Most CEOs of large companies are inhuman monsters who will do anything for an extra dollar. They would like nothing better than to bring back slavery and have a police force to ensure everyone behaves for them. I am not joking at all, they already do this, they're just exporting that labour.
@JasonCuddles what a sad opinion to hold. 😔 I definitely feel differently as for what holds true for what counts for "most". I like to believe, and my personal evidence continues to affirm, that most people are inherently good. There really isn't as much evil in people as the media would like us to believe. 💜
Participating in one of these overly drawn out marathon threads is to egotistically propound my personal beliefs while I endure the boredom of late nights without sleep. It changes nothing in real life. It really seems to be best dealt with at the state level, as the federal will likely be blocked. At this point it isn't corporate sponsors fighting it; it's the small business lobby. To me it represents the last stand of America The Free against the monolithic corporate beast. Taking control of your life, by accepting the contract that you make your own life, is an endangered notion. It may come to pass that we enact a basic income too. Milton Friedman actually supported a version involving negative tax, or something like that. I don't think he was seriously contemplating how that would morph society into a degenerate soulless monster devoid of the drives which make people act as human beings. We evolved to need people around us at a personal level. If you completely remove the motivation for personal interactions for mutual gain, you move us towards complete anomie. In that world the results would be difficult to predict.
@ubergigglefritz Oh most people are pretty okay. People who rise to the top of a big company are generally the most unethical people on the planet though. As long as making another dollar is valued above all other considerations then large companies will continue to be generally run by the worst sub-human filth our planet has to offer.
Also it's not really opinion. It's best available evidence. The CEO of Nestle and other big chocolate would rather have slave child labour than spend some of the 15 billion on profits to look at solving the problem. https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/
Nobody likes to read or talk about that because it makes it a guilty thing to buy a caramilk bar after.
@JasonCuddles I've been accused of not caring about people because I took the position that the sweat labor in Bangladesh was more of a benefit than a detriment. I suspect that you are responding to the belief that profit seeking is the guide to betterment for all, rather than personally knowing these CEOs. I feel that putting faith in government management of the economy is disastrous. In this post Soviet era, more than three decades on, the Millennials tend to revise socialism as a viable model. I've mentioned two major issue that people are struggling with: housing shortage and expense, and healthcare costs. In both cases, the supply and demand curves have been pushed into dangerous ranges. In housing, deliberate shortages have served to benefit owners and municipal tax ratables. In healthcare, meddling by bureaucrats mandated Certificate of Need policies in every state. Today, these policies directly contributed to the rising monopoly power of healthcare provider companies, and it has also impacted the autonomy of physicians who have been swept up into these combines. The consumer is helpless as Congress writes laws according to how lobbyists and large donors direct them. This is right in front of our eyes of we choose to see it, but so many will instinctively distrust business leaders in favor of the contrived allures of politicians and their obedient sycophants.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 Your reason for posting on this long drawn out thread cracks me up. And it's so well-worded, like everything you write. I don't always know what you are talking about but I thoroughly enjoy your posts. And posting in the CuddleComfort forum is a great way to wait for sleep to come. The one thing I do know is your last post here is spot on. We both know my opinion will only get you a cup of coffee if you put $5 with it. I want you to get better sleep but I hope you never get tired of posting.
How can someone pretend that rising to the top of a corporation is any worse than any number of politicians who rise to the top?The politicians don't produce anything but are handsomely rewarded by considerable perks and inside.information.The politicians believe that they can put any number of burdens on us for our own good.
Politicians are known liars that are woefully unqualified to do the job they're elected to. We elect them based off their ability to blame others, name call, and lie. And also apparently by how often we hear about them. When we start electing engineers and scientists to run our countries we will be better off. Unfortunately the people who should be running things aren't good at those three previously mentioned most important traits of a politician.
If you go to a restaurant or order delivery, tip. Nobody cares what your political beliefs are or if you believe the restaurant should be paying more. Those people are just trying to make enough money to make ends meet.
There is a small food spot in Charlottesville that is known for paying their workers "living wages" (getting more trendy for signaling which businesses some people may choose to patron over others). Costco is well known for being one of the best places to work in retail, both for pay and benefits.
