Strike Expanded to Parts Distribution

[AmosMoses]

I don't support any organization that funds people who hate my gender, skin color, religion or constitutional rights. It's that simple.

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[bleda2002]

The one issue with the whole productivity to wage argument is that the amount of effort hasn't increased to boost productivity, rather it's gotten less skills dependent. Automation, line improvements, and computer aided designs and manufacturing technique have boosted productivity while requiring the same or less effort overall from the average worker.

 

[ecidiego]

Everything since COVID sucks. I miss our pre 2020 1st world problems.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

The one issue with the whole productivity to wage argument is that the amount of effort hasn't increased to boost productivity, rather it's gotten less skills dependent. Automation, line improvements, and computer aided designs and manufacturing technique have boosted productivity while requiring the same or less effort overall from the average worker.

And so therefore the result of those gains in productivity should only go to the wealthiest people? And in the meantime wages for everyone else should stagnate to the extent that they don’t keep up with inflation? Let me ask you this. Since 1978 worker wages have increased about 12%. CEO compensation has increased 940%. By your logic workers aren’t working harder, it’s all automation. So are CEOs working 940% harder? By your logic because productivity increases are not a function of working more, I.e., working 90 hour work weeks instead of 40, workers don’t deserve any share of those gains. Workers only deserve more if they work more based on the 1971 wage to hours ratio. Because workers are supposedly not working harder, a premise I reject anyway, 100% of the gains belong to the holders of capital?

But let’s go back to something much more fundamental. Given the opportunity to design a society from scratch would most people choose willingly to create one where the majority of fruits of production, regardless of how that productivity is achieved, goes to less than 1% of 1% of the people rather than be more equitably distributed?

The reasons for gains in productivity aside, someone benefits from that and it’s clearly not workers. 67 people on this planet control more wealth than the bottom 4 billion. Less than 400 families control over 60% of the wealth in the US alone. 1% has 40% of the wealth. Most peoples perceptions of wealth inequality don’t even come close to the reality. Here’s a good video that puts this into a graphical representation.

 

[Tim. Y.]

They had me right up to the "work for 32 hours and get paid for 40 hours" demand.

Come on, man. All the rest make sense. But not that.

Compared to some European countries: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/p...2, the usual working,and Bulgaria (40.2 both).

 

[bleda2002]

And so therefore the result of those gains in productivity should only go to the wealthiest people? And in the meantime wages for everyone else should stagnate to the extent that they don’t keep up with inflation? Let me ask you this. Since 1978 worker wages have increased about 12%. CEO compensation has increased 940%. By your logic workers aren’t working harder, it’s all automation. So are CEOs working 940% harder? By your logic because productivity increases are not a function of working more, I.e., working 90 hour work weeks instead of 40, workers don’t deserve any share of those gains. Workers only deserve more if they work more based on the 1971 wage to hours ratio. Because workers are supposedly not working harder, a premise I reject anyway, 100% of the gains belong to the holders of capital?

But let’s go back to something much more fundamental. Given the opportunity to design a society from scratch would most people choose willingly to create one where the majority of fruits of production, regardless of how that productivity is achieved, goes to less than 1% of 1% of the people rather than be more equitably distributed?

The reasons for gains in productivity aside, someone benefits from that and it’s clearly not workers. 67 people on this planet control more wealth than the bottom 4 billion. Less than 400 families control over 60% of the wealth in the US alone. 1% has 40% of the wealth. Most peoples perceptions of wealth inequality don’t even come close to the reality. Here’s a good video that puts this into a graphical representation.

In my mind the idea that wealth can be redistributed to not be controlled by the top is a fallacy.
Raising the middle wage just means that the currency is worth less now as the average person has more of these widgets but still wants to buy the same things. Hence the price of the widget goes up because it can, and thus they gained nothing. Wages should keep up with inflation, but thats all the average wage can do realistically. Once its higher than inflation, inflation will just catch up to it and make that the new average, the top who owns these established companies (through stock) will continue to reap the majority of the reward and the average person will continue to resent them.

