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It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

washingtonpost.com

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Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#51

Post by ergothus »

pfisch wrote: post #50
mjevans wrote: post #30

Things that could actually be done to make for a more level playing field: * 'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) * Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy * Have the government complete as (several) providers in all 'basics'. The last one includes (some of these are already utilities): * Water * Sewer * Power * Transport (of all kinds, including last mile data) * Housing / org…

> Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy Credit would dry up overnight and interest rates would go through the roof on many loans. Also why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions? >'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) We are about to have net neutrality repealed over the objection of everyone except ISPs basically. Medicare isn't even allowed to negotiat…

> why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions?

Are you saying that it's not possible to offer profitable rates on student loans that could be forgiven in bankruptcy like other debts are? If so, how is that not saying the same thing as "to fund the education of the successful requires perpetual funding from the unsuccessful"?

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#52

Post by tjr225 »

ianai wrote: post #46
BurningFrog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe OP repeated a good sounding slogan ("workers should be able to buy the things they produce!") they had heard, without having spent any thought to what it would mean in reality. My example is meant to show that principle is absurd, not that OP actually believes in that consequence. I admit the point could have been delivered friendlier. As for charitability, we are all prone to agree to what fits with what w…

That's not how I perceived your comment. You took the statement and came up with another statement and claimed it was a logical extension of the first. But it was not faithful to the original statement. Nor was that my only point. You essentially found a logical exploit and dumped the rest of my meaning. That's violent.

Agreed

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#53

Post by mjevans »

pfisch wrote: post #50
mjevans wrote: post #30

Things that could actually be done to make for a more level playing field: * 'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) * Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy * Have the government complete as (several) providers in all 'basics'. The last one includes (some of these are already utilities): * Water * Sewer * Power * Transport (of all kinds, including last mile data) * Housing / org…

> Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy Credit would dry up overnight and interest rates would go through the roof on many loans. Also why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions? >'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) We are about to have net neutrality repealed over the objection of everyone except ISPs basically. Medicare isn't even allowed to negotiat…

Student loans wouldn't be required for an education since the government would be competing with private entities, at least for fields of training that the government felt were useful for society.

For medical care, no, I don't mean the current broken compromise and comparing the regulatory environment in other nations to our own is insanity. I meant what I said in the /government/ providing a market baseline. If we have to start out with massively expanding military medicine and educating doctors that want to serve in the military for a bit (and be paid normal wage for that) for no extra charge then that's where we go.

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#55

Post by maxxxxx »

hueving wrote: post #44
jldugger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have companies that are losing money paying their engineers six-digit salaries. I assume that's a tactical decision on their part to bootstrap a new company. A brief analysis I did a few months ago suggests that six digit salaries aren't bankrupting established companies. The largest SV employers could arguably double or triple engineer salaries without dipping into negative salary territory: Facebook Employees:…

Where are people getting the notion that engineers should be paid whatever the current profit per engineer is? Engineers are not shareholders. You can't have it both ways where employees get to take all of the upside of a business without all of the risks of being an investor. When IBM has a bad year, would you be okay with clawing back all of the salary paid out that year?

Employees take on a lot of risk. They risk being laid off and they have to put all their eggs in one basket. They also risk damage to their career if their company assigns to them work that doesn't look good on resume. In my view investors have less risk.

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#56

Post by jellicle »

pfisch wrote: post #50
mjevans wrote: post #30

Things that could actually be done to make for a more level playing field: * 'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) * Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy * Have the government complete as (several) providers in all 'basics'. The last one includes (some of these are already utilities): * Water * Sewer * Power * Transport (of all kinds, including last mile data) * Housing / org…

> Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy Credit would dry up overnight and interest rates would go through the roof on many loans. Also why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions? >'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) We are about to have net neutrality repealed over the objection of everyone except ISPs basically. Medicare isn't even allowed to negotiat…

> Credit would dry up overnight and interest rates would go through the roof on many loans.

That's a silly thing to say. Will the Moon fall down too?

> Also why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions?

Probably profit. Don't you think? Isn't that usually why loans are made? You understand that this is a recent change to the law (1998) and prior to that, student loans still existed and worked fine?

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#57

Post by humanrebar »

hueving wrote: post #44
jldugger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have companies that are losing money paying their engineers six-digit salaries. I assume that's a tactical decision on their part to bootstrap a new company. A brief analysis I did a few months ago suggests that six digit salaries aren't bankrupting established companies. The largest SV employers could arguably double or triple engineer salaries without dipping into negative salary territory: Facebook Employees:…

Where are people getting the notion that engineers should be paid whatever the current profit per engineer is? Engineers are not shareholders. You can't have it both ways where employees get to take all of the upside of a business without all of the risks of being an investor. When IBM has a bad year, would you be okay with clawing back all of the salary paid out that year?

It's a bit muddier with technology workers, though. Engineers do invest in their employers, by specializing in the relevant tech stack. To the extent that the employer uses a marketable and generally useful tech stack, that's not saying much, but if you specialize in some legacy garbage processes and systems it could be a net negative on your career prospects. Likewise if your employer wants you to repeat the same year of experience over and over without any realistic advancement prospects.

The risk being that you are a proficient line employee for BigCo maintaining their systems written in BigCoLang and then you have a hard time getting a similarly paying gig after you're laid off. And nobody else uses BigCoLang.

Sure, we can argue that talented engineers can retrain, but I don't see many weak senior engineer candidates being offered junior engineering positions so they can bone up on a new tech stack. Typically they just say "technically weak" or "not a good fit" and interview the next candidate.

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#58

Post by School-Cotton »

hueving wrote: post #44
jldugger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have companies that are losing money paying their engineers six-digit salaries. I assume that's a tactical decision on their part to bootstrap a new company. A brief analysis I did a few months ago suggests that six digit salaries aren't bankrupting established companies. The largest SV employers could arguably double or triple engineer salaries without dipping into negative salary territory: Facebook Employees:…

Where are people getting the notion that engineers should be paid whatever the current profit per engineer is? Engineers are not shareholders. You can't have it both ways where employees get to take all of the upside of a business without all of the risks of being an investor. When IBM has a bad year, would you be okay with clawing back all of the salary paid out that year?

To add to your point, it's also not linear -- maybe the first 100 MS employees are responsible for half the value and the next ~100,000 are responsible for the other half.

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#59

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #49

Union, Yes. The US has weak unions because labor law enforcement is so weak. No administration has done much about that in decades. 11% of US employees belong to a union. 32% in Canada. Read "Confessions of a Union Buster" for background. In theory, whether to organize a union in the US is entirely up to the workers. The employer has no say in the matter. Few people even know that. Employers try hard to maintain that…

[deleted]

Re: It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers

#60

Post by pfisch »

ergothus wrote: post #51
pfisch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allow all kinds of debt to be discharged via bankrupcy Credit would dry up overnight and interest rates would go through the roof on many loans. Also why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions? >'Single Payer' healthcare (tax everyone for basic healthcare) We are about to have net neutrality repealed over the objection of everyone except ISPs basically. Medicare isn't even allowed to negotiat…

> why would anyone ever offer a student loan under these conditions? Are you saying that it's not possible to offer profitable rates on student loans that could be forgiven in bankruptcy like other debts are? If so, how is that not saying the same thing as "to fund the education of the successful requires perpetual funding from the unsuccessful"?

I'm saying why would you extend a massive loan to someone who is broke, has no credit, and can immediately discharge the debt. They could and many of them would immediately discharge the entire balance of the loan upon graduation by declaring bankruptcy.

They don't offer 40k+ loans to people with no credit at any rate.

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