quote:

O’Neill made it her job to monitor possible “terrorist” activity by Occupy Phoenix connected with Dimon’s visit.

The monitoring of social media for JPMorgan Chase is just a glimpse into the widespread snooping on Occupy activists that Arizona law enforcement engaged in, often on behalf of the private sector.

Herv posted:

For what it's worth, I was asking more about the conscious decision to state that you aren't concerned with your civil rights because you are not affected by the infringement in question. (e.g. full surveillance on 'Y' demographic)

Really I was looking for a better version of the 'And then they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me' line of argument.

I run into folks of all ages that have no problem forfeiting due process and fourth amendment rights, when it suits them (americans classified as terrorists, boston bomber), but I doubt they would be so welcoming when it targets them personally.

I didn't want to get hung up on details (true fallacy definition vs none) but more to the point of providing a compelling argument for the preservation civil rights and how the fourth is getting bypassed in some situations, and how these folks should give a gently caress about it.

Thanks

quote:

"We have truly entered the world of 'Alice in Wonderland' when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a congressional subcommittee to be denounced on national TV for not paying more."

"Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to 'a worrisome federal deficit,' according to Sen. Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has." Thomas Sowell

Thanks for Carpe Diem blog for posting this quotation.

quote:

Here's my question: why is someone like Tim Cook entitled to literal millions of dollars every year, but the workers lining the company from the stores to the manufacturers - who work at least as hard as he does, if not more - can barely afford to get by every month?

What does he do that justifies such a massively higher amount of income besides signing off of company decisions and occasionally showing his face at press events?

miscellaneous14 posted:

I usually ignore some of the bizarre things that my relative posts on facebook, but this one I couldn't help but respond to because it was just so infuriating.

Here's my response:

Is there a better way I could have come off with that? He'll likely redirect the discussion towards "well what about the fatcat liberal with all the money?", in which case I'd tell him that person is equally responsible for contributing to the marginalization of the poor.

quote:

For the same reasons that anyone makes a high income. People value Tim Cook's skills. Other people besides the Apple board desire to have Tim Cook as their CEO and if they didn't pay him a high salary another company would, and he would leave Apple.

me posted:

I'd argue that company is badly managing its' finances if more money is being poured toward its' CEO for no real reason, instead of improving worker quality of life. They wouldn't be as successful without the collective staff of Apple stores, after all.

If that wouldn't be "enough" money for Tim Cook, then I'd also suggest that his standards for income are far, far too high.

quote:

Do you think that everyone at Apple should be paid the same amount?

me posted:

No, but I believe everyone working for them should be paid a living wage. Many of them are not. The reason for the criticism against Tim Cook is that he already makes some 1000-10,000 times a living wage, and there's no justifiable reason for why he should get away with any form of tax evasion.

quote:

Apple does not move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US to avoid US tax, nor does it use revolving loans from CFCs to fund its domestic operations. Apple does not hold money on a Caribbean island, does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands, and does not move any taxable revenue from sales to US customers to other jurisdictions in order to avoid US taxation.

quote:

Why should Apple pay its workers more than their labor is worth? If you don't produce a living wage's worth of value as a worker, I have no duty to pay you a living wage.

me posted:

Why is their labor not worth a living wage? Why is Tim Cook's labor worth literally thousands of living wages put together? What makes their labor somehow inferior to his in terms of "worth"?

miscellaneous14 posted:

The issue is about Tim Cook's own personal tax evasion, though.

miscellaneous14 posted:

The issue is about Tim Cook's own personal tax evasion, though. I never said anything about how Apple handles its' taxes, I'm just highlighting how absurd it is to defend someone for that when many of the employees working for his company don't make a living wage.

I did get another response from someone in their friends' list, though.



Their response after that was "Take ECON 101".

Prester John posted:

Apologies if this isn't the proper thread, but I'm not sure where else to go with this question. I'm currently engaged in a debate over the American higher education system versus that of Denmark. I'd like to find some data on the starting salaries of fresh graduates from Denmark system so that I can compare them to those of the US. So far google has failed me. Does anyone know where I could get this data?

Alligator Horse posted:

It really isn't, though. Unions are good at protecting these lovely persons, who they are legally obligated to protect, because it is notoriously hard for employers to prove that their employee's behavior constitutes a breach of contract and therefore makes them eligible for dismissal. This is actually a good thing. It makes it harder for employers to summarily fire employees who may be perfectly good at their job, amicable, etc., but who've pissed off their boss for this or that petty reason.