Its a different story if the wages arent keeping up with inflation and driving more people in to the poverty level as then we have a real problem, but this idea that the middle class can get ahead by working average jobs and being an average consumer, its all bunk. How much the .001% makes matters as much as the price of tea on Mars when it comes to the average persons wage and how much they should actually be making.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

Hey, get out of here with your "data" and "facts" and "evidence based policies" - this is a place for blind internet rage and unfounded emotional responses.

There’s another thing that bothers me about this topic. Well, almost every topic really. It’s this new development that only 1 thing can be true at a time and that everyone must take a rigidly defined side that allows for zero nuance. Then we must argue to “win” and whomever wins the debate takes all. Modern media, predating even social media, is completely to blame for this. And tribalism dictates that not only can the other side not be right about anything, but their motivations aren’t genuine, they’re part of some plot, they’re evil, they’re trying to destroy America or good people, they must be destroyed.

I was in the Firefighters union. It was a rotten pile of garbage. I don’t know about the national union but our local was terrible. Union leadership was made up of captains and chiefs. How does a union work when if you go to them to address a complaint about policy, your union leadership is the same people who created the policy? When I worked at the Shipyard, I got in trouble with the union all the time. They were so focused on protecting certain trades they would go after any worker who moved even slightly outside their lane. They’re supposed to be protecting workers from management, not from other workers.

The point is that I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with unions. I feel like any organized group of people, be it a company or government or non-government agency, religions, political organizations, clubs, charities and unions all require external oversight and transparency. All institutions are susceptible to corruption, scope creep, self-serving, and group think. But this doesn’t mean that we throw the baby out with the bath water.

As much as I support the UAWs aims, I don’t think union leadership are saints, or that the workers there or anywhere else are without faults. Likewise, not every CEO or company management or big investor or billionaire is some caricature of evil. But it seems nowadays if you take any position in support of or against anything you now indelibly link yourself to every facet of whatever tribe is superficially linked to that particular position.

This reality has damaged not just unions. It’s damaged religion. It’s damaged conservatism as both a tendency and a movement. It’s damaged progressivism in the same way. It’s hollowed out the debate to the extent that the debate is the only point anymore. It’s paralyzed governance and it’s turned a lot of people who are much more alike than different against each other.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

In my mind the idea that wealth can be redistributed to not be controlled by the top is a fallacy.
Raising the middle wage just means that the currency is worth less now as the average person has more of these widgets but still wants to buy the same things. Hence the price of the widget goes up because it can, and thus they gained nothing. Wages should keep up with inflation, but thats all the average wage can do realistically. Once its higher than inflation, inflation will just catch up to it and make that the new average, the top who owns these established companies (through stock) will continue to reap the majority of the reward and the average person will continue to resent them.

Its a different story if the wages arent keeping up with inflation and driving more people in to the poverty level as then we have a real problem, but this idea that the middle class can get ahead by working average jobs and being an average consumer, its all bunk. How much the .001% makes matters as much as the price of tea on Mars when it comes to the average persons wage and how much they should actually be making.

It’s not about redistribution. Redistribution is a made up boogie man to invoke the red scare. It almost doesn’t exist in this country anymore. TANF was block granted and not indexed to inflation. We can’t even reauthorize the child tax credit. In the span of two years the US had its greatest drop and then the greatest increase in child poverty in the history of the western world. This is about distribution and the allocation of the products of production. And I never said there wouldn’t be rich people at the top. What we have is grotesque and it’s never existed in the history of the country.

There’s multiple problems with your analysis. The first is that wages don’t represent some disconnected unit. They’re tied directly to standard of living. That standard of living has been going steadily down. In fact despite all you hear about raising retirement ages because of rising life expectancies, when you remove the upper 1% from the equation, the life average life expectancy of Americans is actually decreasing. For the middle class it’s barely moving. The lower middle class in the US don’t live as long as they once did. The single largest cause for this when accounting for lifestyle, eating habits, etc., is income. It’s obscene to try to argue that if workers made more money they’d somehow be worse off because of inflationary pressure of widget spending.

