Occupy Wall Street

[Swordfish]

It was $300 billion, and regardless of whether it was paid back or not, it was supposed to be used so that the bank could give out loans to the American taxpayer. That did not happen.

I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you for a source here, because my recollection is that it was more like $50bn, and I think they provided at some point a detailed accounting of where the money went and that most of it was loaned out.

[IheartTesla]

Someone should start a fast here in the USA. It worked wonders back in the home country.

[Lummel]

Someone should start a fast here in the USA. It worked wonders back in the home country.

Yeah that would work out just great in the USA:

"We in corporate America are proud to have inspired the great American consumer to have adopted a new healthier, low calorie lifestyle, and we promise to inspire them further through our financial practises and corporate governance"!

[Arthmail]

I honestly don't understand what squatting is supposed to achieve. It just annoys people and inhibits their life (maybe that's the idea, agitation and all that). Hold your rally, say your peace, then go home and be productive. Parks are not for sleeping.

http://nymag.com/dai...estroys_ca.html

Who honestly gives a shit what these people think? Of course its not going to be a revolution like back in their home country. That won't solve anything.

As for wages, for my own business, i do not consider them an expense. Sure, according to my accountant, they are an expense. But ultimately, if there is work to be done then the employees are required no matter what. Now, i currently own a small construction company, and though i only started up with my business partners 2 months ago, we are doing unreal. I have also owned a retail store, which did not do well. With the construction company, we are doing roughly 100k a month with four employees (3 guys in the field, 2 of which are my business partners, and myselfin the office), and we are moving to five here right away. With my retail store it was considerably less, with a revlolving line of credit keeping us in business as we moved inventory. With the construction company though, we cannot grow any larger without further staff. There is simply not enough hours in the day, nor can we work that much harder, to increase our productivity further to reach a monthly target of, say 150k a month. I have not figured out the exact metrics that would allow me to determine how much extra the company can do in a month on a per employee basis, but the reality is as i have said. No employees, no growth. For my retail store, ere it failed thanks to the recession, i was working 300 hours a month and we could not afford to hire one more person.

So ultimately for me, how i look at employees is predicated around the idea of gain and growth. They help my organization to grow. With the retail store, it was a difficult proposition in the first place, with margins that were simply too low for sustained growth.

But the real problem cannot be found in the model from which i look to my business. All of this shit that i hear about the money makers, the job makers, is predicated on creating jobs. Yet the richest guys are building fortunes on a far simpler model. More money with less people. Investment banking, short selling, and any number of business practices created by the banks is a process that does not require more people. Lets say, investment firm XYZ does $10 million dollars a year with 5 staff (this is not including support staff, such as secretaries and the like). Now, when you look at my business model, hiring five more people could theoretically increase my total gross earnings by at least 50%. This is based on being able to finish the projects that we are working on faster, because more manpower during the day will generally mean a shorter project length (and if it doesn't then i start to get mad), and if it takes us less time to finish a project then we can move on to the next one that much sooner, or start a second one. But for investment firm XYZ, instead of five employees they can hire one, possibly two and see that increase. This is partly because what they do is so specialized, but its also because they are not actually putting in physical work. They are putting in the hours, but there is not a tangible result from their efforts.

A great deal of our current global economy is based on speculation. Money made from nothing, essentially. It is a system that does not require more people, only more loop holes. The largest growth in wealth is not coming from the auto industry, or Micrcosoft, or Apple. Its speculation and lending, the latter of which the banks have been doing at an increased rate for years because they have realized exponential growth from it. But its all a bubble, because its not real. So when recessions come, there are no tangibles to sell and save the business, the money just disappears. If a cog company needs to sell more cogs, it will either get better automation in its plants, or it will hire more people. If it doesnt need to sell more, people lose their jobs. Its the demand for the product itself that will help to fuel the company, not tax breaks to the company. Sure they help, tax breaks, but if no one is buying the cog, no is buying it. Yet if the people that normally buy the cog do not have any fucking money, because they have no jobs or no house (because Citibank or some other such institution used predatory lending practices or engaged in one of a growing number of mortgage frauds), then the results for the cog company are bad.

Occupy Wall Street (And Vancouver, Phoneix etc), is a movement that needs to focus on the dangerous practices that banks and other such large institutions are doing. It's not about people making money. It's about the risks that people take in making that money, where the institutions are so large that its not like the cog plant went out of business in Flint Michigan, but rather that the damages from the collapse can actually hurt the economy. Warren Buffett, who makes a great deal of his money through this, has agreed that taxes need to be increased for the wealthiest 1%. Trust me, i know some very wealthy people, and they know the places to squirrel away their money. Buffett pays a smaller percentage of his annual income in taxes than his secretary does, a sad truth.

