Current Events > Protesters set up a guillotine outside Jeff Bezos' mansion

(+) Yeah! (+)

Broseph_Stalin posted...

1. Because I'm not a conservative
2. NO TRUE LEFTY yeah I get it
3. Keynesianism is certainly considered left-wing
4. Being an economist doesn't disqualify you from being left wing, you don't have to be stupid to join the club. Most oppose wealth taxes for example, just as most countries have repealed theirs. It's not about ideology it's about outcomes.
last post I'm gonna make if you can't actually refute anything these guys are wrong about, time to put up or shut up

All of your takes are firmly conservative though. You prefer center right or libertarian? I've seen some call you neolib but admiring Hoover is well to the right of that wagon. You forgot the "new" part he sticks in front of it. His policy advocacy doesn't cover left wing and neither does his history.

This isn't about what we think is right vs wrong it's about right vs left. You can find plenty of lefty economists, which you would understandably think are dumb. Richard Wolff is an example of a lefty economist. But you don't have to go nearly as far as him.

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Why though

foreverzero212 posted...

This isn't about what we think is right vs wrong it's about right vs left.

No it isn't. You're literally the only person talking about ideology and policy. Russ is a libertarian leaning member of the Chicago school, Larry is a Keynesian Democrat. They are entirely different people, they are just pointing out (along with many other people) that data on "stagnant" wages is misleading or incomplete and shouldn't be parroted by people who don't know how to read data. When a doctor tells you mask prevent the spread of disease you don't ask what political party they belong to because you don't like the facts they're explaining to you.

Now stop attacking people who are overwhelmingly more qualified than you are. You're literally scared shitless of even addressing the issue because of how exposed you'd be.

So you prefer libertarian. Got it.

It literally is about left vs right to establish a left vs right spectrum. No one considers Larry to be a left winger. That is because his legacy is of deregulation Third Way politics. No amount of ignoring this or labels makes it go away. Working under presidents that you don't consider to be left wing does not make him left wing. It's hard to move on or talk about the issues when you consider deregulatory American centrism as the farthest left on on the spectrum that is acceptable for discourse.

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Ok you're done. I shouldn't have been feeding you this much to begin with, it's been nothing but bad faith attacks and lazy attempts at changing the subject to hide the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Although I did get a laugh at you claiming you're more intelligent than multiple reputable economist while at the same time saying neoclassical and Keynesian economics are the same thing lmao.

damn this is based

wonder what the last 150 posts have been about. meh

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Bezos is the richest man in the country and can't give his workers extra pay. What a selfish prick.

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Broseph_Stalin posted...

Ok you're done. I shouldn't have been feeding you this much to begin with, it's been nothing but bad faith attacks and lazy attempts at changing the subject to hide the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Although I did get a laugh at you claiming you're more intelligent than multiple reputable economist while at the same time saying neoclassical and Keynesian economics are the same thing lmao.

Russ and Larry do not cover the right to left spectrum of economists. That was your claim and you were not able to defend it. No amount of scoffing and incredulousness makes it true.

Hoover was also found to be a hack organization that is not credible.

That's 0-2 for you. I agree that you're better off running away from strike 3.

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it's the only way really. legislation is not going to fix us

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I worked for Amazon back in the day. You had to be there forever to have control of "your" Amazon shares. They'd often replace you if you were getting close to actually owning the shares.

Ok so back to the actual wage discussion before a certain troll derailed the entire topic because he wanted to pretend he knew what he was talking about:

Non-monetary compensation has become a larger proportion of total worker compensation in recent decades, but is often not counted in data about "stagnant" wages. It's like only counting the wages of a waiter but not their tips, you would get a very inaccurate idea of what they actually make.

Different price indexes give wildly different measurements of inflation. Even worse, the EPI graph in question uses one price index (NDP) to make productivity look better and another (CPI) to make wages look lower. Very misleading.

Sticking with the EPI graph, it uses all workers to measure productivity gains but then excludes the top earners from wages to widen the productivity to wage gap. This thing is not good!

Our standard way of measuring economic gains takes snapshots of one set of people in the past and compares them to an entirely different set of people in the present. When you follow the same people over time you get a much different picture, larger increases in wages particularly in the middle and lower income levels.

