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At 1/16/09 01:45 AM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

At 1/16/09 12:48 AM, Minarchist wrote: You were saying that, in general, blue-collar wages were too low. I'm saying that, in general, they'll never be too low for too long unless government interferes.

They will be exactly as low as the company can get them to be.

Of course. Paying more than necessary for labor is inefficient.

Here's a fun thought: It is almost impossible for people in blue collar jobs (who work 9-5) to search for another job, since job searches generally require you to search during those hours. If you can't save up enough to take a gamble and quit your job, just "quitting" is like telling someone to just "move out" of their house because they think it's too small or "get a divorce" because they've been having fights with their spouse. It's not a decision to be taken lightly once you have a job beyond flipping burgers in high school.

It may be inconvenient but certainly not impossible. If the inconvenience is stopping people from job hunting, then they don't need a job that bad... or they're just hoping to count on a check from the government.

quality over quantity, the kid who does the material right in school gets a higher grade than the one who works hard and does not understand it

At 1/16/09 06:22 AM, SomeCrappyUsername wrote: quality over quantity, the kid who does the material right in school gets a higher grade than the one who works hard and does not understand it

Sorry, I gonna rephrase it seems somewhat poorly worded. If someone understands how the economy works then they will be rewarded for playing it right. Anybody can become a plumber, but very few people have the ability to run a company. It's supply and demand, but with people/services.

If you work on an assembly line you cannot work any faster than the conveyer belt brings the items to you. It isn't really possible to work faster than other people.

However, in other jobs where it is possible I agree with you that pay should not be a flat hourly wage for everyone doing that job. Having people go home 20% earlier would be bad for morale, creating quotas will often lead people doing fast but sloppy work, and the same applies to paying by the item. However, if there was close inspection of the work to make sure it met up with quality standards then I would support doing a quota/pay per item system.

Absolutely not. Wealth acquiring wealth is gauged based upon how useful the service is performed by individual A is for individuals B-Z, inversely related to the number of people who perform that task. Income is measured by 'community service' [Not in the standard sense of the term].

Think about this way... if a person spent 10 hours a day digging ditches, why should they make money doing that? just because it's hard work doesn't mean that the activity is useful for the wants and needs of others nor does it mean it actually does anything productive. If a person only has to work... 5 hours a day [or 7 hours a day minus weekends] performing the task of a doctor, should they be payed less simply because they work less? The doctor should be payed more because his services are more useful to the needs and wants of the most important element of the economy; the consumer.

Generally speaking, the hardest working people have the advantage of being more productive, and in an isolated system, have job advantages over employers who are interested in profit and recognize the dedication of that individual. But muscle and will power alone don't drive the modern civilization, most of the advancements of society are not done out of sheer hard work but more importantly out of intelligence and ingenuity.

Most of the extremely wealthy people have gotten the way they are either because they are great innovators or investors, minus a few who get their wealth through crime. They didn't need to work 10 hours a day performing back breaking labor (though it is possible that they did) because the virtue of an act is gauged, and better so, by the degree of usefulness to consumers. Bill gates and those that financed and developed Microsoft deserve the money they earn because of the incredible influence of the internet in the economy, the internet likely put a few jobs in the category of 'absolete' such as secretarial jobs, but it most certainly made things cheaper, increased production, and opened up jobs once inconceivable. It is dirrectly influenced in the employment of millions today and for that reason, those involved in microsoft, no matter how lax their work hours might have been, are arguably more virtuous in their activities than the ditch digger.

No offense to those in construction, building bridges is important as well. When i speak of ditch digging i am referring to literally digging holes to no productive end. The construction of roads, bridges, and railways is of little difference to the internet. Rail industrialists like James J Hill deserve their fortunes, their work made products of all kinds cheaper to consumers, the rails connected the countries regions together in unprecedented ways, and Hill put countless people to work who might have not been employed.

In a free economy the consumer dictates who is most virtuous to fulfilling their ends, they vote with their money and to the victor goes the spoils.

At 1/15/09 09:26 PM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

I'm not suggesting profit sharing or Marxism or socialism or any such nonsense. All I want to know is how do we justify paying people the same for varied work. Doesn't that compel people to do the least possible? Beyond that, is the notion of taking pride in work dead (in America)?

We justify this by asking "which person is doing better work?" "Why is this other person not working as hard as him?"
Now usually the mindset is "we need to hire more people like this first one because he's better"
but in today's market it's more like "we need to see if it would benefit us to have person A or person B, if we can only have one of them since we need to cut jobs, we will take person A"

Someone who works harder nowadays doesn't get more reward, he just gets to keep his job.

The truth of it is "The rich get richer"
Its nothing to do with how hard you work. Don't try to tell me poor people are just lazy. It is directly effected by how wealthy you are, what you own and what you can afford.

