Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by vnatale » Sun Jan 31, 2021 10:26 pm

doodle wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:24 pm

57b21102db5ce953008b6c77.jpeg

So business leadership is 20x more effective and valuable than it was in the 60s?


Maybe they were underpaid back then just like Major League baseball players had been. Just like Major League baseball players are the elite of baseball players in the universe the CEOs are the elite of what they do.

Vinny

https://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-s ... story.html

SPORTS
A look at how Major League Baseball salaries have grown more than 20,000% the last 50 years


In 1966, when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale held out from spring training rather than accept what they considered an unfair contract offer from the Dodgers, the minimum salary for a major league baseball player was $6,000.

On March 5, 1966 — with Koufax and Drysdale in the second week of their holdout — Marvin Miller became executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. In 1968, Miller led the union in negotiating the sport’s first collective bargaining agreement.

The minimum salary immediately was raised to $10,000. After the 1975 season, the players won the right to free agency. A look at how the minimum salary and average salary has risen over the years:

Year - Minimum salary; Average salary


1967 - $6,000; $19,000

1970 - $12,000; $29,303

1975 - $16,000; $44,676

1980 - $30,000; $143,756

1985 - $60,000; $371,157

1990 - $100,000; $597,537

1995 - $109,000; $1,110,766

2000 - $200,000; $1,895,630

2005 - $316,000; $2,476,589

2010 - $400,000; $3,014,572

2015 - $507,500; $3,952,252

***These numbers are not adjusted for inflation.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by ahhrunforthehills » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:21 am

doodle wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:24 pm
Image

So business leadership is 20x more effective and valuable than it was in the 60s?
The graph is not representative of reality. It is cherry picking the top 350 CEOs.

Guess what apparently happens when you REMOVE just those 350 cherry-picked salaries from the national Occupational Employment Statistics database? The average CEO salary goes down 99%.

Here is someone who did some math:

Those 350 companies have around 17 million employees (I am estimating that based on reports for all 500 companies in the S&P500) or about 50,000 employees per company. If the CEOs at those companies agreed to work for free instead of an average of $18.9 million the savings would be $6.6 billion per year. If we spread that equally among those 17 million employees, they could each be paid an extra $389 per year, or around $7.50 per week.

(Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydor ... 09fb3a1abc)

Like I said, you are trying to put a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

Besides, who is to say that the extra $7.50 a week comes at the expense of employees? It is more likely to come out of investor profits than wages.

Ever see a 2 year old pretend to "fix something" with his plastic tool set? It is hard not to laugh at how absurd they are. They could be fixing a brick on a fireplace with a plastic screwdriver. Seriously? A PLASTIC SCREWDRIVER is going to fix a BRICK to fix a FIREPLACE?! It is simply nonsensical. But they have that look in their eye of "I know what I am doing... this goes here, this goes here, fix-fix-fix." They are laser-focused on the problem, and they have the know-how to fix it, and fix [they believe] they will. They are oozing with confidence while they do it.

Now replace that 2 year old with politicians and voters that have economic policies to "make the rich pay their fair share". They are confident in what the problem is. They are confident who is to blame. They are confident in how to fix it. But they are still a child fixing a brick on a fireplace with a plastic screwdriver. So what ends up happening? Best case scenario is they get bored and move on to something else (BLM, gay-rights etc.). Worst case scenario? In case you haven't noticed, it is a child playing with a fireplace. If they keep messing with the fireplace, it is only a matter of time before they get severely burned.

FYI, the company owners will be just fine. Every country has a citizenship by investment programs. Bring your company that provides jobs and they will give you citizenship. Democrats just have to squeeze hard enough to make it happen. If you think you can actually stop capital leaving the country... here is your plastic screwdriver.

------

On a separate note... .

Thanks guys for entertaining my previous rant (I really debated about even posting it). Glad someone even read it.

