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 Frazzled wrote:
Not seeing where that link says what you think it says.

The argument was the majority of small business owners are stupid, brave, and generally lose all their money. If 8 out 10 small businesses fail, then that would speak to at the least ignorance if not stupidity, and certainly lost capital if not bankruptcy. There's definitely a seed of truth in that observation, I think.

Although to be more accurate, the example was " the majority of small business owners Dogma has known..."

 Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Not seeing where that link says what you think it says.

The argument was the majority of small business owners are stupid, brave, and generally lose all their money. If 8 out 10 small businesses fail, then that would speak to at the least ignorance if not stupidity, and certainly lost capital if not bankruptcy. There's definitely a seed of truth in that observation, I think.

Although to be more accurate, the example was " the majority of small business owners Dogma has known..."

or maybe its not all solid gold ivory back scratches while diving in and swimming in a vault full of gold coins....

remember, these people who invest their money, with the odds being that they lose it all, are the ones being asked to take in less $ and pay out more $.

8/10 dont fail due to ignorance alone, they fail because its actually a huge risk, with lots of variables. compared to the guy who sweeps the floors and takes 0 risk, but has stable income.

If I made a claim, and I am not, that all min wage workers are just ignorant/stupid and thats why they fail, that would be met with the usual teeth gnashing and "you hate the poor" talk your side has been espousing.

yet you claiming that the entrepreneurs who are actually taking huge risks with their own capital, who actually provide jobs for people, are ignorant/stupid.

 Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Not seeing where that link says what you think it says.

The argument was the majority of small business owners are stupid, brave, and generally lose all their money. If 8 out 10 small businesses fail, then that would speak to at the least ignorance if not stupidity, and certainly lost capital if not bankruptcy. There's definitely a seed of truth in that observation, I think.

Although to be more accurate, the example was " the majority of small business owners Dogma has known..."

You're drawing an inference without support. Sorry. Try harder.

EDIT: easysauce had abetter reply.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 sebster wrote:

I really love the thing where people say they own businesses, and then just assume they know all about business. Just all of... business. Every bit. Running a Wendy's or whatever franchise it is you bought somehow means that you gain a complete knowledge of activity based costing and where it can and can't be applied.

Speaking from personal experience: the majority of small business owners have more chutzpah than intelligence, hence the high rate of failure.

At least they're taking that risk... as such, if successful... the reward should be meaningful.

The reward is they are making money and working for themselves and the pride in their product and the satisfaction of employing people. What other reward do they need/deserve?

It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

 kronk wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 sebster wrote:

I really love the thing where people say they own businesses, and then just assume they know all about business. Just all of... business. Every bit. Running a Wendy's or whatever franchise it is you bought somehow means that you gain a complete knowledge of activity based costing and where it can and can't be applied.

Speaking from personal experience: the majority of small business owners have more chutzpah than intelligence, hence the high rate of failure.

At least they're taking that risk... as such, if successful... the reward should be meaningful.

The reward is they are making money and working for themselves and the pride in their product and the satisfaction of employing people. What other reward do they need/deserve?

You forgot nekkid chicks man.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

What we talking about now?

Society running a protection racket evidently.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

What we talking about now?

That entrepreneurs are the only people taking some huge risk and should be treated like some magical gentle butterflies, but that the hard truth is that they also hold a gakload of power over their employees who are taking a huge risk by working for said entrepreneurs.

 whembly wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 sebster wrote:

I really love the thing where people say they own businesses, and then just assume they know all about business. Just all of... business. Every bit. Running a Wendy's or whatever franchise it is you bought somehow means that you gain a complete knowledge of activity based costing and where it can and can't be applied.

Speaking from personal experience: the majority of small business owners have more chutzpah than intelligence, hence the high rate of failure.

At least they're taking that risk... as such, if successful... the reward should be meaningful.

The reward is they are making money and working for themselves and the pride in their product and the satisfaction of employing people. What other reward do they need/deserve?

You forgot nekkid chicks man.

That's a given. If it has to be explained, then there is NO HOPE!

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

What we talking about now?

