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Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

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Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#231

Post by gher-shyu3i »

imtringued wrote: post #206
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you point out is definitely true, a very important cause of the wealth gap in todays world that barely anyone talks about is the accepted engagement in lending money with interest (i.e. usury). It's heavily built in to the society today. It's not for no reason that this practices (along with derivative practices) is prohibited in the major 3 religions.

A lot of companies (and the jobs those companies created) were built on top of that usury and the workers who lent out their money were even compensated for that!

That doesn't justify the immorality of engaging in usury, it's like saying whaling is banned, but there are people who need to feed their families - we already know that.

A superior and not immoral model is investing in said companies, so if they succeed both the investors and company owners profit, otherwise they both lose. It's proper risk sharing.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#232

Post by Tade0 »

krapp wrote: post #230
imtringued wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this robot called Marty whose reason for existence I still have to discover. I thought it was a roomba style robot but with a camera for navigation. Turns out it does nothing except make the messes it reports to staff even worse.

According to a Twitter post I can no longer track down, those robots exist primarily to shield stores from lawsuits over spillage.

So it's basically a high-tech equivalent of "CAUTION WET FLOOR"?

Amazing.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#233

Post by sendbitcoins »

speedplane wrote: post #138
f6v wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people.

Guns germs steel! Read the book.

Its also a 3-part PBC documentary. I think the Catholic monasteries also played a role, but that's not integrated into his thesis.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#234

Post by rdiddly »

Udik wrote: post #140
rdiddly wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that Joe is rich while Bob is poor. Joe is rich because Bob is poor. And vice versa. It can't be any other way. Grasp that and you've got the whole thing. Sure, focus on living standards and opportunity, but those are just two more metrics that illustrate the same inequality.

> Joe is rich because Bob is poor. And vice versa. Grasp that and you've got the whole thing. Well, why should I grasp that? Just prove it's true and I'll be convinced. But I bet you can't prove it, and you just feel it must be like that. Edit: happy to be proved wrong. Make an effort.

Say n = 3. You've got 3 people, all of whom are equally wealthy. Now make one of them richer. The other two are now poor. They weren't before, but now they are, by comparison if nothing else. It's a wealth distribution. You can't have an upper end without a lower end. Notice I'm not even insisting that the rich guy gets his wealth from the other two, but if he did, then the two are literally poorer as well.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#235

Post by Udik »

rdiddly wrote: post #234
Udik wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Joe is rich because Bob is poor. And vice versa. Grasp that and you've got the whole thing. Well, why should I grasp that? Just prove it's true and I'll be convinced. But I bet you can't prove it, and you just feel it must be like that. Edit: happy to be proved wrong. Make an effort.

Say n = 3. You've got 3 people, all of whom are equally wealthy. Now make one of them richer. The other two are now poor. They weren't before, but now they are, by comparison if nothing else. It's a wealth distribution. You can't have an upper end without a lower end. Notice I'm not even insisting that the rich guy gets his wealth from the other two, but if he did, then the two are literally poorer as well.

Good point, I agree with the basic principle. But in your example you made 33% of the population richer. If you made richer a single person out of 1 million, would the other 999999 be equally poor as in your previous example? I'd say they wouldn't, because the overwhelming majority of those they interacted with would still be as wealthy as themselves. They might even never cross paths with the richer one. So yes, slightly poorer but almost imperceptibly so.

Anyway, the clickbait title seems to imply some (inverse) connection between the two figures- minimum wage and Wall Street bonuses. Yes the bonuses have grown dramatically, and yes there can be something wrong in the fact that minimum wages are so low; but trying to create a connection between the two is moral blackmail.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#236

Post by simonsarris »

bawolff wrote: post #79
stretchwithme wrote: post #64

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap. People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts. But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

What's "no technology", because ancient rome was full of giant wealth gaps. Maybe if you mean hunter-gatherer societies, but i don't really know enough about them to comment.

Andrew Carnegie noted that the richest men in 1850's America were barely rich by the standards of the 1890, because of the technological changes and industries created, which minted huge fortunes.

Similar huge fortunes are made any time more technology breaks out and scales better. That's what he means.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#237

Post by stretchwithme »

bawolff wrote: post #79
stretchwithme wrote: post #64

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap. People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts. But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

What's "no technology", because ancient rome was full of giant wealth gaps. Maybe if you mean hunter-gatherer societies, but i don't really know enough about them to comment.

Being able to force other people to do things is a way of multiplying your efforts. And we still HIRE people and delegate tasks to them.

And, as Melting_Harps pointed out, weapons are a technology. And so is communication and methods of organizing a larger society.

Storing grain is a technology too. Even agriculture is a technology.

But now we have many more ways to do this. If I write an app and millions install and use it, I am multiplying the amount of work I can get done for people and what they are willing to pay for it.

Much better for them than threatening them with my army. Especially since I have been unable to find it. :-)

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#238

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

skywal_l wrote: post #20
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, without standing on one side or the other, humans typically do have tools to attempt to predict potential outcomes. For example, you normally would not put a fork into a socket while telling me you can't decide what to do without doing it. I am not saying analogy is applicable here, but there are some studies suggesting simply 'raising' minimum wage will not work the way some proponents argue.

Humans have predicted inflation for years (decades) due to increase in money supply. So human can be wrong sometimes...

Sure. There is no denying that. I will only add that the predictions I think you are referring to never made it beyond numbers on a sheet ( bond buying and the like ). Supply increased, economy was stabilized, but money touched main street directly.

Still, your main point is valid.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#240

Post by candybar »

The minimum wage hasn't kept up with other things (it feels to me that it should be $15-$25) and the overall trend of inequality is undeniable (the very top, both in terms of wealth and income, have done much better than the median person, who in turn has done much better than those near the bottom) but comparing minimum wage to bonus is highly misleading, as Wall Street comp has moved increasingly to a bonus-heavy structure, which means bonuses have grown much faster than salaries. And this is just an incredibly misleading way to frame this:

> But those paydays have been skyrocketing for decades. Since 1985, Wall Street traders' bonuses have grown 1,217% - and that's just part of their overall pay, which was more than $406,000 on average in 2019, according to data from DiNapoli's office.

There's insinuation here that bonuses have grown 1,217% and since that's just part of the pay, Wall Street employees did even better than what's implied by the growth rate But that's just bad math - the salary had to also grow by the same rate in order for the overall pay to have the same growth rate. I don't have this data but they probably do and it's unlikely that they would've cherry-picked the bonus data if the salaries show the same trend.

Also, given the increase in automation and outsourcing of non-critical functions to less expensive areas (even moving back office functions to New Jersey would contribute to the trend), it's likely that there are fewer low-paying jobs on Wall Street as compared to the past. For instance, if you look at the source data linked to in the article:

https://www.osc.state.ny.us/files/press/pdf/wall-street-bonu...

The total amount grew by less than the amount per person from 1985 to 2011 (despite Wall Street being a much bigger part of the economy that employs far more people) and this means the sample in 2011 is likely biased towards a more elite subset of finance professionals.

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