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By Orion Blastar (Wed Oct 12, 2011 at 11:43:52 AM EST) economics, epic fail, corporations, Oggfrog, haha, economy, corps stick it in the pooper! (all tags)
The Occupy 99%ers are upset at not having the money to pay bills or get by. The Conservatives don't understand this.

Jobs are being lost and moved overseas. I know dozens of IT workers that can't find work due to being overqualified or don't have the degree (masters and up) for jobs they are supposed to be qualified for. Yeah sure work McDonald's or Help Desk, tried that, overqualified. It means they don't want them there as they would be promoted and threaten the supervisors and managers who don't have IT skills. Fast food places don't want IT workers either. Sometimes they get lucky and work for Walmart as a salesperson or maintenance person as Walmart will hire anyone as long as they agree to work for low low wages and long long hours and no no benefits.

It is not a matter of money it is a matter of wealth. Many of us invented things only to have management take credit. Steve Jobs had 300+ patents to his name but had thousands of employees at Apple come up with them for Apple. Employment contracts state that anything invented while working for the company shall become the company's property. Since a company cannot be listed as an inventor on patent forms they usually add in manager names instead. Owning a patent is wealth, it is capital, it is used to create more wealth and defend one from lawsuits or sue others to get more wealth.

Education, many are denied one. It is not because they are lazy or stupid, but cannot afford a college education. I had to drop out of UM Rolla due to not being able to afford it and I went to a community college and graduated and then later in life went to earn a bachelors later. I was lucky enough to get a student loan. Many are not, they don't qualify, or they don't have credit. My parents cosigned my first student loan, without that I would not be able to get one. I worked minimum wage jobs to earn money for college when I first started out, working fast food, as a janitor, as whatever I could get light industrial factory work, etc. People still work those jobs and don't qualify for financial aid. In order to get Pell Grants one must live in a cardboard box with less than $4000 a year in income. Most of these qualifications have not been adjusted for inflation or minimum wage increases.

Companies need to provide better benefits if they are not going to pay a higher salary. Part time employees need benefits too. Health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, vision insurance. If you don't take care of your employees they will not be loyal or they will get sick and not visit a doctor or hospital and die or get disabled.

Managers are paid too much at the upper level. The executive managers that earn millions. Cut their salary instead of laying off workers. Make their contracts state that they get paid based on how well the company does. We don't want executive managers making millions when the company cannot earn a profit, and then lay off workers to compensate for it. Cut executive manager salaries when the company is not profitable and going into debt, they are the ones responsible for that. Fire the board of directors and replace them with new people if you have to, as they are responsible for that too. When you fire workers, you are creating more unemployment and poverty and taking money away from loyal workers who didn't do anything wrong. You are punishing them for success while rewarding the executive managers for their failures.

Well I'd post more but I'd get the TL;DR comments.

< It is about class inequality | That was a terrible chess game. >
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Money problems | 10 comments (10 topical, 0 hidden)
The Conservatives don't understand this. by duxup (2.00 / 0) #1 Wed Oct 12, 2011 at 12:23:46 PM EST
 Depends, some conservatives get it, because the strategy of convincing the other chunk of the 99% that those who are politically of a different are lazy folk sucking off the government taking their money works pretty darned well.

I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.
-Jay Gould

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Degrees are expensive by wumpus (2.00 / 0) #2 Wed Oct 12, 2011 at 07:57:35 PM EST
(especially in terms of interfering with employment). Education is vastly less expensive. I suspect this has a lot to do with a Red Queen situation.

some husi already linked to a "deaf conservative" answer. The catch is simple. If you accept that you understand what they are saying, you allow the political discourse to include things like economic justice and wealth inequality. It gets in the way of the undying hatred of "death taxes" and "make the world safe for the Paris Hiltons and W. Bushs of the world. If you keep asking what they want, you never have to bring up the idea of questioning just how much of the world/nation/neighborhood the 1% should own.

Wumpus

What is economic injustice? by Orion Blastar (2.00 / 0) #3 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 01:35:29 AM EST
In a free market system there is no economic justice department. Those with the land, labor, and capital they own will collect money for it and give very little to the workers. After 200+ years 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth when this used to be a nation of farmers selling tobacco and alcohol to Europeans at low low rates.

