Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 224 posts

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

#81

Post by imtringued »

BurningFrog wrote: post #23
ianai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're fully in the "see what little you can pay someone to get them to do a job" optimization mode. The marginal cost=marginal benefit argument doesn't seem to apply anywhere. On the contrary, if you're actively making something (burgers, computers) then you're usually not paid enough to actually consume those things on a regular schedule. I think that's a symptom of an emergent caste system.

So each Boeing worker should be able to buy their own 787 Dreamliner in any fair society?

If a single worker is capable of making an entire 787 in a single year then why not?

If they are getting paid less than a 787 that just means they aren't producing entire 787s, they are producing parts of a 787.

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

#82

Post by intended »

BurningFrog wrote: post #43
WaxProlix wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that to be a reasonable, charitable interpretation of what OP said?

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…

Ok, so a worker makes a part of a plane - not the whole plane. Should the group of workers be able to buy the whole plane?

I don't see the substantial and valid point in your rebuttal. Care to elucidate in the spirit of the original point?

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

#83

Post by pfisch »

hectormalot wrote: post #76
pfisch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are different ways to do that by redefining the way bankruptcy works. E.g. Personal bankruptcy could result in 2-3 years of handing over most of your income to the state (which distributes across the original loan providers), expect any major assets to be liquidated (e.g. Your house), before you're considered debt free.

If you just graduated from college with no money and debt how could you have a house? Also that is currently how bankruptcy works anyway.

>Personal bankruptcy could result in 2-3 years of handing over most of your income to the state (which distributes across the original loan providers)

That is even worse than how bankruptcy works right now for most debts. There already is loan forgiveness after so many years for student loans.

Also even if they did offer some faster path to discharging student debt the interest rate on the loans would go up to handle the increased loss from defaults. That would not really make the situation better either.

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

#84

Post by jldugger »

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?

Leaving aside the fact that many engineers are sharedholders, or bonus structures based on company performance, it's more a metric of the ceiling these companies have for increased wages. Obviously there's a risk premium that shareholders should be compensated for, but at the same time, Google has more or less explicitly structured themselves around their reliable profit stream with no obvious place to reinvest the profits. Those Other Bets are essentially all funded through Google's ad network profits.

Obviously my simple model has pitfalls, but it's fairly apparent that, absent an illegal covenant preventing it, there would have been more upward pressure on wages in SV. The economic principle of wages tied to productivity has gone off the rails recently, and the investor entitlement you've demonstrated seems to be part of the problem.

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

#85

Post by pmiller2 »

gaius wrote: post #79
BurningFrog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So each Boeing worker should be able to buy their own 787 Dreamliner in any fair society?

Workers should certainly be able to afford to fly for leisure, yes. Many can now, whereas not that long ago only the "jet set" could afford to.

I'm not so sure most people can fly for leisure. Setting aside the miseries of air travel, and whether it constitutes "leisure" or not, according to an AP-NORC[0] survey, 43% of Americans were not vacationing this past summer, and, of them, 49% cite cost as the main reason. Only 12% of non-vacationers said they weren't vacationing in the summer because they were planning on taking a vacation another time of year. Putting that all together, 38% of Americans say they simply can't take a vacation for such reasons as cost, and "can't get time off."

Given our culture of consumer debt, this doesn't speak to whether people can afford to vacation, just whether they intend to do so or not. And, it doesn't really break down flying vs other modes of travel to vacation destinations. Nonetheless, I think this suggests that "many" people, in fact, cannot "afford" to fly for leisure.

[0]: http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/Americans-Plans-for-Sum...

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

#86

Post by xiler »

burntrelish1273 wrote: post #28

Richard Wolff has also been evangelizing co-ops and worker-owned businesses for some time. http://www.rdwolff.com/faq_worker_coops_wdes https://youtu.be/urCy3UOGgx8

In the current economy I feel co-ops are bit too radical to remedy the imbalances of power within large businesses (where it really matters). We might need something less aggressive like the widespread promotion of Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPs) as a start [1]. Also co-ops might come across to business people as something along the lines of "loony-leftist Marxist idealism". Instead one can speak their language by saying things like "decentralizing planning" and "capitalism where everyone is a capitalist" and show how there is indeed common ground. An excellent example of this is The Capitalist Manifesto by Luis Kelso [2] (the creator of ESOPs).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_ownership_plan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capitalist_Manifesto

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

#87

Post by uoaei »

jessaustin wrote: post #42
ChristianBundy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please take your capitalist apologia somewhere else.

Is that ("empowering" "individual citizens") what capitalism does? That doesn't completely conform to my experience...

The super-OP reeks of the common refrain, that

>If only there were less regulation on the market, the small man would be able to make and retain all those profits he works so hard for!

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

#88

Post by yorwba »

mirimir wrote: post #48
ryandrake wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is from a while ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were still true: 19% of Americans think they are in the top 1% and 20% more expect to be one day [1]. So a full 39% of Americans either suck at math or actually believe that by rewarding wealthy capitalists they are actually rewarding themselves! 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...

That is funny :) Maybe ~20% of Americans are well-enough off that they feel wealthy. But they have no clue what real wealth is. And indeed, in day-to-day life, it's pretty much invisible. Edit: Gotta quote this: > All of this adds up to a terrain incredibly inhospitable to class-based politics. Every few years a group of millionaire Democratic presidential aspirants pretends to be the people's warriors against the ov…

> But they have no clue what real wealth is.

I think measuring "real wealth" by some relative metric like "top 1%" is misguided. To me, being wealthy means being able to live a comfortable life without worrying about your next paycheck.

I'm from Germany, but studying in China on a scholarship. The 1000 euros per month I get wouldn't put me among the German 1%, but in a country with a lower cost of living, I spend only half of what I get. When the scholarship runs out next month, I have a year of runway at my current spending level. That's wealthy enough for me.

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

#89

Post by yorwba »

ekianjo wrote: post #66
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…

Let's not forget that unions can also become detrimental to employees' working environment. In France unions are very powerful and unionists when going on strike, prevent non-unionists from working, and retaliate against folks who do not agree with their agenda - this goes against individual employee freedom and becomes another form of coercion. And unionists, no matter how piss poor a job they do, can never be fired…

> And unionists, no matter how piss poor a job they do, can never be fired (in theory they can, but in practice it never happens).

Do you mean union leaders or regular members? Because if it's the latter, then you have a counterexample in every 100% unionized company that ever fired anyone.

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

#90

Post by closeparen »

mirimir wrote: post #34

> The central issue in American politics is the economic security of the middle class and their sense of opportunity for their children. Maybe for Mr. Summers, it is. And maybe as well, for liberals generally. But there are at least a couple problems. First, many Americans are apparently convinced that some other issue is central in American politics. Maybe it's threats from foreigners. Or from Satan, or some proxy o…

You have also left out an interesting third group, who are interested in the welfare of the poor, and believe the middle class have gotten far too much airtime and are basically the same as the super-rich with respect to the poor's concerns.

These folks don't come out much on a national level, but are prevalent in urban housing debates, defending the poor and rich alike against the (upper) middle class.

Post reply on HN