That entrepreneurs are the only people taking some huge risk and should be treated like some magical gentle butterflies, but that the hard truth is that they also hold a gakload of power over their employees who are taking a huge risk by working for said entrepreneurs.

Sure... I see some of that.

But when are you going to give credit to the entrepreneurs too?

It's not an either or situation. Both entrepreneurs and the laborers are in a symbiotic relationship.

 d-usa wrote:
It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

no its not a risk.. you dont lose money when fired, you just have to find a new one and I am pretty sure wrongful dismissal is still a thing you can go to court over.

comparing the "risk" of having to find another job, with the risk of losing millions, as well as having to find another job, is just silly, disingenuous, and ignorant of the weighting of one risk over another.

But I suppose if you dont count the service their business provides, and the jobs it creates, contributing, then you might say they dont contribute,

I however, consider providing jobs and services to be contributing.

Workers need owners to get the job, owners need workers to do the work. If everything goes south, the workers find another job, and the owner is likely bankrupt, in a huge amount of debt, and still has to find another job. The owner has taken more risk, hence gets more reward when that risk actually pays off, which is never a guarantee, and quite likely, wont happen.

The worker has risked nothing, you show up, you get paid, even when fired they must pay you for hours worked. If it all goes south, you just find another job. Which isnt hard, unless all the owners who provide jobs are being put out of business for some reason or the other.

 easysauce wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
It's also a huge risk to work for anybody in the US because they can fire you for no reason other than being in a bad mood because the seeds in their turd scratched their hemorrhoid on the way out.

When you open a business you rely on society, so don't act like you are being punished by society when asked to contribute.

no its not a risk.. you dont lose money when fired, you just have to find a new one

I am officially dumber for having read that reply. There is really no point in bothering to read or reply to anything else, but what the hell. Of course it shows that you have no clue about how crap in the USA actually works, but that's par for the course.

You do lose money when you get fired, that's mostly because you quit getting paid when you get fired. You also lose your insurance, if you were lucky enough to have insurance through your job to begin with.

Bu that same token you also don't lose any money when your business fails, just start another one or get another job.

and I am pretty sure wrongful dismissal is still a thing you can go to court over.

If you get fired for being a woman, or black, or....that's about it.

But anybody can fire you for any reason without any kind of notice. Butt itches? You are fired. Taint on fire? Fired. You are too hot and make my wife jealous? Fired.

And that's just if you want to feth them over. Every single one of these employees is also taking the exact same risk as the guy that opens a business. Tomorrow they might show up to locked doors without a job because the business failed.

comparing the "risk" of having to find another job, with the risk of losing millions, as well as having to find another job, is just silly, disingenuous, and ignorant of the weighting of one risk over another.

If a business fails the person failing is just as broke as the person that got fired because some asshat had a bad day. Not more, not less. Because the same person that complains about government regulations will also have used those regulations to make sure that the business is a separate legal entity.

Personally, any business owner that shows the same attitude as you "feth you, just get another job you are replaceable and I am not" deserves to fail. If your business fails, it doesn't contribute anything anyway.

But I suppose if you dont count the service their business provides, and the jobs it creates, contributing, then you might say they dont contribute,

*insert standard "how do you provide the service, who trains your employees, who makes sure that there is a transport network for your employees and services to get to places etc etc etc Government makes sure your business has the resources to exist to begin with" speech that will get right over people's head and hurt their "bro, do you even bootstrap" feelings*

I however, consider providing jobs and services to be contributing.

Are you providing jobs out of the goodness of your heart? Or are you forced to employ people because your business wouldn't even exist without them?
Are you providing services out of the goodness of your heart? Or are you forcing people to pay you for them?

The people that pay you and the people that you pay are contributing just as much as you. They take the exact same risks as you. The myth of the entrepreneur as the sole risk-taker is false.

So you're arguing not being paid is losing money? Then the small business owner's risk is in geometric proportion to that. They risk not getting paid and losing everything they already have directly.

But thats a straw man side issue and is irrelevant to the value of minimum wage work vs. the salary. It was a good run though.

A person losing their job is also at risk of losing everything. A business owner whose business is shutting down shouldn't lose any more than a person who gets fired. He should still have his house, still have his car, still have his savings. He should have the same emergency funds available as the person getting fired. Because every single one of us is one day away from not having an income.

