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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

#211

Post by imtringued »

downandout wrote: post #108
onetimemanytime wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Taxpayers not only recouped everything from the 2008 bailouts, they actually earned a $15.3 billion profit. How is that “socializing their biggest failures”? Taxpayers should have behaved like hedge funds behave with one another...merciless. Want cash cause no one else loans to you? Sure, hand 95% of the business. The difference between what I said and $15.3 Billion is the gift.

The government is not a hedge fund. It has no expertise in running businesses. Had they done what your are suggesting, the markets wouldn’t have reacted the way they did, the companies would have gone bankrupt under government mismanagement, the economy would have continued to crater, and not $1 of the money would have been recovered. It turns out that the architects of this bailout were very smart about the way they…

The government isn't supposed to run the company. It's supposed to get an ownership stake to compensate for the risk it takes on. The bank would just issue additional non voting shares and sell those to the government as a punishment for the share holders of the banks and teach them a lesson to not put their money into mismanaged companies.

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

#212

Post by imtringued »

rStar wrote: post #86
Guthur wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Gaps are not even remotely what we should be focussed on and are purely based on jealous or indirect aggression. Concentrate on living standards and opportunity that will help far more people than trying pull down a vanishingly small number of people.

billionaires are criminal by definition, and their existence proves the absence of a (econ 101 style) market in whatever industry they came from. we can only fix this problem through efficient regulation of monopolies.

>their existence proves the absence of a (econ 101 style) market in whatever industry they came from.

Actually, it proves that a single company can serve an entire market and by that extension a single CEO can serve an entire market. It's not that the CEO is super productive, it's just that there is no need for a second CEO.

You're right about monopolies though. One single company serving an entire market will just cause inefficiency over the long term.

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

#213

Post by imtringued »

insert_coin wrote: post #155
bluecalm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes infinite number of competent, driven and well funded market participants that jump on every opportunity or inefficiency . The real world is anything but that. There is very small number of competent driven people and vast ocean of opportunity and value waiting to be created. If you deliver the value people will be more than happy to pay. Maybe someone competes with you if the field is ripe enough or mayb…

Have you seen the realstate market? Competition is all there is. The food market, probably the oldest market, is full of startups and more enter the space each year. There is no shortage of untapped competition in any industry.

Unfortunately it's not possible to get major cities to work, at least not the Californian ones. The second best answer is to build more major cities. The irony of course is that the next major city won't be in California either.

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

#214

Post by belgian_guy »

donw wrote: post #136
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.

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? In short: Weapons. On the pre-gunpowder battlefield, the mounted, armored knight was roughly equivalent to the modern light tank. It is incredibly hard to take out an armored knight with the kind of weapons or tools which would have been available to peasants or serfs, so it doesn't take that many knights to keep enough peasants in-line to build a very w…

Following this reasoning, why didn't the enlightenment occur in asia, which had earlier access to gunpowder? Iirc the ottoman empire had portable guns before the west. And china had fire lances way before that.

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

#215

Post by imtringued »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #169
bluecalm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's look at one random tech Billionaire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson -creates a product using open, well known technology in highly competitive, easy to enter video game industry -people love the game -he becomes a billionaire Can you point out what kind of regulation could have stopped this criminal by definition from completing his evil plan?

Max wealth limit of 999 million, might do it. Everything else is taxed at 100%.

To be fair, this would encourage super rich people to have more children. Not a bad outcome but it's still not the silver bullet that everyone thinks it is.

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

#216

Post by imtringued »

rdiddly wrote: post #127
Guthur wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Gaps are not even remotely what we should be focussed on and are purely based on jealous or indirect aggression. Concentrate on living standards and opportunity that will help far more people than trying pull down a vanishingly small number of people.

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.

I honestly don't see it that way. The current wealth inequality factors don't have anything to do with it. The economy is merely broken, not inherently unfair. However, the way it is broken is unfair and fixing the economy (get inflation back on track) will make it fair again.

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

#217

Post by imtringued »

nostrebored wrote: post #34
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Wall Street bonuses grow this much and minimum wage not?

Minimum wage increase fuel underemployment and under the table work and wall street bonuses don't?

There is a psychological component to minimum wages though. A small increase every year would cause companies to renegotiate salaries frequently. A sudden increase will definitively cause underemployment.

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

#218

Post by imtringued »

jb775 wrote: post #59
Rebelgecko wrote: post #17

If minimum wage had grown at the same rate as the US federal debt it would be $408/hour

That irrelevant so long as the USA controls the world's money printing machine and has the biggest guns.

The biggest guns part gives it more money than it needs and that money has to be put somewhere lest it causes unemployment.

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

#219

Post by downandout »

imtringued wrote: post #209
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left off an extremely relevant detail from your quote: "... annualized rate of return of 0.6% and perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation"

If interest payments were the only thing getting bailed out people wouldn't be angry over it.

Well, they shouldn’t be angry at all, because they got a $15 billion profit. People are a bit too tough to please if that makes them angry, especially in light of the fact that we will be paying for the most recent stimulus packages for generations, and they seem to have public support.

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

#220

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #149
speedplane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a mathematically based definition of a perfect market. It’s only an approximation of real life, but it’s heavily used: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/perfectcompetition.asp

Your reference says: "Companies earn just enough profit to stay in business" which contradicts your comment: "in a “perfect” market there cannot be profits"

I think the idea is that in the limit T->inf the profits go to zero.
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