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Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

theguardian.com

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Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#441

Post by alan-hn »

robertlagrant wrote: post #439
alan-hn wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I have to be explicit, I'm questioning the line of thinking that I'm responding to with my initial post in this thread. Perhaps you should go back and reread it.

You're not being explicit. Saying "Go and re-read the thing you wrote" isn't being explicit. Two messages later and you haven't really said anything, other than that you somehow disagree. To be clear: where's the fallacy of the single cause in what I wrote earlier? It's clear in what you said: you misinterpreted my saying "desirable jobs pay less" as "jobs being desirable is the only cause of the market paying less f…

Your statement implies that whether or not someone wants a job is a large deciding factor in the scale of pay, my point is that it is not. I was being explicit where I was telling you that I am in fact questioning your line of logic because it doesn't hold.

Desirable jobs don't pay less than undesirable jobs. In a capitalist market things are set up so that there is a segment of the population who is desperate for money enough to do jobs that other people don't want regardless of pay. You have offered zero evidence for your original claim nor any supporting arguments that a job being less desirable somehow means it will pay more than a desirable job nor have you defined what makes jobs desirable or undesirable. Does high pay make a job desirable? Maybe to some people. You're applying a blanket statement to a heterogeneous population with nothing to back it up.

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#442

Post by ludwigDual »

mcv wrote: post #438
ludwigDual wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of pirated Windows around, but everybody still has to use Windows. The threat of jail time for people sharing pirated copies or circumventing copyright protected measures changes the pros/cons people weigh whether or not some people copy or reverse engineer despite those risks. There would be a lot more competition if pirates weren't incurring all these additional risks and were able to compete fairl…

One thing that they have often done in the past, is to temporarily drop their prices to outcompete newcomers, making it impossible for newcomers to outcompete them, and raising their prices back up once the newcomer is gone. The established monopolists always have deeper pockets than the newcomers. I'd love to see how you stop that without regulation.

> One thing that they have often done in the past, is to temporarily drop their prices to outcompete newcomers, making it impossible for newcomers to outcompete them, and raising their prices back up once the newcomer is gone.

Could you give examples of this happening? When the prices are low that sounds like a good outcome for their customers. Assuming the price drop doesn't affect other aspects customers care about like quality.

The problem is when prices are raised above what they would otherwise be in a competitive market. You phrased this as "once the newcomer is gone", but there isn't anything preventing another newcomer from emerging, or several. The action of raising prices is openly visible to the market. This will attract entrepreneurs to the industry as a result of the perceived success of the monopolistic firm. In other words greedily raising prices above what the market wants to pay is a suicidal move for a single firm that relies on its customers to continue to buy whatever it is selling. This opens a market opportunity for newcomers where it did not exist before the price hike as customers would be encouraged to look for an alternatives.

Monopolies backed by force are not reliant on their customers' voluntary decisions in this way so the analysis above only applies to situations that prevent forcing customers to choose a particular firm against their wishes.

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#443

Post by ludwigDual »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #432
ludwigDual wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would it be worthwhile to compete with a dairy cartel? Of all the things one can do with capital, why go to war with a cartel over relatively small margins? It may not be in Ontario. In a free market (i.e. one that respects property rights) it would be worthwhile. To see why, let me take your objections one by one. Bribing competitors: The point of a cartel is to use force to prevent competition. Successful fir…

You don’t get strong property rights without strong state, the two go together hand in hand. You can concoct rules and regulations to control and prevent antisocial behavior and enforce a free market but that’s no solution itself to getting a state to do so without other dynamics coming with the state affecting that

> You don’t get strong property rights without [a] strong state

Are there any states that don't forcefully take property and life without people's consent? States are well known for taxing their citizens and fighting wars.

There are certainly small communities that don't steal or murder from anyone, but scaling them up has many challenges. I'd argue cultural attitudes around property rights are more important to creating free societies than top down laws and enforcement. Obviously some legal framework and enforcement would be necessary.

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#444

Post by ADuckOnQuack »

sneak wrote: post #76
sixothree wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be as easy as going to the police.

