And it the government hadn't bailed them out, leaving the economy even further in the shit than it is now, you would have blamed that on the government too.
I'm a bit like that. Blame the wife for everything.
Because we're not on the hook to keep RIM on lifesupport. They screwed up, they disappear, and taxpayer dollars arent lost in the process. Imagine if RIM were a government-run agency.
Imagine if RIM were a privately owned bank. Too big to fail anyone?
And don't forget that typically when companies go bankrupt plenty of people ARE on the hook and hurt. All the employees and all the creditors.
And clearly, by looking at all the spectacular ways companies go out of business every day, typically screwing over their creditors, your amended mantra is also false.
And if horses were cows, they'd not be very good milkers.
It's a government's job to provide many things that citizens need, but that wouldn't be done well by private enterprise. Including those things that are not profitable.
Sounds like another clause to go in potential "maximum wage ratio" legislation. If the company uses "at-will" employment for it's normal employees, then it would be at-will for execs too.
In addition, it would make outsourcing lower end employees an attractive option.
If we didn't go ahead because of some predictable loopholes, then racial and sexual discrimination laws would never have happened either. And they have done a lot of good.
First of all the law would have to be drafted to deal with this potential loophole. For example, companies need cleaners and security staff, and they tend to be the lowest earners. It's not that hard to survey the people who are doing the cleaning and security at the company, even if they are employed indirectly via outsourcing.
Secondly, companies can't do outsourcing of existing jobs in secret. And there are plenty of activist organisations that would be only to happy to out the behaviour. Organisations like Occupy Wall Street. Even if the CEO got away with some loophole legally, he and his company would still suffer the bad press as cheating their lowest paid workers.
The question is, will it grow to 30,000 a month within 5 years?
Well it took Hybrids about 15 years to get there. So that's a big ask. Why would that be the target for success? As I pointed out BEVs are making better progress than hybrids, so it's possible - but I haven't done the maths.
As for TCO being less than the sticker price difference, you have to project a long time in the future for that to be true, and make a number of assumptions to do it.
No, it starts happening on day one. Every mile that you travel that is cheaper with electricity than gas is reducing the difference between the sticker price of the cars.
What you seem to be forgetting is that it is not your money, not your company, and not your decision to determine who is given what pay or what proportion. Why do you think it is?
It's a democracy. I'm allowed to suggest that politicians set whatever laws I think are fair, and to use my vote appropriately.
I don't think it's fair that people are divided into rich and poor based on accidents of birth. I have no problem with people earning more because they work hard. I do have a problem with them earning more simply because they were lucky enough to be born in a rich family.
If you follow family wealth back, it was always stolen at one time or another. In America it was pretty recent - the European invaders stole land from the aboriginal Americans.
Look at it this way, suppose you and your neighbor make about the same amount of money. Suppose your bills are about the same too. Now suppose the lot in between you goes up for sale, you both decide you want it. Now suppose the government steps in and says all the sudden your electricity and utilities will be double because you are 1001 feet from the transformer requiring a larger something or another to service your house. So you and your neighbor attempt to purchase this empty lot, but because of the extra costs you have, you can only afford so much where your neighbor can now afford more and you lose.
That was the most bizarre and hypothetical attempt at a metaphor I've ever read.
I'm not saying it's the same as a minimum wage. I'm saying that I am used to business pundits claiming any enforced change will have a bad effect, especially ones that increase fairness. So that I no longer believe such claims.
With a maximum wage ratio, only the successful companies will have a new arbitrary floor in which only they are subject to.
Actually it's not success, that is the differentiator, it's how much the existing gap between employee and CEO pay is. And that is usually the largest companies. And the largest companies already enjoy many advantages over smaller companies, e,g, tax breaks, favourable planning outcomes, law changes and such like that lobbying brings them. So it's no bad thing that this hits them, whilst not hitting smaller companies.
Ad-homenem isn's an argument. And your anecdote isn't data. If you just lived through it, that may give you the impression that it's a frequent occurrence, but it isn't.
Right. And those fund managers just vote for whatever the board recommends. So whilst shareholding is supposed to be a democracy, in reality it's dysfunctional. The CEOs don't get to award themselves ludicrous salaries because the shareholders approve. Far from it.
