Up until 1972 we had a few things happening. We had increasing GDP - per worker - per hour, we had increasing real wages, and we had the minimum wage pegged by law to a percentage of the productivity per worker per hour (thanks to those filthy Unions). The percentage escapes me currently. Then, in their (Legislature) infinite wisdom minimum wage was decoupled.
The minimum wage has become a very small percentage of what it would have been (Almost $30 an hour in today's dollars, more than our median wage of around $20) because increases in productivity were no longer shared with workers and businesses. Business profits have expanded, however. As the automation process advanced and wages continued to be depressed the distribution of income became far less uniform. In simplified terms, those with the least income are your pure consumers. These folks have to spend every cent they earn, and many are negative savers because of this. So while wages have increased nominally and in real terms (for middle-class, but not the poor), the amount of productivity retained by the employer for each hour of labor has increased, about 75% (I’m going to call that a Corporate Greed Tax, because calling non-tax things a tax seems to be a cool thing to do) is retained by the employer now.
This could provide some optimal equilibrium I imagine, if there was some complex shared ownership scenario, but in our situation we have consumers with less money locally to purchase their own production back. The vast majority (about 90%) are worse off in this situation. Now by using, as you put it, an inflationary tax (what Randian craziness is that?) in the form of a minimum wage that is scaled to productivity you can shape your GINI curve, and get more of your consumers consuming. If, all things being equal, I can leverage 50% of my productivity (after Corporate Greed Tax) instead of only 25% I am strictly better off.
Now we certainly couldn’t go directly to $30 an hour for minimum wage overnight, and the issue is a bit more complex than this simplified version. We should properly be leveraging productivity enhancing technologies, driving wages up, driving work hours down and sharing in the Information Age boom in productivity, the same way we (via Unions) finally got our piece of the Industrial Revolution.
Read up a bit on the GINI and the effects of changing the shape of the GINI. It fundamentally disagrees with your statement. You might also correlate when we decoupled minimum wage in the US from worker productivity per hour also coincides with the precipitous plunge in real wage growth.
If the conclusion of a study was that sending women to space was inefficient, there would be plenty of people screaming that it was sexist. This study, like all mono-culture solutions involving human endeavor says more about the opinions of those writing the conclusion then what the optimal solution would be. In all of my years, I have never been involved in any mission, plan or project that couldn't receive the benefits of more diverse viewpoints and experience In my experience, this is true for warfare, public service, private service, charity work; anything that requires people to work together to solve problems. People of different backgrounds, cultures, genders, ect. provide very large intangible benefits that contribute to success. Saying that one class of people should be excluded from a difficult endeavor because they eat more is very short sighted.
Correct, very wise for a country rich in resources with a population smaller then California, and a huge boarder with most advanced military in the world who loves to go to war.
False a more direct parallel would be, If your neighbor's house catches on fire when he's not home, would it be OK to go over to his house and taked the burned, unworkable and unviable remains of his television and use them to save a human life?
Whether such phenomena are "truly random" or not (a bit of a paradox for a supposedly generally-deterministic physics), or, say, a perfect back-door to controlling all of physical reality that an insightful engineer might put in, or, say a God, is a metaphysical question. But that it can happen is clear, as a matter of science.
One of these, vaccum fluctuations, has the ability to predict something and is theoretically testable thus science, the other is god. The problem with your myth of choice is that it is a myth of the gaps. It can only exist where we don't yet know the answer. When we find the answer it will retreat further. There isn't any sort of rational experiment we can preform to prove it's existance, and it has absolutely no predictive power whatsoever. It is faith in that it is a useless expendeture of intelectual power to try and defend.
All that being said, if it makes you a better person, or makes you feel good, or whatever, by all means god it up. Please, however don't insist that other's pretend it is valid or rational.
The alternative MIGHT be to not lend money to people with bad credit scores. Would THAT be better?
In many cases, yes.
Having wages more inline with productivity would be much better. The types of loans being discussed here, came into being after we decoupled minimum wage from worker productivity per hour, and started the long decline of real median incomes relative to productivity per capita, but fixing demand side issue like that is so out of vogue.
The airline industry is very big on pushing Brand Loyalty via points, rewards and membership programs. Though not well versed on that specific market, brand loyalty could significantly influence many riders that would have to choose occasionally between Spirit and their airline of choice.
