Forum Post: Higher Labor Cost NOW
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 27, 2011, 7:39 a.m. EST by factsrfun
(8342)
from Phoenix, AZ
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
We have got to stop believing this stuff about how if the 99% look around and say the games been rigged, and they decide to shake the scoreboard up a bit, that it is somehow morally wrong. We have got to stop believing this crap that if we want a job; we got to work as cheap as the Chinese. I support higher labor cost, and guess what I think it will create jobs because jobs come from customers.
This is why we are here this is why you are needed.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/inside-job-documentary/
Share, circulate, educate, inspire.
If you want higher labor costs, close the border. We've saturated the country with a flood of no-skill labor over the border. Dry up that over-supply and watch low-end wages rise over time. But liberals expect the opposite to happen. They smear anyone wanting the border closed down as racist, welcome mass immigration of unskilled labor, then wonder aloud why wages at the low-end can't seem to go up. One semester in economics at a community college would fix it.
Thanks for the link.
Not a problem. This one deserves to go viral. It dissects the whole issue of corruption and greed very nicely, and even names names by tying them into the action and history.
I've already posted it to another comment thread here, thanks again.
Anytime! Just trying to get things straight.
America, historically, has been the most lucrative consumer market on the planet because American consumers had more disposable income than any other people. Wall Street has successfully attacks that premise with anti union and anti American worker just in time and outsourcing rationalizations since the 1960's. The chickens have now come home to roost with American workers having little or no savings or disposable income to buy products at the prices that have, in the past resulted in record profit growth.
Downsized American corporations need to be reminded that they too get what they pay for.
Sounds like your laying out the grondwork for something....needs a name.......let’s call it “economy” yeah what your describing would be a strong economy. I mean the part about people working and buying stuff with good wages.
better wages would create an army of eager consumers that would bolster our economy. there are tons of poor people who would just love to be able to buy and buy and buy.
Even if your counter-intuitive reasoning was given consideration, how do you solve the following irrefutable reality:
How do you convince this very significant segment of our population to spend on anything except the very basics? How do you ignore the boomers in your equation?
There is no doubt that there will be approximately 76 million boomers retiring within the next 30 years.
As a result, there will be more houses for sale because they will be moving into condos, less spending by them and probably only buying one last vehicle when they retire.
Now, not all may be in a position to retire but you can be sure they will be cutting down on their spending habits.
This is going to have a "grave" impact on the economy. Think about it.
Higher wages is not the answer !
Living wages is !
A loaf of bread and clothing and housing should be equal throughout the world , then you go for the "accepted price" on everything else !
Basic necessities for all human beings on earth ; then the market value of all non-necessities will regulate the wages !
I kinda like what your saying here one of the things that’s bugged me for a while is how if I speed and Letterman speeds, we pay the same ticket, when the ideal is that if you break the law you give up some liberty, we evolved that into a fine system for small offenses even though in days of old more working people did time for things we pay fines for today. So I always thought a speeding ticket should be a days pay, (base it on minimum for those not working) so I would pay, (extracted), and Letterman would pay around $50,000 and we would both be punished the same.
Now that is thinking outside the box, I'd say make the ticket a percentage of one's wealth, maybe not a day's pay, after all speeding is bad, but not a whole day's worth of labor, bad. But I get the point you are making. the system as is, makes the working class hurt more for their negative behavior.
That's the underlying idea, people with money don't live in the same world the rest of us do and yet they write most of the rules. This causes problems.
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The problem stems from we pay too much for people to come up with money schemes and not enough for quality work. This system developed as more and more of our capital resources fell into the hands of trust fund babies who didn’t know anything about making money (or creating jobs) and making money from money and managing money became more lucrative than making stuff. The prevailing theme became “controlling labor cost” and the people who actually do the work became the emery because they actually wanted to get paid. Take air line pilots for instance, that’s a pretty tough job you would think it would pay a little, but we got full time pilots trying to get by on $30,000 a year, you would think we could pay more.
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There is actually plenty of money in America it’s just caught in a system that keeps it choked up. Take Newt getting 1.7 million for consulting, if he only got $700,000 there’s 20 pilots that could be making $80,000 instead of $30,000 and that’s just one guy, there are thousands of 1%ers, we just have to tweak the rules a bit.
Trevor claims Goldman paid for this.
