quote:And yet, I look at this clip and I think "douche." What are you going to do?
I don't know about you, but I'm capable of thinking things that I don't say.
quote:I know that there is a segment who will say that these industries have an elastic demand, but I think we underestimate how much Americans can't be bothered with cleaning house or mowing lawns.
Anecdotal demonstration of elastic demand: right now, housecleaning and lawn care services are priced above my comfort zone. If costs dropped another 20%, I would probably take advantage of each.
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quote:Firmly entitled working-class white guys organize into Unions...
Saying this calls basically everything else you've said about unions into question. The kinds of people who started unions in America definitely weren't "firmly entitled".
As for why Irami would use a crude ad hominem attack, well, at this point that question is like asking why a dog urinates on a fire hydrant.
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quote:I don't know about you, but I'm capable of thinking things that I don't say.
If he were just a son, I won't even care, but he is a "senior press advisor" getting the exposure and doing the talk show circuit of a family values candidate.
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posted
Irami, As is common with you, what you said was childish and inappropriate no matter who it was said about. It was what you said itself and not necessarily the target of it that made it something not worthy of Hatrack.
Your behavior on Hatrack makes it very difficult for me to take you seriously when you talk about character. It appears to me that either you don't understand the term in a way at all similar to how I do or you don't think that you yourself should aspire to demonstrating a high character.
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quote: From what I know of Tagg he is a kind and loving father and a good man.
And yet, I look at this clip and I think "douche." What are you going to do?
Why? I mean honestly? I preserve the crude comparisons for people that do things I find insulting, degrading or offensive. The most I can say about Tagg's performance in your linked clip was that it wasn't particularly polished.
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posted
Irami, I'm with SenojRetep. I would like to know what specifically Tagg said that seems so douchy. I saw nothing in that clip that made me think "douche". It was a pretty bland clip.
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posted
Err...yeah. I don't understand your venom against Tag Romney.
I'm not even sure what's smarmy about his presentation. It's true-- I too love to spend time with my kids, and my parents, and my brothers' families, and my wife's siblings' families.
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Even strengthening unions isn't going to eliminate working poverty, but it is an effective check. You can call it a surgical strike against a wide-spread social disease.
quote:Who are the working poor?
If you work full-time, yet still qualify for food stamps, you are the working poor. If you work full-time for a Fortune 500 company, yet still qualify for food stamps, there is something systemically wrong, and that's where we have problems with companies like Walmart or Allied Barton, but for complicated reasons politicans are scared to take these firms to task. Walmart because they offer the customer the lowest price, and Allied because they offer the client the lowest proposal, both crowding out their competition. That these low prices come at the expense of American workers, whose options have been cut short because of the enormous size and sway of these larger firms, is a federal issue.
What's worse is that everyone can say they are "doing their job." The Parent company operations officials say that they awarded the contract to the company with the lowest bid. Walmart and Allied can say they are providing jobs and paying taxes.
The "actual plan" that you are looking for is to raise expectations such that companies who outsource work make sure those vendors treat the employees at a level commensurate with how the parent company's employees are treated. This will end all of the tacet poor working conditions subsidized by 501c3s like Harvard. I'm sure there is a city ordinance one can write which guarantees that vendors must offer compensation equal to that of the parent company, and that's a debate I'd love to see. This would be the case in which both the Senator and the Capital Hill's full-time maintenance staff have equal access to healthcare. It's awful to see industries that trade on good will and public trust, like museums, award security, maintenance, and catering contracts to vendors who don't treat their employees at a level that would not bear public scrutiny.
posted
I'm pro-family. I support the troops. I'm a real patriot. I'm strong on terror. I'm a uniter. I'm the common man's candidate. I am for ending hunger. I am the right man for the job. I'm pro-business. I'm pro-small business. I'm pro-education. I'm for promoting the public welfare.
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quote:That these low prices come at the expense of American workers, whose options have been cut short because of the enormous size and sway of these larger firms, is an federal issue.
I don't quite get this. Are you suggesting that these workers would be employed anyway, and are simply making less than they would be making without these firms?
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posted
Hm. I disagree. Quite strongly, in fact. In those situations in which demand is less elastic, I think you'd wind up seeing a lot more illegal labor.
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Taking a serious stand against illegal labor is going to lead to significantly higher prices for many types of food (among other things), which is going to increase the burden on the working poor.
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posted
Is it better to get higher wages if it causes prices to rise so those wages actually buy you less?
