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Author Topic: Wally's school of politics  (Read 9804 times)

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Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #15 on: December 08, 2012, 05:13 PM »
f@#!, how do you quote individual things in a post? I'm just gonna have to quote stuff...

Well, I just copy-paste the first [ quote] bit and end with [/ quote] :) Make ctrl-c and ctrl-v work for you!

Take a look at a quick graph I made, it charts these scores by the quality of life index and compares them to the populations of the countries:



Aside from a few blips, these are relatively small countries, population wise, with only a few with more than 10 million inhabitants.  Of the worlds 20 most populated countries, only 3 appear in the top 20 of the happiness index.  That should tell you something unto itself.  Theres a simple correlation here that I didn't invent all on my own.  More people -----> less overall happiness.  With few exceptions.  Also interesting enough: Germany appears to be the perfect model for large countries according to the QLI metric.  This also shows the massive difference in population between the US and any other country on this quality of life list.  Coincidence?

Short answer: yes. ShyGuy handled this one already.
Face it, Wally, we take better care of our own people in Western Europe and there's a simple reason for that: the upper class (man, that term leaves a nasty taste in my mouth) can't function on their own without the lower and middle class (same there) doing what they do. I can't do my job if there weren't truck drivers bringing supplies to the hospital, carpenters and masoners who built the hospital I work in, built the road I use to get to work, architects who designed them, the work force at the power plant to provide electricity, nino's slaves who provide bull meat, etcetera, etcetera. Society would collapse without them, so why the hell won't the guys at the top take better care of them in the US?
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
Numbers don't lie. Costs of living have increased, but the minimum wage hasn't changed. It took a democratic congress in 2006 to finally raise the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years.

Income and spending are skewered in the US and that's the reason countries like Switzerland score higher.

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Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #16 on: December 08, 2012, 05:27 PM »


Income and spending are skewered in the US and that's the reason countries like Switzerland score higher.

that and their not sure if moral bank policy
MonkeyIsland, my friend, I know your english is terrible and your understanding of society limited. However, in real life, people attack and humiliate others without the use of a single bad word. They even go to war with lengthy politeness. You can't base the whole moderation philosophy of a community based on the use of bad words and your struggle with sarcasm and irony. My attack to Jonno was fully justified and of proper good taste.
Eat a bag full of dicks.

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #17 on: December 08, 2012, 05:39 PM »
The cleaning ladies get divident from the bank?

Offline TheWalrus

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #18 on: December 08, 2012, 10:43 PM »
f@#!, how do you quote individual things in a post? I'm just gonna have to quote stuff...

Well, I just copy-paste the first [ quote] bit and end with [/ quote] :) Make ctrl-c and ctrl-v work for you!

Take a look at a quick graph I made, it charts these scores by the quality of life index and compares them to the populations of the countries:



Aside from a few blips, these are relatively small countries, population wise, with only a few with more than 10 million inhabitants.  Of the worlds 20 most populated countries, only 3 appear in the top 20 of the happiness index.  That should tell you something unto itself.  Theres a simple correlation here that I didn't invent all on my own.  More people -----> less overall happiness.  With few exceptions.  Also interesting enough: Germany appears to be the perfect model for large countries according to the QLI metric.  This also shows the massive difference in population between the US and any other country on this quality of life list.  Coincidence?

Short answer: yes. ShyGuy handled this one already.
Face it, Wally, we take better care of our own people in Western Europe and there's a simple reason for that: the upper class (man, that term leaves a nasty taste in my mouth) can't function on their own without the lower and middle class (same there) doing what they do. I can't do my job if there weren't truck drivers bringing supplies to the hospital, carpenters and masoners who built the hospital I work in, built the road I use to get to work, architects who designed them, the work force at the power plant to provide electricity, nino's slaves who provide bull meat, etcetera, etcetera. Society would collapse without them, so why the hell won't the guys at the top take better care of them in the US?
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
Numbers don't lie. Costs of living have increased, but the minimum wage hasn't changed. It took a democratic congress in 2006 to finally raise the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years.