And by the way "a proven investment fund"? There's no such thing. Research has shown that chimpanzees do better at choosing the funds that are going to be profitable this year, than a system of checking historical results of those funds. And that mechanical index-trackers are better than managed funds.
Funds are good at beating individuals because they spread the risk, and they minimise trading costs. It;s not because the fund managers make cleverer than average decisions, either in trading the shares, or in the voting.
The fact that the shareholders still hold shares indicates that the majority of them did, in fact, not care enough to move their investments elsewhere.
Most shares are held by financial institutions such as pension funds. The managers of the funds are part of the same top earning elite as the CEOs and the board members, and don't consider how to vote. They automatically vote for the option recommended by the board.
Most consumer held shares are held in trust by brokers. The voting rights may be offered by the broker to the supposed owner of the shares. But of course even if offered this is usually not taken up. So in either case, again the brokers cast their vte in whatever way the board recommend.
As a result in nearly all cases the vote is automatically cast according to the boards recommendation, without ever being considered by the people who really own the shares.
That's why there is no real democracy in shareholding, and why boards and CEOs can do what they like to rape the companies by awarding themselves massive salaries.
Of course he is! Why do you think that they used to punish offenders with the "hard labour" of smashing rocks with sledge hammers, when existing machines could do a man-day job in seconds.
Look at it another way, people are obviously rewarded if they have a job with "job-satisafaction". Clearly the opposite applies.
You simply specify in the legislation that the total rewards package is to be considered. There's no rewards that cannot be evaluated for tax, so they can be evaluated for this too.
It doesn't matter how much harder they work. If the janitors want to make the same wage, they should get the same jobs.
Obviously janitors can't get those jobs. Not only because of accidents of birth intelligence wise, but accidents of birth socially wise. Most execs had wealth parents, most janitors had working class parents. The old-boy network, or the ivy-league network counts for much more than ability does. That's no reason to multiply the advantages of those that were born lucky, by giving them pay out of all proportion to the work they do.
The problem is the ever revolving unemployment from failing companies. The end of the lawnmower story ended up with the company closing and the 170 employees being out of a job. Now compound this by any other company that expands and you can see the problem.
I don't buy it. When the minimum wage was being proposed on the UK, commerce was complaining that it would make entire industries uneconomic, and there would be mass unemployment as a result. Well the government went ahead with the minimum wage and it didn't happen. In fact unemployment went down.
Business supporters always claim that bad things will happen if they are forced to behave in a fairer fashion. It's bullshit.
You cann dress it up and call it a ratio all you want but in the end, it is telling companies they cannot pay someone over a certain amount. It is telling executives, you cannot make more then a certain amount.
Not at all. It's an incentive to raise the salaries of their lowest paid workers. Raise those and they can raise their own salaries.
It is morally wrong because it requires intervention to prevent two parties from engaging in what both deem is a mutually-beneficial contract.
Nonsense from the start. That is a power play, not a mutually beneficial contract. The pay disparity is only to the advantage of the exec, not the employee. Therefore the government would not be stepping in between two parties that want the massive pay disparity but between the one who is forcing it upon the other.
It's not like the employee has choice. Executive pay disparity is happening everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
And it the government hadn't bailed them out, leaving the economy even further in the shit than it is now, you would have blamed that on the government too.
I'm a bit like that. Blame the wife for everything.
Because we're not on the hook to keep RIM on lifesupport. They screwed up, they disappear, and taxpayer dollars arent lost in the process.
Imagine if RIM were a government-run agency.
Imagine if RIM were a privately owned bank. Too big to fail anyone?
And don't forget that typically when companies go bankrupt plenty of people ARE on the hook and hurt. All the employees and all the creditors.
You believe that private enterprise funded websites aren't created in a fucked up way, every single day?
The difference is that it's big news when government does it. When private enterprise does it it's mostly unnoticed by those outside the company.
And clearly, by looking at all the spectacular ways companies go out of business every day, typically screwing over their creditors, your amended mantra is also false.
And if horses were cows, they'd not be very good milkers.
