Labor organization

[Kriegsspiel]

I'd argue that it's highly consequential to the way one thinks about issues.

Here is full speech.

https://youtu.be/_FanhvXO9Pk

I didn't find anything useful here, but that guy does indeed look like Ben Stiller.

[Kriegsspiel]

One doesn't get paid what one is worth. One gets paid what one negotiates. Labor is doing a shitty job of negotiating. Ideas don't work without labor. Labor is doing a poor job of taking it's fair share I would argue....because it is largely made up of low iq people who are easily taken advantage of. That is called exploitation in my book. Besides, it is the government that protects this concept of intellectual property. It's the idea people that rely on government force and tyranny when you really think about it. Absent a government enforcement mechanism there would be no such thing as intellectual property...

you can only negotiate so much if the value of the work you do and the skills you bring are weak..
not paying somebody more than they are worth is exploitation?
!!damn i have been exploited my entire life and never even realized!!!

Take sole proprietor... Say by himself he can build one swimming pool a month. He hires a helper...suddenly he becomes three times as efficient and his work is easier and lighter on his body. Carrying 150 pound pieces during installation is so much easier and lighter on his body. He can now build three pools a month. How much is that laborer worth? From my perspective he is adding two swimming pools of value every month. Why then if he is adding two swimming pools of value with his work is he being paid say...half a swimming pool? Maybe he doesn't realize his true value. Maybe he is a dumb negotiator...if he were aware that he was adding that much value how much is fair? Well corporations being profit maximizing organizations try to pay him as little as possible. Wouldn't it be smart for labor to organize to try to maximize their profits as well?

Saw this and thought of how a lot of what you think seems to relate to the 'just price' idea from the middle ages, or the Marxist theory of value.

[doodle]

Isn't the scarcity or price of something is also related to what the laborer is willing to sell it for? To keep this interesting, How much is a prostitute worth? If you have little education and low self worth you might sell yourself for 10 dollars. However if prostitutes create an organization and band together they can raise their value tremendously...up to the point where people would be unwilling to pay of course. If a pimp can upsell his prostitute for 50 dollars an hour should he pocket 40? If prostitute knew he was doing that shouldn't she demand more? I'm talking about maximizing ones return based on negotiating skills and information.

The same goes for workers for Jeff bezos....how much could workers get before he said I'm not hiring anyone because it is a money losing proposition at that point? Maybe Bezos knows that each worker at a new factory is worth 30 dollars an hour in value added to him yet the workers are willing to sell their labor for 10 dollars an hour because that is culturally considered a fair wage....minimum is 7.50 so 10 is better than that, right? And I can just afford my rent and some food..what more do I deserve for spending my days adding billions to Bezos bank account? That's great for Bezos and shareholders who can pocket that extra value. However, if workers knew that Bezos would hire up to 20 dollars an hour and still consider the venture worthwhile, they could organize and demand that rate. In other words, in a world of perfect information and intelligent actors labor would be able to fully exploit it's value added and the need for government minimum wages and protections wouldn't be necessary. We would create a more just distribution naturally through market mechanisms. Bezos would still be hundreds of times wealthier than average employee (instead of millions of times) and workers would have a middle class wage.

[doodle]

I'd argue that our wealth disparity is actually a function of information disparity and negotiating intelligence between labor and capital....between owners and management and labor. I think that labor is undervaluing their contribution and not negotiating effectively for their value added. I think given more intelligent labor negotiators with access to better information the top 1% might no longer hold more collective wealth than the lower 80%. I'm pretty sure the top 1% would be happy to negotiate for 20% of societies wealth.

[doodle]

So you both agree with me then. If labor demands more then capital will have to make a choice....make nothing, or make marginally less than they currently do. Who blinks first? Unfortunately labor doesn't do a good job of organizing and negotiating. The entire labor force doesn't have to be involved for this to work either. If only 20 or 30 percent was prepared to play hard ball in negotiations they could drive up wages for everyone. This is free market solution to wealth inequality....no-government involvement needed.

[glennds]

So you both agree with me then. If labor demands more then capital will have to make a choice....make nothing, or make marginally less than they currently do. Who blinks first? Unfortunately labor doesn't do a good job of organizing and negotiating. The entire labor force doesn't have to be involved for this to work either. If only 20 or 30 percent was prepared to play hard ball in negotiations they could drive up wages for everyone. This is free market solution to wealth inequality....no-government involvement needed.