------
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by I Shrugged » Mon Feb 01, 2021 8:42 am

Some people think that graph represents the results of dropping the gold backing of the dollar, and then the Fed's easy money. I tend to agree, especially with the latter. Financial engineering pay very well these days.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by Xan » Mon Feb 01, 2021 10:00 am

ahhrunforthehills wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:21 am
Thanks guys for entertaining my previous rant (I really debated about even posting it). Glad someone even read it.
Really, really good stuff.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:05 pm

I Shrugged wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:21 pm
Doodle, I hope Amazon does get unionized, to the max. I’ll laugh my ass off.
Amazon is a proponent of $15 an hour minimum wage. With their heavy investment into automation, they are hoping to hobble their competitors, who will continue to have human employees, while they dodge it with robots. I could see Amazon doing heavy lobbying for unions (maybe in right to work states?) once they're closer to maximum automation.

Either way, unions don't seem to have any leverage when corporations simply don't need them as much as they used to. I think I brought this up in a discussion with moda back in the day.

EDIT:

Anyways, I think the paradigm that makes more sense WRT the Wall Street Bets situation is a cultural meme where people Buy American to fuck over China (and other countries, I guess, but China seems uniquely evil). You see a lot of accounts on WSB saying stuff like 'I don't care if I lose it all, this is just a fuck you to the hedge fund' and similar messages. The leap doodle should be making, IMO, is to someone saying 'I don't care that I could get a product from China for 20 cents cheaper, I'm buying American because x' where x could be a lot of reasons that all lead to the same thing. Massive pollution, concentration camps, military threats against Taiwan, fascism*, massive IP theft, massive hacking, etc.

* AFAIK, China doesn't have a command-economy or wealth re-distribution in the way we normally think of communist countries. They have private companies that are force-partnered with the state and can be ordered to do things for the good of the country: fascism.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by stuper1 » Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:53 pm

Good stuff, ahrunforthehills, enjoyed reading it very much.

These politicians and do-gooders trying to fight the laws of economics are like people jumping off a cliff without a parachute and claiming they can fight the law of gravity. It's a dog eat dog world. The person who won't work won't eat. Personal responsibility and hard work are the answers to people's economic problems.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by dualstow » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:47 pm

GME hearing of Thursday, Feb 18:
It was embarrassing but unsurprising that AOC was complaining that because of order flow sales, RobinHood wasn’t completely free.
Vlad Tenev of Robinhood, “Uh, Madam Representative, we’re a for-profit company, so...”

I was set up with a Vanguard account before i was old enough to invest on my own. When I finally started trading, it was $20 per trade if i recall. Admittedly, Vanguard was never a discount brokerage. If I’d had the option of trading my paltry sums for free but i’d have my order flow sold, I would have jumped at the chance back then.

ADDED later: more context
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/19/aoc-wan ... ofits.html
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by doodle » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:28 pm

stuper1 wrote:
Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:53 pm
Good stuff, ahrunforthehills, enjoyed reading it very much.

These politicians and do-gooders trying to fight the laws of economics are like people jumping off a cliff without a parachute and claiming they can fight the law of gravity. It's a dog eat dog world. The person who won't work won't eat. Personal responsibility and hard work are the answers to people's economic problems.
I don't see how labor organizing is fighting the "laws of economics"? I wasn't aware that economics even contained scientific "laws".

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:05 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:21 pm
Doodle, I hope Amazon does get unionized, to the max. I’ll laugh my ass off.
Amazon is a proponent of $15 an hour minimum wage. With their heavy investment into automation, they are hoping to hobble their competitors, who will continue to have human employees, while they dodge it with robots. I could see Amazon doing heavy lobbying for unions (maybe in right to work states?) once they're closer to maximum automation.

Either way, unions don't seem to have any leverage when corporations simply don't need them as much as they used to. I think I brought this up in a discussion with moda back in the day.