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quote:Taking a serious stand against illegal labor is going to lead to significantly higher prices for many types of food (among other things), which is going to increase the burden on the working poor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 6441 | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged |
Tresopax Member Member # 1063
posted May 08, 2007 09:41 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is it better to get higher wages if it causes prices to rise so those wages actually buy you less?
In the food industry. We are talking about matters of scale. We don't know how much members of whichever grocery store are profitting, and where the cuts would have to be.
But take house cleaning, landscaping, or security, it's not as if an increase in those costs to round out the wages of the gardeners or cleaners or security officers is going to affect whether the gardeners or cleaners or security officers can afford to have gardeners or cleaners or private security. However, it may lift these full-time workers off of dole or create disposable income that can be put towards homeownership, healthcare, or music lessons for their kids.
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posted
Not all employers of gardeners, housecleaners, or security guards are Scrooge McDuck who are unaffected by the prices of services. Many are private middle-class who are indeed sensitive to price and will, if the price goes up, choose another way (electronic security systems, illegal immigrant labor) or cut back on the hours.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:But take house cleaning, landscaping, or security, it's not as if an increase in those costs to round out the wages of the gardeners or cleaners or security officers is going to affect whether the gardeners or cleaners or security officers can afford to have gardeners or cleaners or private security. However, it may lift these full-time workers off of dole or create disposable income that can be put towards homeownership, healthcare, or music lessons for their kids.
If, somehow, wages and benefits offered to house keepers, landscapers, and security workers were raised, quickly their services would be less frequently purchased, don't you agree, Irami?
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quote:it's not as if an increase in those costs to round out the wages of the gardeners or cleaners or security officers is going to affect whether the gardeners or cleaners or security officers can afford to have gardeners or cleaners or private security
Why wouldn't it? As I've said, I would pay to have my lawn mowed and my house cleaned if the going rate were about 20% cheaper.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Many thought similar things when they imposed a high tax on yachts. Suddenly, rich people bought fewer yachts, and the result was significantly lower revenue than anticipated and the loss of a moderate number of jobs.
People respond to incentives. Anytime you change the incentives, the behavior of people will change, the only question is how much. Assuming changes in behavior will be small is a recipe for disaster.
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posted
I agree that the demand is not perfectly rigid, but the union model seems to work for historically white trades, trucking, carpentry, firefighting, stagehands, plumbing, and for a while, manufacturing, and for a stretch and even until today, there are a lot of people who are raised from being working poor not by mere demand alone, but with demand and the aid of a strong union.
I get the sense that this debate redounds to the question of whether we'd rather create 100 full-time jobs and pay them poorly, or create 65 full-time jobs and pay them well. I opt for the latter.
Fugu, are you really comparing gardening to yachts?
quote:I agree that the demand is not perfectly rigid, but the union model seems to work for historically white trades, trucking, carpentry, firefighting, stagehands, plumbing, and for a while, manufacturing, and for a stretch and even until today, there are a lot of people who are raised from being working poor not by mere demand alone, but with demand and the aide of a strong union.
Well, at least you've dropped your "firmly entitled" nonsense argument from the picture. Now it's just, as everything is with you, a question of race. Which is in my opinion ridiculous. You can't compare modern landscapers with past steel workers or textile workers. There was an unmitigated need for their services, not just an economic demand.
Take a look at manufacturing, and you'll see something of an example of a strong union pricing domestic industry right off the top of the market.
quote:I get the sense that this debate redounds to the question of whether we'd rather create 100 full-time jobs and pay them poorly, or create 65 full-time jobs and pay them well. I opt for the latter.
You can't create the kinds of jobs you're talking about. There must first be a demand for them. Competition for things like landscaping is fierce. A friend of mine at work routinely speaks about stress he's having, keeping his costs low in order to appeal to future customers and keep his current customers. We're talking price differences of as little as $10 on a monthly basis here too.
How exactly you come up with a mere %35 figure here in terms of wages and benefits, too, I don't know exactly. Seems incredibly conservative to me. Do you even know how much landscapers make, or are you just speaking from a different orifice again?
quote:Fugu, are you really comparing gardening to yachts?
If he's not, I am. Exactly like yatchs, hiring someone to come to your home with a bunch of expensive lawn-care hardware and cut your grass, trim your hedges, whack your weeds, etc. etc. is a luxury, just like yachts. Unlike yachts, it's pretty affordable to many people right now.
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quote:I get the sense that this debate redounds to the question of whether we'd rather create 100 full-time jobs and pay them poorly, or create 65 full-time jobs and pay them well. I opt for the latter.
