141–150 of 280 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you cite some evidence for this? My guess is that it breaks down much more on a coastal/inland basis than a liberal/conservative one.
Austin and San Antonio is an informative comparison. They're both inland cities, but Austin has placed significantly more liberal policy into practice. They have problems with spiking rent.
While I have no idea whether this will work (or if it's a good idea), the most interesting part of all of this, to me, is the backlash from people calling it "unbridled Socialism." I'm still not sure how a CEO of a profitable company electing to pay his employees more becomes a political debate. If it fails, perhaps it's a failed experiment in Capitalism? It's not like anyone is forcing the business owner to do this.…
From the article, it sounds like his business had a host of employees below and above that threshold, and the ones above felt resentful and unappreciated, with some people quitting. Remains to be seen if it will have any effect on the business, but it's the people above that level that tend to do non-trivial work, and are harder to train and replace.
Curious. The status quo is inherently political. There is already a heavy political stance built into the structures of the workplace.
(edit: see Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll try to explain. People call it socialism because a starting salary of 70k is likely to be uneconomic. Ie the cost of the employee is set above their value to the company. This is done at the expense of other stakeholders (ie management and investors, possibly other employees who would be paid less). That's kinda the basic premise of socialism - whereby an employee's salary is dissociated from the economic benefi…
I think the reason people are upset when this is called socialism is because those same people saying "you are paying those people more than they are worth!" don't call it socialism when other people are paid way more than the value of what they contribute to the company (CEOs of failing companies making millions, board members who don't do anything, etc).
Am I crazy for thinking it seems naive to not anticipate that current employees may not take kindly to people who earn half as much as them getting bumped up to their salaries?
I know what you're saying, but I've never understood this logic personally. How does someone else earning more money hurt you? It's not like a person doing better than you is taking your money.
All else being equal, people were happier earning $70,000 knowing that their peers earned $50,000, and unhappier earning $90,000 knowing that their peers earned $110,000.
I am likely wrong on exact numbers, but studies are well-known enough to be quoted in "Fooled by Randomness", "Predictably Irrational" and some other pop-psych titles.
Do you know what happens when Paul McCartney gives to charity and charity leaks his name? He cancels the donation. That's how you do good deeds when you genuinely want to help people and not pull a little PR on a side. If this guy wanted to help his under-40K employees, there were multiple ways to do it (a) quietly (b) without pissing off other people who worked for him. I don't know if it's a poorly throught through…
He may or may not be right, but if shaking things up even outside his company was the intended effect, mission accomplished.
I think this is half the problem for the backlash: "“What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so much?” Ms. Brajcich said they asked." It relies on the assumption that the only motivation people would have to work, is that they will be homeless if they don't. I think the idea that you can work towards something bigger than you is a foreign concept to the majority of people.
Do you know what happens when Paul McCartney gives to charity and charity leaks his name? He cancels the donation. That's how you do good deeds when you genuinely want to help people and not pull a little PR on a side. If this guy wanted to help his under-40K employees, there were multiple ways to do it (a) quietly (b) without pissing off other people who worked for him. I don't know if it's a poorly throught through…
This is ridiculous. Any change in pay structure is going to cause someone to get the short end. Who doesn't want more money? Who doesn't have getting less? One thing's for certain: there's a whole bunch of people who are butthurt about lower class people getting more money. Wonder what that reflects about them...
I think this is half the problem for the backlash: "“What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so much?” Ms. Brajcich said they asked." It relies on the assumption that the only motivation people would have to work, is that they will be homeless if they don't. I think the idea that you can work towards something bigger than you is a foreign concept to the majority of people.
If you are being overpaid (in some sense), you might work harder than before because you have more to lose if you get fired. Any alternative job would most likely come with lower pay.
Several employees who stayed, while exhilarated by the
raises, say they now feel a lot of pressure. “Am I doing
my job well enough to deserve this?” said Stephanie Brooks,
23, who joined Gravity as an administrative assistant two
months before the wage increase. “I didn’t earn it.”