It's called a FREE Market asshole. You have a skill, you make more money. It's your choice. if you skill is sitting in a tent and shitting in bucket...then I'm guessing you won't make too much
If you think this is a "free" market your extremely naive. If we're going to get government out of business let’s start by decertifying all corporations so we can get back to a “free” market.
Help me understand the new "Beer and Twinkies" economics. Demand drives job creation? If you give people money they spend it (beer and twinkies) and that creates jobs? All our debt problems can be solved by taxing the snot out of the rich?
And now, paying people more than the job earns is a sure way to prosperity?
Which part of your statement is hard for you?
Demand drives job creation? - That's true
If you give people money they spend it (beer and twinkies) and that creates jobs? - That's true
All our debt problems can be solved by taxing the snot out of the rich? - That's true
paying people more than the job earns is a sure way to prosperity? - Is this the confusing part for you?
American productivity is the highest in the world, American wages are not; we can do better. I don’t want to “tax the snot” out of anyone, I just want to return to the tax rates that we had under Eisenhower when GDP grew at over 8%, unemployment was under 3% and the top rate was a reasonable 90%.
You raise the labor cost and the price has to be raised to proportionally match the previous margin profit. Nobody wants to pay more for.
And yet this agreement never seems to apply when discussing CEO pay, let’s take a look at the one strong economy that is holding up Europe right now, Germany. One of the most prevalent differences is how across the broad their “labor cost” are higher but their management cost are much lower. It seems in America we got it backwards and we need to tweak the rules.
Well, underpaid laborer, explain how this is done.
simple no? pass much higher minimum wage law - then people at the bottom will have more money and they spend it and the economy recovers - multiplier effect
good luck
one comment brighter than the next - i doubt you will top that one - do you want to try to figure out what is going on or do you want to hold on to your outmoded ideas and watch the whole thing go to shit - my guess is you go for the shit. are you just too blind to see or are you being paid to spin this nonsense
typical idiot, you have no idea what I am for when it comes to money and to accuse me of spinning anything because you are being ridiculous is not even amusing
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Let me say first off this is going to be brief, and flawed, as smart as I am, (the doctors say top 99.9997%) I can’t figger it all out by myself. But if your truly interested, I think we need to stop favoring making money with money and punishing those who work for their money, ie working person making $100,000 sends about three times as much to Washington as a trust fund baby making the same amount. We’ve been told that people with money have to be enticed to put it at risk, why? What are they going to do, go to work? So bringing some sanity to our tax system would be a start, allowing the unions to have their card/signed “yes vote” would help, might not be “fair” but the current system where employees are sit down in meeting after meeting to keep the unions out isn’t either. In fact I think we should actively change the rules to make unionization the norm. The lie that we can’t compete if we have decent wages is totally dispelled when we look at Germany, anyway this is just a start check out my “Why am I a Liberal” for more.
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Thanks for the links.
Come on everybody can't agree with this.
No I would like an answer. Also I don't see it as morally wrong.
Me either, I just want to get the idea of labor cost on the table and how we been pushing them in the wrong direction.
And you mean what by that?
Let me refer you to my comment “Why am I a Liberal” for more but I will say here that I think we should implement a 90% tax on estates over $10,000,000 take the money and put it right back into the economy by redeeming treasury bills and get the taxpayers out from under this debt for one.
So you almost double the payments? I'm a little confused as to the practicality.
"double the payments"? Are you referring to the current 55% rate yes it would be 35% higher. There is usually only one estate tax payment. If you are referring to the rate paid by the wealthy today, I believe it would be 6 times the 15% they pay now,( it would be a good idea to rise that as well till the debt is paid). I don’t see what’s confusing about levying tax instead of borrowing money to cover the bills, and how that would avoid a lot of future interest cost to the taxpayers.
yeeah yeah...pay me more for my useless and outdated job.. heard that before
What we need is a federal law requiring that all employees of all corporations be unionized, so that you don’t have individuals’ negotiating with collective power for wages.
Not gonna happen. Why? As you go higher up the ranks in an organization your work and it's influence becomes very different from another guy at the same level in the hierarchy. Which is why as you go up the variable component of your salary increases (in my case the max variable component is up to 400% of my fixed salary). Therefore, each guy will get paid differently because their contribution were different. Unions only make sense at the lowest levels.
Point well made sir, my mistake, I only meant frontline employees, as it is with union shops now, I apologize for the confusion entirely my fault.