EDIT:

Anyways, I think the paradigm that makes more sense WRT the Wall Street Bets situation is a cultural meme where people Buy American to fuck over China (and other countries, I guess, but China seems uniquely evil). You see a lot of accounts on WSB saying stuff like 'I don't care if I lose it all, this is just a fuck you to the hedge fund' and similar messages. The leap doodle should be making, IMO, is to someone saying 'I don't care that I could get a product from China for 20 cents cheaper, I'm buying American because x' where x could be a lot of reasons that all lead to the same thing. Massive pollution, concentration camps, military threats against Taiwan, fascism*, massive IP theft, massive hacking, etc.

* AFAIK, China doesn't have a command-economy or wealth re-distribution in the way we normally think of communist countries. They have private companies that are force-partnered with the state and can be ordered to do things for the good of the country: fascism.
Don't disagree...except then what? Bezos depends on consumers. Eliminate labor through automation and you are certainly going to transform capitalism.

I would support a buy american social movement. It would be great if we could couple that with a return to products that also were expected to last the better part of a lifetime and if they didn't, were reparable. This disposable product planned obsolescence society ends up costing more and doing an incredible amount of environmental damage.
Last edited by doodle on Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by dualstow » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:33 pm

doodle wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:28 pm
I don't see how labor organizing is fighting the "laws of economics"? I wasn't aware that economics even contained scientific "laws".
Off-topic: i have two goldfish named Supply and Demand
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by doodle » Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:04 pm

dualstow wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:33 pm
doodle wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:28 pm
I don't see how labor organizing is fighting the "laws of economics"? I wasn't aware that economics even contained scientific "laws".
Off-topic: i have two goldfish named Supply and Demand
So how does labor organizing violate supply and demand? It simply shifts the curves to a new equilibrium. You are saying that equilibrium point would be worse off...I disagree.

My feeling is that in our society there are a lot of parasites ( by and large the financial industry and wall street) sucking off the teet of the true value creators...I'm not advocating for government intervention...simply a revaluation of labors input value through collective organization. A man who grows food or builds houses contributes something of tangible value to the world and shouldn't sell himself so cheaply...especially to individuals who create nothing of tangible value. Just like GME...if carpenters decide to collectively unionize and sell their services to wall street suits for 250 dollars an hour, well then those suits can either pick up a hammer and do it themselves, or pay up....I for one would enjoy seeing them try to fix their 5000 square foot cedar shingled roof 60 feet up in the air. Perhaps they might realize that if they get paid 500 an hour to push papers around it might be easier just to pay someone half the rate at which they are compensated to keep the rain out of their house. Either way, the same number of roofs are going to leak regardless...perhaps carpenters could decide to work on a sliding scale based on an evaluation of an individuals assets. None of this is wrong...it is simply a reconceptualization of economic relationships. I'm not advocating for a top down approach and my suggestions do not impose on anyone's freedom anymore than what wall street bets was attempting to do with hedge fund short sellers.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by dualstow » Fri Feb 19, 2021 10:26 pm

It was just an example of an economic law.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by doodle » Fri Feb 19, 2021 10:39 pm

dualstow wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 10:26 pm
It was just an example of an economic law.
Maybe we're getting into semantics but I didn't think scientific laws could be based around behavioral observations related to human psychology.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by dualstow » Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:58 am

You’re right: you’re getting into semantics.
Well, ‘The Atlantic’ says they don’t exist (econ laws).
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:20 am

doodle wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:28 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:05 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:21 pm
Doodle, I hope Amazon does get unionized, to the max. I’ll laugh my ass off.
Amazon is a proponent of $15 an hour minimum wage. With their heavy investment into automation, they are hoping to hobble their competitors, who will continue to have human employees, while they dodge it with robots. I could see Amazon doing heavy lobbying for unions (maybe in right to work states?) once they're closer to maximum automation.