Even granting your numbers, what do you suggest that the other 35 people do?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
So...the manufacturer builds the plant in Mexico instead of Ohio because they need to be able to compete with China and it is cheaper to build across the border where those 35 people are.
Not only has Ohio lost the taxes from the plant(and Ohioans lost the services those taxes provided), it has lost all the jobs that go with it, including the building and grounds that those 65 were maintaining.
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posted
Manufacturing is a different animal, but unless you can find a way to ship catering, maintenance, landscaping, house cleaning, and security to Mexico, I stand by my argument.
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posted
Immigrants are not only employed in service industries. Closing the borders to keep out the competition for service jobs will also close the borders to those who work in manufacturing jobs.
Unless you want to segregate the service jobs: "The high-paying jobs are for native-born Americans. Immigrants can only work in manufacturing jobs." That's already been tried, remember? The terrible injustice of it?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Irami, your path requires an ever-widening network of laws and regulations intended to force people to offer only those services which are "optimal," for a given value of "optimal," and to pay for them prices which are "fair." It would require heavy tariffs and other protectionist measures, massive regulation of service industry, and enforced borders, and would probably require that we ultimately ban international outsourcing.
And at the end of the day, I'm not seeing the benefit. What's the "dignity" in being paid a living wage to tend someone's garden if that "dignity" is preserved only through the forced largesse of law? It turns laborers into quaint zoo creatures, unable to survive in the wild; they would be literally patronized.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Manufacturing is a different animal, but unless you can find a way to ship catering, maintenance, landscaping, house cleaning, and security to Mexico, I stand by my argument.
So, you're acknowledging that your plan to defuse working poverty totally fails in respect to manufacturing jobs.
Also, you continue to fail to address the objection that if you raise prices for those services as substantially as you're talking about, demand for those services will diminish.
Of the areas you've mentioned, only security comes close to being a need rather than a luxury. Money-grubbing dollar-worshipping white people are likely to just mow their own lawns and whack their own weeds when it costs them at least double what it does currently to pay for it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Closing the borders to keep out the competition for service jobs will also close the borders to those who work in manufacturing jobs.
Unless you want to segregate the service jobs: "The high-paying jobs are for native-born Americans. Immigrants can only work in manufacturing jobs." That's already been tried, remember? The terrible injustice of it?
I could live with this.
Of course, if it's true that manufacturing jobs will always maintain working poverty in America, the next big puzzle would be figuring out if it were such a bad thing to ship that labor across national borders. If you work in America, you should earn enough to live above American poverty.
quote:What's the "dignity" in being paid a living wage to tend someone's garden if that "dignity" is preserved only through the forced largesse of law?
If I were a gardener, I wouldn't really care why my employer paid me. It's a tacet assumption that the employers are only going to pay these service jobs as much as they can get away with, so whether it's the law or the union that swells the worker's paycheck and guarantees healthcare, I can live with it.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Irami, American poverty is a moving target. By definition, American "poverty" will exist as long as some people make more money than other people.
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posted
We've also defined poverty in this country over the years in such a way that currently you can have a roof over your head, food on the table, multiple televisions, a cell phone, automobile(s), get a public college education, etc and still be considered to live at the poverty line.
Where do you think the line should be drawn so that people can live above it?
Edit: As usual, Tom put it far more concisely than I could have (and beat me to it).
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:If I were a gardener, I wouldn't really care why my employer paid me. It's a tacet assumption that the employers are only going to pay these service jobs as much as they can get away with, so whether it's the law or the union that swells the worker's paycheck and guarantees healthcare, I can live with it.
So what happens when not just is the client not willing to pay more for a service, but not willing to buy that service period, Irami? As would assuredly happen if you started doubling (or more, your figure of 35% is ridiculous) prices?
The worker only has a paycheck, meager or substantial, if the worker has a job. Are you going to force people to purchase catering, landscaping, and security services?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Your plan is impractical, rascist, and doomed to failure.
It'll put employers like your father in an uncomfortable pickle.
quote:Irami, American poverty is a moving target. By definition, American "poverty" will exist as long as some people make more money than other people.
Tom, I thought you knew better than this. Once you've been a member of the working poor, you know that there is difference between buying a house and raising a family on 8.25 and hour and raising a family on 16 dollars an hour.
quote:We've also defined poverty in this country over the years in such a way that currently you can have a roof over your head, food on the table, multiple televisions, a cell phone, automobile(s), get a public college education, etc and still be considered to live at the poverty line.
And hope that nobody gets sick, plan to retire, or save up for a down payment on a house. We are living in different worlds.
