The 99 percent • Hacker News Board

Re: The 99 percent

#131

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:27 PM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #64

veyron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Suffice to say, there were/are pros and cons to having a specialist." Let's not go there. Specialists were accused of favoritism: filling orders that certain traders submitted and ignoring requests from other traders. More generally, the advancements, both in technology and in pricing, actually helped everyone. SOES (small order entry system) helped smaller traders to quickly trade. Decimalization really helped redu…

yes and sophisticated HFT systems screw large funds from moving into and out of positions with relative ease/fairness. This cuts both ways, thus pros and cons. At least with a specialist, everyone was relatively even in that regard. Now, measuring the distance to the server in micro-seconds of fiberoptic wires, I can literally create an unfair system by owning the closest supercomputer. I disagree with your point and…

yes and sophisticated HFT systems screw large funds from moving into and out of positions with relative ease/fairness.

Fact: when you make a large trade, there is a price impact. I.e., if you sell lots of GOOG, the price goes down.

Once upon a time, large funds could use their own sophisticated algorithms to make sure their unsophisticated counterparties feel the price impact. I.e., the big fund disguises their intent, Joe IRA buys from the large fund, and then the price goes down after Joe already owns the stock.

Nowadays, HFT makes the price impact happen immediately, typically splitting the difference with Joe [1].

Why is this worse?

[1] The HFT's try to outbid the large fund in order get ahead of it, resulting in Joe getting a better price.

Re: The 99 percent

#132

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #67

Here's why the rich get richer: because the 99% produce too damn much. Consumerism worked for a while to keep things even, but we've reached a plateau. People can only buy so much crap. But we're more productive now than ever [1]. So where does all that extra money go? The people at the top take it. CEOs don't give their employees raises, and pocket the rest. Bankers play games with your excess money you've dumped in…

Necessarily will likely be a short-term (5-year or less) exemption from these policies for small business owners (defined as those whose executives take home in salary + bonuses less than some threshold, say $200k).

E.g., small businesses like Apple and Google.

Re: The 99 percent

#133

Post by nandemo » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:38 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #77

suivix wrote: post #53

Perhaps it is necessary for the 1% to have huge sums of money and income compared to the rest in a flourishing economy. For one, it means they can spearhead the direction of capital. If you look at the graphs, everyone is doing better. It also leaves out many products that you can get now for less money or with more features. Everyone uses the same iPhones, college students and the rich. There is not an inherent prob…

The problem is that the staples are rising in cost (healthcare, housing, food), while middle class salaries aren't keeping pace. It's called the middle class squeeze . It's real and has been happening in North America for a while now. I don't use an iPhone myself by the way. The smartphone plans are ridiculously expensive here in Canada. Any middle class family bearing iPhones are making other non-trivial sacrifices…

The graph in the article says otherwise: inflation-adjusted income for all groups has been rising.

Re: The 99 percent

#134

Post by nandemo » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:42 PM UTC

suivix wrote: post #53

Perhaps it is necessary for the 1% to have huge sums of money and income compared to the rest in a flourishing economy. For one, it means they can spearhead the direction of capital. If you look at the graphs, everyone is doing better. It also leaves out many products that you can get now for less money or with more features. Everyone uses the same iPhones, college students and the rich. There is not an inherent prob…

I'm a libertarian and also tend to think that economic inequality is not necessarily bad as long as no one is getting actively screwed, and everyone's economic situation is getting better. But there's data indicating that economic inequality is correlated with a lot of bad things:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

Re: The 99 percent

#135

Post by Jach » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #115

Jach wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with your point, but I want to ask a question: if you had the power to kill about 50,000 people of your choice, at the times you wanted, without any repercussions on you personally, do you think you could use this power to effect a much better world than we currently live in? Major choices that have huge consequences are increasingly being made by individuals, major choices that affect a lot of people…

>if you had the power to kill about 50,000 people of your choice, at the times you wanted What kind of question is that? No, I wouldn't want to harm anyone. You definitively can't make things better by killing people. You can make things better by letting people get to work and build their lives and families in peace. Kill anyone? I'm aghast at the way Gaddafi was treated, even though I thought he was an evil despot.

I ask it in the way those annoying moral dichotomy type of questions are asked. The goal is to see what you would actually do or believe, not to get your opinion why the situation would never happen or why the situation is Forbidden. I agree with you completely on the notion that killing people is wrong, I find it sick how he was killed and how his body was treated, however I recognize that, in the following toy scenario, killing is the optimal choice from the set of available choices {kill, do nothing}: an Oracle reveals to you that if you don't kill Mr. Bob within the next five minutes, 5 billion people are going to die; do you kill him?

Even Gandhi recognized the right outcome here, but I agree with him that in most real cases the set of choices usually contains something else, such as maiming or more generally "disabling" to include relatively harmless things like tackling. (Hence I still criticize soldiers who shoot-to-kill brainwashed and/or insane kids coming at them with a machete for not shooting them in the knees or somewhere easier to hit but less likely to kill.)

My original question is dependent on you believing that there exists some real situation where killing one or more people makes the world better, the classic (sorry to Godwin the topic) being to kill Hitler to save who knows how many lives (regardless of if the war still happened). Since you've said you don't believe that, I guess I got what I really wanted to know. I should have just framed it that way to begin with. I agree with you that too many people falsely believe they could fix things, I don't agree with you that a single person couldn't fix things given the right opportunities such as being able to kill the most damaging 50k people.