Oh, I love that. Spots of hope! Thank you, @ubergigglefritz. I do appreciate seeing those.
I agree that businesses, in general, just want to succeed. What gets me is the lack of any actual end to it: when has a business succeeded? When it breaks even? When it makes a reliable profit of at least 1¢? $1? $94.7 billion? Where's the upper bound?
Jeff Bezos believes high turnover leads to better work. He thinks it's cheaper, too: long-time workers expect raises. His data bear this out.
Elon Musk wants workers who never stop working: "never leave the factory," in his words.
And small businesses. Oh dear, the Mom-and-Pop places, where "we're a family" and don't you know how you're hurting people by taking a day off? and we just can't afford more workers so you'll have to do everything alone, we know you understand, and we'll praise you right up until you can't take it anymore, whereupon you're the worst person on earth, how could you turn on us by burning out like this? (Personal experience here.)
Ultimately, I just don't trust the profit motive to lead to anything but worker abuse. Give companies freedom, and they use it to take freedom from people.
Including by using tips to pay them less!
Allow restaurants to outsource their payroll expenses to customers? Ooh! Such freedom. Definitely a good thing.
Anyone remember 1923, when the Supreme Court ruled that employers were free to pay their employees as little as they could get the employees to agree to? That went well. (The sarcasm here is partial. It did go well—for rich people. "Many workers’ wages either didn’t keep up with productivity or fell off completely;" yes, indeed.)
The bright spots are beautiful, and it makes me happy to see them. Everything else gives me so very little hope for any real improvement in my lifetime.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 says,
I don't think he was seriously contemplating how that [giving people the ability to live good lives without having to work for it] would morph society into a degenerate soulless monster devoid of the drives which make people act as human beings. We evolved to need people around us at a personal level. If you completely remove the motivation for personal interactions for mutual gain, you move us towards complete anomie.
This argument—that people are lazy and if things weren't necessary for survival then people wouldn't do them at all—is familiar to me.
I call shenanigans.
Look at retirees, the filthy rich, anybody who knows they don't have to work to survive: are they "devoid of the drives which make people act as human beings"? Do they lack "the motivation for personal interactions for mutual gain" just because survival isn't a factor? Does security make people immoral?
People love doing stuff. Remove the need to work to live, and people (once they've rested enough) work anyway—and so what if they didn't?
"If we couldn't force people to work, they wouldn't work!" A lie, but... so what? Who would care that no one was working, if no one needed to work? I would love to live in a world like that. And, funny thing....
I think I'd work.
@DaringSprinter In addition, "work" is often not paid, but that doesn't mean it's not a positive contribution to society. People innately want to contribute (once rested, like you pointed out). Volunteer, help out in the community, raise children, etc. Myself, I help my parents out in a myriad of different ways, daily. I wish it paid all my bills as it takes a lot of my time and energy and I would love be to be able to just cuddle without financial stress. If I didn't need money, I would still do everything I currently do, just without that stress. I believe if people didn't have to worry about mere survival, we would have such an increase in these different forms of unpaid "work" that our society would absolutely net positive. 💜
@ubergigglefritz: All I have to say to that is 💜
@DaringSprinter Your work ethic/viewpoint is interesting and admirable. I had a superlative work ethic most of my life (I would sometimes be one of the ones taken advantage of by management and co-workers (including the ones who claimed to like me). I lost my desire to work before I was able to retire and due to health problems and overwork was wondering if I would make it to even an early retirement. I actually like not doing much. I kinda wish I felt differently. But when someone I care about needs help that I am capable of giving, I am there. I like helping people I don't know who I see struggling also.
This sure has been an interesting and educational thread, but it has made my brain tired.
@achetocuddle: I'm glad you've enjoyed reading along! That's mostly why I engage in exchanges like this—to exercise my brain, and to give others (including my future self) the chance to exercise too, if they're interested in the topic.
I like public forums for that. Records! Even if my reference links die, at least having the old addresses gives me a shot at rediscovery.