In theory the resolution to the problem that you identify is competition among and between employers for labor. If a given employer is paying less in wages and benefits than some other employer, the other employer will be more attractive to employees, and you could also argue, will have the advantage in recruiting the most talented and desirable employees. Capitalist thinking is that companies are not only competing on price for goods and services to customers, they are also competing with each other for employees and market wages get set in this way. The tech companies are an example of an industry that competes intensely for employee talent.

Now if there are a limited number of employers in a given market and/or if the employers collude to push down wages, then yes, the employee pool is at a significant disadvantage. Organizing is one response to this situation but it does come with its own risks. Just like government, the labor organization can develop its own bureaucracy which in turn can become corrupt and whose self interests can diverge from the members it purports to represent. Other times the organization might stay honest. I personally think labor organizations work best in industries like the airline industry where the industry is specialized and there is a limited group of employers.

I do think it is important for employees to be keeping an eye on their options and if they are better elsewhere then the rational decision is to move. The employees that do not do this are limiting their opportunities IMO.

[Kriegsspiel]

Isn't the scarcity or price of something is also related to what the laborer is willing to sell it for? To keep this interesting, How much is a prostitute worth? If you have little education and low self worth you might sell yourself for 10 dollars. However if prostitutes create an organization and band together they can raise their value tremendously...up to the point where people would be unwilling to pay of course. If a pimp can upsell his prostitute for 50 dollars an hour should he pocket 40? If prostitute knew he was doing that shouldn't she demand more? I'm talking about maximizing ones return based on negotiating skills and information.

I think to make your analogy work, you'd need to say that a guy is utilizing a particular prostitute. So the guy is fine with vanilla sex with the same prostitute on repeat, but then she bands together with other ones and raises her price. The guy can just go bang another prostitute, because they're more or less interchangeable. But if that one prostitute was adept at some strange fetish he was into, maybe he can't find a replacement so he pays her more.

In my ideal situation, the vanilla prostitutes would upgrade their skillset so that they could make more money. Or go somewhere else geographically to fulfill a whorely-needed service somewhere it is lacking. Prostitution is pretty similar to unskilled menial labor in that it's incredibly mobile, you can go mostly anywhere and find some work. If you're a surgeon, you kind of need to go to wherever a hospital is that is short of surgeons.

I don't know what you're getting at with the pimp thing though. Are you saying that the pimp is like a salesman, and he's talking up the prostitutes so that the john pays more? And he shouldn't get to pocket his added value? I'd say that if the prostitute wants to make that $50 she should upgrade her skills at marketing and sales so that she could do that herself. Hmm, but now that I wrote that out, I think that your analogy makes more sense if the prostitutes organize against the pimp who's doing all the marketing and sales. IE, the unskilled (in marketing/sales) workers want to be paid more, while adding no extra value, because someone else came along and created more value out of thin air by layering a skill on top of theirs.

In that case, I would say the prostitutes don't deserve extra money just because the pimp is good at his job. But I could see a market where there are several pimps who are all similarly skilled, and the pimps bid up the price of the prostitutes labor in order to increase the size of their harem/market share. That would be a win for the prostitutes and the top pimps, but a loss for the pimps who are being outbid, and probably for the johns, since they'd be seeing the price they pay going up (although maybe the higher marketing skill of the top pimps compensates because they're getting the best prostitute-fit?). Anyways, my brain isn't working today so that might not make much sense but I'm gonna hit submit anyways. Come at me bros.

[vnatale]

The main problem with liberals regarding economics is failure to see the unseen.

Perhaps, Jeff Bezos will raise the pay of workers a bit, and perhaps it will barely impact Amazon’s bottom line and perhaps capital holders will not notice it.

But, what if Bezos had a capital expansion project planned to build new warehouses, hire tens of thousands of new workers, and expand the business. But, in the planning spreadsheet, when you change the hourly labor rate, the calculation as to whether this new project is profitable is changed such that this new expansion won’t happen, because it would be a money loser.

Marginally, the new project would be profitable at current salary rates but any higher and this project never happens.

So liberals would focus on what we see — current amazon employees making an extra $3 an hour. But liberals would fail to see what is unseen — the 10,000 people currently unemployed who would otherwise have gotten a job at amazon if not for the pay increase which made this new expansion project unprofitable.

Minimum wage laws are guilty of this. We fail to see the unseen — how many of the unemployed out there would be able to get a job at a lower price, but those new businesses never take off because they aren’t profitable at minimum wage pricing.

