U. S Politics: I know why the caged babe screams.

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Considering the obscene profits some companies make it certainly would be possible to pay the employees of those companies their current wage/salary and have them work 30hrs. The company would probably have to employ more people for the same output, but this is a good thing if the coming employment crunch because of AI automation is true. It's not like there aren't pots of money floating around at the top of the socioeconomic pile that couldn't be poured down to workers. But as I said, some businesses currently operate on too low margins to cope. But even then, for larger low margin companies if the executives took a haircut off their million $ + bonuses packages that redistribution of the payroll could cover much of that 25%.

Ok, this is my situation.  I have a USPS highway mail contract that pays me about 60K a year.  House is paid for, few other expenses.  This time last year, I hired my lovely young daughter to run the route for a two days a week - she needed a job with stable hours for babysitting purposes.  Pay was based on 7 hours a day, 9 days a month.  By the terms of the contract, I have to pay her $15 an hour straight time plus $4 an hour for 'health and welfare'  (in lieu of health insurance).  That gives her a monthly paycheck of just under $1200...pathetic.  I really, really wanted to give her *three* days a week - but this is where the other expenses kick in.  Biggest of those is the $1500 a year for workers compensation insurance.  Plus...call it another grand in state and federal taxes.  And, if I give her that extra day a week ($1700 a month, give or take) then that insurance and taxes both go up - quite  little bit.  Now, I have other expenses on top of this - payments on a vehicle I bought for the route, gasoline, and estimated taxes.  Repairs for other work vehicles - I dropped five grand into the one last year (and got a modest tax refund).  Health insurance for myself.    And yes, despite all the expenses and issues, I really hope to be able to give her that three day, 21 hour workweek and $1700 monthly paycheck before the year is out.  At that point, after other expenses, she'll be making more than I will.

 

My whole point is that there are significant employer expenses that appear invisible to many posters here - expenses that throw a serious crimp into schemes for a living wage at a reduced workweek. 

 

[Bonnot OG]

That 14 month old baby that was separated from his parents at the border and was returned after 85 days covered with lice and had not been bathed, spent 20% of his life in a concentration camp away from his parents.

425 days in 14 months.

85 days out of 425 is 20%

Such great people supporting this shit and supporting the nazi fucks pushing this among other horrible shit they push. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The U.S. Army (note, not all branches of the military) is starting to discharge immigrant recruits and reservists who enlisted in the military with the hopes of a pathway to citizenship.

[lokisnow]

@Triskjavikson note an olde link, but re, democrat fissures instead of going for fissures... err, triangulate, ala:

Quote

http://www.businessinsider.com/conor-lamb-rick-saccone-pennsylvania-special-election-should-terrify-republicans-2018-3

 

[Connor Lamb] did better than Clinton where Clinton did better than Obama, and better than Obama where Obama did better than Clinton.

Now, imagine that laid out across the country: Democratic candidates holding together the Clinton coalition while rebuilding the Obama coalition and then adding on some new voters who weren't part of either.

 

 

@OldGimletEye yay or nay?

Quote

(i) the holders of capital are all too rich with too high a level of consumption, hence (ii) you want to tilt their consumption profile so that their consumption declines as fast as possible, and (iii) the capital-output ratio is fixed--hence there are no productive inefficiencies. Thus the optimal government policy is to tax the capital income of the rich as much as possible until they become so poor that their consumption level hits the social optimum value, and use the resources raised to boost the consumption of the poor. It's a very nice intuition pump.

http://www.bradford-delong.com/2008/06/taxing-income-f.html

 

[lokisnow]

Dave Brat (née Cantor) just had his district moved from lean republican to toss up by cook political report.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/virginia-house/va-07-brat-moves-lean-republican-toss

[Martell Spy]

‘A cesspool of deviancy’: New claims of voyeurism test Jordan denials
A half-dozen former wrestlers at Ohio State, where GOP Rep. Jim Jordan once coached, said they were regularly harassed by men in their training facility.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/06/jim-jordan-harassment-ohio-state-wrestling-699192

Quote

 

New allegations in the Ohio State University sexual abuse scandal are threatening to intensify the political firestorm facing its onetime assistant wrestling coach, powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan.