No, then you get to reposess the vehicle, usually much faster and cheaper, and resell it again at 30% intrest, after acessing all sorts of fees to the origional borrower.
Depends on the Price elasticity of demand. In many cases lowering price to make up on volume is a sucker's bet. It may be that all Spirit will accomplish is to decrease their own margins for minimal gain.
Now imagine your credit score is 480 and you have $17 down. Sort of limits your options a bit doesn't it. That removes a large number of the entrants from the market very quickly (and rightfully, so). Pricing to these customers are based on their ability to pay back, not on normal market forces. Operating in this sector, without the intent to reposess is not profit maximizing.
You fail to account for the non-overlapping nature of many of the markets, many of these types of "loans" are generated by the local buy-here-pay-here. The local office may often set their own rates, hold their own paper, ect. They are limited by what they charge based on regulatory limits and the customer's ability to pay. It's key to the bussiness model that they exceed the customer's ability to pay, because that maximizes their profits through repossession and resale.They aren't free markets's because geographically there may be 1 or 2 companies inside the range of any individual sub-prime-doesn't-have-a-car-becuause-the-last-one-got-reposesed-buyer. The first place that offers a vehicle will win the business of these customers. They aren't competing with eachother generally. This kinda throws a hitch into you clear assertion that any change in their cost translates to lower prices, due to other preasures on the price outside of what one would see in markets that are closer to Free in the traditional definition. While I agree that "In the old days, a jobless single mother wouldn't be able to get a car loan at any intrest rate." I have to point out that the Buy-Here-Pay-Here was crated in response to a ballooning cost of vehicles relative to income in the 70's. Before that time it wasn't needed. Also, in the modern setting, many situations a jobless single mother still has a stream of income, that many banks will lend against not just the type of predatory lenders that generally service Buy-Here-Pay-Here type of debt.
Slashdot Mirror
And potentially your bank balance.
What is in their best intrest, and what they are capable of providing may not be the same. Target was vested in not being hacked before.
Up until 1972 we had a few things happening. We had increasing GDP - per worker - per hour, we had increasing real wages, and we had the minimum wage pegged by law to a percentage of the productivity per worker per hour (thanks to those filthy Unions). The percentage escapes me currently. Then, in their (Legislature) infinite wisdom minimum wage was decoupled.
The minimum wage has become a very small percentage of what it would have been (Almost $30 an hour in today's dollars, more than our median wage of around $20) because increases in productivity were no longer shared with workers and businesses. Business profits have expanded, however. As the automation process advanced and wages continued to be depressed the distribution of income became far less uniform. In simplified terms, those with the least income are your pure consumers. These folks have to spend every cent they earn, and many are negative savers because of this. So while wages have increased nominally and in real terms (for middle-class, but not the poor), the amount of productivity retained by the employer for each hour of labor has increased, about 75% (I’m going to call that a Corporate Greed Tax, because calling non-tax things a tax seems to be a cool thing to do) is retained by the employer now.
This could provide some optimal equilibrium I imagine, if there was some complex shared ownership scenario, but in our situation we have consumers with less money locally to purchase their own production back. The vast majority (about 90%) are worse off in this situation. Now by using, as you put it, an inflationary tax (what Randian craziness is that?) in the form of a minimum wage that is scaled to productivity you can shape your GINI curve, and get more of your consumers consuming. If, all things being equal, I can leverage 50% of my productivity (after Corporate Greed Tax) instead of only 25% I am strictly better off.
Now we certainly couldn’t go directly to $30 an hour for minimum wage overnight, and the issue is a bit more complex than this simplified version. We should properly be leveraging productivity enhancing technologies, driving wages up, driving work hours down and sharing in the Information Age boom in productivity, the same way we (via Unions) finally got our piece of the Industrial Revolution.
posting to undo accidental moderation.
There are other benefits, and I don't think I ever ment an enlisted Communications troop then spent a day as an E1 or E2 unless they got in trouble.
Read up a bit on the GINI and the effects of changing the shape of the GINI. It fundamentally disagrees with your statement. You might also correlate when we decoupled minimum wage in the US from worker productivity per hour also coincides with the precipitous plunge in real wage growth.