In America, going to the police isn’t that easy. They will issue you a police report number for your insurance claim, but they are under zero obligation to investigate or prevent any crime. They’ve been quiet quitting across the country since the George Floyd protests and they are working less than ever. Police interventions have been going down, crime has been going up, but staffing and funding has been mostly flat.…

According to FBI data, crime is actually decreasing year on year in almost every metric despite police dereliction of duty. Ironically this is creating a stronger case for further police budget cuts and moving that money towards non-traditional policing alternatives. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/29/us/crime-data-fbi-homicid...

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#445

Post by avgcorrection »

Jensson wrote: post #275
MeImCounting wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me youve never worked in service industry without telling me youve never worked in the service industries. This isnt "being late with payments" that is as you have correctly pointed out, not theft. "late" implies that eventually the wages are in fact paid. This is not what people are talking about when they are talking about wage theft.

Tell me you have never rented out without telling me you have never rented out something. People refuse to pay rent all the time unless you start to threaten legal action over it. We call that late payment, but they would never pay unless you went after them, just like these companies. > This isnt "being late with payments" "Being late with payments" doesn't mean they are late, it means they haven't paid you yet. Tha…

> Tell me you have never rented out without telling me you have never rented out something.

To suffer the indignity of collecting rent by sitting on property. How do you live like that?

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#446

Post by castlecrasher2 »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #420
castlecrasher2 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the chord this opinion strikes. Unless you're letting your personal bias get in the way, there's not a distinct difference between the two.

The difference is power imbalance. A landlord has distinct and easily accessible power over their tenants: they own the tenants home. An employee, conversely, has very little power against their employer. Even a small business has a great deal of power over their employees, and most wage theft occurs at larger ones anyway. Employees can pursue cases of wage theft, sure. But: - They must use the court system, and do s…

Power imbalance is an emotional response, not a rational one; there is no functional difference between the two.

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#447

Post by castlecrasher2 »

autoexec wrote: post #398
castlecrasher2 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the chord this opinion strikes. Unless you're letting your personal bias get in the way, there's not a distinct difference between the two.

If you can't find a difference between the walmart employee late on rent because he doesn't have enough money to pay it until friday comes around, and walmart who has literal billions in profits, but has been repeatedly caught stealing money from workers you'd have to be keeping your eyes shut. Zero personal bias is required to see that those situations aren't even close the same thing.

That you're relying on "if you can't find the difference you must be blind!" as an argument proves my point; it's an emotional argument, not a rational one, and there is no functional difference between the two.

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#448

Post by wahnfrieden »

ludwigDual wrote: post #443
wahnfrieden wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get strong property rights without strong state, the two go together hand in hand. You can concoct rules and regulations to control and prevent antisocial behavior and enforce a free market but that’s no solution itself to getting a state to do so without other dynamics coming with the state affecting that

> You don’t get strong property rights without [a] strong state Are there any states that don't forcefully take property and life without people's consent? States are well known for taxing their citizens and fighting wars. There are certainly small communities that don't steal or murder from anyone, but scaling them up has many challenges. I'd argue cultural attitudes around property rights are more important to crea…

Graeber/Wengrow wrote on this

Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

#449

Post by PenguinCoder »

strictnein wrote: post #270
PenguinCoder wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The promise of salary work in America is such one sided bullcrap. Get paid the same amount of to get your work done no matter the time it takes. if it takes 6 hours or 12 hours, you'll get the same amount. But if you don't work at least 40hrs a week on salary, we're docking your pay. Oh but also, you don't get paid for any hours over 8 in a day. Salary!

> But if you don't work at least 40hrs a week on salary, we're docking your pay. I've never encountered such a system in my 20+ years being paid a salary. What companies do this? Worked for two European firms (including one very large one) and two large American firms during that time. Is it something small companies try to do?

Not sure if its something small companies do, but it certainly isn't something that only small companies do. I've worked for multiple in the Fortune 100 and 500 ranks, and each and every one of them do this.

What companies have you been at in 20+ years that you have not experienced it at?

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