So the idiot 53%, who think that eating shit is a virtue, need to sit the fuck up and look at what is really going on. Sure, taxing the shit out of companies is bad. But when your on Wall Street, a great deal of the money is not coming from actual production. Its futures and speculation. Less taxes does not mean more jobs, the system is far too complicated for such a simple view. And more taxes does not mean less jobs. Small bussinesses are really the only ones that look to the wage earner as a negative to their books, because it can be feast of famine each month. But for those at the top, that cut a 1000 jobs but give their executives bonuses doubling the salaries of those that were fired (anyone know about bonsuses by the way? In Canada, at least, its a way for a company to avoid getting taxed twice. For instance, a company gets taxed on earnings and the individual gets taxed on earnings. Meaning that essentially there are two levels of taxation going on. Bonuses allow them to get taxed only one level, not both), there is not the same daily grind in terms of their financials.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Min, Lummel,

I acknowlege labor is necessary for the business to continue in operation, but it is quite clearly an expense to thw business. Even employee owned buinesses have labor costs.

[Arthmail]

Min, Lummel,

I acknowlege labor is necessary for the business to continue in operation, but it is quite clearly an expense to thw business. Even employee owned buinesses have labor costs.

Sure they do. Your labour cost an an employee, in Canada, is around $5/hr. So $5.00 goes to the government for workers compensation, unemployment, and the like. If you have not factored that into your business model however, then your business is going to have problems. Now, support staff are different. A secratary, for instance, does not go on site. They are a sunk cost. But not really, because they are saving time at another level. For my guys in the field, i'll pay them say, $20.00/hr as a general laborer. And i'll charge out for them at $45/hr. $5/hr goes into the sunk cost of their government mandated benefits, and the rest is profit for me.

In regards to say a retail store. If it is not doing well enough that you can hire employees, then your in trouble as it is. But for a place like Walmart, they have the metrics in place to maximize client services and keep the store upkept while stocking shelves and all of the other stuff that needs to be done while still making a hefty profit. If the store is suffering, no amount of tax relief is going to help them. It is only going to prolong the businesses demise.

The smart companies, the ones like Apple or Westjet (Westjet is a canadian airline company that is "employee owned"), the ones that do really well realize that people are their most important capital. They are the small cogs that make the machine run.

But the real problem is not this. Its an economic system were people are getting a great deal of money for nothing. And its also a lack of proper regulation to make sure peoples natural greed does not get away with them. The reason that Canada weathered the recession so well, even with its mighty southern neighbor and major trading partner taking it in the hooper, is because our Liberal government insulated our banks from the type of shit that happened in the states. They limited what the banks could do. At the time, the right and all of these business people were shitting their pants saying Canada could not compete with other countries if we protected our banks and regulated them so heaviliy. Well, eat shit conservatives, we did well exactly because capitalism can never go completely unfettered.

[Lummel]

Min, Lummel,

I acknowlege labor is necessary for the business to continue in operation, but it is quite clearly an expense to thw business. Even employee owned buinesses have labor costs.

Maybe we are talking past each other here. This is one thing that Milton Friedman said that I think is very wise: there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Obviously your employees are a cost (wages, taxes, equipment, training etc...) but thinking about employees purely as a cost or thinking about them as an investment leads you to two different outcomes.

One is you spend to generate more income and the other you seek to minimise all costs. Minimising costs if your plan is to make the ledgers look good so you can sell the business is fine but if you are buying the cheapest people, not investing in equipment and training you can end up with a business that is less viable in the medium and long term - but the books look great in the short term.

If your plan is to buy businesses and asset strip them, or tart them up and sell them on fine but that's a different mindset to focusing on making money by delivering quality goods or services.

[Arthmail]

But they are not a cost! Wages mean they stay working for me, and i can do more work. Taxes are already incorporated into my business model, and do not effect my bottom line. Training keeps them safer, which will effect my insurance premiums, but it also makes them better at their jobs, therby increasing productivity. And equipment is required regardless.

[Swordfish]

Sure they do. Your labour cost an an employee, in Canada, is around $5/hr. So $5.00 goes to the government for workers compensation, unemployment, and the like. If you have not factored that into your business model however, then your business is going to have problems. Now, support staff are different. A secratary, for instance, does not go on site. They are a sunk cost. But not really, because they are saving time at another level. For my guys in the field, i'll pay them say, $20.00/hr as a general laborer. And i'll charge out for them at $45/hr. $5/hr goes into the sunk cost of their government mandated benefits, and the rest is profit for me.

In regards to say a retail store. If it is not doing well enough that you can hire employees, then your in trouble as it is.

Not necessarily. you may be staffed correctly and it simply may not make sense to hire. A business can be at optimal staffing and not be 'in trouble'.

I think that's the variable that is being ignored here. There is a level of diminishing returns on employee productivity where it simply does not make sense to add jobs.

[Lummel]

I agree with you, Arthmail, honest! I meant in accounting terms, I just wasn't clear about it.