To pretend that as business owners they are the only people facing that risk if simply false. Losing everything is also a risk they willingly take, just as we have to take the risk that we could get fired for no reason tomorrow.

Nobody is forcing them to shut down. That's a stupid argument made by the "I don't want less profit" crowd, and it will have a much smaller impact on their profits than they are pretending.

But pretending that there shouldn't be a minimum wage increase because of some weird belief that they are the only people facing a risk? That's just silly.

You know what...

I'd be okay with increasing minimum wage.

In return, I'd want viable/practical policies to help retrain people. Two ideas:
1) Cheap... I mean cheap "shop" classes on effective/practical blue collar skills. (ie, get Union skilled labor involved, mechanic, civic jobs, basically the stuff you really don't need college).

2) Encourage Public School to expand "Shop" classes... more mechanics, more cooking skills, more fabrication stuff.

KnowWhatIMean?

I think much of this thread can be summed up in this article....

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/14/americans_think_they_re_smarter_than_the_average_american_rich_white_guys.html''

As the National Journal points out, men are likelier than women to consider themselves “much more intelligent” than Joe or Jane American. (This reminds me of attribution studies that reveal how men often ascribe their successes to skill and hard work, whereas women usually credit fate/the stars/fairy godmothers/anything but themselves.) White people prove likelier to tout their intellects than black and Hispanic people. The wealthy—those earning over $100,000 a year—far more frequently deem their fellow Americans unintelligent. For poor respondents (those earning under $40,000 a year), the opposite is true: They tend to perceive other citizens as wise.

But if you focus on who exactly feels so confident in their smarts, these results seem less like a punchline and more like the trap door into an entire unseen network of justifications for inequality. What does it mean when people of privilege—the white, male, and wealthy—disproportionally think they’ve aced the bell curve? I don’t want to read too much into one poll, but there is plenty of other research to back up the numbers. As psychologist Michael Kraus finds, those with higher social status more often hold “essentialist” ideas about class structure—they believe that one’s genes determine one’s place on the economic ladder. Disadvantaged people generally disagree: They tell researchers that social status drops down onto individuals like a net from the sky.

 d-usa wrote:
A person losing their job is also at risk of losing everything. A business owner whose business is shutting down shouldn't lose any more than a person who gets fired.

Your lack of knowledge in how small businesses are financed is terrifying.

You're arguing an opportunity cost. A small business person typically has put them selves deeply in debt and formed the business as a sole proprietorship which makes them completely liable for all debts of the business.

Its one thing to lose your job. Its another to lose your savings and house and THEN lose your "job."

 Frazzled wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
A person losing their job is also at risk of losing everything. A business owner whose business is shutting down shouldn't lose any more than a person who gets fired.

Your lack of knowledge in how small businesses are financed is terrifying.

You're arguing an opportunity cost. A small business person typically has put them selves deeply in debt and formed the business as a sole proprietorship which makes them completely liable for all debts of the business.

Its one thing to lose your job. Its another to lose your savings and house and THEN lose your "job."

Tell all the victims of the recession who lost their homes and property that they "only" lost their job.

If you can't afford to have a business fail, then you can't afford to start a business.

Putting yourself up to your eyeballs in debt to start a business that fails 80% of the time isn't smart. It's also not the problem of the rest of the population.

The person starting a business should have enough savings to live 3-6 months after that business fails. The person working for anybody should have enough savings to live 3-6 months after he loses his job.

If neither of them do, then both of them are stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
You know what...

I'd be okay with increasing minimum wage.

In return, I'd want viable/practical policies to help retrain people. Two ideas:
1) Cheap... I mean cheap "shop" classes on effective/practical blue collar skills. (ie, get Union skilled labor involved, mechanic, civic jobs, basically the stuff you really don't need college).

2) Encourage Public School to expand "Shop" classes... more mechanics, more cooking skills, more fabrication stuff.

KnowWhatIMean?

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/03/07/germany-apprenticeship-michigan

More of this?

 d-usa wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
You know what...

I'd be okay with increasing minimum wage.