Remember that data can be construed to say whatever you want it to say, so it's important to get the full picture and actually understand what you're reading. Click bait media outlets especially love cherry picking data to get a good headline which eventually leads to commonly held beliefs that aren't that accurate. Good stuff to read on this from some very smart people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcdqGUWj2oo
https://www.piie.com/system/files/documents/summers20171109paper.pdf
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/payproductivity-gap-graphs-are-nonsense/
https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-are-wages-and-productivity-related.html
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07/ES0707.pdf

Compensation for us workers has never been better. Thats why it's never been easier for middle and lower Americans to own a home, own cars, see a doctor, easily pay off college debt that was required for said job or pay up for surprise emergencies. Americans have it too good. I have to wonder why are corporations being so nice to us? They pay us so much more than they have in the past when more unions were around. Don't they care about squeezing anything for quarterly profit? Comp should be getting worse but it only gets better.

Jeff_Garcia7 posted...

Thats why it's never been easier for middle and lower Americans to own a home, own cars, see a doctor, easily pay off college debt that was required for said job or pay up for surprise emergencies.

Honest question but have you ever considered that wages aren't the issue and that certain stuff like that has risen in cost well above inflation rates?

Broseph_Stalin posted...

Honest question but have you ever considered that wages aren't the issue and that certain stuff like that has risen in cost well above inflation rates?

What is wage but a power to buy things. What does it matter if the people benefiting from the large increases in cost of that certain stuff are doling out better compensation than they ever have. We have it great I ain't arguin with you.

Jeff_Garcia7 posted...

What is wage but a power to buy things.

I'm just saying it's weird that when wages keep pace with inflation but something like housing rises above the rate of inflation our first thought is "I'm not being paid enough" and not "why is this particular thing rising above the rate of inflation?"

In reality wages are rising and most goods are actually cheaper relative to wages like food, electronics, cars, clothes, entertainment, etc. Maybe it's more productive to ask why a few things like housing, healthcare and education seem to have inflated cost than to blame employers who actually increase incomes?

Broseph_Stalin posted...

I'm just saying it's weird that when wages keep pace with inflation but something like housing rises above the rate of inflation our first thought is "I'm not being paid enough" and not "why is this particular thing rising above the rate of inflation?"

In reality wages are rising and most goods are actually cheaper relative to wages like food, electronics, cars, clothes, entertainment, etc. Maybe it's more productive to ask why a few things like housing, healthcare and education seem to have inflated cost than to blame employers who actually increase incomes?

Right?!! I'm sayin!! The cost and need of college, healthcare, and rent are through the roof! But luckily those industries are compensating their workers tremendously, it's not being sucked up into some weird game of high score for rich people to exert influence on our politics - no!

Maybe we could do something about this so other industries don't have to include this bloat as part of their compensation. Maybe like a universal healthcare system that eliminates the bloat private insurance and pharma is putting into our healthcare cost. Kinda like every other country has figured out. Oh wait naaahhhh I heard this was bad. Same with free college.

Welp guess theres nothing to do but to not figure out that the same rich people saying compensation feels like less because of the increase of cost of other things are the same rich people making more money from the increase in cost of those things and using their gains to exert influence to keep it that way. We got it good!

@foreverzero212 I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I appreciated reading the economics info you posted ITT. Thank you for sharing.

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So many jealous people

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Ugh Amazon is so shit. The prices I saw for Face Masks were halved over at Ebay.

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Broseph_Stalin posted...

In reality wages are rising and most goods are actually cheaper relative to wages like food, electronics, cars, clothes, entertainment, etc. Maybe it's more productive to ask why a few things like housing, healthcare and education seem to have inflated cost than to blame employers who actually increase incomes?

wages have increased slightly faster than inflation, but not much moreso. the main things cheaper relative to wages are luxury goods. housing/food is about the same relative to wages.

the complaint is "productivity has increased much faster than inflation, therfore wages should too"

also the idea that people shouldn't be demanding higher wages but instead price controls is ridiculous. at its core the call is "workers over shareholders" and it begs the question, can you satisfy your shareholders if your workers refuse to accept the deal you are offering them? employment is not a blood contract and employees have the right to organize and demand adjustment. negotiation on the group level has always been a hundred thousand times more effective and honest than on the individual level.

the historical coupling of productivity to wages was because employers needed their employees, and their unions were strong. if they don't anymore because they can just globalize, "employees should just suck it up and get with the new paradigm of being left behind by a new global aristocracy of investors who always come first in corporate priorities" is probably not a mantra you want to endorse. what the right mantra IS, I don't know.

but amazon can't run fulfillment centers for north carolina out of india, so they're at least partially stuck having to make deals if the employees organize sufficiently well. their response has been an attempt to destroy that organizational effort--but inevitably people are better at organizing in secret than corporations are at spying on their employees without breaking the law.



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