Either way, unions don't seem to have any leverage when corporations simply don't need them as much as they used to. I think I brought this up in a discussion with moda back in the day.
Don't disagree...except then what? Bezos depends on consumers. Eliminate labor through automation and you are certainly going to transform capitalism.
I don't know. Maybe we'll enter a stage of enlightened oligarchy, where our monopolistic overloards like Bezos and Musk funnel their profits into quasi-philanthropic ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin, that will eventually let us mine asteroids and colonize outer space, relieving the resource constraints that underpin all of economics. A GUY CAN DREAM RIGHT?
Anyways, I think the paradigm that makes more sense WRT the Wall Street Bets situation is a cultural meme where people Buy American to fuck over China (and other countries, I guess, but China seems uniquely evil). You see a lot of accounts on WSB saying stuff like 'I don't care if I lose it all, this is just a fuck you to the hedge fund' and similar messages. The leap doodle should be making, IMO, is to someone saying 'I don't care that I could get a product from China for 20 cents cheaper, I'm buying American because x' where x could be a lot of reasons that all lead to the same thing. Massive pollution, concentration camps, military threats against Taiwan, fascism*, massive IP theft, massive hacking, etc.

* AFAIK, China doesn't have a command-economy or wealth re-distribution in the way we normally think of communist countries. They have private companies that are force-partnered with the state and can be ordered to do things for the good of the country: fascism.
I would support a buy american social movement. It would be great if we could couple that with a return to products that also were expected to last the better part of a lifetime and if they didn't, were reparable. This disposable product planned obsolescence society ends up costing more and doing an incredible amount of environmental damage.
How about a new platitude? Reduce, re-use, buy American, recycle. Ironically, I think that cheap, disposable things are the ones you're least likely to find made in America. Multinational corporations sell a lot of them in America, but they're made elsewhere (Asia, mainly) and shipped here on container ships.

For instance, cheap clothing and footwear is going to be made in Asia. When you buy nice clothes or well-made shoes, you will be able to find good American stuff. You have to keep on top of it though, because in a clothing company's lifecycle, they seem to start out small, making high-quality stuff here. Then they're incorporated, hire MBAs, and off-shore the work. See; Brooks Brothers.

On the subject of re-using/recycling, well made American antique through near-vintage furniture is really well made (obviously, if it's lasted that long). The same can't be said of IKEA furniture, going back to your last point. And like I talked about in the estate taxes thread, the goal should be to have nice things that you can pass down to your children. Or at least that someone will want to use after you. I can't remember where, but I read an article with a title something like "Your Kids Don't Want All Your Crap," where a large swath of currently retiring people think their kids will want their shitty, disposable items. My parents experienced a house full of this with my grandparents.

EDIT: Oh, to add, I tend to think of economic nationalism in a more holistic sense. This is part of why I like stuff like Mr Money Mustache and Strongtowns. If Americans lived more efficiently & "better," we wouldn't find ourselves outcompeted so hard by people that do.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by I Shrugged » Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:22 pm

Are big Corp and big Finance making most of their money at the expense of others, or are they growing the pie? I don’t know. It’s easy to say it’s at the expense of others. But I bet we can think of a lot of ways they add value.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by doodle » Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:23 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:20 am
doodle wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:28 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:05 pm
I Shrugged wrote:
Sun Jan 31, 2021 6:21 pm
Doodle, I hope Amazon does get unionized, to the max. I’ll laugh my ass off.
Amazon is a proponent of $15 an hour minimum wage. With their heavy investment into automation, they are hoping to hobble their competitors, who will continue to have human employees, while they dodge it with robots. I could see Amazon doing heavy lobbying for unions (maybe in right to work states?) once they're closer to maximum automation.