If your trying to say CEOs are skilled and rare and that's why they deserve what they earn, try to imagine a poor person with a CEOs skills. They have no money to use. They cannot 'invest wisely', they cannot manage efficiently, they do not have the opportunity to innovate. They are stuck due to their starting situation at the bottom.

Then take the example of a Rubbish collector. This is a job that there are few people who want to do. But surprise, surprise the availability of Rubbish collectors doesn't affect the pay of the job. People do it because it is work available to people of there class not because it is rewarding.

In terms of skilled workers, doctors, teachers, scientists even, all get paid less than people high up in the desk based work world. Do you really think that is harder, more skilled or more deserving work? Because I don't.

Hard work = Money
SMART work = x * Money
where x is a number > 1 and is directly proportional to the degree of smartness

At 1/17/09 10:27 PM, Alphabit wrote: Hard work = Money
SMART work = x * Money
where x is a number > 1 and is directly proportional to the degree of smartness

You forgot one:

NET-work = Money^x, where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know.

At 1/17/09 07:00 PM, glomph wrote: The truth of it is "The rich get richer"
...
Its nothing to do with how hard you work. Don't try to tell me poor people are just lazy. It is directly effected by how wealthy you are, what you own and what you can afford. Do you really think that is harder, more skilled or more deserving work? Because I don't.

So, should what can be done to fix it, if anything, and if anything should be done?

At 1/18/09 05:12 AM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

At 1/17/09 07:00 PM, glomph wrote: The truth of it is "The rich get richer"
...
Its nothing to do with how hard you work. Don't try to tell me poor people are just lazy. It is directly effected by how wealthy you are, what you own and what you can afford. Do you really think that is harder, more skilled or more deserving work? Because I don't.

So, should what can be done to fix it, if anything, and if anything should be done?

Increase Taxation in till more economic equality exists. Increase spending on free education and welfare for all ( possibly abolishing private education as it ruins opportunity for those less well off), so that opportunity and standards of living become more equal. Enforce workers rights. Enforce anti discrimination laws on employers. Have more state run industry.

At 1/18/09 08:37 AM, glomph wrote:

Increase Taxation in till more economic equality exists. Increase spending on free education and welfare for all ( possibly abolishing private education as it ruins opportunity for those less well off), so that opportunity and standards of living become more equal. Enforce workers rights. Enforce anti discrimination laws on employers. Have more state run industry.

The problem is that if you abolish private schools, all that you'll do is force more rich people to flee the cities to suburbia. As the system works today, the cities are largely the domain of the poor and the rich. The middle class have mostly left because they cannot afford private schools and because they do not want their kids to go to school with poor kids.

A better way to spread opportunity would be to create magnet schools, where kids who are intelligent can go to good schools no matter what their parent's background is.

At 1/18/09 10:35 AM, Al6200 wrote: The problem is that if you abolish private schools, all that you'll do is force more rich people to flee the cities to suburbia. As the system works today, the cities are largely the domain of the poor and the rich. The middle class have mostly left because they cannot afford private schools and because they do not want their kids to go to school with poor kids.

A better way to spread opportunity would be to create magnet schools, where kids who are intelligent can go to good schools no matter what their parent's background is.

That is a problem I agree, but I am not sure magnet schools would be better. How would you insure it was intelligent kids and not educated ones? How does one measure intelligence? (please don't say IQ) Also lots of kids from poor backgrounds would feel uncomfortable / incapable of going to a magnet school.

If you provide a free, open and improved system of education for ALL regardless of ability, equality of education is closer to being offered. If the rich all move to the suburbs, well one would fund suburb schools only in till there education system matched intercity. Hopefully in the UK(where we have had a Labour government so surly cant have such elitist class system) we have less of an elitist group of people so rich people wouldn't mind mixing so much. I disagree that 'smarter' people deserve better education. They deserve the same standard but a different level of difficulty.

Also to add to my solution to the rich getting richer I would say increase inheritance tax a LOT.

There's not enough time to take pride in your work over the amount of money you make for it, it's a dog eat dog world out there. And money is not equal to the amount of hard work you do, celebrities are in most cases a prime example of this as such a small percentage of them did any amount of work to earn as much as they do. It goes the other way too, I know parents who have been doing their jobs hard for many, many years to support their children and let them get higher up in life than they themselves managed, to pay for a good education. People who earn under 10k a year and are stuck in a vicious cycle of working hard to make a change and just not getting what they deserve for it.

At 1/18/09 11:01 AM, glomph wrote:

That is a problem I agree, but I am not sure magnet schools would be better. How would you insure it was intelligent kids and not educated ones? How does one measure intelligence? (please don't say IQ)

Aptitude tests and grades would probably be the best form of admissions. One could probably even take the data that the tests were centered on, see how much income effects the predictive validity of the scores, and then scale them accordingly. (Basically a kid who gets a high score gets their score increased if their parents are poor).