...Why yes, I am an irredeemable nerd....
@DaringSprinter I actually laughed out loud. Intelligent people describing themselves is so funny sometimes. I will let your opinion of yourself stand. I know I don't really know you that well yet. I'm probably gonna start calling you that. You're so entertaining.
@achetocuddle: Ha! Please do.
The celebrity gossip rags tell us how people behave when money is plentiful. They tend to drive around cars loaded, often wrapping cars around other cars. They live to wallow in things that flood their brains with hedonistic pleasure. Yes, some find uplifting tasks to attend to in between debauchery well-documented by paparazzi. With all my financial worries solved, I would most likely want to spend my every waking moment with a variety of cuddle pros. Oh but wait... There would be none! I would be hopelessly cuddle blocked... Infinite time to experience the dearth of oxytocin! I suppose my brain would be screaming for an alternative source of stimulation. I can ponder that while I try to see if sleep will overtake me again.
I had no idea that this thread would be this active and interesting when I posted. Thanks for all who have posted. Your ideas and thoughts have been enjoyable and I appreciate all of them.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 - you said earlier that you make more as a tipped worked than you did working in construction. That’s unusual and I’m wondering exactly what kind of construction that was? I was a union commercial/industrial electrician for 13 years and had excellent pay and benefits.
This is wandering off subject but since the subjects of income and motivation have come up:
Stockton, California, engaged in a bold experiment, providing a random selection of 125 low income people with $500/month for two years, no strings attached. The common assumption that people are lazy and will not work if they have a guaranteed income did not happen. Instead, people used the financial aid to improve their lives. Full time employment among those receiving the assistance rose and people were able to stabilize their lives.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973653719/california-program-giving-500-no-strings-attached-stipends-pays-off-study-finds
As for younger folks finding socialism attractive, I think their models are more like the Scandinavian countries than the former Soviet Union. Most developed countries have socialized medicine, the U.S. is an aberration.
Back to tipping and restaurants: let’s not forget that most restaurants do not provide benefits like health insurance, paid vacation, holiday pay, sick leave, or 401Ks.
I once met a guy who had two very successful high end restaurants and was in the process of opening a third. He told me that most restaurant owners paid their employees as little as they could get away with. He said he was always looking for ways to pay his employees more because he wanted to be able to hire and then keep good people. That’s an uncommon attitude but I think a smart one.
Income disparity has increased in the U.S. dramatically in the U.S. It did not used to be this way. The average pay for CEOs has risen 90 times faster than the average worker since the 1970s. In my profession of massage therapy wages paid have actually decreased since I started in 1991.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3048172/ceo-pay-has-risen-90-times-faster-than-average-worker-pay-since-the-1970s
UK here. We don't tend to have much of a tipping culture, because we pay people a living wage in the first place. 🤷🏻♀️
France seems to have the best medical system in the world. They have great outcomes, take care of everyone, and don't break the bank doing it. I wish I had what they do.