A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told POLITICO they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there. The voyeurs would masturbate while watching the wrestlers shower or sit in the sauna, or engage in sexual acts in the areas where the athletes trained, the former wrestlers said.

Larkins Hall, the building that housed athletic teams, became such a well-known target that people who frequented it at the time have reminisced in anonymous postings online how easy it was to ogle naked members of the wrestling team.

The situation was so egregious that former wrestling head coach Russ Hellickson would at times have to physically drag the gawkers out of the building, several sources familiar with his actions at the time said. Hellickson also pleaded with the university multiple times to move their athletes to a private facility, the sources said. Jordan served as Hellickson’s No. 2, and the coach has been described as Jordan’s mentor.

 

 

[LongRider]

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

O -- you didn't know that we fought the Second US Civil War over the July 4th of bang and glut? In case you missed it, Monday, the vile insane sadist, nazi Alex Jones criminal sent out a MAGA tweet that on July 4th the Dems were planning to launch a civil war against the great legitimate government of the US.

So did the libs win?  Ask Scott Pruitt.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 7/1/2018 at 8:55 PM, Martell Spy said:

Citizens United will likely stay the law of the land, now. Oh, and also be supersized. Fortunately though, some brave people chose this moment to stand up to corporate Dems. 

I still think attorneys should use “Citizens United” as a veil piercing mechanism.  Hit a few shareholders with direct liability and “Citizena United” will not be so appealing.

[Fragile Bird]

9 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

If you halved top executive compensation (which would roughly bring it back in line with what it used to be in the 60s and 70s, accounting for inflation and general economic growth) and redistributed that to the rest of the employees, that might translate into pay raises of 1-3% depending on the company. 

That's for American businesses, in Western Europe it would be a bit less.

CEO's may be unfairly compensated from a moral perspective, but in economic terms their paychecks don't make all that much of a difference.  

Well, for large corporations anyway. But executives at smaller companies don't tend to make all that much money anyway, not when accounting for workloads and responsibilities. 

In any case, the USA does have large income inequalities so in that sense there would be a bit more wiggle room there to reduce the impact of working less on normal people by combining it with distribution policies. In most the rest of the West however, the inequalities are already quite small. So there a drop in GDP per capita of 25% (assuming a 30 hour work week) would probably need to be passed on to working and middle class people almost in full. 

Please tell us where you got the 1-3% number.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

10 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

If you halved top executive compensation (which would roughly bring it back in line with what it used to be in the 60s and 70s, accounting for inflation and general economic growth) and redistributed that to the rest of the employees, that might translate into pay raises of 1-3% depending on the company. 

That's for American businesses, in Western Europe it would be a bit less.

CEO's may be unfairly compensated from a moral perspective, but in economic terms their paychecks don't make all that much of a difference.  

Well, for large corporations anyway. But executives at smaller companies don't tend to make all that much money anyway, not when accounting for workloads and responsibilities. 

In any case, the USA does have large income inequalities so in that sense there would be a bit more wiggle room there to reduce the impact of working less on normal people by combining it with distribution policies. In most the rest of the West however, the inequalities are already quite small. So there a drop in GDP per capita of 25% (assuming a 30 hour work week) would probably need to be passed on to working and middle class people almost in full. 

Do you have sources for this? Otherwise, your math seems fuzzy. All the money is in the hands of a few, yet if we redistribute it, suddenly there isn't enough to go around (in any meaningful way)?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

6 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Ok, this is my situation.  I have a USPS highway mail contract that pays me about 60K a year.  House is paid for, few other expenses.  This time last year, I hired my lovely young daughter to run the route for a two days a week - she needed a job with stable hours for babysitting purposes.  Pay was based on 7 hours a day, 9 days a month.  By the terms of the contract, I have to pay her $15 an hour straight time plus $4 an hour for 'health and welfare'  (in lieu of health insurance).  That gives her a monthly paycheck of just under $1200...pathetic.  I really, really wanted to give her *three* days a week - but this is where the other expenses kick in.  Biggest of those is the $1500 a year for workers compensation insurance.  Plus...call it another grand in state and federal taxes.  And, if I give her that extra day a week ($1700 a month, give or take) then that insurance and taxes both go up - quite  little bit.  Now, I have other expenses on top of this - payments on a vehicle I bought for the route, gasoline, and estimated taxes.  Repairs for other work vehicles - I dropped five grand into the one last year (and got a modest tax refund).  Health insurance for myself.    And yes, despite all the expenses and issues, I really hope to be able to give her that three day, 21 hour workweek and $1700 monthly paycheck before the year is out.  At that point, after other expenses, she'll be making more than I will.

