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LordofHats wrote:
The argument about public employees is one of the dumbest ones in current US politics, because barring federal employees, the pay range is so spread that making any definitive statement about them is inherently a half-truth. Hell people were complaining when they heard the CEO of USPS is paid $300,000 a year. He's the head of USPS people, you know how much the CEO's at UPS and FedEx are making (and they have better benefits too!)?

10000 internets.

It actually makes me mad (and that is damn hard) thinking about it.

Some people enjoy teaching (and you try finding a job in the DC area, its a nightmare).

10000 internets.

Sweet! Now I have enough internets for that bike they keep on the top shelf at chuckie cheese!

dogma wrote:

LordofHats wrote:
The argument about public employees is one of the dumbest ones in current US politics, because barring federal employees, the pay range is so spread that making any definitive statement about them is inherently a half-truth. Hell people were complaining when they heard the CEO of USPS is paid $300,000 a year. He's the head of USPS people, you know how much the CEO's at UPS and FedEx are making (and they have better benefits too!)?

10000 internets.

It actually makes me mad (and that is damn hard) thinking about it.

300k a year... damn. Talk about one of the cheapest CEOs in the US.

Frazzled wrote:
Why doesn't she quit and do something else?

You've been a banker for some time, that's all white space if you're applying to me. Worked in a warehouse: white space. Worked at McDonalds: white space.

There's a reason "entry level" means "Interned for 2-5 years."

Melissia wrote:

dogma wrote:

LordofHats wrote:
The argument about public employees is one of the dumbest ones in current US politics, because barring federal employees, the pay range is so spread that making any definitive statement about them is inherently a half-truth. Hell people were complaining when they heard the CEO of USPS is paid $300,000 a year. He's the head of USPS people, you know how much the CEO's at UPS and FedEx are making (and they have better benefits too!)?

10000 internets.

It actually makes me mad (and that is damn hard) thinking about it.

300k a year... damn. Talk about one of the cheapest CEOs in the US.

Warren Buffet's Salary is 100k/yr I believe. It's under 200 regardless.

Salary isn't the same as compensation.

AustonT wrote:Bull gak, utter and complete bull gak. We are talking about public employees. If they are asked to break the law or act unethically they are protected by the Whistleblowers Act and REQUIRED TO report it. The governments treatment of public workers is in the public eye constantly, they do not require the protection of Unions. In this day and age youtube and the media are better advocates.

It's be really nice if it was as simple as putting up a youtube video of your boss ordering you to do something evil and then cackling as he stroked a cat, followed by some mass outrage and all the evil people getting fired quickly and promptly. But the real world is a lot messier than that and whistleblowing incidents will regularly take months, or possibly years to resolve, and without legal representation you're basically relying on the goodwill of higher ranking employees that you won't get screwed in the process. And without union representation legal protection for that length of time is beyond the budgets of most workers.

It's just... gak gets ugly, and it does so quickly. What you're arguing above would be lovely in an ideal world, but this is not that world. So instead it is very useful to have an organisation on your side.


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dajobe wrote:also, the reason some people get paid more than soldiers, is because of the education and qualifications required to do the higher paying jobs, while many lower jobs can be completed with less training and education, thus they are paid less unless there are other factors such as danger or something that will result in a pay increase, I am not insulting soldiers or other lower paying jobs, just saying why some jobs that you "sit around all day" pay more

It's a lot more complicated than that. Plenty of jobs have an inherent appeal just beyond the monetary compensation, for instance many nurses find it rewarding to help people, and many soldiers feel a level of pride from serving their country. This means that you get more supply for these jobs than would otherwise be the case at a given level of pay.

Which in turns means that the market can pay a little less for the necessary number of workers... which in turns means many of the jobs which directly help other people get paid a little less than they would if everyone was an unthinking automaton who just goes straight into whatever job that will pay him the most money.

Which, weirdly enough, means loads of people who've studied Microeconomic 101 and nothing more will foolishly, and somewhat rudely, declare that people in those kinds of jobs are delivering less valuable services because they're paid less.


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Frazzled wrote:Besides without bankers, most cleaners wouldn't exist.

And without cleaners most bankers wouldn't exist.

That's kind of the thing with a modern economy, every career is dependant on the services provided by every other career. Which basically means trying to pick out a specific career and declaring how valuable it is by itself is basically a complete load of nonsense.


