. I'd like to respond but it's not at all clear to me what point it is you're trying to make. I'll try, tho...
If by "banks fraudulently lending out 20x the money they ultimately got either from workers or their private, government-backed cartel, the Federal Reserve" you mean "do I oppose the fractional reserve system, whereby banks can, as an example, lend $100 for each $10 in deposits they take in", my answer would be no, I'm not opposed to that. I'm most certainly opposed to bailouts of any sort: if an investor takes a risk and that risk comes to pass, it's the investor's neck which should be on the line, not the taxpayer! Whenever you come across the term "systemic risk", know you're about to get screwed.
As to the balance of your post, I'm about as far removed from supporting welfare of any sort, corporate included. And, for the record, I do not lick scum...
I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of your ability to compete (which is not to say I can determine if it's misplaced or not). But asking others to pay your way because you won't is about as far removed from "fair" as it gets.
"For everyone working at a job, 10 are waiting for him to get fired."
Which country do you live in that has a 90.9% unemployment rate?!? And how, exactly, do "corporations dictate salaries"? Are you not voluntarily employed?
I certainly see the appeal of the world view which posits that you have no control over your life and the world is a terrible place and woe is me and everyone is against me and I cannot compete and therefore need to be subsidized, but seriously: give your head a shake - it is impossible for corporations to dictate salaries. If it were possible, why would any salary be > $0? Why would a company offer you a higher salary to join them? The alternate reality (employers pay employees in company currency, blah blah blah) you posit cannot exist, and doesn't exist not because of laws or unions but because of market operations.
As for healthcare and retirement and all the other things you expect an employer to give you and think by some divine right you "deserve", how about providing for yourself, rather than expecting to be provided for and swaddled, cradle to grave?
Every time you pick a product because it is less expensive than a competing product, you are undermining your fundamental argument, because you get to vote on what your priorities are each and every time you buy something. If you want your philosophy to be logically consistent, always buy the most expensive item, such that there's more money available for the proletariat. Never buy a cheaper, better product made in a foreign country, etc. Because the fundamental (rather basic) economic point you are missing is that profit margins are not infinite - they are instead subject to competitive pressures. What this means, practically speaking, is that a company can no more pay their employees infinite wages as they can price their wares infinitely high. And any expense of a company is passed along to the customers, full stop, also because there are not infinite margins (notable exception: government). It makes me think of similarly ill-informed people who call for high corporate tax rates, without realizing that what they are actually calling for is higher prices - those same people tend (like virtually all people) to find the lowest price possible.
Profit margins reach an equilibrium point whereby investors are willing to invest and customers are willing to buy and people are willing to work. They don't just magically appear because your utopia demands them.There's constant pressure on profit margins (a good thing!), and consumers, not corporations or employees, are really driving the bus by sending signals to companies via their purchasing decisions.
"people need their jobs far more than employers need an individual worker"
I disagree with this statement, and all you need to look at to prove it isn't correct is the fact that the overwhelming majority of jobs pay more than minimum wage. This means that companies willingly pay more than they are legally obligated to in order to obtain their labor force. They also willingly provide additional vacation time beyond that legally mandated and health and dental benefits and a variety of other perks. They don't have to do any of this, legally. They have to do these things because they need employees more than the employees need them. If that wasn't the case, all companies would pay minimum wage and be turning away scores of applicants. Does this mean companies are altruistic? Certainly not! It simply means that competitive market pressures create more favourable results than any law will (or, for that matter, any union will).
As to your point about banning corporations as a legal entity, I tend to agree with you. The only real point of a "corporation", and the reason they were created, was to absolve owners (ie shareholders) of legal responsibility for the actions of the corporation, thus allowing widespread share ownership among people who do not have an active interest in managing the corporation or otherwise being held accountable, and in the process opening up an ocean of capital to companies.
Note, however, that the legal fiction of "corporations" is not the flip-side of unions: the opposite of a union would be if it was legal for competiting companies to collude with each other to fix the wages they will pay to employees, something which is already (rightfully) illegal.
In all cases, unions act for the benefit of the few to the detriment of the many.
If I had mod points today, you'd get them all - very well put!
Unions are on their deathbed for a damn good reason: they don't benefit companies, and they don't benefit union members. The only party they benefit are union administrators. What they ultimately are, and what their single purpose is, is (what should be an illegal) restraint of the free trade of labor.
Does someone have a gun to your head forcing you to work at these places you're complaining about? If you don't like it, find another job or start your own company. If you lack the marketable skills to do either of those, suck it up or go work for the government, the only part of the economy which retains a significant union workforce (US: 36.8% vs 7.6% in the private sector, with predictable results).
Also, I don't understand how "'big wireless' is being greedy and forcing workers to settle for less and less over time" - don't union members agree to settlement offers?
Grow a pair and learn to compete!
The guy's a crApple shill - don't take the bait.
Firstly, I don't think anyone here knows what was in the contract. Maybe it was covered. Maybe it was excluded. Maybe the specific contract language excludes this loss. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. You don't either.
Secondly, Sony's insurance broker is the one who is paid to ensure Sony gets the coverage they need. If coverage was available but the broker didn't present it as an option to Sony, then the broker is going to face a very expensive errors and omissions claim.
Thirdly, the purpose of all insurance is to rent a balance sheet from insurance companies to use in the event of an insured loss. But that doesn't mean you don't have to take steps to mitigate exposures (as others have pointed out). That's really the reason for things like deductibles: to make sure the insured has some skin in the game and shares a vested interest in protecting the balance sheet being rented.
