601–610 of 721 posts
We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.
Labor and capital are on the same side, they are both producers of wealth. You are barking at the wrong tree.
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> Well now you're conflating extreme poverty with poverty. There are millions of people living in poverty in the united states. And you don't really need someone to be in complete poverty to exploit them. After extreme poverty ends, you get poverty to uplift and so on. > Also, the direction currently is towards stagnating wages and growing wealth inequality. The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated o…
> The problem with such nice catchphrases that are repeated over and over by interest groups is that they are inaccurate, and often end up advocating for even higher inequality. What specifically is an "inaccurate catchphrase" in what I've said?
Smartphones, safer cars, cheaper travelling. Have to be very careful to look only at nominal bills to make economic judgement.
And maybe the most problematic and expensive things americans suffer generationally, housing and healthcare, are the defacto most intervened and regulated markets of all. It is the state, in its magnificent regulatory capture, that its pushing poverty unto people.
Also inequality has always been a topic of conversation, what is new is income inequality, and its still an open problem, not something there is economic consensus about. There are other things that have economic consensus, for example, getting rid of corporate taxes. But you dont hear that coming from "high inequality and stagnant wages" guys.
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Informed consent to piss in bottles to meet impossible quotas, or die from starvation. Good choice.
If their next best option to working at an Amazon warehouse is starvation, then it's a pretty good thing for them that Amazon has a warehouse there. That said, I strongly suspect they have better "next best" options.
Have some fucking empathy.
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But I do already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k. That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like. What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots. This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever movi…
Around 80% of stock is owned by the top 10% wealthiest individuals[1]. More recent work[2] puts the percentage even higher. You might own some of the robots but most people don't. [1]: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2012/webprogram/ExtendedAbstr... [2]: http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric...
And its also not given that such a money, well gotten, has been produced by giving something in exchange, so it has removed tat money from less inefficient hands. It was still owned by someone, just changed hands.
Bastiat was right about something, using money as a measure of economics is just an invitation to confusion.
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I know honest people with felony convictions. Do you think a marijuana smoker can't be honest? I'm not arguing morality, I'm arguing reality. Just like a stock broker would be a fool to expect rationality in the markets, so too would a government be foolish to expect everyone to fall in line when the screws start to turn. If you grow up a black kid on a street in Atlanta, and you watch your friends get snatched up by…
I guess by honest I meant "law abiding". Obviously someone that committed and was convicted of a felony does not qualify. From your example, it sounds like the real issue would be behavior from law enforcement / public officials that encourages criminality. The issue there is not "no food stamps". It's a bad system. Fix the system that you think is broken, and then you won't need food stamps, no?
Another note, I think it's dangerous to simply conflate "law abiding" with "honest." The system that creates and upholds the laws is simply too flawed to allow it to be considered 1:1 with the country's moral code. See: rich people getting away with sexual assault for ages, the useless "war on drugs," illegal and immoral activity by federal agency followed by the persecution of whistle blowers exposing that activity, etc etc etc.
A system of laws is necessary, but not necessarily good. It should always be questioned and evolving.
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That's a poor argument. I've gotten offers from many tech giants. They all included a sign-on cash bonus. Often much bigger than Amazon's. Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Sometimes more. Amazon SWEs still earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. So being treated poorly and paid less is relative. In Amazon's defense, I have friends who enjoy working there. The MBAs especially love it. Again, it's not…
> Amazon's total offer was usually about 100k lower. Come on, that's so misleading. Offers from the big tech companies come in 4 year bundles. There's no way your offer was $100k per year lower unless you didn't get leveled the same at Amazon as you did Google. I got an offer from Google in Mountain View and despite being CONSIDERABLY higher, the COL difference made Amazon's pay higher. And that assumed stock prices…
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> I look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :) It does. Capital evaporates in risky endeavors all the time. It rusts by itself as well. Sure interests arent perfectly aligned, but fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance. Meanwhile, landowners see all that from afar, evict people into the streets, and those same people go pay taxes to get their food. Capital is not t…
Ahahah, so that's why capital called in the cops to kill members of the first labor unions in America, out of brother hood?
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Labor and capital are on the same side, they are both producers of wealth. You are barking at the wrong tree.
If that is true then it would also be true that a slave and their master are on the same side.
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Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…
FWIW: I think Amazon's stock vesting schedule for ICs is reasonable considering the sizable hiring bonus (iirc ~$20k for new graduates). Stock grants are intended to reflect an employee's ownership in the company, and rapidly increase with tenure. That said... Amazon is definitely not human-oriented. Leadership within established business units is brutally efficient, with far too much faith in their metric goals. Ask…