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AustonT wrote:Warren Buffet's Salary is 100k/yr I believe. It's under 200 regardless.

He takes that little as salary for tax reasons - because it's more tax effective to receive most of his remuneration in options and the like. Buffet's actual 2010 earnings were $62,855,038.

This is a lot more than the $300,000 you get for being CEO of UPS. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how anyone would even try to claim CEOs in government bodies are paid anything like CEOs in private companies.

sebster wrote:

AustonT wrote:Bull gak, utter and complete bull gak. We are talking about public employees. If they are asked to break the law or act unethically they are protected by the Whistleblowers Act and REQUIRED TO report it. The governments treatment of public workers is in the public eye constantly, they do not require the protection of Unions. In this day and age youtube and the media are better advocates.

It's be really nice if it was as simple as putting up a youtube video of your boss ordering you to do something evil and then cackling as he stroked a cat, followed by some mass outrage and all the evil people getting fired quickly and promptly. But the real world is a lot messier than that and whistleblowing incidents will regularly take months, or possibly years to resolve, and without legal representation you're basically relying on the goodwill of higher ranking employees that you won't get screwed in the process. And without union representation legal protection for that length of time is beyond the budgets of most workers.

And Union lawsuits and grievances provide instant gratification, right?

AustonT wrote:Warren Buffet's Salary is 100k/yr I believe. It's under 200 regardless.

He takes that little as salary for tax reasons - because it's more tax effective to receive most of his remuneration in options and the like. Buffet's actual 2010 earnings were $62,855,038.

This is a lot more than the $300,000 you get for being CEO of UPS. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how anyone would even try to claim CEOs in government bodies are paid anything like CEOs in private companies.

He meant USPS.

AustonT wrote:And Union lawsuits and grievances provide instant gratification, right?

Yeah, because there's absolutley no possibility of moving towards a reasonable middle ground, away from militant unions but still having some level of protection for workers.

I mean, feth. Just stop the culture war silliness, there are positions other than 'boo for everything unions represent and could ever be' and 'yay for everything unions have ever done'.

AustonT wrote:UPS and FedEx are both private companies.

Sorry, missed the letter 'S'. Meant USPS. Which should have been very fething obvious in the context, given I was talking about a public sector company, and that the $300,000 for the CEO of USPS was already mentioned.

So really it becomes hard to see this as anything other than pedantry on your part, to avoid recognising you were wrong (in that Warren Buffet earns around 209 times more than the CEO of USPS).

sebster wrote:

AustonT wrote:And Union lawsuits and grievances provide instant gratification, right?

Yeah, because there's absolutley no possibility of moving towards a reasonable middle ground, away from militant unions but still having some level of protection for workers.

I mean, feth. Just stop the culture war silliness, there are positions other than 'boo for everything unions represent and could ever be' and 'yay for everything unions have ever done'.

Try reading what I said earlier in this thread about unions. Then you are also welcome to get the feth off your high horse you rode into this thread on.

sebster wrote:

AustonT wrote:UPS and FedEx are both private companies.

Sorry, missed the letter 'S'. Meant USPS. Which should have been very fething obvious in the context, given I was talking about a public sector company, and that the $300,000 for the CEO of USPS was already mentioned.

So really it becomes hard to see this as anything other than pedantry on your part, to avoid recognizing you were wrong (in that Warren Buffet earns around 209 times more than the CEO of USPS).

AustonT wrote:Try reading what I said earlier in this thread about unions. Then you are also welcome to get the feth off your high horse you rode into this thread on.

You said this "The governments treatment of public workers is in the public eye constantly, they do not require the protection of Unions. In this day and age youtube and the media are better advocates."

I have been trying to point out to you that your opinion is dangerously naive, and that while unions may have betrayed their purpose in many places, the answer isn't to simply imagine we live in a world where employees are never given the shaft.

Berkshire Hathaway pays Warren Buffet 100 thousand US Dollars a year. That's a period at the end of my sentence in case the don't use those in Australia. It denotes the end of a sentence typically but here it emphasizes an unassailable point. What's pedantic is that you continue to stamp your feet and say "no,no,no" like a 5 year old. WB's income may be higher but it is not a salary, it should have been very fething obvious in the context, given we were talking about salary. You can circle the drain in your blackhole of bs but Warren Buffet's salary won't change.

