He's not the first, a few very rich people have been figuring it out in the past few years. Past a certain point inequality becomes a runaway reaction of self-destruction and they don't want to see the inside of it...they're not being generous, just thinking ahead.
That's an interesting read, and manages to make a big point in a short easy to digest article.
I found it curious that in the last sentence Amazon was mentioned as one of the positive examples, I've heard that in many of the fields that they play in, they are quite the opposite, for example, hiring ex-Walmart executives to out Walmart Walmart so to speak. Maybe I've heard wrong?
I've heard a lot of the same things about Amazon trying to "out-Walmart Walmart." Working in their warehouses is not nice, now they even have a mobile computer for each warehouse worker that bosses them around, which will remind you of a few different horrible things if you read a lot of sci-fi.
I think there's people even in the middle class that can't or don't want to see these issues in that light.
bingo
I think one of the issues is that the middle class had to pay for college and are not rich enough to pay for it or poor enough to not pay for it. Therefore, we have a middle class that is in debt, which they may decide to be underemployed and cannot pay for the extra items. I read an article about two students from Georgetown with high honors with law degrees( highly rated law school), become waiters as that was the only way they could pay the bills. My community the blue-collar middle class jobs are disappearing. Another fault I find is the lack of value out of grade school/High school. People are not walking away with skill enough to progress.
In reply to trigun7469:
That is a very interesting point 30 years ago you could get a job with a high school diploma and college was looked at as a premium. 10 years ago you needed a college degree and a masters was considered a premium. Today a masters is what is needed for a good job and Ph.D. is a premium.
As industry moves forward at an increasing rate the education system can't. People still need to learn how to add 2+2.
The countries that are getting more in sooner are the ones that are taking the lead.
This is news if by news you mean something Henry Ford fully realized and thoroughly communicated 100 years ago.
Corrected Headline: Schmidt does a Buffet job in bid for Presidential favor.
keynesian leasure society is flawed, and if we aren't all working 15 hour weeks with the help of technology, then does that mean the rest of theory is flawed?
Instead of less working hours, we're working the same hours for less money.
Now granted, if youre a software developer or programmer, you might be lucky enough to make a nice living on 20 hours a week, but those jobs are reserved for highly educated, and even those folks are being forced into traditional work schedules by competition from Indian and Chinese labor market.
I thought Henry Ford had mentioned that to the world a century ago. Pay your employees enough to purchase the product they are building...
In reply to Streetwiseguy:
Yep. Also noted by RX Reven' a couple of posts ago.
My quip is that the lights seem to have gone out on "Enlightened Self-Interest".
Very funny having a conference of the super wealthy gathering to talk about wealth inequality - "whatever shall we do with the peasants? They're starting to get riled up, next thing you know, they'll be acting out."
been saying this for years. People who have a little extra cash laying about are going to spend it. If they are so strapped for money they cannot even make a night of McDs, then who is going to buy all the stuff we make and import? It is a good study in entropy.
People are not buying are stuff, we need to cut our expenses... let's cut wages and number of people working.. look! People are buying less of our stuff, lets save money by paying less in wages....
Flight Service wrote: 30 years ago you could get a job with a high school diploma and college was looked at as a premium.
In 1953 my dad graduated high school and started doing drafting eventually designing and drawing all the prints needed to install fire sprinklers. He quit when the market tanked in 2008 (still doing all his drawings on paper or velum or whatever it was).
Today you can't touch this job without an engineering degree and it is all done on computer.
There are so many angles, so few things that can be described as having one simple cause.
With regard to the ability to hire people with HS diplomas to do moderately involved stuff, is this partially the result of more jobs being with larger organizations? If your company is ten people, anybody who matters can meet any new hire and help vet them, and they can agree or talk it out. When you've got thousands of people, nobody can "take a chance" on someone, so most decisions have to be turned into flowcharts which work well across a large number of decisions. HR doesn't know anything about sprinkler systems or what it takes to figure them out, but they can check a resume for a degree.
I certainly have some resistance to The Corporate Way, but this instance, this question isn't so much a value judgment as the question "is this the price for the efficiencies of aggregation?" If we take the economies of scale, do we necessarily give up many of the freedoms of being the exception to a guideline? Does being exceptional (as in different, not necessarily better) simply make you more awkward to flowchart, and thus less likely to benefit from the system optimized for placing 10,000 people as well as possible on average while minimizing opportunities for individual judgment to cause problems?
you bring up a sticking point for me, Ransom.
