Heres a interesting take. www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/08/12/130812ta_talk_surowiecki?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using EO Forums mobile app
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using EO Forums mobile app
Fast Food Strike: Workers Walk Out In US Cities
- Thread starter EnglishLady
- Start date
Sounds like it was written by Karl Marx to me. More leftist swill.
The federal government has NO business imposing a "minimum wage". They have PROVEN, day in and day out, that they have ZERO understanding of economics or how business works. They are ONLY capable of running up debt and taking away freedoms. I don't see what part of the Constitution empowers the government to DICTATE what an employer should pay their employees.
Last edited:
AMonger
Veteran Expediter
The writer displays his ignorance of economics throughout the piece.
and yet Costco can pay their workers $20 an hour and make better profits then Walmart....
Worker Wages: Wendy's vs. Wal-Mart vs. Costco
CNNMoney.com
Worker Wages: Wendy's vs. Wal-Mart vs. Costco - Yahoo! Finance
Worker Wages: Wendy's vs. Wal-Mart vs. Costco
CNNMoney.com
Worker Wages: Wendy's vs. Wal-Mart vs. Costco - Yahoo! Finance
It's all about the margin. Dig deeper and the answer will become evident.
I am pretty sure the average costco shopper is a higher wage class than a Walmart shopper.
Sent from my Fisher Price ABC-123.
really....the now deceased John Walton son ...his widow according to Forbes to be the richest woman in the U.S. receives approx. get this....$220 MILLION EVERY 6 MONTHS in dividends...seems to be room to give employes more just based on one example....
sort of like expediting, (( did I say that ))
pandora2112
Seasoned Expediter
I haven't read the article yet but while Costco may offer s good price and good wages part of that is paid for by the membership fee. Also I know the CEO takes a lower salary than other CEO's but that's his choice...yes it's a good choice but you can't force all CEO's to take a salary cut. They do the job the money!
Sent from my VS910 4G using EO Forums mobile app
And? Is that from stocks? The is no law, nor should there be one, on how much goes to who in a company. It is private industry and NONE of ANYONE'S business outside of that company. IF Walmart wants to pay more, they can. IF the employees don't like the conditions or pay, they can leave. We do not YET live in a government controlled dictatorship, no matter WHAT Obama and his minions may wish to believe.
And that said there also is no law against asking for a raise or asking for more money....
There is no law. How is STRIKING asking? On top of that, this "rabble rousing" is being used to "push" for a MUCH higher minimum wage. It would also not surprise me to find out that this "rabble rousing" is being paid for with tax dollars, much like a lot of the "Martin" trouble was. It STILL just amazes me just how many people think that they are OWED a "living wage".
I would say since they are not unionized they are not striking but rather they are protesting .... We ask for a raise all the time sometimes we get it sometimes we don't
You can say all you want, THEY called it a strike. Organized at the National level. Asking is going to the boss, one on one and ASKING. Protesting what? Their own unwillingness to improve their own skills? Their own unwillingness to relocate for a better job?
I can see where they need more, tattoo's, cell phones, cigarettes and drugs do cost a lot.
Hey I agree with you but they have the right to ask as their bosses have a right to say no!!
Was there a follow up story to this?
I don't know, just bored so I have to pick on you!
We'd be pickin for years now ..,Joe LOL
Have to have something to do, my arthritis won't let me do much else!
AMonger
Veteran Expediter
To help the economic-awareness deficient, I offer excerpts from a piece that runs annually at lewrockwell.com, one that defends Ebenezer Scrooge from charges that he bears some moral or ethical guilt for wanting to keep his own money. You'll notice permission to reprint in part or in whole at the bottom. Here's the link to the entire article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/12/butler-shaffer/the-case-for-ebenezer/
It was hard to cut some parts out to keep it to an acceptable size.
...
England, he went on, "was delivered... by those who, seeking no doubt their own narrow ends, had the wit and resources to devise new instruments of production... There are today on the plains of India and China men and women, plague-ridden and hungry, living lives little better, to outward appearance, than those of the cattle that toil with them by day and share their places of sleep by night. Such Asiatic standards, and such unmechanized horrors, are the lot of those who increase their numbers without passing through an industrial revolution."
May it please the Court. . . and frankly, even if it doesn't please the Court...
One of the offenses with which my client has been charged was that he had not paid Bob Cratchett a large enough salary. Cratchett has worked for an allegedly substandard level of pay — whatever that may mean — for my client for many years. Why? Why did he not quit? Why didn't he go to work for some other employer — perhaps one of the politically-correct businessmen who periodically show up at Scrooge's office to solicit and browbeat charitable contributions from my client?
...
To anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of economics, two things should be clear: [1] if, as has been alleged, my client is a tight-fisted, selfish man, he surely would not have paid Bob Cratchett a shilling more than his marginal productivity was worth to Scrooge's firm, and [2] if Bob Cratchett was being woefully underpaid by my client, there must have been all kinds of alternative employment available to this man at higher salaries. If Cratchett cannot find more remunerative work, and if my client is paying him the maximum that he is marginally worth to his business, then Cratchett must be worth precisely what my client is paying him! Economic values are subjective, with prices for goods or services rising or falling on the basis of the combined preferences of market participants.