Also I think that secondary magnet schools should have admissions systems that allow kids from lower level primary schools to get in if they show strong performance and interest.

Also lots of kids from poor backgrounds would feel uncomfortable / incapable of going to a magnet school.

Why?

If you provide a free, open and improved system of education for ALL regardless of ability, equality of education is closer to being offered. If the rich all move to the suburbs, well one would fund suburb schools only in till there education system matched intercity.

Today (at least in the US), school districts are mostly funded through property taxes, so the suburban schools have better resources.

And let's not pretend that it's just a matter of funding. You could fund two schools equally, and one could still be preferable because of the students who attend it. Even if you allocated school funding nationally, people would still want to send their kids to suburban schools.

Hopefully in the UK(where we have had a Labour government so surly cant have such elitist class system) we have less of an elitist group of people so rich people wouldn't mind mixing so much.

Do kids in inner city London really go to the same schools as kids from rich upper class communities? I'd doubt it.

I disagree that 'smarter' people deserve better education. They deserve the same standard but a different level of difficulty.

That's just not realistic. People who are going to get a job at McDonalds don't need to know calculus or geometry. They need to know civics, how to communicate in the real world, and some understanding of business/management.

People who are going to be physicists at NASA need decades of schooling. Researchers generally go to four years of undergraduate schooling and an additional 4 years to get their Ph. D. That's a huge investment of resources, that should only be invested in people who are going to go into certain fields.

Also to add to my solution to the rich getting richer I would say increase inheritance tax a LOT.

I don't oppose this. I also support a negative income tax (basically you give everyone in the country $10,000, and then raise taxes).

There is a lot of unearned income in America

At 1/18/09 10:35 AM, Al6200 wrote:

At 1/18/09 08:37 AM, glomph wrote:

A better way to spread opportunity would be to create magnet schools, where kids who are intelligent can go to good schools no matter what their parent's background is.

Or to force competition and choice into failing American schools by installing a voucher program that would run cheaper and more efficient then our current system.
As well as helping to destroy the evils of teacher's unions as well.

At 1/16/09 01:45 AM, AntiangelicAngel wrote:

They will be exactly as low as the company can get them to be.

And they will be exactly as high the laborer can get them to be.
Congratulations! you understand a market system.

Here's a fun thought: It is almost impossible for people in blue collar jobs (who work 9-5) to search for another job, since job searches generally require you to search during those hours. If you can't save up enough to take a gamble and quit your job, just "quitting" is like telling someone to just "move out" of their house because they think it's too small or "get a divorce" because they've been having fights with their spouse. It's not a decision to be taken lightly once you have a job beyond flipping burgers in high school.

Right because the internet hasn't been invented yet. Or sick days.

At 1/18/09 05:03 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote:
Or to force competition and choice into failing American schools by installing a voucher program that would run cheaper and more efficient then our current system.
As well as helping to destroy the evils of teacher's unions as well.

It is so amusing to hear teachers unions attack vouchers.
"Giving parents a choice of where to send the kid to school is detrimental to the kid!"

hard and smart work. and depends on the job. a man that works his ass off at a factory will only make a fraction of the pay those guys that run the MRI machines at hospitals that just sit and run it when needed to.

At 1/18/09 03:44 AM, Dawnslayer wrote:

At 1/17/09 10:27 PM, Alphabit wrote: Hard work = Money
SMART work = x * Money
where x is a number > 1 and is directly proportional to the degree of smartness

You forgot one:

NET-work = Money^x, where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know.

Nice one, but your equation doesn't take into account the types of people you know; knowing a single wealthy businessman is way better than knowing 100 hobbos.

So in effect:
NET-work = Money^(x*y), where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know & y>=0 and represents the summed average influence/power index of all the people you know.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on if you happen to be lucky and know anyone higher up or were raised in a family or location where everyone was rich or poor. With the poor economy nowadays, it's difficult for many hard-working people to get the jobs they should have.

At 1/19/09 07:52 AM, Alphabit wrote:

Nice one, but your equation doesn't take into account the types of people you know; knowing a single wealthy businessman is way better than knowing 100 hobbos.

So in effect:
NET-work = Money^(x*y), where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know & y>=0 and represents the summed average influence/power index of all the people you know.

It shouldn't actually be that hard to calculate how well that equation works.

Hard work =/= money ... Hard work = credibility ... credibility + capacity = money

At 1/19/09 04:05 PM, Al6200 wrote:

At 1/19/09 07:52 AM, Alphabit wrote: So in effect:
NET-work = Money^(x*y), where x>1 and directly proportional to the people you know & y>=0 and represents the summed average influence/power index of all the people you know.

It shouldn't actually be that hard to calculate how well that equation works.

There's certainly enough people we can use as a measurement. In fact, a good number of them are leaving their current jobs tomorrow. :P