Income and spending are skewered in the US and that's the reason countries like Switzerland score higher.
lol, my shitty graph wasn't trying to illustrate a trend, I think you got that part at least but Shy is clueless.  I was just trying to show visually how many of those countries' populations on that list are smaller.  Also, I've never heard anyone referencing western europe when talking about prosperity before, lol.  France and Spain are in deep, deep shit.

Also, I know you are no economist, but when in the midst of a economic recession, with unemployment at a high level, the last thing you want to do is raise the minimum wage.  Some of the ideas that Shy and Mab have posted up here actually have merit, I just worry about the implications for the country long-term.  Raising the minimum wage is just a flat out horrible idea Dark, companies are hurting enough without the government pricing low wage jobs over the market.  If you want people making more money over the long term, raising minimum wage in the short term would be a colossal mistake.  We've seen 2 recessions in America while fighting 2 foreign wars last decade.  Raising the federal minimum wage was a terrible idea in 2006, and its a terrible idea now.  You cut young americans and immigrants out of jobs, mostly young americans who are trying to scrape their way along.  The states with more jobs, better jobs have increased their minimum wages as such.  Other states would be devastated.  The US needs more jobs, not better wages right now.

Mablak - It's not about fairness. 

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #19 on: December 09, 2012, 04:13 AM »
f@#!, how do you quote individual things in a post? I'm just gonna have to quote stuff...

Well, I just copy-paste the first [ quote] bit and end with [/ quote] :) Make ctrl-c and ctrl-v work for you!

Take a look at a quick graph I made, it charts these scores by the quality of life index and compares them to the populations of the countries:



Aside from a few blips, these are relatively small countries, population wise, with only a few with more than 10 million inhabitants.  Of the worlds 20 most populated countries, only 3 appear in the top 20 of the happiness index.  That should tell you something unto itself.  Theres a simple correlation here that I didn't invent all on my own.  More people -----> less overall happiness.  With few exceptions.  Also interesting enough: Germany appears to be the perfect model for large countries according to the QLI metric.  This also shows the massive difference in population between the US and any other country on this quality of life list.  Coincidence?

Short answer: yes. ShyGuy handled this one already.
Face it, Wally, we take better care of our own people in Western Europe and there's a simple reason for that: the upper class (man, that term leaves a nasty taste in my mouth) can't function on their own without the lower and middle class (same there) doing what they do. I can't do my job if there weren't truck drivers bringing supplies to the hospital, carpenters and masoners who built the hospital I work in, built the road I use to get to work, architects who designed them, the work force at the power plant to provide electricity, nino's slaves who provide bull meat, etcetera, etcetera. Society would collapse without them, so why the hell won't the guys at the top take better care of them in the US?
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
Numbers don't lie. Costs of living have increased, but the minimum wage hasn't changed. It took a democratic congress in 2006 to finally raise the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years.

Income and spending are skewered in the US and that's the reason countries like Switzerland score higher.
lol, my shitty graph wasn't trying to illustrate a trend, I think you got that part at least but Shy is clueless.  I was just trying to show visually how many of those countries' populations on that list are smaller. 

I was just confused as to why you would make a graph with two variables if you weren't trying to establish a trend
  <-- my brain when I clan with avi

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2012, 04:59 AM »
I knew a girl at my last job at Office Depot, she was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Despite being the most valuable employee at their store for many years, she got paid just a tiny bit more than the rest of us at minimum wage. She had nobody else in her life, and had to pay all her bills on those meager wages, she barely had enough to eat. I refuse to accept the idea that huge corporations like Office Depot or Walmart are simply unable to pay their employees, at the very least, a livable wage. There are companies like Costco and New Seasons who pay their employees a respectable amount, and while that might not be feasible for all companies, it certainly is for huge and successful ones.

There are policies in place to lessen the impact of minimum wage hurting small business; I think we can raise it right now, and it was higher decades ago, adjusted for inflation. But if you're worried about companies finding ways to avoid paying that extra money, by say, employing fewer people, I can certainly say that in a lot of retail stores companies are already employing the bare minimum of people, for the bare minimum of hours, and could hardly cut further. Walmart employs 1.4 million workers, they're the largest workforce of any kind outside of the US and Chinese militaries, and they are definitely not paid what they need to live. Nonetheless, getting paid is fairly useless if it's below a certain amount; would you rather have 1000 people employed and none of them able to eat/pay the bills, or 900-something employed, and all getting enough? Maybe wage changes would be best accomplished by unions, who might be able to better ensure employers don't take out those losses on them, but given that so many companies prevent unionization, a higher minimum right now would be better than nothing.