Either way, unions don't seem to have any leverage when corporations simply don't need them as much as they used to. I think I brought this up in a discussion with moda back in the day.
Don't disagree...except then what? Bezos depends on consumers. Eliminate labor through automation and you are certainly going to transform capitalism.
I don't know. Maybe we'll enter a stage of enlightened oligarchy, where our monopolistic overloards like Bezos and Musk funnel their profits into quasi-philanthropic ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin, that will eventually let us mine asteroids and colonize outer space, relieving the resource constraints that underpin all of economics. A GUY CAN DREAM RIGHT?
Anyways, I think the paradigm that makes more sense WRT the Wall Street Bets situation is a cultural meme where people Buy American to fuck over China (and other countries, I guess, but China seems uniquely evil). You see a lot of accounts on WSB saying stuff like 'I don't care if I lose it all, this is just a fuck you to the hedge fund' and similar messages. The leap doodle should be making, IMO, is to someone saying 'I don't care that I could get a product from China for 20 cents cheaper, I'm buying American because x' where x could be a lot of reasons that all lead to the same thing. Massive pollution, concentration camps, military threats against Taiwan, fascism*, massive IP theft, massive hacking, etc.

* AFAIK, China doesn't have a command-economy or wealth re-distribution in the way we normally think of communist countries. They have private companies that are force-partnered with the state and can be ordered to do things for the good of the country: fascism.
I would support a buy american social movement. It would be great if we could couple that with a return to products that also were expected to last the better part of a lifetime and if they didn't, were reparable. This disposable product planned obsolescence society ends up costing more and doing an incredible amount of environmental damage.
How about a new platitude? Reduce, re-use, buy American, recycle. Ironically, I think that cheap, disposable things are the ones you're least likely to find made in America. Multinational corporations sell a lot of them in America, but they're made elsewhere (Asia, mainly) and shipped here on container ships.

For instance, cheap clothing and footwear is going to be made in Asia. When you buy nice clothes or well-made shoes, you will be able to find good American stuff. You have to keep on top of it though, because in a clothing company's lifecycle, they seem to start out small, making high-quality stuff here. Then they're incorporated, hire MBAs, and off-shore the work. See; Brooks Brothers.

On the subject of re-using/recycling, well made American antique through near-vintage furniture is really well made (obviously, if it's lasted that long). The same can't be said of IKEA furniture, going back to your last point. And like I talked about in the estate taxes thread, the goal should be to have nice things that you can pass down to your children. Or at least that someone will want to use after you. I can't remember where, but I read an article with a title something like "Your Kids Don't Want All Your Crap," where a large swath of currently retiring people think their kids will want their shitty, disposable items. My parents experienced a house full of this with my grandparents.

EDIT: Oh, to add, I tend to think of economic nationalism in a more holistic sense. This is part of why I like stuff like Mr Money Mustache and Strongtowns. If Americans lived more efficiently & "better," we wouldn't find ourselves outcompeted so hard by people that do.
All of this would be tremendously inflationary on its face, but I wonder how accurately inflation is calculated when it comes to durable goods and how such inflation might drive disposable goods out of the market almost entirely....which would be environmentally beneficial. If the price of a fridge went up five fold but was designed in such a way as to last 50 years and have easily repairable parts would that really constitute an inflationary price increase? I think about the cheap non stick chinese pan I bought from walmart for 12 dollars that lasted about 6 months before the coating started coming off and I had to throw in trash vs my 100 year old cast iron pan that still works great from my great grandmother (and ironically works with the most modern inductive cooktops) Based on their respective lifespans that pan could cost 2400 dollars and I would still come out ahead because unlike the chinese one it's still working...and will probably continue to do so for another 100 years.
I Shrugged wrote:
Sat Feb 20, 2021 7:22 pm
Are big Corp and big Finance making most of their money at the expense of others, or are they growing the pie? I don’t know. It’s easy to say it’s at the expense of others. But I bet we can think of a lot of ways they add value.
Do they add value? Undoubtedly in some ways depending on how you measure "value"....I just don't understand how individual hedge fund managers add billions of dollars of value to our system...it seems like some crazy loophole.
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Re: Wsb phenomenon (Politics version)

Post by doodle » Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:54 am

This is the corporate misbehavior that frustrates me as a citizen...

Delta handing out management bonuses while simultaneously receiving gov. Aid.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/delta- ... emic.html

Shame on Delta and shame on government for encouraging this type of behavior by not allowing markets to discipline companies that do this. This bailout nation mentality is creating so much moral hazard.
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