It's a government's job to provide many things that citizens need, but that wouldn't be done well by private enterprise. Including those things that are not profitable.
Sounds like another clause to go in potential "maximum wage ratio" legislation. If the company uses "at-will" employment for it's normal employees, then it would be at-will for execs too.
In addition, it would make outsourcing lower end employees an attractive option.
If we didn't go ahead because of some predictable loopholes, then racial and sexual discrimination laws would never have happened either. And they have done a lot of good.
First of all the law would have to be drafted to deal with this potential loophole. For example, companies need cleaners and security staff, and they tend to be the lowest earners. It's not that hard to survey the people who are doing the cleaning and security at the company, even if they are employed indirectly via outsourcing.
Secondly, companies can't do outsourcing of existing jobs in secret. And there are plenty of activist organisations that would be only to happy to out the behaviour. Organisations like Occupy Wall Street. Even if the CEO got away with some loophole legally, he and his company would still suffer the bad press as cheating their lowest paid workers.
The question is, will it grow to 30,000 a month within 5 years?
Well it took Hybrids about 15 years to get there. So that's a big ask. Why would that be the target for success? As I pointed out BEVs are making better progress than hybrids, so it's possible - but I haven't done the maths.
As for TCO being less than the sticker price difference, you have to project a long time in the future for that to be true, and make a number of assumptions to do it.
No, it starts happening on day one. Every mile that you travel that is cheaper with electricity than gas is reducing the difference between the sticker price of the cars.
So you didn't make it to the 4th paragraph of my post then.
You're wrong. It was ad-hominem. It was also abuse, but that's not an either/or.
And you're continuing with ad-hominem in this post. Showing that you have nothing else.
What you seem to be forgetting is that it is not your money, not your company, and not your decision to determine who is given what pay or what proportion. Why do you think it is?
It's a democracy. I'm allowed to suggest that politicians set whatever laws I think are fair, and to use my vote appropriately.
I don't think it's fair that people are divided into rich and poor based on accidents of birth. I have no problem with people earning more because they work hard. I do have a problem with them earning more simply because they were lucky enough to be born in a rich family.
If you follow family wealth back, it was always stolen at one time or another. In America it was pretty recent - the European invaders stole land from the aboriginal Americans.
Look at it this way, suppose you and your neighbor make about the same amount of money. Suppose your bills are about the same too. Now suppose the lot in between you goes up for sale, you both decide you want it. Now suppose the government steps in and says all the sudden your electricity and utilities will be double because you are 1001 feet from the transformer requiring a larger something or another to service your house. So you and your neighbor attempt to purchase this empty lot, but because of the extra costs you have, you can only afford so much where your neighbor can now afford more and you lose.
That was the most bizarre and hypothetical attempt at a metaphor I've ever read.
I'm not saying it's the same as a minimum wage. I'm saying that I am used to business pundits claiming any enforced change will have a bad effect, especially ones that increase fairness. So that I no longer believe such claims.
With a maximum wage ratio, only the successful companies will have a new arbitrary floor in which only they are subject to.
Actually it's not success, that is the differentiator, it's how much the existing gap between employee and CEO pay is. And that is usually the largest companies. And the largest companies already enjoy many advantages over smaller companies, e,g, tax breaks, favourable planning outcomes, law changes and such like that lobbying brings them. So it's no bad thing that this hits them, whilst not hitting smaller companies.
Ad-homenem isn's an argument. And your anecdote isn't data. If you just lived through it, that may give you the impression that it's a frequent occurrence, but it isn't.
How low? In October 3,733 battery powered EVs were sold in the US. Total car sales in the US in October? Over 1 million.
Sure, it's still small numbers. But they are doing better than hybrids did in their early days. And I see Priuses driving around most days.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1085724_electric-cars-sell-faster-than-hybrids-did-at-same-point
It may become more in the future
There is no "may". It does become more each month, and technology and fossil fuel trends will only make them a better prospect as time moves on.
"oh, EVs don't cost so much when you consider TCO"
But its a fact. TCO difference in price is less than sticker price difference.
What sources are more reputable than "peer-reviewd papers in scientific journals on the topic"?