...My client should no more be expected to pay Cratchett more than his marketable skills merit than would Dickens have paid his stationer a higher than market price for his pen, ink, and paper, simply because the retailer "needed" more money!
Dickens' ignorance of basic economics would, if acted upon by Scrooge, have produced adverse consequences for Cratchett himself. Had Ebenezer paid Cratchett a higher salary for his work, he [Scrooge] would very likely have been able to attract a larger number of job applicants from which he could have selected employees whose enhanced marginal productivity might have earned Scrooge even greater profits. At such a point, terminating Cratchett's employment would have been an economically rational act by Scrooge...
...Perhaps there are employers out there prepared to pay him a higher wage than he is receiving from my client. If this is so, then we must ask ourselves: did Bob Cratchett simply lack the ambition to seek higher-paying employment? It would appear so. At no time do we see this man exhibiting any interest in trying to better his and his family's lot. Not even when the aforementioned businessmen arrive for their annual shakedown of my client, does Cratchett so much as suggest to them: "gentlemen, I have a son who is afflicted with a life-threatening condition, and if you would be so inclined to look upon him as one of the objects of your charitable purposes, I would be greatly appreciative." He can't rise from his self-pitying position long enough to even speak up for Tiny Tim at a time when any responsible and loving parent would have jumped at the opportunity to plead his son's case. If Cratchett is such an unfocused sluggard that he is unable to generate the slightest motivation to speak up on behalf of his son when provided with the opportunity to do so, why should my client have visited upon him the moral opprobrium of a community of readers who presume that he should be more greatly motivated on behalf of Tiny Tim than was Tim's own father?
The prosecution, in the form of Mr. Dickens, would have you believe that my client is a heartless and irresponsible person. But how much parental love and responsibility is exhibited by the sniveling and whining Bob Cratchett, who does little more than sit around and hope, . . . hope that someone will show up with more ambition and sense of urgency and caring for Tiny Tim than do he and his deeply lobotomized family...
If a lack of imagination and ambition is not at the crux of Bob Cratchett's problem in maintaining his inert, status quo position for so many years, then perhaps we should consider the possibility that this man was simply incompetent. Cratchett appears to us as a tenured example of the "Peter Principle," the recipient not so much of an earned salary as a sinecure. He was unable to obtain a more highly paid employment, I suspect, because he was incapable of performing at any higher skilled level than that of the bean counter he apparently was, and seemed satisfied in remaining. Had he been more competent and energetic, he might have sought employment from a competitor of Scrooge's, who would have seen qualities profitable to his firm. But I suspect that, had Cratchett approached any of these businessmen for employment, they would have been observant enough of his elemental dullness to have responded: "don't call us, we'll call you."
If Cratchett's stagnating in the backwaters of Scrooge's shop was due to his basically poor work skills, we are once again confronted with the question: why did Cratchett not seek to enhance his skills, as by learning a more remunerative trade? That would certainly have been a great benefit to his family, including affording additional resources with which to possibly rescue Tiny Tim from his malady. But, alas, Bob Cratchett was, once again, either too unambitious or too unimaginative to pursue this course of conduct. Indeed, about the only gumption we see Cratchett exhibiting in this story is in his groveling request for another lump of coal for the stove, or his equally weak-kneed appeal for a day off on Christmas. Such is the extent of his courage, ambition, and love for his family.
My client — whatever his reasons — has seen fit to keep this incompetent, noncreative dawdler on his payroll. But instead of being praised for not terminating this slug, he stands condemned for not paying him more than he was marginally worth; more than any other employer would have paid him if, indeed, any other employer would have hired him in the first place! Perhaps my client's retention of Bob Cratchett should be looked upon as the most charitable of all the acts engaged in by anyone in Mr. Dickens' story!
As I have already suggested, you can see that Bob Cratchett is not an active party in this conspiracy of terror and extortion against my client. He is both too dull and too lazy to have participated in such a scheme. Had this plot depended upon mobilizing the imagination or energies of Bob Cratchett, Ebenezer would have spent a quiet night of sleep, without being intruded upon by the snarling and clanking Jacob Marley, let alone the associated bogeymen and shakedown artists who show up to terrorize my client...
It is at this point that my strongest condemnation for these spirits arises. Any decent person in whose veins course even a minimal level of humanitarian sentiment must look upon the spirits with utter contempt and moral revulsion. Keep in mind, these specters are possessed with the powers to suspend ordinary rules that operate throughout the rest of nature. They can successfully defy gravity, move backwards and forwards in time, cause matter to become invisible, raise the dead, and foresee the future. Having all of these amazing powers, why did these spirits not intervene to cure Tiny Tim of his ailment? The answer is quite clear: like socialists and welfare-staters generally, they didn't give a **** about Tiny Tim's plight! This poor, crippled boy was nothing more to them than an opportunity, a convenient resource to exploit in furtherance of what was important to them: to wring from my client whatever amount of money they could...