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posted
It sure would. He'd close the plant altogether because raising labor costs means he'll be outbid by Chinese plants.
Of course, that'd put 100 blue-collar and 20 white-collar workers out of a job immediately. You suggesting this is an improvement?
Or I suppose you would force the plant to run at a loss? Subsidized by the government, supported by taxes gathered from...nowhere. Maybe if you invaded China?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Once you've been a member of the working poor, you know that there is difference between buying a house and raising a family on 8.25 and hour and raising a family on 16 dollars an hour.
Are you including as your baseline for "poverty" the ability to buy a home and raise a family in relative comfort?
quote: And hope that nobody gets sick, plan to retire, or save up for a down payment on a house. We are living in different worlds.
Dude, I've been in that world. You know how I got out of it? I got job skills. I didn't insist that people pay me more for labor they didn't need that much.
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Katie, I suspect that Irami would support a law that required American companies to only buy from your father and other American companies, or else tariffs designed to produce the same result -- probably coupled eventually with laws preventing them from charging more money for the final products. Because, after all, those would be more laws targeting employers, and everyone knows that employers are actually the enemies of "working people."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Actually, what he'd do is move the plant to Mexico. He's already half-considered it and only doesn't because it is possible to do business in the States. Double his labor costs and it wouldn't be, so the work would go elsewhere. -- I think you're right, Tom. That's so short-sighted.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:We've also defined poverty in this country over the years in such a way that currently you can have a roof over your head, food on the table, multiple televisions, a cell phone, automobile(s), get a public college education, etc and still be considered to live at the poverty line.
And hope that nobody gets sick, plan to retire, or save up for a down payment on a house. We are living in different worlds.
I've never doubted for a moment that we are living in different worlds. However, like Tom, I was in the situation I described as well, and my solution was the same.
We do have the social safety nets of Medicaid and Social Security for retirement and health problems for the poor. I just don't agree that someone that can't afford to purchase their own home lives in poverty.
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quote:It sure would. He'd close the plant altogether because raising labor costs means he'll be outbid by Chinese plants.
Of course, that'd put 100 blue-collar and 20 white-collar workers out of a job immediately. You suggesting this is an improvement?
Depending on who his clients are, this is where public policy becomes an issue. You call them "blue-collar workers," I reserve that term for unionized construction workers or plumbers, I get the feeling that I'd employ a nastier noun to describe the guys in your dad's plant.
_______________________
quote: Katie, I suspect that Irami would support a law that required American companies to only buy from your father and other American companies, or else tariffs designed to produce the same result -- probably coupled eventually with laws preventing them from charging more money for the final products. Because, after all, those would be more laws targeting employers, and everyone knows that employers are actually the enemies of "working people."
*nods*
Keeping your father in the states and maintaining a broad economic base is important for American stability, but I am not willing to degrade what I consider our nation's democratic principles in order to do it.
posted
Really? 1) what are you basing this on, and 2) what, exactly, word would you use? --- In case it isn't clear, since you nothing about the plant, the workers there, or their lives or salaries, everything you say will be based on wishful thinking, shocking racism, and willful ignorance.
Public policy? You WOULD put into action the self-defeating tariffs and laws Tom mentioned? Everything you say exposes your ignorance of economics, public policy, and history.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Keeping your father in the states and maintaining a broad economic base is important for American stability, I am willing to degrade what I consider our nation's democratic principles in order to do it.
So, laying aside the fact that this is laughable and would not work, it shows your venality. Your principles are up for sale.
No matter how protectionist laws you pass, you can't pass a law that forces the plant to stay open if the owners have no economic incentive to keep it so. They'd get out of the business and take their capital with them.
Of course, your next plan would be to take their capital from them, right? That's your next brilliant step in your unworkable plan?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:And why not call "public policy" what it is: regulation of private commerce?
It could be private commerce, but if we find out that the final wellspring is a fat government contract that's been outsourced to within an inch of it's life, then we are talking about the regulation of public funds. Either way, I think this is preferable to regulating private commerce by sustaining a class of working poor.
katharina, I forgot the "not," in your last quote. "I am not willing..."
quote:Katie, I suspect that Irami would support a law that required American companies to only buy from your father and other American companies, or else tariffs designed to produce the same result -- probably coupled eventually with laws preventing them from charging more money for the final products. Because, after all, those would be more laws targeting employers, and everyone knows that employers are actually the enemies of "working people."
posted
Irami, your solution is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Even if we assume your remedy solves the targeted problem, it would cause more problems, some worse than the original problem. The cure is worse than the disease.
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