What you are seeing is not the result of corruption but the confluence of two separate institutional facts, one I consider a good thing and the other I consider a not so good thing. On the one hand you've got Taft-Hartley, which requires unions to do their utmost to represent their clients (union members) in cases against their employer. This requirement means that the union is open to legal action if they don't expend a fair amount of resources protecting their members--even the ones who may be incompetent dicks.

On the other hand is the balance of power between employer and employee with regard to hiring and firing. There are different kinds of institutional frameworks in play here: you've got at-will employment, Right to Work legislation, "fair share" states, and the true blue closed shop states where a unionized shop floor means you're a member of the union and you pay your dues, period. It should be pretty obvious along this spectrum which arrangements favor whom. At-will employment empowers employers to fire someone for looking at them funny. Right to Work legislation creates a huge free rider problem for unions. "Fair share" arrangements and union shops on the whole benefit unions and their membership, though this end of the spectrum is considerably more diverse than the others because of the variety of unions and their various characters.

Now, none of the above categories represent examples of deregulation that could empower a union. I can't think of any example in recent history in which a law opposed by labor has been repealed for the benefit of labor organizations in the United States, either as a result of their corruption or thereby ensuring their future corruption. This is not for lack of research on my part. I have a degree in American history, and labor issues are one of my primary areas of interest. I spent last summer bouncing around between sites of labor struggle in the US as part of a larger trip which included visits to the archives at the Rivers of Steel museum in Pittsburgh as well as the ILR archives at Cornell. I'm fine with you treating me and other people in this thread like idiots for not agreeing with you, but you can't fault us for not taking you seriously when you so adamantly defend your thesis while simultaneously refusing to show any kind of evidence for it.

Install Gentoo posted:

I'm already proved right by the fact that at least one person in the world rejects privacy and he seems to be doing pretty OK. Most people would consider it pretty uncontroversial that some people don't need or want the same things as everyone else.

Habibi posted:

Wait, who is this one person? Did I miss a link about him? Because I can see where Zeitgeist is coming from. I don't think I have anything to hide [that the government would care about] but I wear clothes, I lower my voice when on my cell in crowded areas, etc... Privacy to an extent means nothing to me, privacy beyond that extent is pretty important. There are people on the internet who have live cameras streaming their buck naked selves 24/7 - but would they flash their SSN and bank account numbers, for example, to the nice viewers at home? Probably not.

Install Gentoo posted:

I know several people like that. Honestly I think they're really weird for it, but I doubt they're insincere about their beliefs. I also doubt they're the only people in the world who feel that way!

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Would you also say shelter isn't a fundamental human need because some people prefer to sleep under the stars, or that sex isn't a fundamental human need because asexual people exist?

A few outliers don't invalidate his point in anything but the most semantic way.

Install Gentoo posted:

His point was that no one could possibly not want or need privacy, and that people who say they don't need it aren't telling the truth or are mistaken.

Install Gentoo posted:

That would indeed make them not fundamental human needs.

Zeitgueist posted:

My point was that I didn't think you could prove these people exist. I was right.

When you can't drudge up even a token support for an argument, your argument is probably bad, or pointless. Additionally, their existence was irrelevant to the argument as far as government invasions of privacy, so it would be useless even if you could find one of those people. Further illustrating a bad argument.

This is a thread where we help D&D debate. Consider this help.

Idran posted:

Then you don't use the phrase "fundamental human needs" the way the majority of other people do, and so you aren't arguing against the position you think you're arguing against.

Install Gentoo posted:

No you're still not right. I've talked to these people in real life. Buy your own drat plane ticket to the NY metro area if you want to meet them.

You are doing nothing to help debate because you are declaring it's impossible for people to really think differently than you,

Install Gentoo posted:

You are doing nothing to help debate because you are declaring it's impossible for people to really think differently than you,

Freudian posted:

This is a terrible argument mainly because both posters are arguing out of different dictionaries and failing to acknowledge this. This is something that you should watch out for if you are attempting to Debate and Discuss! Please figure out agreed-upon definitions of Need and then decide if the argument is worth continuing. It probably will not be.

Freudian posted:

You two are literally the only ones who care about your lovely argument - though not enough to sit down and say "perhaps we should clarify as best we can what we mean by need". You both have private messages.