In return, I'd want viable/practical policies to help retrain people. Two ideas:
1) Cheap... I mean cheap "shop" classes on effective/practical blue collar skills. (ie, get Union skilled labor involved, mechanic, civic jobs, basically the stuff you really don't need college).

2) Encourage Public School to expand "Shop" classes... more mechanics, more cooking skills, more fabrication stuff.

KnowWhatIMean?

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/03/07/germany-apprenticeship-michigan

More of this?

THIS!!! So much THIS!

Where do I sign?

 easysauce wrote:
no its not a risk.. you dont lose money when fired, you just have to find a new one and I am pretty sure wrongful dismissal is still a thing you can go to court over.

Maybe it works that way in Canada, but it very, very seldom works that way here. Our countries are very similar but they diverge sometimes in unexpected ways (like your free speech laws are much different than ours).

Most employment here is "at-will" - you can be fired for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason, The flipside is that you can also quit at any time. The only thing you can go to court for are either if you're a protected class, and were fired based upon discrimination against that class, or if you have an employment contract, of which the terms were violated. Even if you go to court, it's an uphill battle and the best reward you can get is generally, if anything, the job you got fired from back.

 d-usa wrote:
Putting yourself up to your eyeballs in debt to start a business that fails 80% of the time isn't smart. It's also not the problem of the rest of the population.

The person starting a business should have enough savings to live 3-6 months after that business fails. The person working for anybody should have enough savings to live 3-6 months after he loses his job.

If neither of them do, then both of them are stupid.

And yet when I pointed this out, I was some kind of villain. I don't understand what was controversial about that idea. Most small businesses fail, and it's almost always because of some kind of error the proprietor made - some market research not done, not enough capital, bad business plan, poor location, blah blah. I don't think this is exactly a controversial line of thinking.

 easysauce wrote:

remember, these people who invest their money, with the odds being that they lose it all, are the ones being asked to take in less $ and pay out more $.

If that is the case, then they are obviously stupid as no intelligent person would knowingly work at a loss, at least absent necessity. And the last time I checked no given individual needed to own a business.

 easysauce wrote:

8/10 dont fail due to ignorance alone, they fail because its actually a huge risk, with lots of variables.

No, not ignorance alone, but pretending that isn't a significant factor is a fool's errand.

 easysauce wrote:

If I made a claim, and I am not, that all min wage workers are just ignorant/stupid and thats why they fail, that would be met with the usual teeth gnashing and "you hate the poor" talk your side has been espousing.

Well, that's nothing like the claim I made, so I don't really understand your boggle.

Incidentally, you did previously argue that adult minimum wage workers likely made bad life choices.

 d-usa wrote:
Tomorrow they might show up to locked doors without a job because the business failed.

Ah, software QA, how happy you make me for not pursuing my dream of working in game design.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Weather you believe it or not, it is possible to estimate how many people will not walk through your doors and make a purchase if you don't keep the store clean.

Yes its an estimate, but its a good one. Things get done based on guesswork and assumptions all the freaking time, at least in this case they are very solid guesses.

Things get done on estimates and guess work, absolutely. And they are solid guesses... but they are solid guesses based on management skill and experience, not made by making up numbers based on the impact to revenue of having one level of cleanliness in the store or a slightly lower level of cleanliness.

I mean, think about which one of these things will actually be heard in a business;
"I think we need to employ another janitor, as I suspect the mess that sometimes isn't cleaned up in the front of house is costing us customers."

or;
"I have calculated we need to employ another janitor, as mess in the front of house reduces weekly sales by 3.46% or $276.80, therefore if we hire a janitor for 40 hours a week at $6.92 per hour or less the option has a positive value."

Like I said, it was only an example. I don't know the specifics of how a job like that gets it wage determined,

As I said earlier, you pay what you must to get the number and quality of staff required. It is based entirely on the market.

I mean, think about it, even if you did determine that an extra janitor would be worth $23 in increased economic value to your store... you'd still only pay what the market made you pay.

Any part of business can have a value attached to it, you need to accept that. Its really why many businesses are successful.

