Obama: "Profits have to be shared by workers" ... Idiodic Statements for $500 please!

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
As an employer that has employed at least 10% of my city at one point or another, I can assure you that you get what you pay for. Minimum wage = minimum effort. Invest just 1 dollar an hour more, and you can increase productivity substantially.

You said yourself that the minimum wage by itself does not affect the workforce too much, so considering this particular balancing act is not instructive. I want to know your opinion as to why real wages are so much behind the gains in worker productivity of the the past 15 years.

Originally posted by Reptius
Stuff like what the op said doesn't even annoy me anymore because at the end of
the day if the world worked like the OP wants it.
You cannot force people into poverty for hundreds of years and not expect them to get mad and start a riot.


Look , You either share the pie with everybody or everybody gangs up your and takes there piece.

If you want to be a greedy person and cause mass chaos and destruction , go ahead.I'm not gonna waste my time telling you why that's wrong , you're a human being you should know that equality and fairness are good and what your doing is wrong but if you don't , that's fine with me. Just don't get mad when the system fails and America falls into anarchy.







You can say I'm wrong but look at all the bank robbers during the great depression. There were hundreds of them and alot of them were consider rock stars by general public. That's what happens when the system of wack. People we may not like when the system is fair become our heroes because they're trying to balance it out.



You can only keep people down for so long before they just snap.

When people consider thieves and crooks heroes, the people are wrong.

Which is why democracy is a major fail.

You have to learn to appreciate what you DO have and not be jealous of what others have.

You are not them. You know not their problems or what their true gain is. Have you ever been rich before?
I haven't, but I know some people who are and most of their lives suck because they are always anxious.

Firstly, no one deserves anything.

Secondly, when you don't appreciate what little you do have, then you are certainly not ready for more.

Besides, once you learn to be responsible and live below your means, you realize that you can make a nice adventure out of your free time - and money is not how it happens! There is a world out there to explore and if you are an "overcome and adapt" kind of person and you don't look at others as above you, you can get pretty much anywhere you want.

However, you must not cross that boundary into doing things that are against your beliefs or against goodness.

If you do that, any rewards you have earned are only punishments in disguise.

Originally posted by lilsmurf
Obama is talking sense.

Profits should be shared between all workers. Normally the hardest workers will get the least amount of pay, while doing the #test jobs, while the directors of the companys get massively inflated wages and bonuses for just being in a position of power. The directors will normally (not always) come from privileged backgrounds and would have had a head start in life. The reason there is such a massive gap in America between the rich and the poor is because of ignorance like the OPs. This is not Socialism, it is just capping Capitalism something that should have been done many, many years ago.

Oh I really like your talk.

We have a bottom limit set on Capitalism (welfare for the broke), so why not have a max cap on the other side? Makes sense to me.

That way 1 guy can't own everything.

Balance is best.

I declare no matter what he may say to the contrary Obama is a Socialist with a One-World-Order agenda he is desperately trying to push through before he is out of office. It seems to me that he is doing one hell of a job too. Shame on Americans for sitting idly by and letting this happen!!!

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by gncnew

 

Let's get real people. You either believe that people should be paid a willing wage or you basically support slavery. It is really that simple and no middle ground. Exploitation is explotation no matter how you frame it and try to justify it.

YES! black and white - there is no grey, and your limited world view has got it all figured out.

Slave wages... LOL... btw: slaves don't get paid and don't have a choice. Just because you don't like the choice offered to work harder doesn't make you a slave.

Those who point to capitalism and call it "slave labor" just don't have the goose to work hard enough to earn what they want. They've got the desire enough to be jealous of those who have what they want - but they just don't want to work for it....

lazy != bad economic system.

reply to post by Reptius

Look , You either share the pie with everybody or everybody gangs up your and takes there piece.

What? You've been watching too many inde movies...

This is just a dippy comment mean to deflect your inability to defend an illogical position.

Originally posted by gncnew
Those who point to capitalism and call it "slave labor" just don't have the goose to work hard enough to earn what they want. They've got the desire enough to be jealous of those who have what they want - but they just don't want to work for it...

I'm extremely far from calling capitalism "slave labor", it's probably the exact opposite in the developed countries. What doesn't make me comfortable is the growing disparity between the top earners and all others, and effective downward mobility of the middle class. Again, that's not typical for the developed countries, actually. I guess we don't qualify as one, anymore.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

I'm extremely far from calling capitalism "slave labor", it's probably the exact opposite in the developed countries. What doesn't make me comfortable is the growing disparity between the top earners and all others, and effective downward mobility of the middle class. Again, that's not typical for the developed countries, actually. I guess we don't qualify as one, anymore.

I have to give you props on that last line... you made me spit my wine out and laugh out loud.... my wife gave me a bizarre look.

I agree that the gap is growing quickly - but it's not just in corporate America. The problem is that we've become so scared of teamwork and responsibility. So we have to pay our executives ridiculous amounts of money to entice them away from private investment careers to run our companies.

You screw up as a CEO and you don't just get fired - you get sued and go to jail. You're expected to have no life or family and work round the clock.