But the only remuneration the CEO of USPS gets is salary. It is a make believe game of unicorns and pixies to pretending the only remuneration Buffet gets from Berkshire is in direct salary, when we know income derived from his holdings there produced a 2010 income in excess of $60 million dollars.

sebster wrote:

AustonT wrote:Try reading what I said earlier in this thread about unions. Then you are also welcome to get the feth off your high horse you rode into this thread on.

You said this "The governments treatment of public workers is in the public eye constantly, they do not require the protection of Unions. In this day and age youtube and the media are better advocates."

I have been trying to point out to you that your opinion is dangerously naive, and that while unions may have betrayed their purpose in many places, the answer isn't to simply imagine we live in a world where employees are never given the shaft.

AustonT wrote:I'm fairly ambivalent about unions. On the one hand they provide a service for the working and middle class and exist to protect thier rights and wages. On the other some unions, especially the public ones, demand more and more when there is nothing to give and abuse the power they have. I'd wager that when the dockworkers for Toyota struck none of you noticed, but if all city services stopped for a day their would be marching in the streets. I'm pro union, I'm even pro public union; but collective bargaining between public unions and the populations they SERVE need to be reasonable and fiscally responsible. The truth is both side have ground to give and often those who are supposed to bargain in the best interest of their municipality fail to make an even token effort.

sebster wrote:

Berkshire Hathaway pays Warren Buffet 100 thousand US Dollars a year. That's a period at the end of my sentence in case the don't use those in Australia. It denotes the end of a sentence typically but here it emphasizes an unassailable point. What's pedantic is that you continue to stamp your feet and say "no,no,no" like a 5 year old. WB's income may be higher but it is not a salary, it should have been very fething obvious in the context, given we were talking about salary. You can circle the drain in your blackhole of bs but Warren Buffet's salary won't change.

But the only remuneration the CEO of USPS gets is salary. It is a make believe game of unicorns and pixies to pretending the only remuneration Buffet gets from Berkshire is in direct salary, when we know income derived from his holdings there produced a 2010 income in excess of $60 million dollars.

Shame about those private holding not being income from his employer. Better luck next time.
On both counts please carry on.

Just out of curiousity, why is investment capital deemed more important than labor capital? Investment capital is actually an unlimited bucket, since someone can always simply make more money? No matter what anyone does, there can always be more money? I believe it is called the liquidity trap?

However, there is a cap on the number of laborers in the world. Currently around 7+ billion. Therefore, why is labor capital deemed inferior to investment capital if one is limited and the other is virtually unlimited at the macro-level?

I'm no economist, so can someone help me understand?


Also apropo of nothing....

What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Easy E wrote:Just out of curiousity, why is investment capital deemed more important than labor capital?\

Liquidity.

Easy E wrote:What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Because the market won't support it.

Dogma wrote:Liquidity

I guess. It's a lot easier to send money around the globe than people. However, if no amount of zooming it around will make or reduce the amount of money, is that the only reason to have such a vast disparity in value between capital and labor?

How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Frazzled wrote:

Easy E wrote:What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Because the market won't support it.

Any proof or is it just an article of faith?

Like I said, I'm not an economist, so if you can enlighten me with some case studies or research on it, I would be open to reviewing it. You never know, you might just get a convert.

Easy E wrote:

Dogma wrote:Liquidity

I guess. It's a lot easier to send money around the globe than people. However, if no amount of zooming it around will make or reduce the amount of money, is that the only reason to have such a vast disparity in value between capital and labor?

How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Easy E wrote:

Dogma wrote:Liquidity

I guess. It's a lot easier to send money around the globe than people. However, if no amount of zooming it around will make or reduce the amount of money, is that the only reason to have such a vast disparity in value between capital and labor?

How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Frazzled wrote:

Easy E wrote:What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Because the market won't support it.

Any proof or is it just an article of faith?

Like I said, I'm not an economist, so if you can enlighten me with some case studies or research on it, I would be open to reviewing it. You never know, you might just get a convert.

Simple math. it would have already happened.
Drones say that want more money.
Company says bleep off.
Either employees leave and Company is forced to raise its levels to get new employees, or the company can acquire new employees without increasing benefits (or ship job off to location where that is not market standard).

Its not a closed system.

[quote=FrazzledSimple math. it would have already happened.
Drones say that want more money.
Company says bleep off.
Either employees leave and Company is forced to raise its levels to get new employees, or the company can acquire new employees without increasing benefits (or ship job off to location where that is not market standard).