At this point liberals respond, that those people are better off unemployed than making an unfair wage. Because, perhaps, the assumption is the government can provide welfare to those people. Or perhaps because liberals think the capital holders will blink first, and hire those employees anyway.

As far as what a fair living wage means, all of those programs make that an impossible dream. Even if we had $30/hour minimum wage, it wouldn’t result in everyone having a great lifestyle, because the costs of apartment rent would rise.

The apartment maintenance staff have to get paid more, too. The garbage workers picking up trash at the apartment have to be paid more.

The cost to go out to dinner would double because wait staff and cooks need to be paid more.

Grocery shopping prices would go up 30% to 50% because their margins are under 1% and stock boys and cashiers need to get paid more.

Property taxes would double because teachers, who were making $28 an hour, would demand to make $50 an hour. After all, if minimum wage is $30, shouldn’t teachers be paid concomittantly more to justify their effort of going to school, the opportunity cost of missing 4 years of employment at $30/hour min wage job to get a bachelors degree? And now to do a job that’s harder and shittier than changing oil at jiffy lube for $30 an hour? So property taxes rise. Which makes apartment rent rise.

And now people making $30 min wage are living an identical lifestyle as the ones making $10 min wage were a few years earlier. So we need $50 min wage, that will surely fix this problem.

The only part you missed was that the higher wages go the more likely it becomes economically feasible for the business to choose to automate certain processes, which then leads to unemployment for those whose jobs are now gone due to automation.

Vinny

[doodle]

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Since 1979, the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce has seen their pay shrink radically as a share of total income. Figure A shows total labor compensation for the bottom 90 percent as a share of all market-based income in the American economy. In 1979, this share was 58 percent, but as of 2015 it had shrunk to just under 47 percent. The amount of money this loss represents is staggering; had the 1979 share held constant, the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce would have had roughly $1.35 trillion in additional labor income in 2015, or about $10,800 per household.

Why is the bottom 90 percent taking home far less share of total income?

Look, I'm making the argument that if this continues were going to have more unrest and social dysfunction than we already have. You can sit back and expound upon the morality of your theories all you want....if this trend continues it's going to be dark times. I think it would make sense to begin to think about how to solve these issues in a way that doesn't involve a top down government led approach.

[doodle]

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Ignoring this trend is going to create problems.

[Xan]

Most people don't want to be wealthy. They want to spend everything they make.

And regardless of how wealthy somebody else is, if people have a decent life and see it improving (and most do, don't they?) then it's hard to sell them on a revolution. There aren't masses of oppressed starving people.

[doodle]

Most people don't want to be wealthy. They want to spend everything they make.

And regardless of how wealthy somebody else is, if people have a decent life and see it improving (and most do, don't they?)

Do they? I think a lot of people don't necessarily feel that way.

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None of these graphs that I'm posting indicate a pattern?

[Xan]

Interesting that the sharp break appears right at the closing of the gold window.

[doodle]

Good find. The productivity compensation gap is definitely complicated and changes by industry and my chart certainly oversimplifies the issue. I'm looking to understand the widening gap between haves and have nots. I'm sure its causes run the gamut from declining labor unions, increased gig economy independent contractor designations, offshoring jobs, borderline monopolistic concentration of corporate conglomerates, nepotistic corporate boardrooms, concentration of stock ownership and voting rights among elites....the list could go on and on I'm sure. But just like healthcare, if the problem continues to get worse and we ignore and refuse to address it, we will continue to prime conditions for a full out social breakdown. To me the historical precedent for this outcome is evident.

[Kriegsspiel]

I found it interesting that the industries with compensation rising fastest relative to productivity are the kind of industries/jobs I think of as fun or low-stress. Golf courses & country clubs, oil and gas extraction, theme parks, and.... are you kidding me, vending machine operators! I was just looking at vending machines on craigslist this morning!

[vnatale]

What I found completely surprising was the industry that is "screwing" their employees the most was IT.

Is this related to H1-B immigrants?

The companies say that they cannot find enough qualified U.S. employees for the job when what they mean is that they cannot find that class of employees willing to work for the wages they are offering? Then they bring in these H1-B immigrants who can, in some ways, be likened to "indentured servants" with nowhere the same rights as U.S. employees?

