131–140 of 151 posts
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Wealth isn't zero sum. Creating something of value doesn't take anything away from anyone else.
>Wealth isn't zero sum. It is sometimes. The profits "earned" by Wall Street are nearly always zero sum, for instance. They are not making other people richer.
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You can't divide market capitalization by number of employees and compare that with "yearly" salary figure. A better comparison would be to divide revenue by number of employees.
At least explain why this is not a good first-order comparison.
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I have now and I fail to make a connection to the argument that I was making. Could you elaborate in which way you think it's applicable? My argument was that the non-regulatory/voluntary solution would be for customers to demand from manufacturers/sellers to provide nutritional data, else they'd contact/buy from another manufacturer/seller.
> But isn't the non-regulatory solution here to just not buy products > without nutritional data if so? The point is the consumer does not have as much power as you think. Because consumers act as individuals and not as a group (prisoners dilemma etc.), consumers do not nearly have as much information as the seller, for a consumer the particular issues is one of millions he's supposed to take care of (save the rain f…
I unfortunately don't see how that changes anything I've said. My only contribution was to offer a supposedly non-regulatory solution could be, I have put no value in if it's a good or bad solution.
Given your feedback, I take it that you do not consider it to be a good solution - that is fine.
To discuss your feedback, I do agree that there can be and often are information shortages on both the buying and selling side, although we do seem to disagree on the influence individual and group choices (ie. power) can have or have, where I think they're more powerful and influential than what you might think. When it comes to group choices, there have been many successful purchasing associations and voluntary certification organizations through time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Wealth isn't zero sum. It is sometimes. The profits "earned" by Wall Street are nearly always zero sum, for instance. They are not making other people richer.
Free market transactions are not zero-sum because each party feels they gain by making the trade (else they would not trade). Zero sum transactions are things like theft, any transaction with an unwilling party.
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At least explain why this is not a good first-order comparison.
You are going to have high market cap per employee in asset rich companies like oil producers and REITs. The value in those cases is primarily the mineral and real estate assets, not the employees, so tying salaries to it doesn't make a lot of sense.
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The difference is that the autoworkers were organized and used collective bargaining to capture more value.
And what a mixed blessing that turned out to be. On the one hand, we had a few decades of unprecedented sharing of prosperity. Those times have ended. On the other hand, the unions have become their own sclerotic system of oppression. The greater pity, they do not see it that way. Especially once all this “deregulation” has finished. Actually, it was not deregulation, but divestiture of public services to the plutocr…
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Gvien the forum we're on, it's worth pointing out that today's white collar laborers are capturing one or two orders of magnitude less of the value they're creating than the blue collar workers of 1990's detroit. 360 billion* divided by 1.2 million = 300000 "per employee". Typical salary to 40,000ish-100,00ish range for laborers/engineers. The disparity in those numbers isn't so bad at all. Conversely, 1 trillion div…
You can't divide market capitalization by number of employees and compare that with "yearly" salary figure. A better comparison would be to divide revenue by number of employees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gvien the forum we're on, it's worth pointing out that today's white collar laborers are capturing one or two orders of magnitude less of the value they're creating than the blue collar workers of 1990's detroit. 360 billion* divided by 1.2 million = 300000 "per employee". Typical salary to 40,000ish-100,00ish range for laborers/engineers. The disparity in those numbers isn't so bad at all. Conversely, 1 trillion div…
Not only that, but in US salaried status is routinely used to avoid paying overtime, when overtime is a tacit requirement of many jobs.
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This argument doesn't make any sense to me. Neither Google or Facebook or Apple have been using cheap loans to fuel growth. They have more cash flow from operations than they know what to do with, they don't need loans.
They also can't borrow at negative real interest rates. Only some governments can. And you can't blame the governments for low interest rates. At least in the medium term, interest rates are mostly set by the market, supply and demand for loans. There's not a lot of demand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what a mixed blessing that turned out to be. On the one hand, we had a few decades of unprecedented sharing of prosperity. Those times have ended. On the other hand, the unions have become their own sclerotic system of oppression. The greater pity, they do not see it that way. Especially once all this “deregulation” has finished. Actually, it was not deregulation, but divestiture of public services to the plutocr…
The private sector unionization rate is around 6.7% in the US so, despite whatever issues unions may have presented in the past, they are certainly not the primary cause of any of our current economic issues.
Whether it’s teacher unions that make sure teachers can’t get promoted for their quality, or construction unions that make sure housing can’t be built without protracted negotiations and significant expense, or transportation unions that make sure automated subways always have an operator, multiple operators in New York, or dockworker unions that oppose new technology on the (correct) assumption that they would lose jobs. Union opposition to technology was one reason why the Port of San Francisco no longer is a major shipping port; rather than some losing their jobs, everybody lost their jobs.
It’s nice if labor can partner with capital. In practice, it’s often more like a squabble for scarce resources. Sometimes you have to accept that a role is no longer necessary, but that idea doesn’t fit the union ideology.