Yeah, that statement is not true. There are many things you can cost, and cost very accurately, but far more you simply cannot track the units produces or the value of those units... and so making up some model where you pretend to cost those things is a silly waste of time. A waste of time many business wandered in to in the 90s and then abandoned, but even they never went as far as something as farcical as trying to determine the revenue impact of cleaning.

You can be assured that Walmart knows exactly what their janitors are worth to them per hour, they're not just paying them an arbitrary figure.

Walmart is a fantastic example of what can be done with ABC. For all the political noise about Walmart, when you actually look at the core of their business their use of ABC to identify cheaper ways of delivering, storing & selling products is best in world (funnily enough, their inventory selection is way behind the likes of Aldi, but that's a whole other story).

But they're not assigning economic value to each janitor, because that's just a total nonsense.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Maybe they have learned, but you haven't?

Except they've learned nothing, and that's obvious just from reading the threads. Every time, they just come piling in with the same stupid one liners, then they get pissy when its explained things don't work like that, then they wander off, and come piling in again the next time the issue is raised, ready to repeat the same nonsense.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
No, they figure out his value and from that work out what his pay is, also including how little they can pay and still fill the position while also following any laws they have to figure. If that comes out to minimum wage or just a little above it that is what they pay him.

If he ends up being more, he gets paid more. Janitors aren't worth a whole lot as it turns out, largely because its not hard to fill the position. That depresses what he gets paid.

If it was very hard to get people to work as a janitor, they'd get paid more(up to the maximum the company figures they're worth)

No, it doesn't work that way. Are you getting confused with marginal returns and marginal cost in economics? Because in that model people end up being paid the marginal product of their labour because of market forces, not because managment pays what value the position is worth (otherwise where's the profit for management?)

Anyhow, whether that's how you got confused or not, just think about a real world example. Consider a company that contracts out to dig trenches. They used to have one bus full with 20 guys with shovels. Then technology comes along and now one guy with a trencher can do the job. That one guy is now worth what used to cost 20 guys. They aren't going to pay him what they used to have to pay 20 guys... they're going to pay him what it costs to have one guy with the training to use a trencher (which will work out more than it costs to pay one guy to work a shovel, but a hell of a lot less than it costs to pay 20 guys).


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 dogma wrote:
Speaking from personal experience: the majority of small business owners have more chutzpah than intelligence, hence the high rate of failure.

There's no shortage of idiots, that's for sure. But running a business is also an inherently difficult thing to do, hard enough that even if people understand the challenge, and apply considerable skill, they are still pretty likely to fail if market conditions and other factors don't fall their way.

But yeah, for everyone of those smart people who understand the challenge (and maybe fail), there's also a fair few idiots who just wander in thinking their awesome and that they'll totally do brilliantly just because they're awesome and know everything.


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 whembly wrote:
At least they're taking that risk... as such, if successful... the reward should be meaningful.

Absolutely.

But to get back to my original point, whether they are successful or not, it doesn't mean they know anything other than what it takes to run their business. A franchise owner will likely know timetabling, people skills, negotiating, budgeting & cash management, inventory control, and all sorts of other things like that.

But they aren't going to somehow just know how activity based costing works, and what it's strengths and limitations are. Or countless other subjects that are actually business specializations that need a large amount of course work and industry experience.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Often because they aren't doing the math.

They might pay workers the right amount by the math(simply by copying successful businesses) but hire too many of them. They also tend to get killed in overhead.

Market research also is a failing.

Or bad luck, as the market turns against them at a crucial time (your bumper wheat crop is put out in a market glut, for instance). Or your product was well considered and constructed but just doesn't get the traction expected and no-one ever knows why. Or the product does well for a while, but then just becomes unfashionable for no reason but the fickle nature of the public (happens to a lot of restaurants and clubs). Or millions of other reasons.

Or you are skillful in your core business, but a terrible manager of people and morale collapses and productivity goes with it. Or you handle inventory poorly and end up getting tricked by your profit reports in to thinking you've got positive cashflow, and then get caught with no cash and hundreds of thousands tied up in outdated inventory.

Loads of reasons.

 sebster wrote:

But yeah, for everyone of those smart people who understand the challenge (and maybe fail), there's also a fair few idiots who just wander in thinking their awesome and that they'll totally do brilliantly just because they're awesome and know everything.

