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If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

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Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#371

Post by danielscrubs »

andrewjl wrote: post #362
ashtonkem wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably American firms have been incredibly competitive since the 1970s; its American labor that hasn’t been. And/or the fruits of globalism have not been fairly shared. Depending on whom you ask.

The fruits of globalism aren't shared equitably amongst labor, post-1970's labor earnings have done exceptionally well for the upper tranches of the labor pyramid. Why are those more competitive than the rest? There are factors like differential productivity gains due to globalization, technology, etc but I'm not convinced. Especially when one takes Baumol's cost disease into account. There was a change in during the…

https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st...

What do you think about that? Did they make any errors?

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#372

Post by jmalicki »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #168
arcticbull wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are broadly speaking benchmarked on return on equity for investors. They receive high salaries in anticipation of their doing a good job, and if they don't they're removed. Further, a disproportionate amount of their compensation is equity based to align their incentives. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that they are expected to justify their pay too.

> They receive high salaries in anticipation of their doing a good job, and if they don't they're removed. When they get removed, they often receive golden parachutes even if they seriously effed up the company. This can't be explained by return on equity. I guess it can be explained by bargaining power or cronyism, or perhaps other things I'm not thinking of.

I won't claim the system isn't corrupt at all... but if you were taking a job where the expectations were ridiculously high and there was a pretty chance you'd get fired possibly for things outside of your control, and in a way that would end your career because your failure would be so public if you screwed up, wouldn't you demand the golden parachute as insurance?

True often the golden parachutes are way too high compared to realistic performance bonuses. But if you think of that as insurance - the board and the CEO both know this is risky, so they negotiate a fixed golden parachute just in case it doesn't work out - otherwise why would someone who wouldn't get fired take the job, since they wouldn't want to risk the downside?

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#373

Post by coldtea »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #40

There's a lot of reasons for this but one of the largest is the near invisible (to me) structural shift from direct hire to contractors for jobs at the lower end of the wage/salary spectrum. There is a fantastic long form article that articulates this better than I can at: https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenn... The portion relevant to this discussion: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could wa…

>Today, they’re almost all indirect hires, employees of random, anonymous contracting companies: Laundry Inc., Rent-A-Guard Inc.

That should be made illegal to do...

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#374

Post by coldtea »

geodel wrote: post #368
martin_bech wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi from Scandinavia, we dont have a monopoly on anything, and no actual minimum wage, yet people make about $20+ at the lowest paying jobs, enjoy 5 weeks paid vacation, free healthcare and cheap childcare..

Wouldn't it be great if you let in a million people from countries where people make lot less than $20. It would be fastest way to raise standard for those people

Yeah, and pressure their system and degrade their standards, they've build over years themselves (in 1900 Sweden was not much different than a third world country today).

Why do those other people get some automatic raise?

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#375

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

rbg246 wrote: post #359
gridlockd wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The minimum wage does not naturally rise The minimum amount of money you have to pay for someone to show up for any job rises (and falls) alongside demand for labor in the broader economy. > Under our current system that heavily favors returning productivity gains to capital instead of labor... If you look at the profit margins of those companies that employ a lot of low-end labor, you will find that they're genera…

If everyone has to raise the minimum wage all, everyone has to raise prices accordingly and ROI remains the same.

This is not how it works, but it is one of many lies spread to help prevent raising minimum wage.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#376

Post by dmoy »

jackvalentine wrote: post #304
Junk_Collector wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitration is actually very expensive for the company but generally they can rely on the fact that most people will not utilize it for a variety of reasons. If people large scale started taking companies like this to claims it could quickly become more expensive than class action lawsuits trying to arbitrate each individual claim. If you feel strongly against arbitration clauses, activism to get people to use them i…

It happened earlier this year to Doordash! https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135474/doordash-workers...

I love me some Alsup decisions. Almost makes me wish I had gone into law and tried to become a judge.

Ok not really almost, but for a brief second.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#377

Post by andrewjl »

danielscrubs wrote: post #371
andrewjl wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fruits of globalism aren't shared equitably amongst labor, post-1970's labor earnings have done exceptionally well for the upper tranches of the labor pyramid. Why are those more competitive than the rest? There are factors like differential productivity gains due to globalization, technology, etc but I'm not convinced. Especially when one takes Baumol's cost disease into account. There was a change in during the…

https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st... What do you think about that? Did they make any errors?

Labor in the top 1% is still labor was my point. I never argued that inequality doesn't exist or didn't get worse. I just think the capital vs labor rhetoric is a distraction.

Edit: Also, from the link, this is very fishy to me. You could argue the medical benefits they exclude aren't meaningful because of healthcare inflation not being linked to better health outcomes. You can't make that argument for capital gains. It's likely not be meaningful because there are indeed severe inequalities among Americans in capital assets holdings, it is still an omission however.

> And it takes into account capital gains but, due to certain technical constraints, only for those above the 90th percentile.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#378

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #310
oramit wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this is one of those slow moving trends that you just don't see but has really large effects after decades of compounding. It used to be normal for companies to have much larger work forces and to in-source all tasks, even if they were not a core competency. Now the emphasis is on lean everything, to only focus on your niche, and outsource as much as possible. Remember IT departments? It's all been outsource…

On the other hand, it's never been easier to start a company and instantly reach a global market.

Not only that, but you can draw collaborators from the entire world, and even get investment capital from the globe (like kickstarter, etc.).

I remember when I wanted to sell in France, I had to find a French distributor, make a French version of the product, guess how many would sell there, ship a pile to the distributor, the distributor collects most of the money, and unsold merchandise is scrapped. If I didn't have a distributor, the merchandise was always getting hung up in customs, would disappear in the mail, would take 6 weeks to deliver, I'd get paid in dollary-doos that no bank would exchange, etc.

Rinse, repeat for every country.

Today, I ship all over the world via the internet for $0, have no stock, no scrap, no middlemen, get paid instantly, ship instantly, and the transaction cost is 1% for paypal and 3% for credit cards.

Still have to pay taxes, though :-)

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#379

Post by geodel »

coldtea wrote: post #374
geodel wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be great if you let in a million people from countries where people make lot less than $20. It would be fastest way to raise standard for those people

Yeah, and pressure their system and degrade their standards, they've build over years themselves (in 1900 Sweden was not much different than a third world country today). Why do those other people get some automatic raise?

> Why do those other people get some automatic raise?

Because other people are constantly told how great Europe/Scandinavia is. So these 'other people' just want to have good life by moving there.

Re: If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

#380

Post by macklemoreshair »

momokoko wrote: post #361
mortenjorck wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an excellent and frankly damning ProPublica report that serves as a case study in the movement to rely on staffing companies for low-wage labor: https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-customer-service... The degree to which both costs and risk are shifted onto workers is at times astonishing: “After paying about $1,500 for home office equipment: a computer, two headsets and a phone line dedicated to Aris…

I think we need to stop saying a company and instead use the name of the person or persons actually setting Tami up for this. AT&T and Arise are not people. People made these decisions and put Tami in this position. We should use their names.

Should we? Sounds like a broken system and going after individuals doesn’t solve anything
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