This is the second problem. This tired trope of the irresponsible American consumer and their things. Americans aren’t spending all their money on widgets or avocado toast that’s driving inflation. They’re spending all their money on rent, utilities, healthcare and education and they’re going bankrupt doing it.

Lastly, it’s just naive to believe that we can’t raise people’s wages because inflation will suddenly go out of control and eat away all of the gains. This is another trope and by your logic we must therefore continue along this current trend of radically increasing income inequality. Americans in the 1950s and 1960s had higher standards of living, more purchasing power, they took more vacations, they traveled more. CEOs made far less. Corporations were taxed far more as were the wealthy. We didn’t have runaway inflation. The country wasn’t on the verge of collapse. Many Americans consider this our high point. Our contemporaries in other OECD countries don’t seem to have this problem you say we’d have with their high wages and lower inequality and frequently higher standards of living. They all seem to muster universal healthcare, stronger pension systems, a great deal of comfort and their systems aren’t imploding. You’re correct that inflation eating into wages is a problem. That’s the point. When accounting for inflation, Americans make less now than they did in the 1970s. This was true long before the inflation of the last 3 years.

Why is it that I’m always hearing that in this country, in the wealthiest country on earth, we just don’t have the ability to pay workers more equitably? We just cant provide affordable healthcare. We can’t have a functioning retirement system. We’re uniquely incapable of these things, for some boogie man will come out of the woodwork and destroy us. It’s all bullshit. It’s manufactured consent designed to convince Americans this kleptocracy is the only viable system when we’re surrounded by countries where the people can’t fathom the reality of dying because you can’t afford your medication or going bankrupt because you got cancer or can’t afford to have children because you went to college and have crushing student loan debt or can’t take maternity leave or can’t retire or can’t afford housing on a six figure salary or work 50-60 hours a week and get 1 week of vacation or no vacation or work two part time jobs because your employers don’t want to pay benefits and won’t schedule you over 20 hours a week.

And I know the typical retort to this. “Why don’t you just move to one of these wonderful places then.” First I don’t need to. I already am well into the upper 10%. Secondly, Americans may be shocked to learn, it’s actually really hard to leave this country. I barely qualify to move to Canada. Believe it or not most countries don’t want Americans over the age of 30 that don’t speak their official languages unless the have some unique skill that their population lacks. We don’t need to move. We need to fix this country.

Last year Walmart spent more money on stock buybacks than any single other thing. This had the effect of boosting the share prices and net worth of its largest shareholders, Sam Waltons children, by a few billion each. People who have never worked who are worth $20-50B, got an extra billion on their piles. They could have used that exact same amount of money to give every Walmart employee a raise. It would have brought thousands of people out of poverty. It would have had zero effect on inflation largely because in addition to raising their standards of living it would have taken people off of government assistance that we as tax payers pay for.

 

[Deleted member 57233]

A lot of the school districts around me are switching to a four day week, which means more jobs are allowing parents to work 4 days, and other jobs are starting to offer 4 day weeks to compete. I negotiated my job to a 4 day week. It's not as outlandish as people seem to think.

 

[bleda2002]

It’s not about redistribution. Redistribution is a made up boogie man to invoke the red scare. It almost doesn’t exist in this country anymore. TANF was block granted and not indexed to inflation. We can’t even reauthorize the child tax credit. In the span of two years the US had its greatest drop and then the greatest increase in child poverty in the history of the western world. This is about distribution and the allocation of the products of production. And I never said there wouldn’t be rich people at the top. What we have is grotesque and it’s never existed in the history of the country.