There's also something to be said about "repeat offenders" By this, and I'm not sure if the article that has been referenced really talks about it, but here in the US, "most" entepreneurs who get a business running, even if or especially if it fails will try again. So this whole 8 of 10 businesses fail within their first 18 months thing could only account for a smaller margin of business owners/starters. Obviously there are some out there who think a great deal about what theyre doing, look at guys like the Trump, or Mark Cuban. Now that they are sitting on mountains of money, they CAN be more free in starting new businesses or supporting those new businesses, but you can bet money when they started, they were nervous about those startups.

 easysauce wrote:
I agree, and still is coming from you, so maybe take a break.

Being polite is not optional, seriously, you are just being insulting and aggressive at this point with a very "im right, your wrong" *repeat* attitude.

Despite your assertions that all the arguments/points you dont like are "BS", they are not.

There's more to manners than just saying nice things. A person who uses only the nicest of language, but enters of conversation with a poorly informed, poorly considered argument that they simply refuse to think about over the course of a debate is an obnoxious bore, and that's a very rude thing for a person to be.

You claim repeating simple stuff to people is not only your hobby on dakka, but most of your job.

No, I didn't. Read more carefully. My job, among others things, is cost or management accounting. What I do here on dakka is end up explaining basic things over and over again to people who don't want to accept them.

You already have an answer to "how do jobs that dont directly "produce" anything get factored in?" since it is econ 101, has been repeated in this thread.

Yeah, see, it isn't Econ 101. Economics deal with the subject only in an entirely abstract way, as how all firms and all workers will interact in the market to equalise the rate of pay against the marginal productivity of labour.

Whereas for an individual company, all that stuff is irrelevant. Instead, what matters there is cost or management accounting, which is a specialisation of accounting, which will teach you how things like ABC work, and where they can be usefully applied.

Which is stuff you would know if you had any idea about what you're talking about.

If there is a job that doesnt directly generate income, its a cost of doing business. How necessary that role is to the business, the cost of turnover in workers, the scarcity of the skills, and other factors contribute to determining how much the hourly is.

What you said there is true in a fairly vague way, but it's a long way from what you were claiming earlier, when you said it was based on the value of that work to the company, which you had a formula for.

No harder to calculate then your gas bill, despite you not being able to quantify how much gas benefits you, it still gets a price put on it.

And now you're acknowledging that you can't actually quantify the benefits of the gas consumed by the business. And so you've basically given up on your earlier attempt to claim that you have formulas to determine how much every input to the company is worth.

Qualitative factors are used to determine things as well, not just quantitative, so if you dont understand how things work and literally want a X+Y=Z formula for everything, you will be sorely disappointed as that is not how the world works.

You're the one who was claiming you had formulas for determining qualitative factors. I'm the one trying to explain to you that qualitative factors are also important, which means many decisions lie outside of simple formulas.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Sorry where does your deep knowledge of business come from again?

I don't have a deep knowledge of business. I have a specific specialisation, management accounting. This means I know how cost accounting and transfer accounting work, and can construct and improve business processes, particularly within the not-for-profit and education sectors in which I have most of my experience. On top of that there's a bunch of other stuff I do just because it's stuff every accountant does (management reports, cashflow management etc), but there's all kinds of accounting stuff on which I'd be way out of my depth, like the really pedantic, complex end of International Standards, auditing (I can never remember whether the green or the red pen is good).

Just like, iirc correctly, you work in corporate law at a bank. And so you'd know lots about various legal concepts as they apply specifically to banks. It wouldn't make you an expert in assessing loan risks, or cash management, or in all kinds of law outside of your speciality.

But if someone were to come in to a thread and claim they've owned businesses and so they know how money and banks work, and banks break the law all the time and never get held to account you would be well within your expertise to tell that person that he's completely and utterly wrong.

You can still put nearly all qualitative factors into a mathematical form, you simply determine a value based on a guess or approximation.

Saying qualitative factors mean you need to toss formulas away is wrong, you can use them to determine economic value.

Will you be 100% right? No.

Will you be pretty damn close? Yes.

Can we say that most minimum wage jobs are not worth $12 an hour? Hell yes.