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #21 on: December 09, 2012, 09:46 AM »
Raising the minimum wage is just a flat out horrible idea Dark, companies are hurting enough without the government pricing low wage jobs over the market.

How do you expect people to consume if they don't have enough money to spend? Less consumption = less profit.
At any rate, your sales pitch is kind of tough to sell if you consider that the average salary at goldman sachs in 2009 (including everybody that worked there - banktellers, janitors, professional pencil sharpeners, security etcetera) was $700k (ballpark).
When we're talking about minimum wage, it shouldn't go up if you ask the big boys in corporate America. When we're talking about the salary of the guys at the top, it has to go up and taxes have to go down according to them.

These are also the guys that didn't see the credit crunch coming because they didn't realise cashflow isn't infinite. If doctors f@#!ed up on this scale, there would be riots and we would be lynched. Just saying.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2012, 09:48 AM by DarkOne »

Offline TheWalrus

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #22 on: December 09, 2012, 09:49 AM »
f@#!, how do you quote individual things in a post? I'm just gonna have to quote stuff...

Well, I just copy-paste the first [ quote] bit and end with [/ quote] :) Make ctrl-c and ctrl-v work for you!

Take a look at a quick graph I made, it charts these scores by the quality of life index and compares them to the populations of the countries:



Aside from a few blips, these are relatively small countries, population wise, with only a few with more than 10 million inhabitants.  Of the worlds 20 most populated countries, only 3 appear in the top 20 of the happiness index.  That should tell you something unto itself.  Theres a simple correlation here that I didn't invent all on my own.  More people -----> less overall happiness.  With few exceptions.  Also interesting enough: Germany appears to be the perfect model for large countries according to the QLI metric.  This also shows the massive difference in population between the US and any other country on this quality of life list.  Coincidence?

Short answer: yes. ShyGuy handled this one already.
Face it, Wally, we take better care of our own people in Western Europe and there's a simple reason for that: the upper class (man, that term leaves a nasty taste in my mouth) can't function on their own without the lower and middle class (same there) doing what they do. I can't do my job if there weren't truck drivers bringing supplies to the hospital, carpenters and masoners who built the hospital I work in, built the road I use to get to work, architects who designed them, the work force at the power plant to provide electricity, nino's slaves who provide bull meat, etcetera, etcetera. Society would collapse without them, so why the hell won't the guys at the top take better care of them in the US?
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
Numbers don't lie. Costs of living have increased, but the minimum wage hasn't changed. It took a democratic congress in 2006 to finally raise the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years.

Income and spending are skewered in the US and that's the reason countries like Switzerland score higher.
lol, my shitty graph wasn't trying to illustrate a trend, I think you got that part at least but Shy is clueless.  I was just trying to show visually how many of those countries' populations on that list are smaller. 

I was just confused as to why you would make a graph with two variables if you weren't trying to establish a trend
I claim laziness.  1 graph with 2 variables = easier than 2 graphs with one variable.  What do I look like, a statistician?  It's amazing i even put in the time to enter all the integers in the first place.  Take it for what it is, a meager attempt at visualisation.  If you want to make a better one, im all for it.

Offline TheWalrus

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #23 on: December 09, 2012, 10:02 AM »
Raising the minimum wage is just a flat out horrible idea Dark, companies are hurting enough without the government pricing low wage jobs over the market.

How do you expect people to consume if they don't have enough money to spend? Less consumption = less profit.
At any rate, your sales pitch is kind of tough to sell if you consider that the average salary at goldman sachs in 2009 (including everybody that worked there - banktellers, janitors, professional pencil sharpeners, security etcetera) was $700k (ballpark).
When we're talking about minimum wage, it shouldn't go up if you ask the big boys in corporate America. When we're talking about the salary of the guys at the top, it has to go up and taxes have to go down according to them.