Install Gentoo posted:

That would indeed make them not fundamental human needs.

quote:

So we agree that businesses do not get to determine wages in most markets- they pay what they have to pay as long as the going wage is less than or equal to the marginal product of the worker. But in some markets it appears that there is a surplus of workers so they only have to pay the minimum. You are right about that but that is because of the minimum wage- if there was no minimum wage, then no surplus, and they would pay what they have to pay- BTW: it would be higher than $1/hr- no one would agree to work for that because even for low skilled labor there is competition from other employers- but in some cases it would be lower than minimum wage is currently.

So the real question is when employers are forced to pay more than they have to pay- when there is a minimum wage- what happens? Who gains? Who loses? Can we pay low skilled employees more in order to create more value?

The answer is, generally, no. Unless we are talking about a situation where there is only one employer- and thus no competition for labor- then people generally get paid close to their marginal product. One of the problems with your study citing the $21 mp of labor is that since the minimum wage was put in place companies that used to rely primarily on labor have become technology heavy- reducing their dependence on labor and consequently increasing the productivity of the remaining laborers. So any time businesses pay people more it must be because they expect to get more value from them- value in terms of producing the more of the products that people are willing to work to buy. If we pay people more than the market demands then the costs of producing things- everything- goes up. Its not just price of milk- which is actually quite important to poor people- but the price of anything which relies on low-skilled labor.

What we have to ask is what will happen when the prices of all those goods goes up? Firstly, it will partly cancel the effect of giving low-skilled labor a raise. Second, it will cause the total amount of goods produced to decrease. Even if those goods are coming out of the reduced profits to stockholders or reduced income of CEOs, then fewer goods will be produced. When fewer goods are produced, the demand for labor falls, and people lose their jobs.

This would happen even if the minimum wage-paying labor more than market wage- was a voluntary decision and not mandated. Pay some people more- when not motivated by an increase in marginal product- and other people have to lose their jobs. period.

me posted:

When employers are already paying well below what citizens need to actually live on, what reason would they have for bothering to pay more than $1 an hour? You would have your outlying businesses like Costco that might pay more, but the majority of businesses already don't follow their example because they think they're a special exception.

The gain in this case would be the well-being of US citizens. I asked this a while ago, but again, how can we claim to be an ideal culture so often when a massive amount of our population lives below the poverty line, while a few make literally a thousand times the amount anyone would need to get by?

What are you referring to in terms of technology increasing productivity? Just because the person working at a register now has a POS system doesn't mean they aren't working harder to begin with. And this is if a piece of technology doesn't outright replace skilled labor (e.g. when theaters began incorporating digital projectors that operate on an automatic schedule). The point of the study is still the same result: workers are producing exponentially more worth through their labor than they're actually getting paid for. Companies like Apple are still seeing record profits, after all. Why is the workforce at the bottom not seeing any kickback despite this?

It's already been mentioned that analysis shows the price of goods barely increases if businesses decide to pass the cost of increased labor onto the product; a menu item at McDonalds cost a few more cents, someone shopping at Wal-Mart might spend an extra $50 every year, hardly anything that would cancel out millions of workers having more money to work with every month.

How do you figure that fewer goods will be produced, what is that based on? If your reasoning is that increased labor costs will prevent businesses from hiring as many staff, then why do studies show there being no real effect on unemployment rates in the long run whenever minimum wage is increased? Here's a graph using data pulled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that shows unemployment rates are often independent of any major changes in wage laws.

[link to chart from here]

Habibi posted:

The only 'fundamental human needs' by this reasoning are eating and drinking (and peeing and pooping) because they are literally the only things that you won't find some people somewhere electing not to do. Every other basic human need as generally characterized is something that you could technically do without if you really wanted. 99% of people just don't want to because they're basic needs.

miscellaneous14 posted:

A few other people got involved in that conversation I mentioned earlier, and now it's gotten a lot more in-depth than I expected it to. Skipping ahead to the two most recent posts:



The $1 an hour thing was something I brought up earlier in the discussion to make a point about employers not putting much thought into wages beyond what's profitable in the short-term.

I'm trying to keep this discussion as constrained to the topic of living wages and the ramifications of paying workers only the minimum amount possible. I also tried to avoid saying anything I couldn't refute through either personal experience (the theater example, for instance) or studies proving it, since I have a bad habit of letting the subject veer into fields I'm not really knowledgeable about.

That being said, is there anything I handled poorly or could have done a better job describing?