The Newest Casino here in Atlantic City is tanking big time.. the multi-billion dollar Revel. Beside the fact that they have to bring in 30 million a month just to pay the mortgage on the place, their biggest problem was HR.
They decided they did not want to hire anybody with casino experience. They wanted clean slate people they could indoctrinate into their corporate world view.. sounds good on paper (not) but when you have a brand new building, a brand new company, and brand new people who do not have a flying clue what they are doing.. it is a recipe for disaster.
I got to the 1st interview.. 30 people there, half of them were experienced stage hands. They brought us upstage to the interview room. Chairs for everyone.. they made us all stand for an hour while they asked us all questions about the company and what it meant for AC. Needless to say, none of the experienced stage hands got the cut.
Couple of weeks later, through the union, I got a call to do a load out at Revel. get there, I am getting paid -half- what their official stage hands get paid and I had to show them what to do. I have turned down every call there since.
The only saving grace, the head of HR, the woman who singlehandedly killed that company, got laid off last fall
these things have a way of leveling out over time... things go up, things go down- but look at it over the long term and it looks pretty level over all.
personally, i don't think the middle class is any "poorer" than they used to be... but there are a lot of things that are seen as necessities today that simply didn't exist 30 years ago- cell phones, internet, cable tv, etc.- and they all cost money. then you throw in the way everyone seems to think that making payments on a $40k car (or two- gotta keep mama happy) and $200k house, and suddenly everyone starts to look a lot more "poor" than they were a generation ago even tho they are surrounded by nicer stuff and gadgets that make Star Trek look like ancient history.
Some of this is distorted by the housing crash. For a lot of people, especially the middle class, their house is their biggest asset and largest part of their net worth. When house prices jumped, everyone was richer. Then they crashed and everyone was suddenly much poorer than before, even though, practically speaking, nothing had really changed.
Of course, that doesn't address so-called income inequality. Which also doesn't take into account standard of living. I'm always amused by complex economic issues being addressed with a single chart and a couple of paragraphs of hyperbole.
In reply to novaderrik:
No kidding. My salary is more than my parents' brand new house was in 1976.
petegossett wrote: In reply to novaderrik: No kidding. My salary is more than my parents' brand new house was in 1976.
That's adjusted for inflation, right?
In reply to JamesMcD:
No, but it all ties into inflation. In 1976 dad had to make a concession - he could either have the driveway paved, or install central-air. He chose the driveway, and often commented later how he regretted it.
Cable TV was still pretty much a luxury then, and even though the house was small by today's standards(700sq-ft, plus a mostly finished basement) my mother often commented about it as though it was a mansion compared to the house she was raised in, and honestly it was. Her and her two brothers occupied the two rooms on the 2nd floor of my grandparents' house, but like most older homes around here you had to walk through one room to reach the next, and there was no door separating them. Now it's almost looked down upon like some type of neglect/abuse if you don't have separate rooms for each of your adolescent children.
As mentioned above, what was once luxury now becomes necessity, but that all costs money and when people "expect" it as though it is necessity, they also "expect" to earn enough to afford it - whether they've truly earned it or not. This same middle-class also invests in their 401k hoping their returns far outweigh their contributions so they can have the dream-retirement they've been promised all along(because they're spending all their salary on $200k homes and $40k cars they can't really afford, instead of contributing the max amount), which pressures the companies they invest in to manage not for long-term growth or future prosperity of the company, but rather they manage only for the value per share.
What they fail to grasp is these companies they're investing in are no different than their own employer. Thus the vicious cycle continues - people as consumers will continue to demand more product for less money, while at the same exact time demand more pay without producing any more productivity from their employer!
This discussion is a great example of why I appreciate the underlying theme of GRM: you CAN do more with less. Whether you are a pauper or a prince, live below your means and you will be fine.
That's the GRM theme, isn't it? LOL
OHSCrifle wrote: This discussion is a great example of why I appreciate the underlying theme of GRM: you CAN do more with less. Whether you are a pauper or a prince, live below your means and you will be fine. That's the GRM theme, isn't it? LOL
i wonder about this some time- when i see people on here asking for advice on a good "cheap beater" that costs more than any car i have ever owned in the past or will ever own in the future. but i've also seen threads that explain that i don't exactly exist in the income range of the average GRM user/subscriber, so i come at things from a different perspective than some around here do.
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