When you start to think about things in productivity terms then yes, exactly, you want to squeeze every penny of value ie maximise every working minute which means buying decent equipment, spending on training and health and safety, keeping people happy and minimising sickness.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Lummel, Arthmail,

Interesting. I think we are all correct. Employees are a cost and an asset. WhT is difficut is quantifying there "asset" nature whereas showing their cost nature is fairly easy to account for.

[Ser Greguh]

Jobs are a cost to a business

Say what?

Jobs are an investment. Companies don't hire people out of the goodness of their heart, they hire people because they believe that, as employees, they will be able to profit from their employment.

If I'm a widget maker, and with one factory and ten employees I can provide the world's supply of widgets at a sustainable rate in a stable model, it doesn't matter if I'm being taxed at 10% or at 20%, I need the ten employees so I'm going to hire them, and only them, either way. The difference in the taxation of my company only affects one thing in this case: the cash in my pocket. It's not going to decide whether or not I hire an eleventh employee, because I don't need one either way.

Yes, taxes, like any other expense to a business, can affect hiring through the effect that they have on optimal/sustainable business models, but there is no guarantee that they will do so, or that if they do result in those jobs, that they will be American jobs. This entire statement that "lower taxes = more american jobs, full stop" is one of the more pernicious fallacies championed by the Right these days.

[The Iceman of the North]

Noroldis, Do you understand why it's more difficult to create jobs if taxes are increased? Jobs are a cost to a business, as are taxes.

You'd make a better argument if the reduced taxes over the past decades in the US had gone to creating more jobs, and not increased bonuses to CEO's and dividend to stockholders.

The proposed taxes are on high income. Very little of that income are put into the creation of jobs in the US, thus these new taxes aren't likely to result in fewer jobs.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Ser Greguh,

I haven't said lower taxes equals more jobs. I'm saying higher taxes reduces funds that could be used to invest in the business and could be used to fund more jobs if that is what the business believes will improve profitability.

[Ser Greguh]

Ser Greguh,

I haven't said lower taxes equals more jobs. I'm saying higher taxes reduces funds that could be used to invest in the business and could be used to fund more jobs if that is what the business believes will improve profitability.

As does any other expense. Yes, it's fairly basic math. Lower overhead (including lower taxes) allows a company to, in theory, seek out more narrow profit margins that allows for expansion that means new jobs. I can sell 50,000 widgets per year at a high tax rate, but if you lower my taxes I can sell them for less and sell 100,000 per year at the lower price that that allows for. Therefore I double my production and yay, jobs.

The problem is precisely the disconnect between that theory and the reality of what has actually occurred when taxes have been lowered in general: turns out businesses tend to be making the majority of their profitable investments (including hiring) already and the extra cash tends to fund a new wing on the CEO's yacht. (Not to mention the campaign investments that complete the circle). So the reality is evidently closer to the example I posted before: the companies that are the richest and that have the most to gain from lower taxes also tend to be the largest and the most saturated in their markets, who have the business models that are already closer to optimal, and who already tend to have the cash on hand (or borrowing power) to fund any potentially profitable expansion.

And that's just talking about businesses that tangibly make things, which is a hell of a long way from the whole, or even the norm.

[sologdin]

Do you understand why it's more difficult to create jobs if taxes are increased? Jobs are a cost to a business, as are taxes.

difficult to take this line of argument seriously when GE had $14B in profits and paid no taxes--and then outsourced jobs anyway.

[Verboten]

I still don't understand why people are Occupying Winnipeg. Seriously, I don't understand why people have decided to protest over Wall Street in Winnipeg, which is one of the places that's recovering from the recession. We are one of the provinces that still has an upward growth in our economy, albeit a slow and steady one, and as our major money-makers are agriculture, mining and y'know, not corporate business related at all, we really don't have any reason to be as pissed as the people in America. I get that family run stores were closed or ruined, I get that people were laid off and I know that people had their wages cut. I respect these guys for caring enough to get out there and protest but I still don't really see the point, beyond making your voice heard.

[Verboten]

Not to mention that a lot of them are still using the American slogans and protesting about American issues instead of Canadian issues. We have our problems too, stop looking south for inspiration!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sologdin,

If I had my druthers we'd do away wih the corporate form entirely. However, that's unlikely to happen.

[davos]

I still don't understand why people are Occupying Winnipeg. Seriously, I don't understand why people have decided to protest over Wall Street in Winnipeg, which is one of the places that's recovering from the recession

A statement of solidarity with the protesters in the US? Its perfectly possible and reasonable to feel the need to speak out against social injustice even if it doesn't directly effect you. A lot of white people took part in the civil rights movement in the late 50's and 60's. Would you question them doing so because they were not african-american and therefore not directly effected by the pervasive racism of the times? I think not.