What's interesting to note is that, as far as I know, Zurich was one of the subscribers on the policy in question. Usually in these cases, there is a single contract underwritten by various insurers at various percentages of the policy. If that's the case here, then it is curious that only Zurich has chosen to decline the loss.
I'd get into it with you, but I'm getting rather exhausted discussing these types of issues with people missing a fundamental understanding of economics. Suffice it to say: Canada has been systematically reducing its various tax rates and cutting government services since the mid-90s. The consequences? GDP grew. Tax revenues increased. Unemployment went from 12% to 6%. The dollar went from being worth $0.67 USD to about $1.04 USD. Government deficits were eliminated (until recent economic downturn) and the country ran surpluses. Government debt as a percentage of GDP went from 70% at its peak in 1995 (about where the US is today) to about 22% (pre-downturn - it's now around 31%). You really need to stop equating tax rate with tax revenue, and also take into consideration the demonstrable fact that higher tax = less productivity and less innovation and less capital for the private sector (you know, the sector that produces jobs and prosperity)...
Given the nature of the project, they might as well have skipped the "HA"...
To change to 4 columns: in iGoogle: Options-->iGoogle settings. Scroll to bottom. Click "Export" button next to "Export iGoogle settings to your computer:" This will download an xml file to your computer. Open the xml file using gedit or somesuch and do a find and replace, replacing all instances of "THREE_" with "FOUR_". Save as iGoogle-settings-modified.xml (or whatever name you wish). Go back to Options-->iGoogle settings and click "Choose File" under "Import iGoogle settings from a file:" Select your modified xml file, click "Upload" and you're good to go.
What, exactly, about Canada's last election makes you think Canada has become a nation about to go bankrupt (which is what the OP's sig refers to)? The NDP may have made some gains via protest votes in Quebec, but they don't have their hands anywhere near the levers of power, so there's no real threat of bankrupting Canada...
re: your sig: you can apply for Canadian citizenship here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/citizenship/index.asp
"America will continue to decline until "lavish spending promises" no longer win elections. You can't run an empire by spending more gold than you take in."
FTFY.
Also, don't confuse "tax rate" with "tax revenue" - they are not the same and do not move in lockstep. For a good example, see capital gains taxes: when the rate has been reduced, revenue has increased.
Yes, you're quite correct. I used "there" to mean "in contact with the object containing the DNA or fingerprint" but should have been more specific. In my defense, it's been an awfully long day of lounging...
I've been using 64 bit Ubuntu since building this machine, which was perhaps 4 years ago now (actually I think 6.04 was the first version I installed, so that would make it April 2006 or so). The only time I've had to manually compile something is when there hasn't been a version of the particular progam available in the repos or otherwise, and generally that's been programs that haven't been available for 32 bit repos either. Also when I specifically want to include compile-time flags which aren't set by default (again, that applies equally to 32 bit versions). But I honestly can't recall the last time I had to compile something due to my computer running 64 bit - I'm not sure I've ever had to. I had to install the ia-32 libs way back before firefox released 64 bit for linux, but otherwise it's been smooth sailing. Of course, this machine is using an AMD chip, not Intel, and if I recall they handle 32 bit differently. YM has clearly V'd.
Huh?!? All you need to do is download it from here:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/latest-5.0/linux-x86_64/en-US/
Then just unpack it (ie double-click on it) and redirect your current firefox launcher to the new "firefox" file (right click on the launcher, select "Properties", click the "Browse" button next to "Command" and point it at the file called "firefox" in the folder you unpacked). No coding required.
If you want flash, you can download the 64 bit linux version here:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11/flashplayer11_b1_install_lin_64_071311.tar.gz
No need to be a "code compiling madman linux guru" - just need to be able to operate a mouse at a beginners level.
I disagree with virtually every word of your post, and am no big fan of "poor me/the world is all wrong" self pity, but I will agree with the "life=job" comment: About six weeks ago I concluded I had an irreconcilable philosophical difference with the direction the company, where I had worked for the past nine years, had taken (a very large global company in the financial sector). Now, this wasn't an "I reject corporations!" or some other rallying cry of those who have a poor understanding of economics. I simply concluded the company was making repeated decisions which I considered sub-optimal/ill-considered and that other senior leaders did not share my vision of the way forward. So I resigned.
The first two weeks without a job were terrible. Not for lack of money - I can remain unemployed for the foreseeable future if I so desire - but for the loss of identity. I didn't realize, until that point, just how much of my identity was wrapped up in a job I was deeply and passionately committed to (and which, upon reflection, consumed a lot of my life).
Now, after some weeks of reflection, I have begun to separate myself from my "work self", and it has been both difficult at times and deeply rewarding at other times. But I'm definitely a different "me" now. I used to wake up and immediately start thinking of the various projects I was managing and what needed to be done that day. I still wake up and think about what projects I need to work on today, but they're of the "feed yourself occasionally", "take a shower", "make a pot of coffee" variety now.
None of which is to say that I blame "society" or my former employer or anyone else: I chose to work there and commit to the job in the way I did. I'm just saying that it seemed in retrospect pretty easy for me to get a bit lost in it all and not realize how absorbed and obsessed I'd become, and that I became unable (or maybe I just didn't want) to consider a less-frenetic alternative.
Hasn't a linux 64 bit version been available for a few years now?