Install Gentoo posted:

Yes that would in fact be the difference between fundamental human needs and fundamental human rights. What exactly do you not get here?

miscellaneous14 posted:

Install Gentoo posted:

Yes that would in fact be the difference between fundamental human needs and fundamental human rights. What exactly do you not get here?

Trivia posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could swear that just because wages go up, prices (and number) of goods don't necessarily go up (down) proportionally as well. There are just so many loving variables. Consumption goes up -> prices rise relative to the increase in production cost, but economies of scale means this won't necessarily be linear. Stocks of goods go down -> signal to competitors that there's demand for the good -> more competition. Elastic good -> people find alternatives. And lastly, people don't all buy the same things in the same amounts; just because we all get a raise doesn't mean I'm going out to buy a new diamond ring.

miscellaneous14 posted:

Of course there are about a million variables to consider when it comes to making any grand changes to wages. The issue is that people like the person who I was debating with have this preconceived narrative that any raising of minimum wage laws somehow inevitably leads to the prices of goods skyrocketing, and less hiring capability for employers. I would imagine that person hasn't even considered the fact that there's no logical or factual basis for that idea.

shots shots shots posted:

There are plenty of examples of countries with high minimum wages, and things tend to be more expensive in those countries, although it depends on the specific item. A good example of this is Australia.

wateroverfire posted:

Also, the size of the wage increase matters. All of the minimum wage literature has studied responses to increases that are fairly small, in markets where the minimum wage wasn't an effective price floor. So depending on what you have in mind for a minimum wage increase or living wage, the research may not say anything much to support the idea that it won't affect anything.

The charts you link to are junk (find actual econometric studies instead), as is the economic explanation given by the guy you're arguing with...basically you guys are just banging your political priors up against eachother.

Trivia posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could swear that just because wages go up, prices (and number) of goods don't necessarily go up (down) proportionally as well. There are just so many loving variables. Consumption goes up -> prices rise relative to the increase in production cost, but economies of scale means this won't necessarily be linear. Stocks of goods go down -> signal to competitors that there's demand for the good -> more competition. Elastic good -> people find alternatives. And lastly, people don't all buy the same things in the same amounts; just because we all get a raise doesn't mean I'm going out to buy a new diamond ring.

2banks1swap.avi posted:

So just how much higher are things in Australia priced compared to other nations of similar GDP per capita, then?

$AUS > $USA could mean 1%, 1% of 1%, or 100%, or 1000% more. The dry fact that it merely is tells us almost nothing.

KernelSlanders posted:

The replies you've gotten have focused on raising the minimum wage rather than wages generally. I'm not sure which you were asking about, but I think the answer is that in a free market prices are always determined by supply and demand. The people who say rising wages cause a commensurate rise in prices are, I think, right provided the economy is already at full employment/capacity. If that's the case then the economy is already producing as much goods and services in real terms as it can. In that scenario, if wages suddenly rose by say 10% then each worker, feeling richer, would like to consume more than they were before, but since the economy was already at full production it's clear that in aggregate they cannot. There are simply no more goods and services to consume. Trying to maintain their standard of living they'll simply bid prices up until everyone is more or less where they were in real terms before the wage increase.

If the economy is not at full capacity, which must be true any time there is non-frictional unemployment, then I would think there can be a very different situation. The now higher paid workers go out and try to buy more stuff. This stuff (by "stuff" I mean goods and services) can be produced by hiring more people, running factories at full capacity, etc. In this situation, prices still need to rise a bit to cover the excess labor costs, but there's no reason why the costs attributable to previously wasted resources need to change. In this sense higher wages could lead to less unemployment, not more.

That possibility seems counterintuitive. Am I missing something obvious here?

KernelSlanders posted:

That possibility seems counterintuitive. Am I missing something obvious here?

wateroverfire posted:

Yes.

That money isn't created, it's redistributed from other parts of the economy. So some people get higher wages but the companies that employ them have less to spend on investment, for hiring, to pay through to the owners, etc. It could happen the way you're describing but to get there you have to make assumptions about how the money gets spread around and what it would have been used for otherwise that at the very least are contestable.

Muscle Tracer posted:

They're also assuming that the employers are working with a 0% profit margin, or need to maintain the same profit margin. If they're able to pay their chief executives millions of dollars, and are able to pile on multi-million-dollar bonuses as well, then this is obviously not the case.