@Babichev I wasn't a union construction worker in New Jersey. A journeyman would be making more than I make now. I worked doing residential construction for a small private company. I had started with painting. I gained skills over time. In Florida I worked for a master electrician. He would leave the site while I did wiring runs. Then he would return and check it out. IBEW was starting guys out at $8 an hour when I considered joining the Orlando local in the 90s. I declined then. I worked for a carpenter and eventually was installing kitchens and baths unsupervised. I did innumerable window and door installations. I did just enough plumbing to get into trouble. Same with roofing. I've also installed tongue and groove wood flooring, was well as rolled and tile. I had a friend who was a third generation union carpenter, who offered to get me into labor and painting union locals, through contacts he had. I passed. The unions seemed shady to me. They basically exist as a device to extort more money out of employers, than they might otherwise get by purely economic supply and demand means. In Philly, the Chestnut Hill Quaker meetinghouse was vandalized by the ironworkers union to the tune of half a million $ because they dared hire a non union company. Fortunately they got busted. I went to meetings there. I remember when the Teamsters were shooting at scabs in the 70s. Thank God things have improved. Socialism is not what exists in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. They have social programs, like our failing programs. They put more commitment into it and do not allow alternatives, but they are not like the CCP or the Bolivarians of Venezuela. They are more conducive to free market trade than is the United States. They actually have more billionaires per capita in Sweden than are in the USA. So there was a pilot program and it showed possibly some positive results? I think we need a little more than that. The multi generations stuck on welfare, people that I lived around and knew, show a different side. Granted, the devil is in the details. *Edit - my last full year in Philly I grossed over $60K doing massage. I decline to say how much more. Tips were close to half of my gross earnings. ** - the reported earnings in Philly were only from massage, 30 hours of massage pet week on average. *** - the "income disparity" is an easily manipulated statistic. My problems are not related to the existence of billionaires NEARLY as much as the completed F***ed healthcare system and the locked up housing situation. I swear, the amount of political propaganda that stifles reasonable discussion of problems is probably a great strategy to keep us plebeians from actually knowing which end is up, and thus preventing us from sensible action. Like, Elizabeth Warren is going to tax the 💩 out of those "evil billionaires" so she must be on our side! Only thing is, the government is more of our enemy than any billionaire. I dunno about you, but my payroll tax has been pretty consistent and there's no way that a few hundred a month SS is going to keep me afloat. I'm screwed there. Billionaires generally offer us better deals on stuff, like Walmart, even if we are supposed to hate the Walton's for killing Main St. If the government actually came through with useful stuff, like affordable housing or healthcare... Then I might be open to their blather. But they cause more problems than they fix.
@Babichev says,
Stockton, California, engaged in a bold experiment, providing a random selection of 125 low income people with $500/month for two years, no strings attached.
A quote from the linked article:
Critics worry it could eliminate the incentive to work, as well as endanger certain existing safety net programs. Tubbs countered this criticism in a 2018 interview with NPR's All Things Considered, saying research and trials from the previous three decades did not indicate that $500 a month would discourage people from working. He argued that more financial stability would "make people work better and smarter and harder," as well as make it possible to spend time with their families and participate in their communities. In a subsequent interview this January, he told NPR that the money had decidedly not quashed people's work ethic. ...Among the key findings outlined in a 25-page white paper are that the unconditional cash reduced the month-to-month income fluctuations that households face, increased recipients' full-time employment by 12 percentage points and decreased their measurable feelings of anxiety and depression, compared with their control-group counterparts.
Critics worry it could eliminate the incentive to work, as well as endanger certain existing safety net programs.
Tubbs countered this criticism in a 2018 interview with NPR's All Things Considered, saying research and trials from the previous three decades did not indicate that $500 a month would discourage people from working. He argued that more financial stability would "make people work better and smarter and harder," as well as make it possible to spend time with their families and participate in their communities. In a subsequent interview this January, he told NPR that the money had decidedly not quashed people's work ethic.
...Among the key findings outlined in a 25-page white paper are that the unconditional cash reduced the month-to-month income fluctuations that households face, increased recipients' full-time employment by 12 percentage points and decreased their measurable feelings of anxiety and depression, compared with their control-group counterparts.
This is far from the only study showing how people respond to basic financial security. TL;DR: It's always good overall.
As for younger folks finding socialism attractive, I think their models are more like the Scandinavian countries than the former Soviet Union. Most countries have socialized medicine, the U.S. is an aberration.
That's correct!
I love that attitude, and the thought that people who hold it exist. I assume that if he's even got tipped workers he doesn't pay them the tipped minimum wage or take a tip credit?
A small side note on unions....
Tipping is the global outlier. In other countries, like Japan, tipping is unheard of (and even seen as an insult to the provider) for meals out, taxis, barbers, hotel workers, etc., because good service should be the norm, not the exception. Of course, they also pay a living wage to service employees, instead of the ridiculous scheme that we have here.