What you are forgetting is this:
Higher labor costs cost consumers more money and they don't want to pay it. They would rather buy "cheap disposable chinese made products' then invest in American Labor.
It’s actually American corporations that won’t invest in American labor, the drive for higher profits and bigger paydays for top management. We allow the Walmart family to squeeze billions of dollars out of our economy for each of the seven heirs by selling cheap carp and putting all our MOM & POPs out of business. We don’t have to do that.
How much do you pay your employees?
Minumin wage baby, that's why it needs to higher.
(Just kidding I chose not to discuss personel issues on public site)
I bet you take a dump in a field and then roll over on it.
Ah and so the conservative soul is revealed,
Tell me how to make this happen as a small business owner with finite resources and a very certain ceiling on retail prices?
Pay twice that I can afford for labor, sell below cost, advertise like hell (maybe a few superbowl spots) and make up for it in volume?
Your approach to me seems like it would be better received if people were willing to have a vested interest in their jobs. I have no problem finding endless supplies of non-illegal workers willing to hit a lick a day or two, for amounts of money as to not even be believable.
So anyhow, explain to me how paying more than I can afford, and often for help whose usefulness and qualifications are dubious at best, will make things better and not result in me working 5 times harder to break even and stay afloat.
you pay more for your help - they have more money to buy things from other businesses - those people have more money and buy more things from you! seems obvious no? as jim hightower says - money is like manure - you need to spread it around
start a business and show everyone how it is done, good luck
intelligent comment - can you respond to the point - no i guess you can't. it is obvious - people do not have much money to spend so the economy weakens - the bottom 90% of the population survives on a median income of 32k per household - try it! if they had more money they would spend it and demand would recover. very simple - if you would listen to the business news you would hear that often. i have had my own business for 40 yrs - we started a new one in june - we can always use some luck
Are you telling me there are people working for you that are paid any less than 30 bucks an hour, with full benefits?
32k per household - often two people working - what is $30 per hour - can you respond t what i said - no probably not
Look junior, I don't like your high brow manure and nonsense, so how about you go piss up a rope?
if this is high brow you got more trouble than i thought - 32k per household - often two people working - what is $30 per hour - can you respond to what i said - no probably not.- i'll be happy to piss anywhere you like if you can stay on topic - i guess i shouldn't torment the retarded - frogswithwings - says it all don't you think
You can't even form proper sentences while spewing incomplete fragments of either assertions or answers.
I can only attempt to deduce you pay your emloyees 16K/year. Whoopie shit, I have no need for 16K/year help, they are always more of a liability than an asset.
Now clean your ears with a jackhammer and don't stop until the green and red stuff gushes out and makes a huge mess.
Maybe your cheap grunts will be able to clean it, flipper.
the bottom 90% of the population survives on a median income of 32k per household - try it! if they had more money they would spend it and demand would recover. very simple - if you would listen to the business news you would hear that often. - i don't think you have responded yet - do you?
I make it a point to not engage poorly presenting morons who are an embarrassment to any reasonable facsimile of educated.
Your ideas may be great, however, I've seen teenager text messaging that made more sense than your poorly typed idiot appearing crap.
My advice to you, at least learn decent English skills.
btw... in case you aren't some actual pimply faced kid who truly never has accomplished anything, much less made payroll for several households....
my electric rates have more than doubled, my property taxes have more than doubled, all my costs of operating have more than doubled
all in the last ten years
so, you sir, miss my original point entirely, I'm already paying for many raises and if I pay unskilled floor sweepers even more, of which I employ none, I can what....???? Advertise like hell, take out a few superbowl spots, sell well below cost and make up for it in volume?
well written shit - you do know the kings english but not much more - sorry you cannot respond to the point but then you should not be here discussing ideas.
Oh I do and very well at that. Pardon me for attempting to relax things in order to help you ease into stepping up your garbage.
