Checkmate



cassius said:
Any cost will at least be partially passed to the consumer, including executive pay.
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All salary and costs are paid by the consumer.

The wage of the minimum worker who makes the food cannot be decoupled from the cost of the food, just like the raw materials cannot be decoupled. The CEO job is to run the business while finding ways to increase profits or cut costs (which increases profits again). So their salary are not as linked to the costs of the product than the minimum wage worker. For example, if the CEO can cut the costs elsewhere by streamlining a distribution channel that results in reduced costs, the amount he saves the company, he can have the salary increase without eating into the original profit margins.

A major difference also is that increase of minimum wage would be compulsory upon the company while the increase in salary of the CEO is discretionary. A company would be stupid to increase the CEO salary in such ridiculous amount that it would cut into the profit margin of each product sold (and hence potentially increase price of the product), it contradicts the point of what the CEO should be doing. The McDonalds CEO tripling his salary was a discretionary increase that have taken account of his contribution (cut costs/increase profits) to the company, hence no product price needs to increase to accommodate the salary hike.
 
scottspfd82 said:
I was talking with a girl one time who said "It's bullshit that professional athletes make millions, while teachers make nothing"...

I had to explain that athletes can command that market value, because they sell tickets, they sell merch and ads, they draw millions of people who will pay money to watch them play. The same goes for movie stars, etc.

A teacher doesn't have to live on the government payroll. If you're good at something you can teach it privately and charge whatever you want. Like it or not, your income is a choice - it's a reflection of the value the world wants to pay you. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, but for the most part, you're paid based on the value you bring to the world.



The USPS is going broke because they can't compete with private companies. Government workers get paid with stolen money. It's easy to malinvest money that doesn't belong to you.



"Capitalism" is what happens when people are free to make voluntary transactions. I'd agree that politicians are the problem, but for completely different reasons.



Yeah, the system is fucked and it needs to change.

The state collected $5.7 trillion in tax revenue last year (Fed/state/local combined). That's $18,000+ for every citizen. That's NOT counting hidden taxes like licenses, court costs, fines, inflation, etc...

...Maybe if they'd stop fucking the economy and robbing people of their money idiots wouldn't have to argue about the minimum wage.

"We need a living wage!" Then stop supporting the institution that steals over half of your income to bomb innocent children and uses brute force to monopolize every profitable market in the world - then everyone could easily earn a living wage.

Holy fuck, we're dropping bombs on kids daily, we have the largest prison population in the history of the world, you have a gestapo marching around who are 5x more likely to kill you than a terrorist (and probably 1000x more likely to steal your property or cause you physical harm) and we're arguing about how much people should be "allowed" to earn for in jobs that are completely voluntary?

How fucked is that entire conversation? "MURDER! STEAL! RAPE! PILLAGE! But protect the FAST FOOD WORKERS!"

Maybe - just maybe - the source of all of these problems is the fact that people happily support a murderous, thieving institution who must steal to finance everything it does, creates no value and destroys exponentially more life and property than any other force on the planet - and then hope to use that same violence to solve the problems that it causes?

Damn you Shinobi, I have better stuff to do than try to explain that "violence is bad, mmkay?"... If it's a troll well played sir.
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Scott, I enjoy reading your incredibly insightful posts. You're clarifying what many of us have on our minds into beautiful words. I see the George Carlin in you.

One thing I must say is that you're an individual thinker, and the majority of people don't support going lone wolf but would rather support a large institution or group such as government. Things won't change because people don't want to abandon their government. Decentralization is the only thing that will help progress the evolution of the human species. When will it happen? Only time will tell.

For now, we can only do two things as humans living in this era - enjoy the ride of life (Bill Hicks) while we have front row seats of observing the world while living in America (George Carlin)
 
Looks like another possible attempt to get Guerilla to post has failed.

Enjoy your McNuggetts.



IceToEskimos said:
Not terrifying at all.

Hazlitt will soothe you with his essay "the Curse Of Machinery"
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And here again is the related video with the girl reading off cue cards :

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOwKJRVmoBw]Economics in One Lesson VII: "The Curse of Machinery" - YouTube[/ame]
 
IceToEskimos said:
Not terrifying at all.

Hazlitt will soothe you with his essay "the Curse Of Machinery"
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So he is basically saying the same as Orwell minus the part of war and manipulation of social classes:

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.
Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter — set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
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War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.
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The 99%: 9001
Pig disgusting greedy capitalists: 0
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bill-cosby-confused-face-475x365.png
 
SeoReborn said:
Workers minimum wage is taken as part of the cost of the product/service while the ceo's salary is not. You don't need the CEO to make the product, you need the workers
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So if I want more moniez I should be less productive or not productive at all?
 
Mises said:
If the minimum wage was raised to $100 a Big Mac would go from $3.99 to $12.83. Who cares about the cost of a $13 Big Mac when you're making $100 an hour. To hell with being lifted out of poverty, we'd all be fucking rich.

Of course, like the people who conducted those studies I didn't take in to account the increased cost of all capital goods and other workers making more than minimum wage who will expect an equally proportionate wage increase for their skill set.
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the world would adapt what other choice is there.
 
Mises said:
Rule #1 Get people emotionally worked up over something, and all logic goes out the window.