Vinny

[doodle]

I found it interesting that the industries with compensation rising fastest relative to productivity are the kind of industries/jobs I think of as fun or low-stress. Golf courses & country clubs, oil and gas extraction, theme parks, and.... are you kidding me, vending machine operators! I was just looking at vending machines on craigslist this morning!

Oil and gas extraction? That doesn't sound low stress to me. I'm not so sure on the theme parks and country club one either...dealing directly with the general public can be excrutiating...at least for me. Then again, most jobs are pretty cushy compared to the true essential jobs...building and construction, food production, garbage and waste disposal, natural resource extraction....we have offshored or brought in immigrant labor to deal with most of these.

[Kriegsspiel]

I found it interesting that the industries with compensation rising fastest relative to productivity are the kind of industries/jobs I think of as fun or low-stress. Golf courses & country clubs, oil and gas extraction, theme parks, and.... are you kidding me, vending machine operators! I was just looking at vending machines on craigslist this morning!

Oil and gas extraction? That doesn't sound low stress to me.

I worked in the oil and gas industry, it was really fun. When I say fun, I mean.. for dudes who like to joke around and fuck with each other and get dirty and do manly stuff outdoors. It's just totally different from the typical office atmosphere. The stress you get is, to me, a better and more tolerable type of stress than you get from managing office workers, or working sales/purchasing, or other white collar jobs like that. Mike Rowe is all over this so I don't feel I need to belabor the point, but a lot of blue collar work is a really good fit for a lot of people.

Then again, most jobs are pretty cushy compared to the true essential jobs...building and construction, food production, garbage and waste disposal, natural resource extraction....

Physically, yes, office jobs are cushier. But they might have more of the bad kind of mental stress, or you don't feel like you're doing anything useful, or WHATEVER. As time goes on, I find myself less and less condescending towards jobs I personally wouldn't want to do. It's mostly because I've noticed that people talk bad about things that I liked doing (like you just did), so I can fathom that people might actually prefer, or not mind, different things. Again, Mike Rowe talks about this better than I can.

[doodle]

I found it interesting that the industries with compensation rising fastest relative to productivity are the kind of industries/jobs I think of as fun or low-stress. Golf courses & country clubs, oil and gas extraction, theme parks, and.... are you kidding me, vending machine operators! I was just looking at vending machines on craigslist this morning!

Oil and gas extraction? That doesn't sound low stress to me.

I worked in the oil and gas industry, it was really fun. When I say fun, I mean.. for dudes who like to joke around and fuck with each other and get dirty and do manly stuff outdoors. It's just totally different from the typical office atmosphere. The stress you get is, to me, a better and more tolerable type of stress than you get from managing office workers, or working sales/purchasing, or other white collar jobs like that. Mike Rowe is all over this so I don't feel I need to belabor the point, but a lot of blue collar work is a really good fit for a lot of people.

Then again, most jobs are pretty cushy compared to the true essential jobs...building and construction, food production, garbage and waste disposal, natural resource extraction....

Physically, yes, office jobs are cushier. But they might have more of the bad kind of mental stress, or you don't feel like you're doing anything useful, or WHATEVER. As time goes on, I find myself less and less condescending towards jobs I personally wouldn't want to do. It's mostly because I've noticed that people talk bad about things that I liked doing (like you just did), so I can fathom that people might actually prefer, or not mind, different things. Again, Mike Rowe talks about this better than I can.

I agree with that analysis...although not as true once you get past 40. Lot of knuckleheads in those jobs as well... Can become tiring with everything having to be a dick measuring competition....at least it is for me. With the right crew though can be a joy ...I'm back to that type of work now. When my body cooperates it's great...

[Kriegsspiel]

I agree with that analysis...although not as true once you get past 40. Lot of knuckleheads in those jobs as well... Can become tiring with everything having to be a dick measuring competition....at least it is for me. With the right crew though can be a joy ...I'm back to that type of work now. When my body cooperates it's great...

Yup. In my view, once you hit 40, and you've been doing something for 20 years, you should be pretty much an expert. Or a master, in the old parlance, ready to train and direct apprentices and journeymen. And if you've figured out the business side, start your own company.

What are you getting back into?

[doodle]

I agree with that analysis...although not as true once you get past 40. Lot of knuckleheads in those jobs as well... Can become tiring with everything having to be a dick measuring competition....at least it is for me. With the right crew though can be a joy ...I'm back to that type of work now. When my body cooperates it's great...

Yup. In my view, once you hit 40, and you've been doing something for 20 years, you should be pretty much an expert. Or a master, in the old parlance, ready to train and direct apprentices and journeymen. And if you've figured out the business side, start your own company.