Its not a closed system.

Easy E wrote:[quote=FrazzledSimple math. it would have already happened.
Drones say that want more money.
Company says bleep off.
Either employees leave and Company is forced to raise its levels to get new employees, or the company can acquire new employees without increasing benefits (or ship job off to location where that is not market standard).

Its not a closed system.

Yes. I see that it is not a closed system. If worker A in Detroit asks for x amount of money, the company says screw ALL of you and moves to Charleston where the worker B is ecstatic to make just a bit less than what the Detroit worker had been making. So competition is good for the business, but not the workers. The workers would benefit from cooperation, but is they are too fractured and focused on personal needs to cooperate. That is a brilliant and beautiful system for somebody.

That also leads back to why Liquidity is so much more valuable than labor due to liquidity, because in today's day and age Labor seems pretty liquid as well. Granted, I could see that changing as it becomes harder to find countries/workers willing to race each other to the bottom wages for jobs. That process could take a really long time though.

I guess that means it is the very liquidity of labor that can devalue labor, but liquidity in capital increases its value? Sorry if I am stating the obvious.

Easy E wrote:It's a lot easier to send money around the globe than people.

Depends on the person and job, but generally yes.

Easy E wrote:
How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Who do you think is moving? People like me move, we have the money, people like Joe the Plumber don't.

Easy E wrote:Just out of curiousity, why is investment capital deemed more important than labor capital?

Because they can make more money off of it. "Importance" here is a rather loaded term.

Frazzled wrote:

Easy E wrote:What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Because the market won't support it.

Yeah, the market's kinda broken like that.

Of course, the reason why I say the market won't support it isn't likely the same reason why Fraz says.

Namely that the free market never did exist except in the minds of economists.

Melissia wrote:

Easy E wrote:Just out of curiousity, why is investment capital deemed more important than labor capital?

Because they can make more money off of it. "Importance" here is a rather loaded term.

Frazzled wrote:

Easy E wrote:What I never understand is if private workers are so bent out of shape about what the public workers gets as benefits; why don't they demand better benefits from their employers instead of trying to strip public workers down to their level?

Because the market won't support it.

Yeah, the market's kinda broken like that.

Of course, the reason why I say the market won't support it isn't likely the same reason why Fraz says.

Namely that the free market never did exist except in the minds of economists.

Well thats true. On the other hand what are you going to do? Central Planning? European socialism?

Like most things (except chocolate and wiener dogs), capitalism is the best of a bunch of bad choices.

dogma wrote:

Easy E wrote:
How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Who do you think is moving? People like me move, we have the money, people like Joe the Plumber don't.

I was refering to the business/production will move to where the labor is cheapest. So, I can see how regionally, labor is inelastic as people get tied down with roots, mortgages, and other emotion based gak.

Frazzled wrote:
I'm not focused on the value between the two though. Thats a Commie BS argument. Labor is a cost, like inventory, or electricity.

Equal competition is good for workers too. Just think about all the people who acquired the jobs in the first place and have new jobs in the South, vs. the company going bankrupt.

So acquiring capital isn't a cost, but acquiring labor is. Interesting. I should spend more time learning about economics.

Equal Competition? I'm not sure if there is such a thing except in the imagination.


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Easy E wrote:

dogma wrote:

Easy E wrote:
How does outsourcing play into this dynamic, since you are essentially moving to where the labor is cheaper?

Who do you think is moving? People like me move, we have the money, people like Joe the Plumber don't.

I was refering to the business/production will move to where the labor is cheapest. So, I can see how regionally, labor is inelastic as people get tied down with roots, mortgages, and other emotion based gak. On a Macro-level it might look different.

Frazzled wrote:
I'm not focused on the value between the two though. Thats a Commie BS argument. Labor is a cost, like inventory, or electricity.

Equal competition is good for workers too. Just think about all the people who acquired the jobs in the first place and have new jobs in the South, vs. the company going bankrupt.

So acquiring capital isn't a cost, but acquiring labor is. Interesting. I should spend more time learning about economics.

Equal Competition? I'm not sure if there is such a thing except in the imagination.

So acquiring capital isn't a cost, but acquiring labor is. Interesting. I should spend more time learning about economics.

You betcha its a cost. The cost of capital is an important factor in any major project.

Thanks for enlightening me on a few things in a civil manner. I appreciate it.