There’s multiple problems with your analysis. The first is that wages don’t represent some disconnected unit. They’re tied directly to standard of living. That standard of living has been going steadily down. In fact despite all you hear about raising retirement ages because of rising life expectancies, when you remove the upper 1% from the equation, the life average life expectancy of Americans is actually decreasing. For the middle class it’s barely moving. The lower middle class in the US don’t live as long as they once did. The single largest cause for this when accounting for lifestyle, eating habits, etc., is income. It’s obscene to try to argue that if workers made more money they’d somehow be worse off because of inflationary pressure of widget spending.

This is the second problem. This tired trope of the irresponsible American consumer and their things. Americans aren’t spending all their money on widgets or avocado toast that’s driving inflation. They’re spending all their money on rent, utilities, healthcare and education and they’re going bankrupt doing it.

Lastly, it’s just naive to believe that we can’t raise people’s wages because inflation will suddenly go out of control and eat away all of the gains. This is another trope and by your logic we must therefore continue along this current trend of radically increasing income inequality. Americans in the 1950s and 1960s had higher standards of living, more purchasing power, they took more vacations, they traveled more. CEOs made far less. Corporations were taxed far more as were the wealthy. We didn’t have runaway inflation. The country wasn’t on the verge of collapse. Many Americans consider this our high point. Our contemporaries in other OECD countries don’t seem to have this problem you say we’d have with their high wages and lower inequality and frequently higher standards of living. They all seem to muster universal healthcare, stronger pension systems, a great deal of comfort and their systems aren’t imploding. You’re correct that inflation eating into wages is a problem. That’s the point. When accounting for inflation, Americans make less now than they did in the 1970s. This was true long before the inflation of the last 3 years.

Why is it that I’m always hearing that in this country, in the wealthiest country on earth, we just don’t have the ability to pay workers more equitably? We just cant provide affordable healthcare. We can’t have a functioning retirement system. We’re uniquely incapable of these things, for some boogie man will come out of the woodwork and destroy us. It’s all bullshit. It’s manufactured consent designed to convince Americans this kleptocracy is the only viable system when we’re surrounded by countries where the people can’t fathom the reality of dying because you can’t afford your medication or going bankrupt because you got cancer or can’t afford to have children because you went to college and have crushing student loan debt or can’t take maternity leave or can’t retire or can’t afford housing on a six figure salary or work 50-60 hours a week and get 1 week of vacation or no vacation or work two part time jobs because your employers don’t want to pay benefits and won’t schedule you over 20 hours a week.

And I know the typical retort to this. “Why don’t you just move to one of these wonderful places then.” First I don’t need to. I already am well into the upper 10%. Secondly, Americans may be shocked to learn, it’s actually really hard to leave this country. I barely qualify to move to Canada. Believe it or not most countries don’t want Americans over the age of 30 that don’t speak their official languages unless the have some unique skill that their population lacks. We don’t need to move. We need to fix this country.

Last year Walmart spent more money on stock buybacks than any single other thing. This had the effect of boosting the share prices and net worth of its largest shareholders, Sam Waltons children, by a few billion each. People who have never worked who are worth $20-50B, got an extra billion on their piles. They could have used that exact same amount of money to give every Walmart employee a raise. It would have brought thousands of people out of poverty. It would have had zero effect on inflation largely because in addition to raising their standards of living it would have taken people off of government assistance that we as tax payers pay for.

This is where I'll say you're wrong because wages and wealth inequality are not the source or solution to the problem. Throwing more money at the fundamental issues never works.

I agree the main issues are rent, education, and healthcare. More wages won't fix any of those things because it's not a problem wages can fix. Other countries wages aren't any better than ours and their cost of living is higher but they aren't spending the money on the fundamentals like we are here. It's an issue because neither side is actually interested in fixing any of it. Instead they are used as wedges with no actual solutions proposed because we as a country object to the solution which is more taxes on everyone, rich, middle, and poor as well as the Boogeyman of increased government regulation.