Maybe the real problem is our society's decline as a whole - not just the economic segment - that has moved us into an atmosphere of zero accountability and selfishness?

Maybe our economic woes are simply a symptom of the larger problem?

Destruction of family = lack of values and loyalty in general... ?

reply to post by buddhasystem



A loss of equilibrium in the job market. The US has exported almost all of its manufacturing jobs, and tried to bring in tech jobs to replace it. The problem with this is two fold:

1. you have a smaller workforce as manufacturing skill sets are having to be trained for a technological workforce. Of course, some just aren't "cut out for it", either through a lack of insight, or a mental block/lack of desire. This problem will be made worse by the next problem; Add to this a near impossibility to predict what jobs are going to be needed 5 years down the road, due to the chaotic nature of industry (new breakthroughs send folks hunting up side paths) and the chaotic nature of the student pool (students are changing majors more and more these days, making predicting job market needs increasingly difficult)

2. The tech industry is evolving faster than many people can adapt. It is hard to train a 40 something year old man who spent the previous 19 years doing rivets for General Motors the more subtle ins and outs of an industry that is changing so fast that catching up may be difficult for him.

Now, there is a 3rd problem that I see, but am not sure about yet:

3. Changing concepts in business. Using technology, many jobs that may have been somewhat more high paying in the past are being phased out and replaced with dumbed down versions. For example, computer repair (which could have gotten good money in the 80's) is now worth about 60 cents per minute on the phone with a tech support agent. And that is only in the US. In india it is about 35 cents. Once you extract about a nickel of profit for the call center company, it doesn't leave much for the person doing the work.

And then a fourth problem that seems to exist separately from tech and manufacturing:

4. In a global economy, the US worker will compete with a Chinese worker. If you want to stay employed, you have to help you employer sell that widget for the same 99 cents per unit that China is doing. Otherwise, you will have no customer base.

The majority of the earnings you are talking about come from utilizing the foreign worker. This is the price we pay for Clinton and his "opening up China." Will ti be good long term? Who knows....but it is the current reality.

Perhaps if the US government decided to take a protectionist stance. While it would be a HUGE folly, you could then begin protecting exports/imports like labor. Labor isn't really seen as something that has been under tarriff in the past. Perhaps that will change.

I can't even guess how tomorrow will end up. It is far, far too complex a picture to try to predict.

reply to post by buddhasystem


I may have misunderstood your question.

I think the short and sweet answer is, worker productivity is improving because of greatly refined processes and the near God like capabilities that can be inferred by technology. I ran a call center for the last 5 years that i worked there (a total of 8 years). On the day we closed, we were like Star Trek compared to the stone age of just 5 years prior.

Look at how much more productive just a simple database can make a customer service agent. If you don't have to spend 10 minutes sorting files, you can hire far fewer employees to fields customer support phone calls.

reply to post by gncnew

If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line," President Obama told the Chamber of Commerce on Monday morning.

OMG...that's something Satan would say!!!

That evil Obama!

To hell with our standard of living!!!

Originally posted by gncnew
If you worry about off-shoring... then let's make it more profitable to keep the jobs in America instead of allowing Chinese slave labor to be the best option.

Treat the problem, not the symptom.

The problem here is the greed of the people that run the company. Unless you can explain why companies that were already making a good and sometimes record profits to off-shore jobs for no other reason than a increase in profits?

Originally posted by ghaleon12
He said more accurately, "Benefits have to be shared by workers". There's a difference. He is saying that when you change tax laws and imports, you need to look at the whole picture for Americans.

Well,
Look at the whole picture now.
30% of working age Americans don't have a job.
The benefits don't start until there is a job to benefit from.
The government taxes corporations so much and makes it so hard to build a facility and run production in the united states that they have given up. Just about everything built is overseas.

The politicians say the wealthy are the problem but the ones who employ people don't have any incentive to employ anyone in the US if they don't make a profit.

Banks don't manufacture, lawyers don't produce, politicians don't ship, stockbrokers don't refine, the fed doesn't have real money to loan, wars don't pay off and foriegn aid doesn't return benefits to American workers.

The trillions being made, bilked and stolen from Americans don't come back. This is why we don't have jobs and proper benefits. Obama and the politicians know this.

"Benefits have to be shared by American workers" is a steaming pile of rhetoric.

It means nothing coming from an American politician.

reply to post by gncnew


You should take a class on accounting. Even a basic one. Workers dont get a share of profits. Wages are a business expense and they come out of the equation before you calculate "profits." Just sayin'. If you are going to be calling people ignorant, at least understand roughly what your OP is about.

A quote directly from an article about American corporations in "The Economist" entitled "Never had it so good."

www.economist.com...

Some fear that the productivity improvements that have driven profit growth since the financial crisis will soon tail off. “Around 90% of the productivity growth in corporate America has come from cost-cutting, and that is now reaching its limit,” says Carsten Stendevad of Citigroup’s corporate-advisory arm. Scared for their jobs during the crisis, employees toiled more for no more money; but they cannot be whipped much harder. To increase profits still further, firms need to increase sales far more than most analysts think they will, reckons Mr Stendevad.