These are also the guys that didn't see the credit crunch coming because they didn't realise cashflow isn't infinite. If doctors f@#!ed up on this scale, there would be riots and we would be lynched. Just saying.
I agree with everything you said Dark, its just that there is a time and a place for these proposed changes of yours.  You cant expect a blanket change like that to be implemented at any old time, and expect results.  You have to consider the current state of the economy.  In a vacuum, your plan would work just fine, but basic economics tell you that in the short term, it significantly makes things worse.   The same thing goes for reining in inflation.  Reducing inflation is a problem when you have to increase interest rates.  When the US approaches the so called 'fiscal cliff', increasing interest rates is the last thing you want to do to sustain or promote growth.  Shy, Mab, and yourself have descent ideas, it is just nearly impossible to push through sweeping changes right now, as they will produce diminished returns with the state of the economy.  The US needs a stopgap plan, things are going south in a hurry and implementing incremental long term solutions is a incredible gamble when the economy is sensitive enough to change as it is.  I think you are all missing the boat when it comes to what is needed at this exact moment. 

Offline TheKaren

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #24 on: December 09, 2012, 11:40 AM »
I knew a girl at my last job at Office Depot, she was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Despite being the most valuable employee at their store for many years, she got paid just a tiny bit more than the rest of us at minimum wage. She had nobody else in her life, and had to pay all her bills on those meager wages, she barely had enough to eat. I refuse to accept the idea that huge corporations like Office Depot or Walmart are simply unable to pay their employees, at the very least, a livable wage. There are companies like Costco and New Seasons who pay their employees a respectable amount, and while that might not be feasible for all companies, it certainly is for huge and successful ones.

There are policies in place to lessen the impact of minimum wage hurting small business; I think we can raise it right now, and it was higher decades ago, adjusted for inflation. But if you're worried about companies finding ways to avoid paying that extra money, by say, employing fewer people, I can certainly say that in a lot of retail stores companies are already employing the bare minimum of people, for the bare minimum of hours, and could hardly cut further. Walmart employs 1.4 million workers, they're the largest workforce of any kind outside of the US and Chinese militaries, and they are definitely not paid what they need to live. Nonetheless, getting paid is fairly useless if it's below a certain amount; would you rather have 1000 people employed and none of them able to eat/pay the bills, or 900-something employed, and all getting enough? Maybe wage changes would be best accomplished by unions, who might be able to better ensure employers don't take out those losses on them, but given that so many companies prevent unionization, a higher minimum right now would be better than nothing.

Ah Mablak, I think me and you should have a private chat sometime, I work for Tesco, and I have seriously never been so disgusted in my life at the way this company runs its business and treats its staff...

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #25 on: December 09, 2012, 06:06 PM »
You have to consider the current state of the economy.  In a vacuum, your plan would work just fine, but basic economics tell you that in the short term, it significantly makes things worse.

What you're saying is that in a bad economy, companies should have to spend less on wages to compensate for the smaller income. Sounds legit.
Here's an idea: spend less on bonuses: [link removed at the request of the site maintainer]
Tesco is mentioned as an example here: a news report from 4 days ago mentions that Tim Mason is leaving the company and with his departure receives 5.7 million pounds (at the current rate, that's $9.14 million). How many year salaries is that? What kind of work does he do for that kind of money anyway? High profile assassination? It's not like his own money is at risk with his work, anyway. If the company goes bankrupt, he gets to keep all his money (in contrast, in Japan, if a company goes bankrupt, the director loses everything). Basically, the guys at the top get the rewards while the guys at the bottom run the risk. That's messed up, man.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2016, 05:12 PM by DarkOne »

Offline TheWalrus

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #26 on: December 09, 2012, 08:51 PM »
You have to consider the current state of the economy.  In a vacuum, your plan would work just fine, but basic economics tell you that in the short term, it significantly makes things worse.