Walmart buying back it's stock won't change that, neither will a CEO making 10 million instead of 20 million, or the networth of the Walton's.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

A lot of the school districts around me are switching to a four day week, which means more jobs are allowing parents to work 4 days, and other jobs are starting to offer 4 day weeks to compete. I negotiated my job to a 4 day week. It's not as outlandish as people seem to think.

My company implemented universal flex and global flex and there are tiers based upon your job description but suffice to say there are very few people who need to work a standard 9-5 work week. Pretty much no one works Fridays unless they have to for some specific reason. And this applies to people who work remote or in the office. They did this specifically for the quality of life of the employees. A lot of us are on call 24/7 but like myself as an example, I can flex without permission, so I basically work when I want. I’ve got to supervise so stuff at 0200 EDT. But I probably won’t do much Monday. I’ll be at my dealership all day Wednesday. No one cares. I just mark my calendar.

Now this isn’t retail and this isn’t manufacturing. This works for some jobs/companies and not others. I’ve noticed that people are constantly on the move during meetings, going to pick up kids, coming back from an errand, etc. None of this is causing a problem. I think our structure would work well at a lot of white collar employers.

Over the last year, since implementing this we’ve seen record revenue. We’ve got really demanding customers but we’ve had record positive reviews from them. We’ve got record employee engagement. We’re growing significantly faster than our industry average. We had lower profits earlier this year because of contract employees but we’re looking like we’re on track to exceed our profit goals overall.

At least in our case becoming more employee centric, giving people more freedom and flexibility has been a resounding net positive.

 

[Deleted member 57233]

My company implemented universal flex and global flex and there are tiers based upon your job description but suffice to say there are very few people who need to work a standard 9-5 work week. Pretty much no one works Fridays unless they have to for some specific reason. And this applies to people who work remote or in the office. They did this specifically for the quality of life of the employees. A lot of us are on call 24/7 but like myself as an example, I can flex without permission, so I basically work when I want. I’ve got to supervise so stuff at 0200 EDT. But I probably won’t do much Monday. I’ll be at my dealership all day Wednesday. No one cares. I just mark my calendar.

Now this isn’t retail and this isn’t manufacturing. This works for some jobs/companies and not others. I’ve noticed that people are constantly on the move during meetings, going to pick up kids, coming back from an errand, etc. None of this is causing a problem. I think our structure would work well at a lot of white collar employers.

Over the last year, since implementing this we’ve seen record revenue. We’ve got really demanding customers but we’ve had record positive reviews from them. We’ve got record employee engagement. We’re growing significantly faster than our industry average. We had lower profits earlier this year because of contract employees but we’re looking like we’re on track to exceed our profit goals overall.

At least in our case becoming more employee centric, giving people more freedom and flexibility has been a resounding net positive.

Same with our company. They implemented a "Work where it works" policy. Meaning, they don't care when/where/how you do your job, as long as you get it done. I just negotiated that I'll only be available for 8 hours a day Monday through Thursday. I used to do the oncall thing, but getting off that was one of my requirements when I signed up here.

 

[Rusty PW]

I'm working 4-10's now. Monday thru Thursday. Just had a phone interview the other day for another job. They asked me if I was willing to work a 4-10 week.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

This is where I'll say you're wrong because wages and wealth inequality are not the source or solution to the problem. Throwing more money at the fundamental issues never works.

I agree the main issues are rent, education, and healthcare. More wages won't fix any of those things because it's not a problem wages can fix. Other countries wages aren't any better than ours and their cost of living is higher but they aren't spending the money on the fundamentals like we are here. It's an issue because neither side is actually interested in fixing any of it. Instead they are used as wedges with no actual solutions proposed because we as a country object to the solution which is more taxes on everyone, rich, middle, and poor as well as the Boogeyman of increased government regulation.

Walmart buying back it's stock won't change that, neither will a CEO making 10 million instead of 20 million, or the networth of the Walton's.