Squeezing the lemon

Others disagree. “There is a lot more juice to be squeezed out of the lemon,” insists Hal Sirkin of BCG, a consultancy. Firms brag about having introduced “lean systems”, but most have done only “10-25% of what they could do”, says Mr Sirkin.

Obama has a right to complain. Americans are doing more, for less. It is harming our national economy while not really affecting corporations, who can easily, (now) sell their products over seas if Americans are too poor to buy them. A Presidents job is to act for his people, who hire him, at least in theory. Not simply to promote the interests of corporations, who have no real loyalty to the US and her people. When this lemon has no more juice to squeeze, they will simply move on. The citizens here do not have that as an option. In a democracy, you would expect your President to try influence businesses who benefit from America, to act in Americas benefit.

Originally posted by badgerprints

The government taxes corporations so much and makes it so hard to build a facility and run production in the united states that they have given up. Just about everything built is overseas.

Not true. American businesses are doing great. They moved production overseas for a lot of reasons. Cheaper labor, fewer laws to protect said labor, fewer environmental laws, dummy or corrupt governments who could be bought to allow the theft of resources from that nations people, lots of reasons. Taxes are only one of corporate Americans complaints. If we allowed slave labor here, and the disposal of sick and elderly slaves without pensions, I am sure we could lure some of them back, but how low do we really want to go when they are making tons of profit already?

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
Perhaps if the US government decided to take a protectionist stance. While it would be a HUGE folly, you could then begin protecting exports/imports like labor. Labor isn't really seen as something that has been under tarriff in the past. Perhaps that will change.

Far from seeing it as a "huge" folly, I see it as long overdue and the only reasonable course for the US to survive. If we just skip all socioeconomic theory, and look at on one number: trade deficit. Enough said.

If we don't manufacture enough, we shouldn't import, I think that much is clear. Less junk in Walmart and less landfill to be used up.

Basically as a nation, we are bleeding jobs and debt and somehow it's OK. What does open trade borders with China do for us? Nothing, we just stuff the coffers of a not so friendly nation.

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander

Originally posted by badgerprints

The government taxes corporations so much and makes it so hard to build a facility and run production in the united states that they have given up. Just about everything built is overseas.

Not true. American businesses are doing great. They moved production overseas for a lot of reasons. Cheaper labor, fewer laws to protect said labor, fewer environmental laws, dummy or corrupt governments who could be bought to allow the theft of resources from that nations people, lots of reasons. Taxes are only one of corporate Americans complaints. If we allowed slave labor here, and the disposal of sick and elderly slaves without pensions, I am sure we could lure some of them back, but how low do we really want to go when they are making tons of profit already?

There are not many small businesses that are doing well. They are being run out of business. The businesses that are doing great are businesses that don't employ many and they are making many of their profits by reducing their overhead by closing down facilities and consolidating with less employees. Meanwhile, laws have made it harder and harder to build facilities that employ laborers.

The other side of that coin is that the politicians...including Mr Obama...have passed innumerable laws that allow the corporations to profit by removing jobs from the US. They also have retracted many of the former legal protections America used to have. Getting down to basics these laws used to forbid illegal trusts, usury and fraud but now those very things are basic methods of operation between business and politics with the people as the ones who are the victims of these crimes.

Obama should have said " Big business doesn't have to benefit the American worker because Congress, the Senate and Presidents have made it so." Instead he told a half truth to sway public opinion

He and his ilk took the lobbyist money for the last half century and stacked the laws against the citizens. Now they act as if Mr. Obama and his kind weren't the ones who made it all possible by making it legal in the first place.

As far as "slave labor", that's a loaded term for unskilled labor.

Sorry, you don't take an education seriously....this is what you get. Since the government has it's hands in education, special interest, hiring quotas, subsidies and billions more in wasteful garbage that has done nothing but reduce the abilities of the average American worker over the last 40 years I'd say Mr. Obama and his predecessors have done a great job of creating those "slaves" but he blames it on business.

As for the pensions that keep disappearing......I don't see any former congressmen, senators or ex presidents going hungry, but their names are all over the laws that make it legal to steal those very pensions.

Your President has already expressed his support for a program that would "Nationalize" 401K funds.
Sounds like he's the one leading the charge on stealing pensions.

Getting to the crux of it. The politicians lined their pockets and in return sold us out. It's LEGAL for the big businesses to screw us now. It is also much harder for them to do the right thing.

Obama is full of it. As are all of our other politicians.
He needs to stop spouting socialist dogma but why should he? The blind eat it up like candy

Originally posted by David9176
reply to post by gncnew

 

If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line," President Obama told the Chamber of Commerce on Monday morning.

OMG...that's something Satan would say!!!

That evil Obama!

To hell with our standard of living!!!

edit on 7-2-2011 by David9176 because: (no reason given)

Thanks for the very insightful and completely useless commentary!

reply to post by buster2010

The problem here is the greed of the people that run the company.

Ahhh, you mean like you and me? If you've got a 401k - you just became that greedy SOB running the company...

Never forget that the companies are run by lots and lots of people... only Apple and Microsoft are run by one dude sitting on a pile of cash.