What you're saying is that in a bad economy, companies should have to spend less on wages to compensate for the smaller income. Sounds legit.
Here's an idea: spend less on bonuses: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/2012-investment-banking-bonuses/
Tesco is mentioned as an example here: a news report from 4 days ago mentions that Tim Mason is leaving the company and with his departure receives 5.7 million pounds (at the current rate, that's $9.14 million). How many year salaries is that? What kind of work does he do for that kind of money anyway? High profile assassination? It's not like his own money is at risk with his work, anyway. If the company goes bankrupt, he gets to keep all his money (in contrast, in Japan, if a company goes bankrupt, the director loses everything). Basically, the guys at the top get the rewards while the guys at the bottom run the risk. That's messed up, man.
Yeah, the monster bonuses to CEO's are pretty terrible, I'm torn because as a CEO, you should be paid many times more than the average worker in my opinion.  The 'many times' has become exponentially astronomical, though.  I think they've worked harder than others to achieve their position so they do deserve more.  I can't really offer a solution, as I don't believe in governments telling private companies how to structure their pay system.  Regulating minimum wage is one thing, that is a government issue, I do not believe capping bonuses paid in a private corporation should be a function of government.  Once you start with that, where does it end?  What would government end up not controlling in private enterprise?  I don't want to be a business owner trying to turn a profit with a government telling me where to spend what money and what to pay which workers. 

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #27 on: December 09, 2012, 11:13 PM »
You have to consider the current state of the economy.  In a vacuum, your plan would work just fine, but basic economics tell you that in the short term, it significantly makes things worse.

What you're saying is that in a bad economy, companies should have to spend less on wages to compensate for the smaller income. Sounds legit.
Here's an idea: spend less on bonuses: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/2012-investment-banking-bonuses/
Tesco is mentioned as an example here: a news report from 4 days ago mentions that Tim Mason is leaving the company and with his departure receives 5.7 million pounds (at the current rate, that's $9.14 million). How many year salaries is that? What kind of work does he do for that kind of money anyway? High profile assassination? It's not like his own money is at risk with his work, anyway. If the company goes bankrupt, he gets to keep all his money (in contrast, in Japan, if a company goes bankrupt, the director loses everything). Basically, the guys at the top get the rewards while the guys at the bottom run the risk. That's messed up, man.
Yeah, the monster bonuses to CEO's are pretty terrible, I'm torn because as a CEO, you should be paid many times more than the average worker in my opinion.  The 'many times' has become exponentially astronomical, though.  I think they've worked harder than others to achieve their position so they do deserve more.  I can't really offer a solution, as I don't believe in governments telling private companies how to structure their pay system.  Regulating minimum wage is one thing, that is a government issue, I do not believe capping bonuses paid in a private corporation should be a function of government.  Once you start with that, where does it end?  What would government end up not controlling in private enterprise?  I don't want to be a business owner trying to turn a profit with a government telling me where to spend what money and what to pay which workers.

Paid a few times more maybe, not hundreds times more though. The only reason you might want a CEO to be paid more is because salaries might have to be structured like a pyramid scheme, just to maintain incentives for workers to move up the ladder. But what would be wrong about the government (ideally meaning us, the people) telling companies to spread their wealth out more effectively, in a way that better benefits society? I think we have to do something about the religion centered around the false idea that a business performs best when it attempts to maximize one factor only, shareholder value. This is a good article on corporate purpose:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/6/18%20corporate%20stout/stout_corporate%20issues.pdf

The slippery slope argument could be applied to anything though, I mean you could ask 'once we start taxing people, where will it end?', yet no one's pushing for arbitrarily high taxes. I really don't see the risk for getting out of control here, and I'm sure no matter what caps we put in place, CEOs will still be making exorbitant amounts.

Offline ANO

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #28 on: December 10, 2012, 09:12 AM »
Save us from Berlusconi Wally!

Re: Wally's school of politics
« Reply #29 on: December 10, 2012, 11:16 PM »
Yeah, the monster bonuses to CEO's are pretty terrible, I'm torn because as a CEO, you should be paid many times more than the average worker in my opinion. [...] I think they've worked harder than others to achieve their position so they do deserve more.

How do you know that they've worked harder? Did they have night shifts? Did they have to work multiple jobs like minimum wage workers? What is it that these people do, anyway?