Re: The 99 percent

#136

Post by epscylonb » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:08 PM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #63

mchusma wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, You can read this graph in many ways, including that everyone has become more wealthy in a short period of time. Second, all of guilmarin's points: 1) Transparency - Only politicians would disagree with this. Good idea. 2) As other readers pointed out, this is a red herring, and would not solve anything. 3) This has the effect of killing the messenger, and there is a lot of evidence that derivatives are extrem…

I disagree with your second point. I think that making banks which do more than lending money to businesses/individuals into partnerships will do a lot of good. They won't stiff the US tax-payer with the bill by saying that they are too big to fail and that they risked US tax-payer deposits, as is the case of BofA. If a partnership wants to take big risks that's their decision. I'm suggesting to remove the moral haza…

Regarding the separation of investment banking from retail banking, I am strongly in favour of this.

However at the moment, investment banking subsidises retail banking quite significantly, if you change this then banks will start charging for retail accounts.

There are a couple of solutions to this, but they all basically come down to the same thing, someone has to pay for the retail banking. Either it comes directly from the customer as a periodic payment or it is funded by taxation, I suggest the later because arguably a retail bank account is a necessary part of modern life in the west and could be considered a utility.

I would personally like to see retail only banks that charge and are strongly regulated to avoid bailouts in the future.

Investment banks should be allowed to offer retail services, but they should be forced to make it clear to the customer that if their investment arm fails, there will be no bailout from the government and they could lose all their money.

Let the people who want to play roulette and let those that don't have an option too.

Sadly this kinda depends on their being enough consumers who don't want to play roulette.

Re: The 99 percent

#137

Post by danssig » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:36 PM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #2

Five points for the OWS guys. 1. Transparency. We need to see where every dollar of the US federal gov't is spent. It needs to be on the internet, and it needs to be easily accessable. An exception can be made for classified spending in specific, but not so categorically (IE we spend X on classified stuff). Additionally, just like there is a Surgeon's General Warning on cigarette packages, there needs to be a link on…

You have some good points here, but I tend to disagree with term limits. Things take time to fix. Terms are 2 to 4 years. That's not enough time for the effects of big changes to really show up.

Re: The 99 percent

#138

Post by colanderman » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:21 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #69

colanderman wrote: post #67

Here's why the rich get richer: because the 99% produce too damn much. Consumerism worked for a while to keep things even, but we've reached a plateau. People can only buy so much crap. But we're more productive now than ever [1]. So where does all that extra money go? The people at the top take it. CEOs don't give their employees raises, and pocket the rest. Bankers play games with your excess money you've dumped in…

Hoo boy are you wrong. You are so, so wrong. I was hoping you were being ironic, but apparently you're serious. Raising minimum wage and cutting working hours will drop productivity like a stone. You're effectively saying that all workers are equal, and interchangeable. You want to forcibly stop the more productive ones from working, so that their tasks and livelihoods can be given to others. In the case of a softwar…

So what do you think of the 40-hour workweek? Should we eliminate the concept of time-and-a-half pay for overtime?

> In the case of a software company you're introducing the twin evils of bad hires and oversized teams. For what? An inferior product produced at a higher price.

Software engineers are not hourly workers last time I checked.

> What are you going to do with someone who works more than 35 hours?

The same thing we do with people who work more than 40 hours now. Pay them overtime.

> I hope you're young and still learning, because if you're of any reasonable age, you should know better by now.

You sir are an asshole.

Re: The 99 percent

#139

Post by colanderman » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:23 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #114

nhaehnle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hoo boy are you wrong. > You are so, so wrong. ... > You've effectively described a blend of National Socialism and Stalinism. Hyperbole much? It saddens me to see this kind of nonsense on HN. Also, let me point out that your disagreement is not on the highest level of the disagreement scale. In particular, your parent brings up the very reasonable point that mankind introduced the two-day-weekend at some point dur…

The OP asks for control of wages and working hours. The plan is to use a simultaneous forced raising of wages and restrictions of working hours so that everyone can have a job. Apart from being unworkable and ridiculous, this is the starting point of a completely planned economy. Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but too many people sleepwalk into agreeing with this type of idea without thinking through the full consequence…

> The OP asks for control of wages and working hours.

So you're saying minimum wage and overtime are bad things? I'm not proposing new laws, just new numbers in existing laws.

Re: The 99 percent

#140

Post by colanderman » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 2:32 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #116

ctl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty strong reaction to a pretty mild proposal. You know that the US already has a minimum wage and a standard workweek, right? The parent is advocating increasing the minimum wage 20% and decreasing the standard workweek 12.5%. That's not Stalinism. Now, it's reasonable to point out that skilled laborers are basically fully employed right now, so the proposal would marginally reduce the supply of skilled…

It's not the mechanics of the price - it's the basic premise that you can fix things by forcing people to pay more for labour and to work less hours. A standard workweek of 40 hours is different to a maximum workweek of 35 hours. Put yourself in the position of a startup founder. You've got $x million of runway in your account. Now the government says your employees have to work less and you have to pay them more. Wh…

> Bottom line : people should stop trying to impose price controls on things, including labor. It has never worked, will never work and it frustrates me to see it being discussed.

You're right, this whole weekend thing sucks. Let's go back to the industrial revolution era and work 6-day 80-hour workweeks because that's what the market decides is the most productive. People who don't want to lose their free time can opt to work less and... oh wait, they'd be fired and be out of work. /sarcasm

This is why people organize... the labor movement is a natural product of a laissez-faire economy. Government exists to serve the people; i.e. the laborers. Hence, it makes sense for government to enforce labor policies.