The CEO of McDonald's makes $13.8 million per year up from $4.1 million. That's a difference of $9.1 million.

McDonald's employs 400,000 workers at a median wage of $7.73 an hour. Although it's not accurate let us assume they work 40 hours per week. If McDonald's were to raise their employees pay to $15 an hour, the yearly cost of that raise would be over $6 billion. Although the real number they say closer to $4.5 billion.

$9.1 million doesn't make a big difference. $4.5 billion sure as fuck does.
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I wouldn't care if the f*ck tards at McDonald's got paid $15 an hour as long as they got the order correct but there are so many times that they screw it up it's beyond amazing. I don't think they deserve the minimum wage that they get
 
THE CEO COULDA GIVEN HIS INCREASED WAGES TO THE MINIMUM WAGE WORKERS INSTEAD, BUT HE WON'T BECAUSE HE'S TOO GREEDY

(this is what the person who posted this on Facebook actually believes)
 
mituozo said:
If you can't earn a salary high enough to live in the area you're in, you can do this thing I like to call moving.

Also, why should people who work harder get paid more? The level of effort you put in is nothing to do with the value you can create. I can spend all day devising the ultimate command and conquer strategy, and then spend the next day intensely playing the game, implementing and executing that strategy. I'm working damn hard to do that, but should I get paid for that, like a CEO who is taking a risk on a new product that'll create 3000 jobs in a city? A risk that if it goes tits up, could get him fired, or lose shareholders billions of dollars? Or if it pays off, could generate billions of dollars in value?

The whole argument is complete and utter madness.

The world isn't fair. Working hard alone is not a reason to earn more money. Largely speaking, you earn the value you contribute. If you're not earning enough money, then find a way to contribute more value to the world. If your job is something that a robot can do, or will be doing shortly, then you need to find a way to add more value than executing mindless repetitive tasks.

As an aside, long term capitalism does present a challenge, and that is what happens when computers are more able than we are universally? And humans are incapable of delivering anything of value? When a CEO does his job worse than a robot could?

How do people make money then, and what happens to capitalism?
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Someone has to build, program and service the computer. Granted that takes a skill set though
 
We're all fucked, period. We're all just sheep scrambling for a piece of paper that represents imaginary value. It's all make-believe, folks.

At this particular moment in time, the ruling class determines the value of your play-money. Even in a free market society, the value of your imaginary paper (or coin, or rock, or whatever) is purely subjective.

So get used to it. We're all just a bunch of half-monkey-half-gods stuck in a prison of burdensome existence. And that's the funny thing about Free Market anarchists. They go around screaming "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION" when human life itself is only made possible by involuntary force. Your parents fucked, and now you're here. There wasn't any voluntary consent on your behalf. No contract. No nothing. Just two people - influenced entirely by nature - deciding what they want. And BOOM: a decision that directly affects (or rather results in) your life.

Also, A free market society only works when everyone's on the same page. Good luck with that.

Mankind is essentially a slave race (either by purposeful design or cosmic happenstance). Those who are able to surpass the genetic handicap of hierarchical tribalism usually find themselves in a much darker, lonelier place.

But even if you reach that level of awareness, you're still a slave. If not by the hands of other human beings, by nature itself.

GOOD LUCK BROS :)
 
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GimpSpack said:
We're all fucked, period. We're all just sheep scrambling for a piece of paper that represents imaginary value. It's all make-believe, folks.

At this particular moment in time, the ruling class determines the value of your play-money. Even in a free market society, the value of your imaginary paper (or coin, or rock, or whatever) is purely subjective.

So get used to it. We're all just a bunch of half-monkey-half-gods stuck in a prison of burdensome existence. And that's the funny thing about Free Market anarchists. They go around screaming "VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION" when human life itself is only made possible by involuntary force. Your parents fucked, and now you're here. There wasn't any voluntary consent on your behalf. No contract. No nothing. Just two people - influenced entirely by nature - deciding what they want. And BOOM: a decision that directly affects (or rather results in) your life.

Also, A free market society only works when everyone's on the same page. Good luck with that.

Mankind is essentially a slave race (either by purposeful design or cosmic happenstance). Those who are able to surpass the genetic handicap of hierarchical tribalism usually find themselves in a much darker, lonelier place.

But even if you reach that level of awareness, you're still a slave. If not by the hands of other human beings, by nature itself.

GOOD LUCK BROS :)
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If it's all make-believe, send me all of your money now. If don't want to, I'll just force you to, apparently you have no problem with that.

Also, I cry everytime reality / nature requires me to acquire food so I don't starve. Life is suffering.
 
mattseh said:
If it's all make-believe, send me all of your money now. If don't want to, I'll just force you to, apparently you have no problem with that.

Also, I cry everytime reality / nature requires me to acquire food so I don't starve. Life is suffering.
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I'm natures puppet, I need to eat. And fuck women with large tits and a shapely ass.

...

I'd rather not be forced, but that's simply my preference. Most people don't share the same sentiments.

Hence a socialist world order.

There's nothing you and I can do about that (except bitch on an anonymous forum like the slaves we are). Welcome to planet Earth.

I'm not telling you to drop out of the game. Trust, I'm still playing. I'm just recommending people see it for what it is. Futile make believe.
 
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