I saw in Japan they were fitting living spaces in closet sized apartments in Tokyo. I admire that adaptability. We can't legally do stuff like that in our cities without code enforcement coming down, so we have tents on sidewalks. People in America think that Nordic socialism is magic fairy money that solves people's problems. Do they really know how it works? Do they know who is paying? It's the middle class mostly. It's simply redistribution. Don't think it's them taxing billionaires like Liz Warren wants to do. It's social insurance coupled with a very authoritarian system that controls pricing of all procedures. I am also under the impression that a relatively cooperative relationship between unions and employers yields high wages as well as complete coverage of benefits. Here, we have monopolies gone wild, and a few health insurance majors that are firmly ensconced on K Street, such that they direct Congress about how it's gonna be. Good luck fixing that. Another less well known thing about Nordic countries is their underbelly, that they have foreign workers who work informally. Lastly, the tides have gone back and forth over how much they love their social welfare system. Last I knew they were moving towards shrinking it.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 It is mostly the middle class paying for Nordic programs thru redistribution.
@achetocuddle Not only that, but it's the middle class paying through redistribution
😂
🦄🧚💸
I would actually love to see a program like SEED proven to be a success. It would renew something long deceased in my heart to believe that people who have for years been stuck on the substance abuse merry go round, would be able to see a plan that is viable for themselves, and go for it. And if they could get help to fill the gaps that they themselves couldn't do alone, that would be great. I actually thought that the ideal of capitalism, on a small human scale, would be like that. Back in the day, we had savings and loan banks. The community could help each other build up individually and communally, like the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". Nowadays it seems you have to scam somebody to get ahead.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 - I take umbrage at your description of unions existing to extort money from employers. Collective bargaining is the only way that workers have any power. Without union representation, an individual worker is completely at the mercy of the employer’s whim. The existence of unions raises the standards for non-union employees in their area. Those low wages in Florida were precisely because it’s a non-union state. When I was traveling in Florida I also noticed the workmanship was shoddy compared to here. Our union has an excellent training program and turns out highly skilled electricians. When you are trained by a single individual you’re limited by their singular point of view and experience. Our instructors had decades of experience in the field and focused their instruction in a single area such as teaching the National Electrical Code, blueprint drawing & reading, electrical theory, welding, safety, and a brief overview of union history and the history of the electrical field. Actual installation was learned on the job and we worked with a variety of people on a variety of jobs. Even those in residential get put with different people and put on different jobs so they have a variety of experience.
Unions were instrumental in the implementation of the 40 hour work week, paid vacation, health insurance as a job benefit, safety standards, child labor laws, overtime, minimum wage, and a host of other protections and benefits. Sadly, with the demise of unions we’ve seen many of those benefits and protections erode.
Anyway, this is going off topic but I can’t let trashing unions go by without sticking up for them. I was the first journeywoman electrician in IBEW Local #1, am a 40 year member, and proud of it.
@Babichev I see no reason for you to personally take umbrage at my honest impression based on the experiences I've mentioned. I don't doubt you are proud of those union accomplishments. There is a dark side to unions that you don't seem to acknowledge. I find that troubling. There are only a few exceptions to Sherman Anti Trust laws. One is unions. Another is health insurance. The third is baseball salaries. Now, to me this looks rather suspicious. I mentioned some serious criminality and violence associated with unions, some of which I was personally witness to. In NJ it was mobbed up. Another thing pro union people don't mention is how union growth had far more to do with WW2 beginning than any other reason. The power was shifted to the workers who were needed on all those assembly lines and other labor intensive activities for the war effort. It's not like the unions were out for all workers. Yeah, that IBEW in Orlando was open to me after I took the test, but up in Jersey you had to be familia with the delegate or something. And they would F you up if you crossed their lines. I accept that they do teach their members well, but some of the things they teach should not be taught. I think about a few years back, the stevedores union which was really the people operating cranes to unload container ships, striked and held up shipping on the East Coast. These people made more than surgeons. It was all about having power and how you could use it against people for your own personal gain. You personally may we'll have contributed greatly to better electrical power for people, but unfortunately it doesn't always work that way. I would hope a reasonable and fair person would seek to be more critical of an organization they were part of, because they wanted to be part of something good. This whole subject of tipping, where people put down how I make my living, and how I profit according to how well I improve people's lives, is an affront to me personally. I just have been pointing out one fallacy after another, and I'm sorry if you got too close to one.