 

My whole point is that there are significant employer expenses that appear invisible to many posters here - expenses that throw a serious crimp into schemes for a living wage at a reduced workweek. 

 

Your single example doesn't account for the hundreds of billions circulating through the banks of private individuals.

[Week]

Maybe purely by annual salary where you exclude equity and all other perks.

[Martell Spy]

22 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Your single example doesn't account for the hundreds of billions circulating through the banks of private individuals.

Well they need that money for yachts and space projects. Fuck everyone else.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Dave Brat (née Cantor)

That's pretty clever.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

I still think attorneys should use “Citizens United” as a veil piercing mechanism.  Hit a few shareholders with direct liability and “Citizena United” will not be so appealing.

That would be nice, but it will come down to what judges are hearing the appeals. We could also mess around with corporate rights via legislation, but judges may strike it down.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

Your single example doesn't account for the hundreds of billions circulating through the banks of private individuals.

I guess socialists really do loathe the concept of small business. 

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

I guess socialists really do loathe the concept of small business. 

You know what? It's not someone like you who's going to be paying more money for less work. It will be businesses that add robots and get rid of people. A number of people are already posing the question, should businesses have to pay taxes for every robot they employ. If you buy a machine that will eliminate 50 jobs, shouldn't that machine be taxed to pay for the costs of the unemployed worker?

If 50,000 drivers of various kinds lose their driving jobs because an intelligent vehicle is going to do the job, what part of society is going to pick up the costs associated with the unemployed? The rest of us who are working and looking over our shoulders to see if our jobs are next? Or the owners of the wealth created by the machine?

[mormont]

[mod] Let's get off the hypothetical future of work and return to the here and now of US politics, perhaps? [/mod]

[mormont]

Apropos of which, hearings into reuniting children under 5 with their parents were unable to continue over the weekend as sadly, the Trump administration lawyer had 'dog sitting responsibilities'.

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1015357998296977408

 

htps://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/101533851204292

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

19 hours ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

Please tell us where you got the 1-3% number.

A rough estimate. It is of course difficult to get an exact range considering the thousands of companies in different industries that are involved. 

But this study seems to have done something similar: 

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Bebchuk_et al_510.pdf 

According to that, total compensation to the top five executives at a given company stood at around 10% of corporate income in 2004.

Possibly a bit more now. Then you can try to count backwards and think what corporate income relative to total payroll expenses generally are, and then halve that (to account for the proposal to slash executive pay) and see what you get. 

We can test if my 1-3% range seems reasonable or not by looking at a quintessential US corporation; McDonalds. 

https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/gwscorp/investor-relations-content/annual-reports/McDonald's 2017 Annual Report.pdf 

Total payroll there for 2017 seems to have been around 5 billion dollars (p.31), or somewhere around there since I couldn't find a precise breakdown for the franchises or for administrative expenses.  

Meanwhile, total compensation for the top five executives in 2017 appears to have been around 45 million dollars: https://www1.salary.com/Mcdonald-S-Corp-Executive-Salaries.html 

Cut that in half and it should translate into pay raises of around 0,5% to the other employees. 

Not every company is McDonalds, but my estimate of 1-3% hardly seems like lowballing, no? 

 

19 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Do you have sources for this? Otherwise, your math seems fuzzy. All the money is in the hands of a few, yet if we redistribute it, suddenly there isn't enough to go around (in any meaningful way)?

There are more high income people in the USA than just corporate executives. Capital owners for a start (being the wealthiest of them all) but then lawyers, engineers, doctors, data scientists etc, earn a good deal more than they do in Europe as well, relatively speaking.