40 Hour Work Week In Peril?

[kuronosan]

Always cracks me up when companies lay off workers and then have the nerve to post profits.

[Headspace]

How are the employees going to buy shares after losing their jobs if they think the company is failing?

[Callisto]

Always cracks me up when companies lay off workers and then have the nerve to post profits.

To an extent if their profits were being held down simply due to inefficiencies(they were capable of meeting all of the same production goals with less people the entire time) then laying people off is the correct thing to do, and rightfully should drive greater if not record profits.

If the company made a short-sighted snap judgment to lay people off but the remaining staff aren't as capable of meeting all production goals as the executives had intended, that problem will more or less rectify itself as the company either realizes it needs more people than or calculated and is forced to hire again, or it it fails. That said, either scenario fucks the everyman laborer and benefits the executives regardless, so yeah...

[test123]

You guys clearly do not know how project planning and risk management work. I have managed plenty of projects, everything from developing electronics to installing IT equipment onboard oilrigs.

Let me explain to you how companies decide if they want to go forward with a project. First a market analasys is taken and the project is benchmarked using various risk factors. Then a cost estimate and budget is created for the project. In that cost estimate there is consumables and man-hours etc. The expected return value of the project is then divided by the cost estimate.

A typical company then ranks several projects against eachother:
Project1: 47%
Project2: 33%
Project3: 18%
Project4: 12%
Project5: 4%

Risk play a factor on which projects to go forward with. Project 4 with an expected 12% return on the investment and low risk is a winner, a high risk project with 18% is not. From this rank Project1, 2 and 4 will be started.

Now, if the cost of labor, lets say having a tech travel and install equipment someplace is high, then a project may be scrapped. However if the labor cost is low the project is much more attractive.


The bottom line is, lower wages produces more goods and services, which will stimulate growth and labor demand.

[Callisto]

The solution's relatively obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of macroeconomics though, I'm not really sure if it's due to partisan gridlock or if the people in Washington are just actually so bad at finance that they can't see the incredibly straightforward solution:






































All we need to do is ship off our unemployed/under-employed poverty-stricken laborers to Europe; I hear they pay like $300k a year and you don't even need a degree.

[Callisto]

The bottom line is, lower wages produces more goods and services, which will stimulate growth and labor demand.

Simply producing more goods and services does not generate demand for those goods and services, and that demand does not exist if consumers make $5/hour and cannot afford to consume those goods and services. You just have a bunch of extra goods and services with noone buying them. When people have expendable income, they demand goods and services, that demand requires higher production of goods and services, and that stimulates labor demand. You don't just make a bunch of extra shit because you don't have to pay anybody above poverty levels and magically everybody buys it and the economy recovers.

[Day]

Simply producing more goods and services does not generate demand for those goods and services, and that demand does not exist if consumers make $5/hour and cannot afford to consume those goods and services. You just have a bunch of extra goods and services with noone buying them. When people have expendable income, they demand goods and services, that demand requires higher production of goods and services, and that stimulates labor demand. You don't just make a bunch of extra shit because you don't have to pay anybody above poverty levels and magically everybody buys it and the economy recovers.

aaand circle gets the square

[test123]

The demand is always there, you just have to get to the right price. If massages were 1$ a session then I bet you everyone and their mother would be lining up to get one.

[Callisto]

Wow, lol. I'm legitimately not sure what's a scarier thought, this guy being in charge of a project or swampy being a lawyer.

[Melena]

I'm amazed you haven't understood yet that if they lowered minimum wage, all they would do is hire more people and then cut everyone's hours, thus people making even less then they did before. You obviously have no concept of greed in a capitalistic society.

I'll take swampy being a lawyer. At least with him we know there is a 1% chance he may say something intelligent.

[Correction]

Simply producing more goods and services does not generate demand for those goods and services, and that demand does not exist if consumers make $5/hour and cannot afford to consume those goods and services. You just have a bunch of extra goods and services with noone buying them. When people have expendable income, they demand goods and services, that demand requires higher production of goods and services, and that stimulates labor demand. You don't just make a bunch of extra shit because you don't have to pay anybody above poverty levels and magically everybody buys it and the economy recovers.