“Throwing more money at the fundamental issues never works.” is a bit of an odd fit in this case, since we’re not taking about public policies and public expenditures. We’re taking about wages. So by this logic, is there never a justification for any wage increases? You said something earlier about keeping up with inflation. That’s the point, wages since the 1970’s haven’t kept up with inflation. The notion wage increases cause inflation is describing the wage/price spiral, but that’s not a guaranteed or even common result of wage increases. Historically they’ve been short lived. There’s a lot of research on this.

As far as the wealth of the top .1% This is where I think some nuance comes into play. I agree that the wealth of the Waltons isn’t the issue per se. Their wealth and the wealth of any of these large holders of stock is an artifact of a problem of the system. In the US market p/b and p/e values are radically skewed. In other words company stocks are radically overvalued. This isn’t the case in other stock markets. But this isn’t new, it’s following a trend and this trend basically benefits and to some extent creates these billionaires. I understand the point that says “well their wealth is just an artifact of these stock prices, inflated or not.” I’ve said this myself. The obsession over Elon Musks status as the world’s richest man annoys me because his wealth is purely a function of Tesla’s share price. On one level it doesn’t matter.

However, stock valuations, whether inflated or not don’t occur in a vacuum. Elon Musk is actually a great example of this. The concern is that both structures in the economy and behaviors of the part of these companies and these large stock holders that result in these valuations and their resulting net worths is the problem. I’m taking about behavior that’s not just bad for workers but bad for the long term viability of these companies.

So in this sense these peoples worth does matter. It matters because of the behaviors companies are engaging in to create this worth. This isn’t organic growth. The least worst growth that’s now common practice is growth by acquisition. This concentrates market share and kills competition. But these companies also engage in stock buybacks which only serve these large investors at the expense of internal investment, R&D, etc. Prior to 2000 stock buybacks were uncommon. Most CEO and investors frowned upon them, because they’re fundamentally an artificial boost of value. They distort the normal mechanisms of the market. But stock buybacks have exploded to the almost singular benefit of large holders of corporate stock.

Rather than innovate they put constant downward pressure consumers in both diminishing customer service, choice (through monopolies) and quality. There’s a reason comic book movies are ubiquitous to the extent that they cannibalize new IPs. They’re high yield and low risk. You see this same type of behavior across lots of markets. Large investment banks have started buying up first post 08’ foreclosures and then rental properties to gain monopolistic control of the market and then sitting on empty properties to drive up prices. Again, like film industry this is legal, but it’s bad for consumers and bad for the country. It’s all a function of boosting share prices. They outsource jobs, and they put downward pressure on wages. All of this is a function of “maximizing shareholder value” as well.

Increasingly they engage in borderline or explicitly fraudulent or illegal behavior. There are myriad examples of this. Entire books are written on the explosive growth of the “scam economy” And as they grow bigger they introduce systemic risk into the economy. Simultaneously their behavior frequently becomes more risky and their fundamentals become shakier. The 2008 financial collapse is a perfect example of this. The private equity and leveraged buyout industry is a good example of this to. The crypto industry. Fraud, grift, manipulation, shell games are all considered just another business opportunity. All of it is designed to maximize the stock valuation often for short term gains by CEOs and predatory institutional investors who don’t care about the long term viability of the company let alone their employees. And in many cases if and when these companies collapse it’s employees and tax payers holding the tab.

So yes, the individual net worth of members of the Walton family or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Larry Fink or Mortimer J. Buckley or Charles Koch or Mark Zuckerberg any number of industry leaders and billionaires isn’t the important point. It’s the behaviors of the companies they control that are designed to maximize their wealth and the wealth of other top shareholders that’s the problem. And while I’m not suggesting some silver bullet to solve this, there’s a distinct set of changes in policies and behaviors that have occurred over the last 50 years in the courts, the SEC, corporate governance and congress that have allowed these companies to behave in ways engineered to shift wealth to the top .1% that are detrimental to not only workers but the public at large and the environment. To deny this is to deny reality.

 

[Tim. Y.]

Interesting read: https://rantt.com/stock-buybacks-drive-high-ceo-pay

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