Income gap between rich and poor

In my experience, the couple of low-end jobs that I used to offer went to people that weren't sole supporters of a family but a grandpa or brother earning a check to help out at home and do something satisfying, or young kids on break from school. I can't do that anymore and it hurts the local economy a bit, there are LOTS of small companies that are in the same boat. Min wage laws have cut the bottom out of the job market. Stupid move on the gov's part.

My wage averages are pretty good for my industry and most of my people can make piece-work bonus that can double their pay if all goes right. A lot of these people take home more than I do. The more automation I do the more my payroll costs, but productivity and quality go up too.

You said it better than I could. Liberals like to feel that everybody is trainable to do high-paying jobs but it just isn't so. Many years ago, I had an old guy that swept the floors and moved material around. He took great pride in how clean he kept the plant and enjoyed doing it. He couldn't add and subtract or read and write but had pride and satisfaction. The floors haven't been as clean since he died. I can't afford to hire a replacement at $15/hr. plus bennies. And, the union won't accept a lower pay.

That's really something Tom. Perhaps you shouldn't abuse your old guys. It seems they die off on you. When did minimum wage hit $15.00 per hour? Is that something unique to Cleveland or is it a State thing? LMAO How many sides does your mouth have? I've seen three so far. Are there more?

It is indicative, but not definitive, and appears to have involved both Siemens and Thyssen.

Before we charge more windmills by attempting to impose German style corporate goverance/labor relations on American corporations, it is critical that far more in-depth work be done. This may well be another situation where something works and works well in the German society/culture but is not exportable. FWIW -- much of their vocational education appears to fall into this category.

Siemens was indeed involved in paying hidden commissions [bribes].

Bribery case

Siemens agreed to pay a record $1.34 billion in fines in December 2008[25] after being investigated for serious bribery, involving Heinz-Joachim Neubürger, former chief financial officer, Karl-Hermann Baumann, another former CFO and ex chairman, and Johannes Feldmayer, a former management board member.[26] The investigation found questionable payments of roughly ?1.3 billion, from 2002 to 2006 that triggered a broad range of inquiries in Germany, the United States and many other countries.[27]

In May 2007 a German court convicted two former executives of paying about ?6 million in bribes from 1999 to 2002 to help Siemens win natural gas turbine supply contracts with Enel, an Italian energy company. The contracts were valued at about ?450 million. Siemens was fined ?38 million.[28]

Thyssen

Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

I wasn't aware that we were charging anywhere. Are we?

You wouldn't be importing anything George. Although far less structured, the US had a very similar structure until the late 50's. Our trade schools were the equal of anyone's, including the German's.

I read an extensive article on this one. There was a decent interview on 60 Minutes or one if the other newsinfomertial shows. I distinctly remembered the fine involved and that a single individual was responsible for the actual mechanics of distributing the payments and keeping the off the books record of everything. That was what screwed everything up. The high mucky mucks wanted complete and detailed accountings of everything, thereby creating the paper trail the burned them. Typical German fastidiousness.

I don't believe that they even have the effect of "cutting the bottom out of the labor market" as you say, because so few actually work for minimum wage. Minimum wage laws and promised increases to them serve only to buy the votes of the ignorant.

The real effect is that when the minimum wage is raised, the very few people making minimum wage are fooled into thinking that they are better off, and the liberal folks who are so eager to help the poor with someone else's money are fooled into thinking that the poor have been helped. What really happens is that the minimum increase triggers inflation and within a year the ratio of work hours:buying power is rebalanced and those minimum wage folks are back exactly where they started, just with bigger numbers on their pay check and their expenses.

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:20:11 -0400, "Ed Huntress" wrote: and Wes clipped a bunch :)

The GI Bill was one government social program I truely believe worked. I believe it had a lot to do with college enrollment going though the roof.

I'm with Iggy on this one. It would seem to encourage automation. Since I repair that stuff, good for me, and more education would even be better for me.

I've also noticed a trend to work people longer as in getting away from the 40 hour work week. Health bennies and capital cost of equipment means running Saturdays and Sundays during high demand periods is the least expensive solution.

For how long? Sounds like they have an exploding debt problem also.

55.9% of GNP Germany 77.2% of GNP

It is behind a paywall. What I could read indicated that Germany has a excellent ballance on exports. I can believe it. Many of the sensors and positioners we use at work are made in Germany. I'm glad to see it isn't China but would rather see USA content for many reasons including JIT replacement.

Wes @ NAMES Southgate tonight

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:51:27 -0400, the infamous "Buerste" scrawled the following:

Ohmigod, you're a UNION shop?

What if you wrote to the union and asked them if you could hire a guy off the street to clean your floors and move material for $10/hr? Might they write back "Hell no!"? Now what would happen if somehow, those letters found their way into a journalist's hands?

Sorry, I meant FOX journalist's hands. Nobody else'd publish that story which clearly showed that a union would rather have people out of work than making normal wages.

-- ...in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work. -- John Ruskin

On Apr 23, 6:28=A0pm, F. George McDuffee

I always found the more I learned and the harder I worked, the luckier I was.

Dan

Smart Fraction Theory is the method used to do all the various analyses captured in the articles. The earlier articles lay the theory out most clearly.