Had the spirits been truly desirous of helping the Cratchett family, they would have been better advised to focus their time and energies upon this family rather than upon my client. The "Ghost of Christmas Past" could, perhaps in some proto-Freudian style, have taken Bob Cratchett back to his youth, to help him discover why he had become such a passive, wimpy recipient of other people's decision-making. Then, perhaps, the "Ghost of Christmas Present" could have appeared to warn Cratchett of the dreary fate awaiting his family as a consequence of his incompetence, laziness, passivity, and psychic bankruptcy. The prospect of Tiny Tim's death, and of his own family ending up in a dismal poor house, might have been enough to stir some semblance of ambition in this hapless lummox.
These spirits might even have offered him more positive assistance, perhaps by encouraging him to develop better marketable skills, in order that he might remove his family from the dire straits to which Cratchett seems all but indifferent. What level of paternal love is exhibited by this totally inept member of the booboisie, who has no more imagination or motivation on behalf of his ailing son than to sit around whining that his son will surely die unless someone else, . . . somehow, . . . at some uncertain time, shows up to bestow unearned riches upon his family? Bob Cratchett represents that growing class of mathematically challenged men and women who believe that a lottery ticket is the most realistic means of acquiring riches!
The Cratchetts are good for little more than sitting around the house spouting empty bromides and homilies, seemingly oblivious of the need to make fundamental changes in their lives. At no time in the story do we find either of the adult Cratchetts considering alternatives by which they could improve their economic condition. We do not, for instance, read of Mrs. Cratchett telling Bob — as they huddle around their rapidly-cooling fireplace — "Bob, I saw Sally Struthers on the telly today, and she was advertising for a correspondence school where you can learn all kinds of new skills. Perhaps you could study charter accountancy,' Bob, and make more money." Neither is any offer made by Mrs. Cratchett to seek employment in order to earn money that could be used to help their ailing son. Tiny Tim continually reminds them "God bless us, every one." But let us not forget that other admonition long since lost on the Cratchetts: "the Lord helps those who help themselves."
...In the final analysis, this case against Ebenezer Scrooge comes down to an emotional appeal based upon the resentment and envy that is at the core of every second-rater's personality...
...Neither the Cratchetts nor any of the spirits exhibit an interest in helping Bob transform himself into a more productive person. If Ebenezer had wanted to help his employee become less existentially crippled — instead of just making him the object of his gratuitous inclinations — he could have taken Cratchett aside and told him: "Bob, you're a loser! At this rate, you and your family are destined for that long slide down the razor blade of life into total entropy. I recognize that the nature of our relationship helped to condition you into becoming the mess you are now. But what will your future be like when I and my generosity are not around to sustain you? Let me help you by providing some lessons in advanced accounting practices, so that you can become marginally more productive to me and, in the process, help you earn more money. This is the industrial revolution, Bob, and opportunities have never been greater for anyone with a creative idea. Why don't you get one? Even a boob like you might get rich in this setting."
Still, I doubt that Bob Cratchett would get the message. I suspect that he would still cling to his tin-cup lifestyle, preferring to trade upon our sympathies rather than develop creative talents; never to experience the joy of existential equality and dignity that comes from being a producer of goods and services that other people value. Sympathy should take us only so far, and never become a substitute for the self-respect that comes from being in control of one's life. Tiny Tim may, it is hoped, rid himself of his crutch: I have my doubts about Bob Cratchett doing so.
At some point, we need to show some appropriate respect for the forces of natural selection that have long directed the life process. We ought to learn from the rest of nature: either we make ourselves capable of adapting to an ever-changing world — by improving the skills or other learning with which we act upon the world — or we prepare to die. Dickens' approach, like the underlying methodology of the welfare state, does nothing to provide long-term help for the Cratchetts of the world. Scrooge's unearned generosity will not only increase his costs of doing business — thus increasing the likelihood of his own business failure — but, upon his bankruptcy or eventual death, will leave Cratchett in the position of having to find a new host upon which to attach himself for the remainder of his parasitic life...
As part of a settlement offer, my client would consider adopting Tiny Tim — should his parents agree — and cut loose the rest of the Cratchett family to continue their mindless, unfocused, dispirited, and passive bottom-feeding in the shallow and stagnant end of the human gene pool. But let us have no more of these "drive-by" specters from the netherworld, who feign their concern for crippled children. Like other opportunistic parasites who tell us that they "feel our pain" even as they are causing us more pain, let us have no more of the self-serving guilt-peddling that keeps men and women subservient to those who threaten to cut off their dependencies.
Tiny Tim is young enough to be given the benefit of the doubt as to his future. As for the other members of the Cratchett family, let us allow the evolutionary processes of nature to dispose of these nonadaptive, nonresilient, nonambitious leeches who exhibit not the least sense of intelligence or creativity in the plight of one of their own, for whom they exhibit only superficial concern.
The claim against my client is without substance, and should be dismissed with prejudice. It is the industrial revolution's version of a scapegoating action, grounded more in bigotry than in fact or reason. In the end, I can offer no better answer to such charges than those provided by my client himself: "bah, humbug!"
The defense rests.
December 13, 2004
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Last edited:
G
GregTtibo
Guest
and this is a really sad ([I said: