Because having a massive section of the population willing to but not working leads to a massive section of the population being very poor. They tend not to appreciate it and it affects everyone else.
Except the thing people ignore when they make these kinds of arguments is that, while low-skilled workers do make up a significant portion of the population, they also have more jobs they can apply to. A Ph.D. in computer science probably has only a handful of jobs he can apply to in his vicinity, whereas a retail person has hundreds or maybe even thousands.
Sure, now there are 3400 less low-skill jobs, but for one thing, that number is statistically insignificant when you think about the size of the job market, and for another thing, new jobs are opened up all the time in other companies -- particularly positions for low-skill jobs.
Man, what?
That's the complete opposite of the trends. Job opportunities for unskilled labor have been absolutely plummeting, and opportunities for the educated are exploding. There may be a thousand unskilled jobs at the moment in a city and 100 skilled, but when there are 1500 unskilled workers and 95 skilled workers looking for employment one group is fucked and the other is dictating their terms.
We'll leave aside the fact this trend is only going to get worse, and not in some misty future sense, but on a scales of years. Within our lifetime, things are likely to be radically different, unless of course some crazy X factor comes out of nowhere.
10 dollars an hour is fucking poverty in most big cities dude
So?
So even unskilled laborers deserve to do more than work and eat.
I don't see how that is related specifically to what we are talking about.
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
Because having a massive section of the population willing to but not working leads to a massive section of the population being very poor. They tend not to appreciate it and it affects everyone else.
Except the thing people ignore when they make these kinds of arguments is that, while low-skilled workers do make up a significant portion of the population, they also have more jobs they can apply to. A Ph.D. in computer science probably has only a handful of jobs he can apply to in his vicinity, whereas a retail person has hundreds or maybe even thousands.
Sure, now there are 3400 less low-skill jobs, but for one thing, that number is statistically insignificant when you think about the size of the job market, and for another thing, new jobs are opened up all the time in other companies -- particularly positions for low-skill jobs.
Man, what?
That's the complete opposite of the trends. Job opportunities for unskilled labor have been absolutely plummeting, and opportunities for the educated are exploding. There may be a thousand unskilled jobs at the moment in a city and 100 skilled, but when there are 1500 unskilled workers and 95 skilled workers looking for employment one group is fucked and the other is dictating their terms.
We'll leave aside the fact this trend is only going to get worse, and not in some misty future sense, but on a scales of years. Within our lifetime, things are likely to be radically different, unless of course some crazy X factor comes out of nowhere.
So Circuit City is simply following the trends.
....... and we loop back to: The company did nothing wrong, and we as a society actually WANT the company to do this, but we still have to deal with the effect this will have on society as a whole and the huge problem it will present.
Hmmm, as I said agricultural economics is a funky field, but I think you're more than overstating your case. There is a certain amount of novelty/luxury good pricing in current organic pricing, but besides the fact I doubt that'll ever go completely away, I quite simply see absolutely no way organic farming can ever be price competitive with current agricultural practices. The sheer labor intensity and lower yields see to that.
No, seriously, the only two reasons agribusiness competes are a) subsidies and b) economies of scale. And the subsidies are by far the larger part of the gap. Organic (proper organic) is also sabotaged by crappy USDA regs which are pretty much designed to make it difficult to operate efficiently and not be Monsanto. Also, labour isn't as intense as you'd think, I'm not talking use of feudal tech here. Also also, you're flat wrong about significantly lower yields. The only lower ones are in cereal crops, but the true cost of the high-yield breeds is well hidden in environmental external damage and farm debt.
If it was possible to grow organic at anything near current price levels, we would need to be talking about bringing that system forward kicking and screaming, it would have happened naturally.
Nope, its been hamstrung legally and economically because it can't be centralised effectively into large businesses, or standardised across huge geographical areas.
The best case for organic is that we legislate away the price difference by piling on taxes and so on. That still leaves prices at the current levels of organics, which is well beyond the means of the poor, or above it because a lot of the same non-regulative factors that are are going to drive up the cost of current agriculture will hit organics as well.
This isn't true, and you're still discounting the most obvious market solution, which is where people quit buying and start growing.
And the grow your own food, hyper-local movement is a sham. It's not even remotely an option for the vast majority of people to grow anything remotely near their actual food needs on their own.
You can replace most of a household's food requirements with the output of a a 5x5m plot if you have the know-how, which is readily available. Even a balcony full of beans and tomatoes will make a huge difference to a budget. You are wholly wrong. Do you know anything about gardening?
Trying to revert the flow of civilization and make us all spend more time growing our own food isn't only a catastrophe on a social level, it's completely infeasible on the resource level. In the country, maybe it can be done if you have the time and resources to devote (which the poor who would need the help won't) but in suburban and urban environments it's not physically possible for the vast majority.
This is complete tripe. You are clearly manifestly unqualified to comment on this matter. The only things holding back effective urban food production are poor local government support and lack of local knowledge.
Well if it's localized organic farming you save an assload of cash on shipping costs. That's a huge portion of produce prices
I'm not sure, so if you can cite numbers I'll take your word for it, but I'm pretty sure that comparing the labor/shipping costs of traditional agriculture versus that of organics gives traditional a huge advantage.
Basically, there's a reason it's cheaper to eat Argentinian asparagus from a industrial farm than to get the organic stuff from Jim at the farmer's market.
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
They are not being overpaid if it's to keep them out of poverty.
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
They are not being overpaid if it's to keep them out of poverty.
They are being overpaid if they are being paid more than what the job they are doing is worth.
If you paid each of the executive 35 years worth of one of the fired employees salaries to convince them to stay while their stock is tanking, is that overpaying too?
And the grow your own food, hyper-local movement is a sham. It's not even remotely an option for the vast majority of people to grow anything remotely near their actual food needs on their own.
You can replace most of a household's food requirements with the output of a a 5x5m plot if you have the know-how, which is readily available. Even a balcony full of beans and tomatoes will make a huge difference to a budget. You are wholly wrong. Do you know anything about gardening?
Trying to revert the flow of civilization and make us all spend more time growing our own food isn't only a catastrophe on a social level, it's completely infeasible on the resource level. In the country, maybe it can be done if you have the time and resources to devote (which the poor who would need the help won't) but in suburban and urban environments it's not physically possible for the vast majority.
This is complete tripe. You are clearly manifestly unqualified to comment on this matter. The only things holding back effective urban food production are poor local government support and lack of local knowledge.
You can, with a straight face, tell me I'm the one selling complete tripe when you blithely toss off "all it takes is a 5mx5m plot and the know how" as not a limiting factor in suburban or urban areas, or among the poor?
So NYC, with it's 8.5 million population and it's 3.4 million households (ssuming the US average household size), all they need to support their food requirements is 85 million square meters, or 21,000 acres, or 32 square miles. So all a city needs to do is devote a tenth of its surface area to farming and it'll be fine.
LET ALONE fact the poor live in the most crowded conditions, so a few hundred people will be lucky if they have a 5mX5m plot communally, how exactly do you propose someone who can't afford food secure a plot of land of ANY goddam size.
For fuck's sake. It's a damn shame to see ideology blind someone. We may well need to make changes, but acting as if you're doing it for everyone's good and it'll be super happy fun time for all just makes you luck either naive or stupid, and undercuts your point.
Yes, sustainability is important, damn important even. No it isn't going to be painless, or a boon to those it's most going to effect, and yes there are some drastic downsides to your ideas.
edit: And AGAIN we'll leave aside the fact your illustrious and flawless system is predicated on undoing the few millenniums worth of progress and getting us all back to doing are farming. Nope, not a single good goddam reason we moved away from that system. Not a one.
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
They are not being overpaid if it's to keep them out of poverty.
They are being overpaid if they are being paid more than what the job they are doing is worth.
And I imagine you let the company decide that.
Well fuck, what the Hell do we even have minimum wage for? Screw it, let's just leave it up entirely to the companies!
Well if it's localized organic farming you save an assload of cash on shipping costs. That's a huge portion of produce prices
I'm not sure, so if you can cite numbers I'll take your word for it, but I'm pretty sure that comparing the labor/shipping costs of traditional agriculture versus that of organics gives traditional a huge advantage.
Basically, there's a reason it's cheaper to eat Argentinian asparagus from a industrial farm than to get the organic stuff from Jim at the farmer's market.
ITS CALLED OIL SUBSIDIES, GOD DAMNIT ALL TO HELL
Real? Well, shit, I must just be stupid. Because my point obviously can't be that pulling the economic advantages agriculture has enjoyed in favor of a pricier and vastly more limited system (in terms of quantity, reach, and variety provided on the year round scale) is going to mean shit will be more expensive and this hurts the poor.
No, in the toss up between your perfect system and economic reality, I must be the dip shit.
If I'm going to spend $x,xxx on televisions, appliances, receivers, etc... I'm not going to spend it somewhere that treats its employees in such a way. Because if they're willing to do this, then it means they don't care about providing good service and quality experience to the customer.
If I'm going to spend $x,xxx on televisions, appliances, receivers, etc... I'm not going to spend it somewhere that treats its employees in such a way. Because if they're willing to do this, then it means they don't care about providing good service and quality experience to the customer.
Basically, though they are just giving the people what they want. Given the choice between a marginally more helpful employee (above a bare minimum of did they stab/rob/spit on me) and a marginally cheaper good society at large has consistently and nigh universally said they want their stuff cheaper.
If I'm going to spend $x,xxx on televisions, appliances, receivers, etc... I'm not going to spend it somewhere that treats its employees in such a way. Because if they're willing to do this, then it means they don't care about providing good service and quality experience to the customer.
Basically, though they are just giving the people what they want. Given the choice between a marginally more helpful employee (above a bare minimum of did they stab/rob/spit on me) and a marginally cheaper good society at large has consistently and nigh universally said they want their stuff cheaper.
Most people are idiots, and corporations that do what most people want usually end up in the shitter. Look at Apple - they charge more than anybody else and you cannot fight your way through an Apple retail store without a chair and a whip, because the places is packed with people who are spending money like it's going out of style. They can charge a lot more money because they're all about the cult of customer experience and loyalty. And yet they're making bajillions of dollars despite spending more on fancy retail stores, trained employees, etc.
You can, with a straight face, tell me I'm the one selling complete tripe when you blithely toss off "all it takes is a 5mx5m plot and the know how" as not a limiting factor in suburban or urban areas, or among the poor?
So NYC, with it's 8.5 million population and it's 3.4 million households (ssuming the US average household size), all they need to support their food requirements is 85 million square meters, or 21,000 acres, or 32 square miles. So all a city needs to do is devote a tenth of its surface area to farming and it'll be fine.
You are clearly not thinking about the available space. Balconies, rooftops, etc. take up quite a chunk of acreage. And obviously it won't be a total replacement of supermarket food, but its certainly a help. Oh, and most people don't live in fucking NYC.
LET ALONE fact the poor live in the most crowded conditions, so a few hundred people will be lucky if they have a 5mX5m plot communally, how exactly do you propose someone who can't afford food secure a plot of land of ANY goddam size.
Local government support of space set aside!
For fuck's sake. It's a damn shame to see ideology blind someone. We may well need to make changes, but acting as if you're doing it for everyone's good and it'll be super happy fun time for all just makes you luck either naive or stupid, and undercuts your point.
Ideology my muscular buttocks. Your lack of imagination and technical knowledge do not make you morally superior. Shit, you don't even realise how much labour can be saved doing localised gardening with modern techniques. For the last fucking time, this is not ack-to-the-dark-ages stuff, nor is it intended to entirely replace the current food chain. Distributed networks of supply are seen as a boon in damn near every other industry ever, why the hell can't you appreciate the benefits when applied to food production?
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
They are not being overpaid if it's to keep them out of poverty.
They are being overpaid if they are being paid more than what the job they are doing is worth.
And I imagine you let the company decide that.
Who else would decide it?
Well fuck, what the Hell do we even have minimum wage for? Screw it, let's just leave it up entirely to the companies!
You can, with a straight face, tell me I'm the one selling complete tripe when you blithely toss off "all it takes is a 5mx5m plot and the know how" as not a limiting factor in suburban or urban areas, or among the poor?
So NYC, with it's 8.5 million population and it's 3.4 million households (ssuming the US average household size), all they need to support their food requirements is 85 million square meters, or 21,000 acres, or 32 square miles. So all a city needs to do is devote a tenth of its surface area to farming and it'll be fine.
You are clearly not thinking about the available space. Balconies, rooftops, etc. take up quite a chunk of acreage. And obviously it won't be a total replacement of supermarket food, but its certainly a help. Oh, and most people don't live in fucking NYC.
But most of the POOR do live in densely settled urban areas. I'm sure those 200 people in each of the 10 apartment buildings in a project in the Bronx will each be able to find 5mX5m squared on the roof or in that strip of grass out front.
Yes it's lovely most people have some space. Unfortunately MOST people aren't the POOR people who are fucked in this situation. I won't tell you how to farm, you don't fucking tell me how the poor live.
For fuck's sake. It's a damn shame to see ideology blind someone. We may well need to make changes, but acting as if you're doing it for everyone's good and it'll be super happy fun time for all just makes you luck either naive or stupid, and undercuts your point.
Ideology my muscular buttocks. Your lack of imagination and technical knowledge do not make you morally superior. Shit, you don't even realise how much labour can be saved doing localised gardening with modern techniques. For the last fucking time, this is not ack-to-the-dark-ages stuff, nor is it intended to entirely replace the current food chain. Distributed networks of supply are seen as a boon in damn near every other industry ever, why the hell can't you appreciate the benefits when applied to food production?[/QUOTE]
It must have something to do with the fact most distributed supply networks stop somewhere short of: "So you'll have to build your own toaster, since they cost a grand now, but seriously it's so fucking easy. All you need is your own machine shop and some basic know how."
And a big :P to this being labor saving. Centralization, specialization, and mechanization are always less labor intensive than individual production, so don't try and feed me that line of bullshit. Farming needs to change on environmental and sustainability grounds, not labor/economic/or quality of life grounds.
If I'm going to spend $x,xxx on televisions, appliances, receivers, etc... I'm not going to spend it somewhere that treats its employees in such a way. Because if they're willing to do this, then it means they don't care about providing good service and quality experience to the customer.
Basically, though they are just giving the people what they want. Given the choice between a marginally more helpful employee (above a bare minimum of did they stab/rob/spit on me) and a marginally cheaper good society at large has consistently and nigh universally said they want their stuff cheaper.
Most people are idiots, and corporations that do what most people want usually end up in the shitter. Look at Apple - they charge more than anybody else and you cannot fight your way through an Apple retail store without a chair and a whip, because the places is packed with people who are spending money like it's going out of style. They can charge a lot more money because they're all about the cult of customer experience and loyalty. And yet they're making bajillions of dollars despite spending more on fancy retail stores, trained employees, etc.
Different strokes for different folks (or in this case products). Apple has thrived on basically a cult mentality, which works when you are selling an image of cool.
No one finds TVs and toilet paper cool. If there was a way on earth to pull it off, someone would be doing it. The vast majority of what people buy falls under the heading of staples, shit you just need not especially want. That's the stuff where cost vastly outweighs service as far as people are concerned.
It's a rare item for which people care about the experience more than the bottom line.
Something else to consider. Circuit City's slogan has been, for years, "Where service is state of the art." Service has been the focal point of their company. By firing the experienced workers, they're abandoning that idea. So what reason is there left to shop at Circuity City? Certainly not their prices - you can get better deals online. Certainly not their selection - again, there's better online. Service is the only thing that sets B&M apart from most online retailers. Without it, they're not going to last.
Something else to consider. Circuit City's slogan has been, for years, "Where service is state of the art." Service has been the focal point of their company. By firing the experienced workers, they're abandoning that idea. So what reason is there left to shop at Circuity City? Certainly not their prices - you can get better deals online. Certainly not their selection - again, there's better online. Service is the only thing that sets B&M apart from most online retailers. Without it, they're not going to last.
I don't know about CC, but whenever I go to BestBuy, the employees who treat me the nicest are the obviously new ones. The ones that have been there for a long time generally don't give a damn about the customer because they have the illusion of job security, and all their ambition has been lost in disillusionment.
Something else to consider. Circuit City's slogan has been, for years, "Where service is state of the art." Service has been the focal point of their company. By firing the experienced workers, they're abandoning that idea. So what reason is there left to shop at Circuity City? Certainly not their prices - you can get better deals online. Certainly not their selection - again, there's better online. Service is the only thing that sets B&M apart from most online retailers. Without it, they're not going to last.
I don't know about CC, but whenever I go to BestBuy, the employees who treat me the nicest are the obviously new ones. The ones that have been there for a long time generally don't give a damn about the customer because they have the illusion of job security, and all their ambition has been lost in disillusionment.
Amazingly I'm actually kind of in agreement about the concept here - people who feel they have job security are in no way necessarily better workers - the argument really swings both ways.
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Something else to consider. Circuit City's slogan has been, for years, "Where service is state of the art." Service has been the focal point of their company. By firing the experienced workers, they're abandoning that idea. So what reason is there left to shop at Circuity City? Certainly not their prices - you can get better deals online. Certainly not their selection - again, there's better online. Service is the only thing that sets B&M apart from most online retailers. Without it, they're not going to last.
I don't know about CC, but whenever I go to BestBuy, the employees who treat me the nicest are the obviously new ones. The ones that have been there for a long time generally don't give a damn about the customer because they have the illusion of job security, and all their ambition has been lost in disillusionment.
Amazingly I'm actually kind of in agreement about the concept here - people who feel they have job security are in no way necessarily better workers - the argument really swings both ways.
There's a difference between someone who's nice to you and someone who knows what they're doing. Most of my co-workers who are new (I work in a somewhat smaller computer store with about 5 people in sales on any given day) usually spend far too long talking to customers who are buying inexpensive items, they have a bad tendency of not knowing which products are compatible with what, and while they put lots of effort into what they're doing, they're not all that efficient at it. So from a company standpoint they're really not all that great as replacements.
Generally that'll last for about a month or two, and then they'll learn a bit more about how to sell and stop being quite as polite - a combination of knowing that they could have served four or five customers instead of chatting with just one, and that despite you being as nice as possible your customers have no such obligation - and it takes just a few pricks to realize that being a cheery friendly employee isn't always worth the $10/hr.
Am I the only one where "we're firing these guys to hire new guys that are paid less" really gets under the skin? Were this Hippie Commie Treehugger Socialist Sweden they would suddenly find themselves without deliveries as the transport union blockades them, and nearly the entire population has a mentality of "Oh, they fuck over their employees? Well, fuck them right back, I'm shopping elsewhere."
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
Home Depot did the exact same thing. Good luck finding competent help there these days.
Absolutely. As a college student working on an art degree a couple years ago I went in there looking for a few simple products for projects and substitute canvases, and I was SORELY disappointed with the staff there. I walked around the place for about half an hour, and I'm confident that I could have helped any customer that came in there as good or better than the help that I sought out when I got in that place.
Am I the only one where "we're firing these guys to hire new guys that are paid less" really gets under the skin? Were this Hippie Commie Treehugger Socialist Sweden they would suddenly find themselves without deliveries as the transport union blockades them, and nearly the entire population has a mentality of "Oh, they fuck over their employees? Well, fuck them right back, I'm shopping elsewhere."
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
What works for one doesn't for the other. What works for a country the size of California with just barely more than the population of New York City and pretty minimal immigration won't necessarily work for a country the size and character of the US.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
It may well be a good system, but it's by no means undebatablely the best one.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
I'm guessing you refer to Sweden with these numbers? Where did you get the stagnation figure?
Am I the only one where "we're firing these guys to hire new guys that are paid less" really gets under the skin? Were this Hippie Commie Treehugger Socialist Sweden they would suddenly find themselves without deliveries as the transport union blockades them, and nearly the entire population has a mentality of "Oh, they fuck over their employees? Well, fuck them right back, I'm shopping elsewhere."
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
What works for one doesn't for the other. What works for a country the size of California with just barely more than the population of New York City and pretty minimal immigration won't necessarily work for a country the size and character of the US.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
It may well be a good system, but it's by no means undebatablely the best one.
The best system has yet to be invented. Economists have been arguing about that for years. The system in Sweden has benefits that the system US employs lacks, and vice versa. US experiences greater growth, but the social costs (what constitutes them is debatable) are arguably higher.
What Echo was saying is true though, the business environment in the Nordic countries is quite hostile to asshole corporations. When Lidl(a German supermarket chain) came to Finland, they were for the longest time(and probably still are) under strict surveillance in case they'd try to screw over their employees.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
I'm guessing you refer to Sweden with these numbers? Where did you get the stagnation figure?
And what is "economic freedom"?
Wow, weird typo. Greater than 50% taxation. I guess I was mentally going off on a tangent about how the common refrain is that this kind of taxation causes stagnation by creating significant disincentives to work (I believe the magic number is something like 37%, off the top of my head, maybe?)
And economic freedom tends to refer to the freedom of economic action, which is why I listed it as a debatable cost. On the plus side workers are more protected, on the downside business owners are limited in what they can do. Less freedom, but not NECESSARILY a bad thing.
What Echo was saying is true though, the business environment in the Nordic countries is quite hostile to asshole corporations. When Lidl(a German supermarket chain) came to Finland, they were for the longest time(and probably still are) under strict surveillance in case they'd try to screw over their employees.
Lidl are still assholes here. They recently got caught using incoming food transports to haul away their rotting garbage - right next to food to be delivered to other Lidl stores. They forced the transports to pick it up despite it being against their regulations.
Am I the only one where "we're firing these guys to hire new guys that are paid less" really gets under the skin? Were this Hippie Commie Treehugger Socialist Sweden they would suddenly find themselves without deliveries as the transport union blockades them, and nearly the entire population has a mentality of "Oh, they fuck over their employees? Well, fuck them right back, I'm shopping elsewhere."
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
What works for one doesn't for the other. What works for a country the size of California with just barely more than the population of New York City and pretty minimal immigration won't necessarily work for a country the size and character of the US.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
It may well be a good system, but it's by no means undebatablely the best one.
The best system has yet to be invented. Economists have been arguing about that for years. The system in Sweden has benefits that the system US employs lacks, and vice versa. US experiences greater growth, but the social costs (what constitutes them is debatable) are arguably higher.
What Echo was saying is true though, the business environment in the Nordic countries is quite hostile to asshole corporations. When Lidl(a German supermarket chain) came to Finland, they were for the longest time(and probably still are) under strict surveillance in case they'd try to screw over their employees.
I'd caveat it to "Nordic countries are hostile to corporations" not just asshole ones. Again, this isn't necessarily an outright bad thing, because it does protect workers, but it is a pretty virulently anti-entrepreneurship system.
Why try and start the next google, when I get less than half the reward of my work and automatically get treated like I'm evil? Not to say it'll absolutely stop business, but it has to act as a significant break.
Also, that 5.4% unemployment is a damn lie by the Social Democrats. They invented some "employment programs" where you learn to save files in Word, and suddenly you're not unemployed while doing that. So it's actually higher.
Am I the only one where "we're firing these guys to hire new guys that are paid less" really gets under the skin? Were this Hippie Commie Treehugger Socialist Sweden they would suddenly find themselves without deliveries as the transport union blockades them, and nearly the entire population has a mentality of "Oh, they fuck over their employees? Well, fuck them right back, I'm shopping elsewhere."
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
What works for one doesn't for the other. What works for a country the size of California with just barely more than the population of New York City and pretty minimal immigration won't necessarily work for a country the size and character of the US.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
It may well be a good system, but it's by no means undebatablely the best one.
The best system has yet to be invented. Economists have been arguing about that for years. The system in Sweden has benefits that the system US employs lacks, and vice versa. US experiences greater growth, but the social costs (what constitutes them is debatable) are arguably higher.
What Echo was saying is true though, the business environment in the Nordic countries is quite hostile to asshole corporations. When Lidl(a German supermarket chain) came to Finland, they were for the longest time(and probably still are) under strict surveillance in case they'd try to screw over their employees.
I'd caveat it to "Nordic countries are hostile to corporations" not just asshole ones. Again, this isn't necessarily an outright bad thing, because it does protect workers, but it is a pretty virulently anti-entrepreneurship system.
Why try and start the next google, when I get less than half the reward of my work and automatically get treated like I'm evil? Not to say it'll absolutely stop business, but it has to act as a significant break.
That's quite true. I'm not too enthusiastic about the taxation. In fact, I hate it when government rips off whatever meager money I make(the prices are pretty fucking high in the first place). It's basically US prices here, except keep the numbers and switch the $ for €. If I had a significant income, I'd probably move abroad just due to the taxes. High taxation does cause entrepreneur flight from a country.
Also, that 5.4% unemployment is a damn lie by the Social Democrats. They invented some "employment programs" where you learn to save files in Word, and suddenly you're not unemployed while doing that. So it's actually higher.
And it apparently doesn't include the 2% who are actively enrolled in unemployment programs, but I don't know the situation nearly well enough. The salient point as far as this discussion is concerned is that it is significantly higher than US unemployment. Even the absolute bottom of 7.4% is a full 3% higher, and it's likely at least double the US rate.
You think getting paid enough money to eat is getting overpaid. Should I believe you even give two shits about minimum wage?
Huh. So CC fired their best employees and now are showing losses because they can't sell the big ticket items.
Well here's a nice reality check for the CC higher-ups- You get what you pay for.
Honestly, I'm at least somewhat dubious that this really made a difference in the long run, look at CompUSA. I'm sure there was an impact, both because they lost some key works and because I'm sure this hurt morale, but I'm really doubtful this is going to either hurt or help them in the long run.
The business model of big box stores really is just fundamentally flawed. No one wants some low payed worker (which all retail employees fall into) pushing some stupid crap on them or giving them information that is at best the same thing I could find elsewhere and likely less useful. Add in paying more for the privilege of going and getting the item myself instead of getting it delivered.
Big box stores have managed to stay afloat simply because so much of the population is technophobic. Two decades from now, when the majority of the population has grown up in the internet age, the landscape is going to completely change.
And it apparently doesn't include the 2% who are actively enrolled in unemployment programs, but I don't know the situation nearly well enough.
I've been subjected to that crap. If you've been unemployed for 90 days you get called to one of these programs. Don't show up and your unemployment benefits get cut. Participate in some token full-time program and you're still expected to apply to jobs on your own time (which would be after office hours due to the program, so mail it is.)
Those 2% may not be included, but they're still unemployed.
The salient point as far as this discussion is concerned is that it is significantly higher than US unemployment. Even the absolute bottom of 7.4% is a full 3% higher, and it's likely at least double the US rate.
But our unemployed still get benefits, such as up to 80% of the paycheck of your last employment, up to 680 SEK per day (~103 USD). I'd say that's still above minimum wage in the US. (that's the basic unemployment package; different lines of work often have different packages via union organisations.)
I think minimum wage in the US is considered below starvation limit in Swedish norms.
Not claiming one system beats another, just explaining how it works here.
You think getting paid enough money to eat is getting overpaid. Should I believe you even give two shits about minimum wage?
Are you daft, or do you simply not understand economics?
Getting paid more than the value they are adding to the company is getting overpaid. This is the definition of being overpaid.
If you do a job that is worth 4 bucks, and I pay you 8 bucks, you are being overpaid, regardless of whether or not that 8 bucks is enough for you to maintain a decent living. Really, the latter is a completely irrelevant concept as far as determining whether someone is overpaid and underpaid; the only two variables in the equation are wage and the marginal value of the labor being performed.
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So Circuit City is simply following the trends.
I don't see how that is related specifically to what we are talking about.
I mean, maybe in some remote sense, you can argue that unskilled workers need to be overpaid in order to not live in poverty, which would mean in some weird ironic sense that not being in poverty is costing them their jobs, sure I could agree with that.
....... and we loop back to: The company did nothing wrong, and we as a society actually WANT the company to do this, but we still have to deal with the effect this will have on society as a whole and the huge problem it will present.
No, seriously, the only two reasons agribusiness competes are a) subsidies and b) economies of scale. And the subsidies are by far the larger part of the gap. Organic (proper organic) is also sabotaged by crappy USDA regs which are pretty much designed to make it difficult to operate efficiently and not be Monsanto. Also, labour isn't as intense as you'd think, I'm not talking use of feudal tech here. Also also, you're flat wrong about significantly lower yields. The only lower ones are in cereal crops, but the true cost of the high-yield breeds is well hidden in environmental external damage and farm debt.
Nope, its been hamstrung legally and economically because it can't be centralised effectively into large businesses, or standardised across huge geographical areas.
This isn't true, and you're still discounting the most obvious market solution, which is where people quit buying and start growing.
You can replace most of a household's food requirements with the output of a a 5x5m plot if you have the know-how, which is readily available. Even a balcony full of beans and tomatoes will make a huge difference to a budget. You are wholly wrong. Do you know anything about gardening?
This is complete tripe. You are clearly manifestly unqualified to comment on this matter. The only things holding back effective urban food production are poor local government support and lack of local knowledge.
ITS CALLED OIL SUBSIDIES, GOD DAMNIT ALL TO HELL
They are being overpaid if they are being paid more than what the job they are doing is worth.
You can, with a straight face, tell me I'm the one selling complete tripe when you blithely toss off "all it takes is a 5mx5m plot and the know how" as not a limiting factor in suburban or urban areas, or among the poor?
So NYC, with it's 8.5 million population and it's 3.4 million households (ssuming the US average household size), all they need to support their food requirements is 85 million square meters, or 21,000 acres, or 32 square miles. So all a city needs to do is devote a tenth of its surface area to farming and it'll be fine.
LET ALONE fact the poor live in the most crowded conditions, so a few hundred people will be lucky if they have a 5mX5m plot communally, how exactly do you propose someone who can't afford food secure a plot of land of ANY goddam size.
For fuck's sake. It's a damn shame to see ideology blind someone. We may well need to make changes, but acting as if you're doing it for everyone's good and it'll be super happy fun time for all just makes you luck either naive or stupid, and undercuts your point.
Yes, sustainability is important, damn important even. No it isn't going to be painless, or a boon to those it's most going to effect, and yes there are some drastic downsides to your ideas.
edit: And AGAIN we'll leave aside the fact your illustrious and flawless system is predicated on undoing the few millenniums worth of progress and getting us all back to doing are farming. Nope, not a single good goddam reason we moved away from that system. Not a one.
Well fuck, what the Hell do we even have minimum wage for? Screw it, let's just leave it up entirely to the companies!
Real? Well, shit, I must just be stupid. Because my point obviously can't be that pulling the economic advantages agriculture has enjoyed in favor of a pricier and vastly more limited system (in terms of quantity, reach, and variety provided on the year round scale) is going to mean shit will be more expensive and this hurts the poor.
No, in the toss up between your perfect system and economic reality, I must be the dip shit.
Basically, though they are just giving the people what they want. Given the choice between a marginally more helpful employee (above a bare minimum of did they stab/rob/spit on me) and a marginally cheaper good society at large has consistently and nigh universally said they want their stuff cheaper.
Most people are idiots, and corporations that do what most people want usually end up in the shitter. Look at Apple - they charge more than anybody else and you cannot fight your way through an Apple retail store without a chair and a whip, because the places is packed with people who are spending money like it's going out of style. They can charge a lot more money because they're all about the cult of customer experience and loyalty. And yet they're making bajillions of dollars despite spending more on fancy retail stores, trained employees, etc.
You are clearly not thinking about the available space. Balconies, rooftops, etc. take up quite a chunk of acreage. And obviously it won't be a total replacement of supermarket food, but its certainly a help. Oh, and most people don't live in fucking NYC.
Local government support of space set aside!
Ideology my muscular buttocks. Your lack of imagination and technical knowledge do not make you morally superior. Shit, you don't even realise how much labour can be saved doing localised gardening with modern techniques. For the last fucking time, this is not ack-to-the-dark-ages stuff, nor is it intended to entirely replace the current food chain. Distributed networks of supply are seen as a boon in damn near every other industry ever, why the hell can't you appreciate the benefits when applied to food production?
Who else would decide it?
Nice strawman.
But most of the POOR do live in densely settled urban areas. I'm sure those 200 people in each of the 10 apartment buildings in a project in the Bronx will each be able to find 5mX5m squared on the roof or in that strip of grass out front.
Yes it's lovely most people have some space. Unfortunately MOST people aren't the POOR people who are fucked in this situation. I won't tell you how to farm, you don't fucking tell me how the poor live.
Ideology my muscular buttocks. Your lack of imagination and technical knowledge do not make you morally superior. Shit, you don't even realise how much labour can be saved doing localised gardening with modern techniques. For the last fucking time, this is not ack-to-the-dark-ages stuff, nor is it intended to entirely replace the current food chain. Distributed networks of supply are seen as a boon in damn near every other industry ever, why the hell can't you appreciate the benefits when applied to food production?[/QUOTE]
It must have something to do with the fact most distributed supply networks stop somewhere short of: "So you'll have to build your own toaster, since they cost a grand now, but seriously it's so fucking easy. All you need is your own machine shop and some basic know how."
And a big :P to this being labor saving. Centralization, specialization, and mechanization are always less labor intensive than individual production, so don't try and feed me that line of bullshit. Farming needs to change on environmental and sustainability grounds, not labor/economic/or quality of life grounds.
Different strokes for different folks (or in this case products). Apple has thrived on basically a cult mentality, which works when you are selling an image of cool.
No one finds TVs and toilet paper cool. If there was a way on earth to pull it off, someone would be doing it. The vast majority of what people buy falls under the heading of staples, shit you just need not especially want. That's the stuff where cost vastly outweighs service as far as people are concerned.
It's a rare item for which people care about the experience more than the bottom line.
I don't know about CC, but whenever I go to BestBuy, the employees who treat me the nicest are the obviously new ones. The ones that have been there for a long time generally don't give a damn about the customer because they have the illusion of job security, and all their ambition has been lost in disillusionment.
There's a difference between someone who's nice to you and someone who knows what they're doing. Most of my co-workers who are new (I work in a somewhat smaller computer store with about 5 people in sales on any given day) usually spend far too long talking to customers who are buying inexpensive items, they have a bad tendency of not knowing which products are compatible with what, and while they put lots of effort into what they're doing, they're not all that efficient at it. So from a company standpoint they're really not all that great as replacements.
Generally that'll last for about a month or two, and then they'll learn a bit more about how to sell and stop being quite as polite - a combination of knowing that they could have served four or five customers instead of chatting with just one, and that despite you being as nice as possible your customers have no such obligation - and it takes just a few pricks to realize that being a cheery friendly employee isn't always worth the $10/hr.
Not to mention employment laws that say pretty much "give them their jobs back or find them a new one, or we're shutting you down."
Absolutely. As a college student working on an art degree a couple years ago I went in there looking for a few simple products for projects and substitute canvases, and I was SORELY disappointed with the staff there. I walked around the place for about half an hour, and I'm confident that I could have helped any customer that came in there as good or better than the help that I sought out when I got in that place.
Look man if you don't make enough to eat maybe you should have gone to college.
What works for one doesn't for the other. What works for a country the size of California with just barely more than the population of New York City and pretty minimal immigration won't necessarily work for a country the size and character of the US.
Not to mention that this worker safety comes at a pretty steep cost. Greater than 50% economic stagnation, relatively high unemployment (at a minimum apparently 5.4% plus 2% on unemployment), reduced economic freedom (which I'll give you is debatable cost), and so on.
It may well be a good system, but it's by no means undebatablely the best one.
I'm guessing you refer to Sweden with these numbers? Where did you get the stagnation figure?
And what is "economic freedom"?
The best system has yet to be invented. Economists have been arguing about that for years. The system in Sweden has benefits that the system US employs lacks, and vice versa. US experiences greater growth, but the social costs (what constitutes them is debatable) are arguably higher.
What Echo was saying is true though, the business environment in the Nordic countries is quite hostile to asshole corporations. When Lidl(a German supermarket chain) came to Finland, they were for the longest time(and probably still are) under strict surveillance in case they'd try to screw over their employees.
Wow, weird typo. Greater than 50% taxation. I guess I was mentally going off on a tangent about how the common refrain is that this kind of taxation causes stagnation by creating significant disincentives to work (I believe the magic number is something like 37%, off the top of my head, maybe?)
And economic freedom tends to refer to the freedom of economic action, which is why I listed it as a debatable cost. On the plus side workers are more protected, on the downside business owners are limited in what they can do. Less freedom, but not NECESSARILY a bad thing.
Lidl are still assholes here. They recently got caught using incoming food transports to haul away their rotting garbage - right next to food to be delivered to other Lidl stores. They forced the transports to pick it up despite it being against their regulations.
Yeah, Lidl can fuck right off.
I'd caveat it to "Nordic countries are hostile to corporations" not just asshole ones. Again, this isn't necessarily an outright bad thing, because it does protect workers, but it is a pretty virulently anti-entrepreneurship system.
Why try and start the next google, when I get less than half the reward of my work and automatically get treated like I'm evil? Not to say it'll absolutely stop business, but it has to act as a significant break.
That's quite true. I'm not too enthusiastic about the taxation. In fact, I hate it when government rips off whatever meager money I make(the prices are pretty fucking high in the first place). It's basically US prices here, except keep the numbers and switch the $ for €. If I had a significant income, I'd probably move abroad just due to the taxes. High taxation does cause entrepreneur flight from a country.
And it apparently doesn't include the 2% who are actively enrolled in unemployment programs, but I don't know the situation nearly well enough. The salient point as far as this discussion is concerned is that it is significantly higher than US unemployment. Even the absolute bottom of 7.4% is a full 3% higher, and it's likely at least double the US rate.
Huh. So CC fired their best employees and now are showing losses because they can't sell the big ticket items.
Well here's a nice reality check for the CC higher-ups- You get what you pay for.
Honestly, I'm at least somewhat dubious that this really made a difference in the long run, look at CompUSA. I'm sure there was an impact, both because they lost some key works and because I'm sure this hurt morale, but I'm really doubtful this is going to either hurt or help them in the long run.
The business model of big box stores really is just fundamentally flawed. No one wants some low payed worker (which all retail employees fall into) pushing some stupid crap on them or giving them information that is at best the same thing I could find elsewhere and likely less useful. Add in paying more for the privilege of going and getting the item myself instead of getting it delivered.
Big box stores have managed to stay afloat simply because so much of the population is technophobic. Two decades from now, when the majority of the population has grown up in the internet age, the landscape is going to completely change.
I've been subjected to that crap. If you've been unemployed for 90 days you get called to one of these programs. Don't show up and your unemployment benefits get cut. Participate in some token full-time program and you're still expected to apply to jobs on your own time (which would be after office hours due to the program, so mail it is.)
Those 2% may not be included, but they're still unemployed.
But our unemployed still get benefits, such as up to 80% of the paycheck of your last employment, up to 680 SEK per day (~103 USD). I'd say that's still above minimum wage in the US. (that's the basic unemployment package; different lines of work often have different packages via union organisations.)
I think minimum wage in the US is considered below starvation limit in Swedish norms.
Not claiming one system beats another, just explaining how it works here.
Are you daft, or do you simply not understand economics?
Getting paid more than the value they are adding to the company is getting overpaid. This is the definition of being overpaid.
If you do a job that is worth 4 bucks, and I pay you 8 bucks, you are being overpaid, regardless of whether or not that 8 bucks is enough for you to maintain a decent living. Really, the latter is a completely irrelevant concept as far as determining whether someone is overpaid and underpaid; the only two variables in the equation are wage and the marginal value of the labor being performed.