Antiwork

[Foggy_Goggles]

Labor Market (tm)

Nobody gets to arbitrarily determine what somebody is worth. It cracks me up when the soft hands crowd gets all up in arms about "what people are charging". No shit that profitability may be increased by suppressing wages. But it cuts both ways. Nobody "deserves" a certain pay.

A Fortune 500 CFO customer of mine is calling in "The Patagonia Vest Recession". Lumburg is coming for the "low performers". But don't worry, I hear construction and railroads are hiring.

[Foggy_Goggles]

RR workers salaries are comparable to what most blue collar salaries were like in the 50's and the economy did just fine. The marginal income tax rate was as high as 90% and the economy did just fine. Since then the corporations and their employees in Congress and the WH have engineered a stunning transrer of wealth from workers to the bosses, in the name of protecting us from "socialism".

Boom! I try and say the same thing but it come out like a rant with spittle coming out my mouth. Basically, we've traded wages for profits behind the smoke screen off the bottom 90% fighting amongst ourselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe9x8pmj3Vc

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

There was a time when blue collar workers could make a decent living, when American families could do ok on one income if they chose to, when we didn't have so many people with 12 figure net worth. We could go on and on about the causes.

Well, a giant war changed the economy in a significant way for about 20 years. Then someone invented containerized shipping.

[old goat]

Well, a giant war changed the economy in a significant way for about 20 years. Then someone invented containerized shipping.

That, and the Depression before it, and the war before that. Piketty, in Capital in the 21st Century, points out that the 50's were an anomaly. But still they show that capitalist economies can run without huge income disparities.

Historically, rents (actual rents of farmland in the past, capital gains nowadays) are 5%, while economic growth--which determines wages--is about 2%, which means that the income and wealth gaps will continue to increase unless governments act (Piketty advocates a global wealth tax) or until revolution, of which we got a little taste on Jan 6. (There's no law that says revolution has to actually benefit the people who make it.)

[Ted Striker]

For better and worse, that's exactly the kind of problem the (non-train) engineers love to solve so the talent of the operator isn't required. As you know--it's why Boeing kept that third seat for a dog in case one of you uppity pilots started touching stuff!

That's the commuter seat (my back will never be the same)

Yeah, it's my understanding that managing the slack has been somewhat? largely? completely? automated.

[RoooR]

O yeah the 1950s. When a family of four lived in a 980 sq ft house, drove a deathtrap car, and the dad had to drink heavily due to the extreme physical pain inflicted by his awesome job. And that's if you were white and upper middle class. Elsewhere subsistence level poverty was rampant, everybody was being poisoned by leaded gasoline fumes and society enforced an extreme level of conformity (often violently.) And that's in the "best" country in the world. Worldwide the percentage of the population living on the edge of starvation was many times what it is now.

[riser4]

I did read that. The benefit for labor comes in toast's post. I'm a little bit familiar with that side of it, even though it wasn't fully detailed in the article. The reason ownership is willing to make the concessions they do is that the union contracts create barriers to entry that help the owners capitalize on their monopoly, at society's expense.

For example, railroads could have self-driving cars. They pretty much do already. If the rails were broken up and deregulated in the same way that AT&T once was we could see systems implemented that could manage smaller trains more efficiently, including passenger trains, rail-ferries and road/rail hybrid vehicles that linked into (and took direction from) a computerized system. Or imagine your own innovation--the barrier to most any of them is 0% technology and 100% human, with the laws and contracts making up the majority of the obstacles.

I'm all for busting up monopolies.

[J. Barron DeJong]

O yeah the 1950s. When a family of four lived in a 980 sq ft house, drove a deathtrap car, and the dad had to drink heavily due to the extreme physical pain inflicted by his awesome job. And that's if you were white and upper middle class. Elsewhere subsistence level poverty was rampant, everybody was being poisoned by leaded gasoline fumes and society enforced an extreme level of conformity (often violently.) And that's in the "best" country in the world. Worldwide the percentage of the population living on the edge of starvation was many times what it is now.

Yeah, there’s been economic and technological progress. I don’t think the progress was driven by rising income inequality.

[jono]

That's the commuter seat (my back will never be the same)

That's what they told you. But there's a reason that seat is cramped. In the hallways they admitted it in hushed tones:

"We used to need 3 seats for the pilot, co-pilot and navigator. Then we made better avionics and got rid of the navigator. But we still need 3 seats for the pilot, the co-pilot and the dog. The pilot to fly, the co-pilot to back up the pilot, and the dog to bite them if they touch anything!"

[Cocximus]

I just noticed home depot is open on the 1st. Probably other big stores are open tomorrow. Fucking bullshit. No wonder it's hard to find staff.

[AK47bp]

It’s New Years Day, unless you’re a Kardashian most people don’t give a shit and likely enjoy getting paid double time.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[Supermoon]

New Year’s Day opening shift sucks, but Christmas Eve is way worse, IMO.