Will this lead to downsizing, job losses, economic depression, and possibly even businesses effected by this closing? Definitely.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
There's also something to be said about "repeat offenders" By this, and I'm not sure if the article that has been referenced really talks about it, but here in the US, "most" entepreneurs who get a business running, even if or especially if it fails will try again. So this whole 8 of 10 businesses fail within their first 18 months thing could only account for a smaller margin of business owners/starters. Obviously there are some out there who think a great deal about what theyre doing, look at guys like the Trump, or Mark Cuban. Now that they are sitting on mountains of money, they CAN be more free in starting new businesses or supporting those new businesses, but you can bet money when they started, they were nervous about those startups.

Interesting, I hadn't heard that there's many repeat offenders. Makes sense.

The other thing to consider with business is that a whole lot of small businesses that get set up don't have massive start up investments. Often the company starts out of the spare room, with few materials costs, no labour costs and just a hell of a lot of hard work and enthusiasm from one or two people. If after a while the business hasn't taken off, and enthusiasm has dwindled because of that, the business doesn't so much go bankrupt as just sort of peter out.

Those kinds of business might account for a fair portion of that 8/10 figure as well.


As an aside, Trump's business prowess is largely fictitious, by the way. His dad was pretty impressive, I think, but Donald's just another one of those big risk, big return guys who'll gamble enough of other people's money to do okay for himself in the long haul, but I'd never want to invest in his enterprises.

As an aside, Trump's business prowess is largely fictitious, by the way. His dad was pretty impressive, I think, but Donald's just another one of those big risk, big return guys who'll gamble enough of other people's money to do okay for himself in the long haul, but I'd never want to invest in his enterprises

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-why-donald-trump-biggest-troll-alive/

 Grey Templar wrote:
You can still put nearly all qualitative factors into a mathematical form, you simply determine a value based on a guess or approximation.

Saying qualitative factors mean you need to toss formulas away is wrong, you can use them to determine economic value.

The presence of qualitative factors doesn't mean you toss away the formula. But it does mean you can't produce a quantitative answer, which is what had been argued earlier in this thread.

For a real world example, the costing I produced the other day showed that one of our submarine courses brings in about half the revenue it costs to run the program. So in quantitative terms we shouldn't offer the program. But if we were stop offering the course, we'd risk the Federal government looking elsewhere for a full service contract, risking losing the profitable courses (whether there's any profitable courses in the whole program is a whole other point of debate). And then on top of that we're talking about almost entirely permanent staff who can't be redeployed to teach other programs, so there's little scope for labour savings.

Will this lead to downsizing, job losses, economic depression, and possibly even businesses effected by this closing? Definitely.

Once again... actual experts have run the numbers on this. Here's the CBO report that I've mentioned earlier in the thread, that whembly posted some time ago on this site.

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995

As you'll see if you click on the link, an increase in minimum wage to $9 will cost about 100,000 jobs across the whole of the country. It's a bit silly to describe that as economic depression. And you'll note that within the band of likely results, it is possible (though not likely) that there will an increase in jobs, possible because there is a chance that jobs could increase (as the number of jobs cut turns out to be very small, which is more than offset by the increase in economic activity from those higher pay packets).

Read through the report in more detail if you'd like. You'll learn the impact of minimum wage is a lot more complex than you're arguing in this thread.

Except they've learned nothing, and that's obvious just from reading the threads. Every time, they just come piling in with the same stupid one liners, then they get pissy when its explained things don't work like that, then they wander off, and come piling in again the next time the issue is raised, ready to repeat the same nonsense.

1. You still have listed your vast area of expertise on the subject. Why is that?

2. So its your self appointed task to "educate dem heathens more gooder." Have you considered a hobby? I like blowing things up, wiener dog belly rubs, and an intensive belly expansion program.

 Frazzled wrote:

1. You still have listed your vast area of expertise on the subject. Why is that?

2. So its your self appointed task to "educate dem heathens more gooder." Have you considered a hobby? I like blowing things up, wiener dog belly rubs, and an intensive belly expansion program.

I'm surprised you didn't leverage your nominal, "He's not American!" argument.