Oh I do and very well at that. - you do well at what? the punctuation is proper and the words spelled correctly but they make no sense - no surprise - are you ready to respond to the point yet??? do i need to remind you - probably - here you go -if they had more money they would spend it and demand would recover. very simple - if you would listen to the business news you would hear that often. - try it - i could help you with some responses. you could start by reading ricardo (not ricky!) he seems right up your alley - here is a piece - "So after Ricardo, you start getting the conception that it's better for the poor if I'm rich. As capitalist ideology becomes dominant, this conception that you'll only hurt the poor by helping them, takes over. And then comes the idea that you have no intrinsic rights. The big intellectual revolution for capitalism, I think, was the principle that you human beings, have no rights other than what you can gain on the labor market. So Malthus and Ricardo and others said that if you can't survive by what you can gain on the marketplace, go somewhere else. And any effort to try to help you will just harm you in the long run, because of market interference." - seems reasonable don't you think and then we could go on to discussing how actual slavery is better for the slave than wage slavery - try this - "Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted at least as early as Cicero.[10] Before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of African American slavery invoked the concept to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.
No, what Jim Hightower says in like manure.
Money isn't just what you spend, it's what you earn. When the earning part doesn't happen because the money was simply passed out, you start inflation. Inflation repairs the mistakes of policy. When liberal fantasy tries to create value that isn't real by throwing money at something, inflation takes it away.
If you want low-end wages to rise, the only to do that is by fixing the over-supply problem. Increase high school graduation and rates and close the damn border and you'll have a shot. Of course, talk about those two and the leftists moonbats like Hightower flip. One involves responsibility taking and doing the other just gets you smeared as racist.
well you can have your opinions and they are just that opinions - too much labor supply? sounds ominous no? not enough work to be done - look around - lots of very important work - fix the crumbling water system etc - it is obvious to those who are not blinded by a hard money ideology what can and should be done. inflation hurts who??? deflation helps who - think about it - i know it may be hard at first but think - who is helped and who is hurt
Yes, an oversupply of low-end labor. Unemployment for the skill-free is much higher than for those with skills. That pressures wages. If you and Hightower wanted to do something about it, you'd advocate cleaning up the illegals and closing the border with Mexico. We've swamped the country in no-skill workers; what the hell did you think would happen? Wages were going to go up?
When government passes out money pretending that people create value that isn't there, it's a force of inflation. Inflation takes back everything that government pretends to give.
Inflation, in the short-term, hurts creditors and benefits debtors. Deflation is the opposite. Inflation also hurts anyone that can't keep up. That means people without hard assets and those who were in need of downward adjustment. It helps those that benefit from having those adjustments made. Deflation is pretty much just the opposite. Shaky money is good for making the adjustments government won't make or reversing unsustainable policy.
Hightower is a moonbat.
you are not thinking clearly here - forget the nonsense about immigration - i prefer not engage with you on that subject. you idea of inflation is backwards - think - inflation helps creditors - you pay back the lender in cheaper dollars. creditors on the other hand like deflation - your mortgage is 5% and deflation makes your house worth less and the mortgage payment larger. you need to think this through or stop the conversation - my guess is you will stop - make some dumb ass remark and go away. that is what usually happens to your type when confronted with facts that can't be debated! you can't fudge the math - i can spell it out more if you need it but you should be able to figure it out from here! moonbat - you are the one with the theories that make no sense
Yes, I know that the left wants to ignore immigration. But it's been a huge source of supply of no-skill labor. And unemployment hooks upward as skill level declines. Liberals are upset at how low wages are for no-skill people. They cry and whine and the tears do flow. But they want to continue to over-supply the market and instead think price controls in terms of wage mandates can work. That fails. Throwing money at it fails. It all fails. Correcting the oversupply succeeds.
Exactly, inflation hurts creditors and benefits debtors, in the short-run, just as I wrote. Deflation is the opposite, just as I wrote. I know that. But more importantly, inflation and deflation are processes that correct for government imposed distortions. If the government throws money at no-skill people and the value isn't there, inflation will merely take it back. Government can at best bend the laws of economics for short periods of time; it can't change them. This is despite Hightower's delusions.
This guy must smoke heavy arm dope or has already cooked what was left of a brain on that muslim sold incense, bath salts or plant food. Maybe several bad triple stacks of ex? Who knows.
The fool can't even form a coherent sentence or indent for a new paragraph.
short term - do you know what a pizza cost in 1935 - what has long term inflation done to debtors - you can believe you hayek theories all you like just don't bother me with them. as far as you racist nonsense you can spew it somewhere else - when you expel all the immigrants who will pick your lettuce - this is a divide and conquer argument - you are making the point of the ruling class - i have no interest in what they say - they have been spinning their stories for hundreds of years - stopped believing them when i was a kid.