If the conclusion of a study was that sending women to space was inefficient, there would be plenty of people screaming that it was sexist. This study, like all mono-culture solutions involving human endeavor says more about the opinions of those writing the conclusion then what the optimal solution would be. In all of my years, I have never been involved in any mission, plan or project that couldn't receive the benefits of more diverse viewpoints and experience In my experience, this is true for warfare, public service, private service, charity work; anything that requires people to work together to solve problems. People of different backgrounds, cultures, genders, ect. provide very large intangible benefits that contribute to success. Saying that one class of people should be excluded from a difficult endeavor because they eat more is very short sighted.
Correct, very wise for a country rich in resources with a population smaller then California, and a huge boarder with most advanced military in the world who loves to go to war.
Routing around regulation is what American Innovation does best.
To be fair it is a tool to discover how bad their software is. You would think Microsoft set a pretty low bar for qualified success here.
False a more direct parallel would be, If your neighbor's house catches on fire when he's not home, would it be OK to go over to his house and taked the burned, unworkable and unviable remains of his television and use them to save a human life?
The other mice from that batch were routed over to a lab conducting an experiment entitled "Will it Blend?"
Whether such phenomena are "truly random" or not (a bit of a paradox for a supposedly generally-deterministic physics), or, say, a perfect back-door to controlling all of physical reality that an insightful engineer might put in, or, say a God, is a metaphysical question. But that it can happen is clear, as a matter of science.
One of these, vaccum fluctuations, has the ability to predict something and is theoretically testable thus science, the other is god. The problem with your myth of choice is that it is a myth of the gaps. It can only exist where we don't yet know the answer. When we find the answer it will retreat further. There isn't any sort of rational experiment we can preform to prove it's existance, and it has absolutely no predictive power whatsoever. It is faith in that it is a useless expendeture of intelectual power to try and defend.
All that being said, if it makes you a better person, or makes you feel good, or whatever, by all means god it up. Please, however don't insist that other's pretend it is valid or rational.
Are you familiar with the dragon in my garage?
If you have extra payments in a savings account you are probably not sub-prime.
Kill?
The alternative MIGHT be to not lend money to people with bad credit scores. Would THAT be better?
In many cases, yes.
Having wages more inline with productivity would be much better. The types of loans being discussed here, came into being after we decoupled minimum wage from worker productivity per hour, and started the long decline of real median incomes relative to productivity per capita, but fixing demand side issue like that is so out of vogue.
The airline industry is very big on pushing Brand Loyalty via points, rewards and membership programs. Though not well versed on that specific market, brand loyalty could significantly influence many riders that would have to choose occasionally between Spirit and their airline of choice.
No, then you get to reposess the vehicle, usually much faster and cheaper, and resell it again at 30% intrest, after acessing all sorts of fees to the origional borrower.
and sometimes even people who aren't living incorrectly
Like underwater?
*for a minimal gain in ridership.
Depends on the Price elasticity of demand. In many cases lowering price to make up on volume is a sucker's bet. It may be that all Spirit will accomplish is to decrease their own margins for minimal gain.
Now imagine your credit score is 480 and you have $17 down. Sort of limits your options a bit doesn't it. That removes a large number of the entrants from the market very quickly (and rightfully, so). Pricing to these customers are based on their ability to pay back, not on normal market forces. Operating in this sector, without the intent to reposess is not profit maximizing.
You fail to account for the non-overlapping nature of many of the markets, many of these types of "loans" are generated by the local buy-here-pay-here. The local office may often set their own rates, hold their own paper, ect. They are limited by what they charge based on regulatory limits and the customer's ability to pay. It's key to the bussiness model that they exceed the customer's ability to pay, because that maximizes their profits through repossession and resale.They aren't free markets's because geographically there may be 1 or 2 companies inside the range of any individual sub-prime-doesn't-have-a-car-becuause-the-last-one-got-reposesed-buyer. The first place that offers a vehicle will win the business of these customers. They aren't competing with eachother generally. This kinda throws a hitch into you clear assertion that any change in their cost translates to lower prices, due to other preasures on the price outside of what one would see in markets that are closer to Free in the traditional definition. While I agree that "In the old days, a jobless single mother wouldn't be able to get a car loan at any intrest rate." I have to point out that the Buy-Here-Pay-Here was crated in response to a ballooning cost of vehicles relative to income in the 70's. Before that time it wasn't needed. Also, in the modern setting, many situations a jobless single mother still has a stream of income, that many banks will lend against not just the type of predatory lenders that generally service Buy-Here-Pay-Here type of debt.
"activist owners" = people I don't agree with?
There is the little detail about his inability to follow up on Minecraft's success with another marketable game.