A journal called "Homeopathy" is not a reputable scientific journal. It's equivalent to quoting The Catholic Herald on whether God exists.
We both know you've lost this. You're now just confirming your trolling.
not by reading your links which I have not and will not be clicking on.
You won't be clicking on them because they don't exist. You're imagining things.
Right. So you admit you've presented no evidence of your belief that Homeopathy works.
Right. And those fund managers just vote for whatever the board recommends. So whilst shareholding is supposed to be a democracy, in reality it's dysfunctional. The CEOs don't get to award themselves ludicrous salaries because the shareholders approve. Far from it.
And by the way "a proven investment fund"? There's no such thing. Research has shown that chimpanzees do better at choosing the funds that are going to be profitable this year, than a system of checking historical results of those funds. And that mechanical index-trackers are better than managed funds.
Funds are good at beating individuals because they spread the risk, and they minimise trading costs. It;s not because the fund managers make cleverer than average decisions, either in trading the shares, or in the voting.
You seem to be unaware that this happens fairly often, but it does.
He'd be unaware of it because, contrary to your belief, it almost never happens.
The fact that the shareholders still hold shares indicates that the majority of them did, in fact, not care enough to move their investments elsewhere.
Most shares are held by financial institutions such as pension funds. The managers of the funds are part of the same top earning elite as the CEOs and the board members, and don't consider how to vote. They automatically vote for the option recommended by the board.
Most consumer held shares are held in trust by brokers. The voting rights may be offered by the broker to the supposed owner of the shares. But of course even if offered this is usually not taken up. So in either case, again the brokers cast their vte in whatever way the board recommend.
As a result in nearly all cases the vote is automatically cast according to the boards recommendation, without ever being considered by the people who really own the shares.
That's why there is no real democracy in shareholding, and why boards and CEOs can do what they like to rape the companies by awarding themselves massive salaries.
Of course he is! Why do you think that they used to punish offenders with the "hard labour" of smashing rocks with sledge hammers, when existing machines could do a man-day job in seconds.
Look at it another way, people are obviously rewarded if they have a job with "job-satisafaction". Clearly the opposite applies.
Men are not machines.
The minimum wage law is used largely to limit the amount of welfare the government has to dole out.
History is against your belief. It was introduced in an act by the Democrats along with other worker friendly things like limiting hours worked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act
You simply specify in the legislation that the total rewards package is to be considered. There's no rewards that cannot be evaluated for tax, so they can be evaluated for this too.
It doesn't matter how much harder they work. If the janitors want to make the same wage, they should get the same jobs.
Obviously janitors can't get those jobs. Not only because of accidents of birth intelligence wise, but accidents of birth socially wise. Most execs had wealth parents, most janitors had working class parents. The old-boy network, or the ivy-league network counts for much more than ability does. That's no reason to multiply the advantages of those that were born lucky, by giving them pay out of all proportion to the work they do.
The problem is the ever revolving unemployment from failing companies. The end of the lawnmower story ended up with the company closing and the 170 employees being out of a job. Now compound this by any other company that expands and you can see the problem.
I don't buy it. When the minimum wage was being proposed on the UK, commerce was complaining that it would make entire industries uneconomic, and there would be mass unemployment as a result. Well the government went ahead with the minimum wage and it didn't happen. In fact unemployment went down.
Business supporters always claim that bad things will happen if they are forced to behave in a fairer fashion. It's bullshit.
You cann dress it up and call it a ratio all you want but in the end, it is telling companies they cannot pay someone over a certain amount. It is telling executives, you cannot make more then a certain amount.
Not at all. It's an incentive to raise the salaries of their lowest paid workers. Raise those and they can raise their own salaries.
It is morally wrong because it requires intervention to prevent two parties from engaging in what both deem is a mutually-beneficial contract.
Nonsense from the start. That is a power play, not a mutually beneficial contract. The pay disparity is only to the advantage of the exec, not the employee. Therefore the government would not be stepping in between two parties that want the massive pay disparity but between the one who is forcing it upon the other.
It's not like the employee has choice. Executive pay disparity is happening everywhere.