What are you getting back into?

Construction which was a side hustle for years became fulltime gig. Dialed things back for winter and doing some snowplowing but basically went from predominantly white collar to strictly blue collar work at 40. The first couple weeks were a rude awakening. Im in pretty good shape but was so sore at the beginning that I could barely make it up the stairs at the end of the day. I should just get a plush job and enjoy my semi retirement but I get bored easily and need a challenge to keep me motivated.

[doodle]

A lot of the people I work with will be voting for Trump. Most of them also have no health insurance...which is incredible given the dangers of the job. They seem to have fallen between the cracks of the Obamacare subsidies and the private market. I try not to have political discussions at work but best I can understand is that the republican party has done a good job of cultivating a tough guy, take no bullshit, don't tread on me ethos and the democrats have done just the opposite. The message of victimhood doesn't sit well with people doing hard labor....you wouldn't last long in that type of work if that's how you thought about yourself. Somewhere along the line the democrats lost the working man. The party got soft...the lyndon johnson type character has largely disappeared and been replaced by something even I struggle to understand.

[doodle]

A lot of the people I work with will be voting for Trump. Most of them also have no health insurance...which is incredible given the dangers of the job. They seem to have fallen between the cracks of the Obamacare subsidies and the private market. I try not to have political discussions at work but best I can understand is that the republican party has done a good job of cultivating a tough guy, take no bullshit, don't tread on me ethos and the democrats have done just the opposite. The message of victimhood doesn't sit well with people doing hard labor....you wouldn't last long in that type of work if that's how you thought about yourself. Somewhere along the line the democrats lost the working man. The party got soft...the lyndon johnson type character has largely disappeared and been replaced by something even I struggle to understand.

Has the Republican Party brainwashed supporters into a tough guy don’t tread on me attitude, or is it attracting those types of people? Correlation vs causation.

I argue that independent tough guys are attracted to republican and libertarian politics. Because the left supports pussification of the world.

If you didn’t get a job, or lost a job, it’s not because you aren’t competent, it might be racism or sexism or transphobia. Or nepotism, although that one is less sexy to fight against. It’s never your own fault, or something to take personal responsibility for.

The left wing has become the party of victim hood and has encouraged people who refuse to take responsibility to join it.

As far as people falling through the cracks of Obamacare, yes, that’s what I’ve been saying for a decade. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature of economics. People who are young and healthy and have a middle class job that doesn’t offer benefits will be priced out of the market by how economics works. I’ve described it in detail in another post.

Yes, the democrats have become too whiny and I've said on many occasions that they need to emphasize the importance of responsibility. However, I'm with AOC on the political front..

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As far as this:

The left wing has become the party of victim hood and has encouraged people who refuse to take responsibility to join it.

I've never seen a bigger thin skinned pussy than the orangeman who "never gets treated fairly" waaaaaaahhh! And refuses to take responsibility for anything. Being born with a hundreds of millions in inheritance is so unfair. Then he mocks and insults AOC for having been a waitress and bartender...how much more elitist can one get?

[doodle]

Oh and our healthcare system is Fu**#*# because American are completely incapable of understanding social contract like every other industrialized nation. What do we pay...twice as much per capita as other western nation's with worse results? Wonderful.

[doodle]

Oh and our healthcare system is Fu**#*# because American are completely incapable of understanding social contract like every other industrialized nation. What do we pay...twice as much per capita as other western nation's with worse results? Wonderful.

I understand the social construct, I just disagree with it.

Especially when the country is a nation of obese people with terrible diets and poor life choices resulting in poor health. As someone who goes through great effort and expense to take care of their health, it disgusts me that I’m expected to chip in for their health insurance.

This is a complicated topic. A lot of our obesity and health issues are culturally related. I lived in the ghetto for a while flipping houses. Peoples diets are a screwed up mix of few options, bad cultural influences, poor education, ignorance, and plain old stupidity. I also believe food stamps shouldn't be accepted for the purchase of cheetos and shasta cola at the corner food mart.

As far as health insurance Im for plans that incentivize preventative health care and taking responsibility for ones health. There are ways to structure health care that does that. I'm also for structuring health care in such a way that people have coverage for accidents and what not, yet decreasing public coverage for issues related to lifestyle choices after a certain age. This is where democrats need to come to the table and get on the personal responsibility wagon.