Joe Gwinn

They import many millions of tons of maize annually, when I lived there in the 60's about 20 million tons was exported and the Africans had the second highest standard of living in the continent. Look south for highest. The confiscation of white farmers land stopped all major food production and that prime land has probably reverted to bush. When I lived there the farmers provided a portion of their land ( 10% ?? ) so their employees could grow some of their own food. All employees were provided with basic rations for themselves and family. I very much doubt if those remaining on the farms receive anything from their new political masters.

Alan

Pete, if the people making minimum wage are "very few," how could an increase in the minimum wage trigger inflation?

This is another part of the conservative economic catechism that just doesn't stand scrutiny. The economic effects of raising the minimum wage are, as you suggested first, too small to make even a dent in the larger monetary and fiscal policies of the government, and also 'way too small to make a dent into trade factors that influence it (particularly the effects of oil prices during the '70s). Increasing minimum wage doesn't dump much cash into the economy -- note that Tawwwwwm is saying that he's actually let people go because of minimum wage -- and it doesn't change anything that would affect velocity. If people have little cash, they spend all of it. Higher wages could actually *decrease* velocity by increasing savings. But it doesn't, in general. It just has little net effect either way.

We could look at the numbers and show that there is a correlation between minimum wage and inflation, but you'd see that, at least since 1968, wage increases have LAGGED inflation by a substantial amount. And, again, the monetary effects of increasing minimum wage are so low that they disappear into the noise.

Here's a table that shows the value of minimum wages since 1955, in current dollars and constant dollars. In other words, the first column is the face value of the minimum wage and the second column indicates what it would buy in that year, adjusted for inflation:

Here's a graph of inflation:

Unfortunately, they don't tell much from those without some careful thought and analysis, but you can see from the wage table that minimum wage increases have lagged inflation by quite a bit in recent years. It's difficult to make a case that wage rates have driven inflation. If you look at total monetary effects you'd see it more clearly. But that would take me a couple of hours to assemble, so you'll have to consider doing it for yourself. d8-)

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Dan

"Lucky" is a socialist code word for undeserving, used to rationalize confiscation.

If you hit the lottery, you can send the money to me so you won't have to revisit your (mis)understanding of "lucky."

I have my own version: Wresting the controls out of the hands of my glider "instructor" as he was about to stall our Schweitzer 2-33 into a pile of concrete rubble that looked like a WWII tank trap, from 50 feet, and having his hand slip off of the stick as I pushed the nose down -- because he outweighed me by about 100 pounds.

I was lucky that he sweats. It probably was life and death. d8-)

That's an opinion on my part. As a highly developed country, we are stuck (according to most economists, liberal and conservative) with a need for open, if not free, trade in the Ricardo model of comparative advantage. That model says that we benefit by having no import restrictions, even if the countries we trade with have tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Anyone interested can look this up; it's too much to explain here.

On top of that, and despite our financial meltdown, we're stuck with a minimal level of restrictions on business. This is a relative thing but ours is one golden goose that can be killed with little effort. With our current need for economic growth, no one in his right mind is going to vote for more than minimal regulation, except, perhaps, on non-bank finance.

We also cannot afford a lot of restrictions on business in regard to labor. One thing that has saved our butts in recent decades is our extreme labor and capital flexibility. We dig out of most troubles by adapting quickly. We're better at that than anyone.

All of these things are components of the neoliberal economic model. To a large degree we're locked into it, because of the stage and size of our economic development, and because of the fierce competition we face from low-wage countries.

To break out of it we'd have to cover almost everything at once -- a political impossibility right now. Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place on this because he *needs* to put heavy restrictions on finance (or we'll just crash again), but he can't break up our current neoliberal model for a variety of reasons, the need for comprehensive, simultaneous change being first among them.

What this administration appears to be doing is to try to whack off the roughest edges of injustices and economic divisions without assaulting the basic model. It may be a pipe dream; once you have a fundamental ideology at work, it's difficult to bend it without meeting huge resistance. And he has.

That's pretty sketchy but the details would keep us going for a year or two, and I just had another birthday that reminds me I'd better start making better use of my time. d8-)

Thanks, Winston. It was on Income Tax Day, which takes a bit of the edge off of celebrations. d8-)

Easy. The wages of people like backhoe operators is determined by the wage of a laborer. A backhoe with a frontloader can do as much work per hour as about seven or eight laborers. And therefore a backhoe costs about 7 or 8 times as much per hour as a laborer costs.

There is not a lot of correlation because a lot of that time, one could not hire anyone at the minimum wage. It was certainly true in the Seattle area when I was there. I do not know what the minumum wage was at the time, but you couldn't hire a high school kid for less than $10/ hr. And an adult cost a few dollars more.

So what the minimum wage really did was to jack up the labor costs of the states which had low wages. But did not affect the wages of the states with high labor costs.

Question for you, Ed. How much per hour does one have to pay for yard work in your area? Mowing grass, raking leaves, trimming hedges? And what is the minumum wage?

=20 Dan

That was something you wanted to accomplish and made the effort to get it done.

Luck would be having the "instructor" faint and fall against the control which nosed the plane down.

Dan

If I was sitting behind him, I might have arranged something that had a similar result. s8-)