[Callisto]

I'm not quite sure there's a concept of capitalism in general, apparently markets only operate in one direction, I never knew.

[Headspace]

SUPPLY SIDE

SUPPLY SIDE

[Day]

The demand is always there, you just have to get to the right price. If massages were 1$ a session then I bet you everyone and their mother would be lining up to get one.

[Day]

If massages are a dollar and you spent your last 15 cents on a piece of bread how the fuck you gonna get a massage.

[Moridam]

All we need to do is ship off our unemployed/under-employed poverty-stricken laborers to Europe; I hear they pay like $300k a year and you don't even need a degree.

that sounds awfully expensive though. and as test reminds us, since lowering wages apparently increases growth and labor demand, all we have to do is abolish wages altogether. boom, infinite prosperity, overnight!

[Waraji]

If massages are a dollar and you spent your last 15 cents on a piece of bread how the fuck you gonna get a massage.

Back the fuck up, where they selling these 15c pieces of bread?

[Byrthnoth]

We have more people than jobs, because industrial efficiency has increased to the point where we do not need everyone slaving away at manual labor 12 hours a day just to keep themselves fed and clothed. This is a good thing.

We have more uneducated people than jobs that don't require education. This means we have managed to mechanize our most brainless and boring jobs, which is a good thing.

Both of these factors create a surplus of humans, humans that do not *need* to do anything specific in order for society (including themselves) to keep running. Why is this surplus a bad thing? Why do we need to lower the minimum wage so that our unskilled laborers can compete with third world unskilled laborers, and eventually with machines? How could we use this surplus of humanity to increase happiness?



How about dramatically increasing the number of artistic public works programs? Make it some kind of a grant application process where you write up your idea (including proof that you can actually do it), apply, and get a living wage with the stipulation that you share your work in some way. At the end of the year, each person would submit their project and review three other projects. Feedback would return to the applicant/government and the application would either be renewed or terminated.

We have a surplus of dissatisfied humanities majors. How many would forgo their current shitty minimum wage jobs/welfare to practice their art? Would this not make our country a more interesting place? I think most art is crap and I would still willingly pay more taxes if such a system was adopted.

[RKenshin]

You guys clearly do not know how project planning and risk management work. I have managed plenty of projects, everything from developing electronics to installing IT equipment onboard oilrigs.

Let me explain to you how companies decide if they want to go forward with a project. First a market analasys is taken and the project is benchmarked using various risk factors. Then a cost estimate and budget is created for the project. In that cost estimate there is consumables and man-hours etc. The expected return value of the project is then divided by the cost estimate.

A typical company then ranks several projects against eachother:
Project1: 47%
Project2: 33%
Project3: 18%
Project4: 12%
Project5: 4%

Risk play a factor on which projects to go forward with. Project 4 with an expected 12% return on the investment and low risk is a winner, a high risk project with 18% is not. From this rank Project1, 2 and 4 will be started.

Now, if the cost of labor, lets say having a tech travel and install equipment someplace is high, then a project may be scrapped. However if the labor cost is low the project is much more attractive.


The bottom line is, lower wages produces more goods and services, which will stimulate growth and labor demand.

What "low risk project" involves directly utilizing workers that could ever, possibly be effected by a minimum wage?

Seriously, you'd have to go pretty far down a supply chain of any reasonable project to find any kind of relation to minimum wage workers, and by the time you get that deep the effects would be null vs. the total cost/scope of a sizeable project.

You used the oil rig IT project example. I'd like to see how/where you think the effect of min wage workers comes into play there.

Meal reimbursements costs double? Yeah, that'll bankrupt the project.

[test123]

You can't narrow it down to just money. Money is just a representation of the value for goods and services. You have to consider Resources, if fewer people are making goods and serivces then there will be fewer stuff to go around. The best case is to get everyone to produce as much goods and services as they can, which benefits everyone. Who gets what and money is just a system of distributing all of this.

A wealthy country is measured by the availability of goods and services. That is why you don't live in Somalia, it is a shit country because nobody is doing anything there and there is nothing to share.

Again, everyone should contribute to make the cake bigger. If you think your slice is to thin then that is the free market sending you a signal to start competing with the guy who has a bigger slice then you.