Yep, there you go: "racist". It never takes long with a liberal. Just like they think government can overrule economics, the ordinarily obvious consequences on wages of oversupply are suspended if many of the people in the oversupply are brown. Of course, in reality, it doesn't work that way. Supply and demand doesn't have a race carve-out, although liberals imagine one.
Labor markets respond to supply and demand, just like anything else. We've had mass immigration of people with essentially 6th grade educations. The average educational attainment of the U.S. workforce is about 1 year post-high school. That's opened the biggest skills gap in American history. This has consequences, even if some of them are brown. And you can see it dumbass in the hook of unemployment by skills. Smarten up.
Just another wanting something for nothing. Claims he pays the workers of his own business 32K per household. My guess is 14 in a trailer with a heater and am radio comprises his idea of a household.
Ok all you have to do is set up a fair set of rules for everyone, one of the big problems we have in this country is represented by this example. When OWS suggested that minimum wage be $20/hr all the tele readers on FOX giggled and laughed and called it utopia, when everyone of them make ten times that for reading off a screen. We don’t value work in this country, we value the deal, we have to start to reward work, and yes some small business people will have to work harder for their $250,000+/yr that the GOP tell us they all make. I would assume that you have no problem keeping your $20/hr workers?
You obviously have never run a small business that does not kiss wall street's, banker's, insurance companies' or china's asses.
I actually don't HAVE TO DO a damned thing but keep on doing what I do, I asked you how to make it happen so that I'm not overpaying under-able help to put me out of business. I can do that all by myself and get all the money.
Not sure what kind of business you have, but I am partners in a construction firm. The costs of this type of business are through the roof ( workers comp and liability/disability ins ) My crew is paid very well according to skill level. My lead carpenters make more than the helpers. With the cost of building supplies way up, it is very hard to break even some weeks. Most folks don't have a clue what it takes to run a business with all the costs involved, so most of these posts about higher wages just dont understand the business world. Oh and btw., I dont have to kiss anyones ass either lol
Good for you and thanks for affirming I've not overlooked something so simple as being able to double up on labor costs and make magic money as a result. I have nothing financed and very little overhead, I have two patents right now that after running them up the US production flagpole, I cannot make a nickle on them without having the widgets made in PRC.
Do you think it possible to find people willing to invest know how and sweat equity in such a venture? Not easy even if your a fantastic pitchmen, as it all comes down the bottom line of China can make it for less than a tenth of the cost here. Will any of these "increase labor poor and broke people" pay more for an item made in the US?
No way, no how, not ever.
You are absolutely so on the money here. I have been very fortunate in that I have much of the same staff from day one ( 12 yrs ago) and we have weathered the economical climate the last few years without any layoffs. But what so many don't understand, is even though there is money coming in( not always as much or as fast as Id like), the money going out is constant. To double up on pay makes no sense. In my particular field my staff is paid comparably to this industry in my part of the country ( NY) The experienced tradespeople make more than the helpers do. That is the nature of real world business.
As far as materials, lately the last few years the US can't compete with China, say for instance in the granite trade. No longer do I see the Italian or Greek granites coming in, but from China and much cheaper and of less quality. It's a lousy situation overall. We are not a low end contractor, so often when it comes down to it, customers are going for price over quality. If I raise everyone's salary, so do the prices for the customers. My staff is happy.. they make a good living, work hard and with that comes referrals for new work. New work is what small business's like mine depend on.
errr.. become a good businessman? I mean if you need me to tell you (hire good people). Of course if your point is your so cool you can kick back and live off the labor of others, hats off to you.
Eat shit you irrational and disingenuous fool. I'm far better off not hiring a soul than to overpay people which puts even the best businessperson out of business.
Now ramble on about how many $20/hr jobs you bankroll and tell me all about their benefits packages. If you're doing this, you obviously have a nice cushy Soylandra type Obamajagoff contract.
Wonder how they went out of business.
Ah and so the conservative soul is revealed, no I did not make my money creating 20$/hr jobs, I did it making million dollar a day decisions, but I was born with certain natural talents, like a basketball player, so I don’t expect everyone to follow my path, each has their own. This is just a hobby, my real talent lies in numbers, and it’s just math, if we keep pumping more and more money into fewer and fewer hands something going to break. I’m open as to how we stop that flow and pull the money in the other direction, but if we don’t do something America’s going to break and that’s not politics that’s math.