Anyway those that earn college degrees seem to make the most money as those good paying jobs require a master's degree from an Ivy League University. Another form of discrimination. I remember when the job I once held required only an associates degree and then they changed it to a bachelors degree and now it requires a masters degree. People with those degrees cannot do as good a job as I once did, but they get hired. Either that or get lucky as a rap star, sports player, actor/actress, lottery winner, or even a gangsta and earn millions without a degree. Many tried and never made it.

Land labor and capital are the key, labor is cheaper in China and other third world nations that lack a minimum wage law. Land is cheaper in third world nations as well. Capital can be moved thanks to International banks and the Internet. Somehow the store and office part of the corp stay here and all the factories and help desk jobs get offshored. Quality goes downhill as well. Hardly anything is made in the USA anymore.

I got news for you, Democrats own the same type of corps that the Republicans own, treat their employees the same. I really don't see the difference between the Democrat who promises to end poverty and never does and the Republican who says quit whining and get a new job, at the end of each quarter they both count the dividends of their massive shares of stock and laugh at how both of them have fooled people and gotten rich from it. Too bad there is no third alternative to Democrats or Republicans.

This occupy Wall Street group has no leader, it will end in anarchy, it has no purpose, cannot even be an effective protest. Might as well be a weenie roast at the beach, at least something gets done there. I was hoping it would lead to a third party, but dare I say it would become the democratic version of the tea party protests. You had the republican tea party and now the democratic ows party. In the end the rich keep getting richer, and will pack up and leave the USA for China as it becomes the next super power and economic leader as their economy takes off and the USA and EU tumble into a debt crisis and massive unemployment problem. All the jobs will be in China then, all our debt is there already.

What can we do? Neither the democrats nor republicans will fix this, all they need to do is take 9% of their wealth and pay their employees more and hire more citizens for jobs to fix the economy. But you and I know they won't, they'll keep saying they don't have qualified people to work jobs as an excuse to ship more jobs overseas to nations with diploma mills and a free college education like China or India.

"I drank what?" - Socrates after drinking the Conium
[ Parent ]
Hmm. by Herring (2.00 / 0) #5 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 04:10:41 AM EST
I think it's a "natural" effect that wealth will concentrate itself in fewer and fewer hands. Money begets money - damned hard to get money if you don't have any in the first place.

The problem is, these corps will collapse if nobody can afford to buy their stuff - which is where we're heading now.

Unless you have some sort of redistribution in place capitalism will always eat itself.

You can't inspire people with facts
- Small Gods

[ Parent ]
B2C turns into B2B by Orion Blastar (2.00 / 0) #8 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 01:20:45 PM EST
Corps will just retool to sell to each other.

"I drank what?" - Socrates after drinking the Conium
[ Parent ]
They'll have plenty of time to whine about money by the mariner (4.00 / 1) #4 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 02:33:02 AM EST
When they're living in a van down by the river. 

Credentialism by jimgon (4.00 / 1) #6 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 06:32:09 AM EST
The need for higher education comes down to credentialism.  Most jobs don't require higher education.  It's used as a credential to get past the gate keeper.  When that doesn't work they resort to other credentials: A+, PMP, MCSE, etc.  I remember in Stranger in a Strange Land Heinlein's take on degrees for the sake of degrees.  At any rate the race for credentials dosen't help the economy except the education industry.  Ultimately what's needed is an increase in demand.  The people who would fuel demand the most are the middle and poor since more of their income goes to consumption.  Provide the poor and middle class with work, especially work not requiring credentials, and things will change.  There's really no hope of that happening.   I wish the Occupiers luck, but have no belief they'll accomplish anything. 




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Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."
In my philosophy of law class by lm (4.00 / 1) #7 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 07:07:26 AM EST
... the professor explained that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, graduate school (at least in the field of law) was for those who were insufficiently brilliant, i.e. those who were in obvious need of additional education after their baccalaureate.

I don't how accurate of a depiction that is of the field of legal academia but I think it is a good contrast to the present where we equate a graduate degree as the sign of competence.

There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic
[ Parent ]
Replace that with MBA by jimgon (4.00 / 1) #9 Thu Oct 13, 2011 at 08:24:36 PM EST
And you get the end of the end 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.




---------------
Technician - "We can't even get decent physical health care. Mental health is like witchcraft here."
[ Parent ]
legal academia is a mutant by nathan (2.00 / 0) #10 Tue Oct 25, 2011 at 11:27:00 AM EST

For most of its history, legal academia was narrowly doctrinal. As a doctrinal field, legal academia did not need or want scholars in the usual sense of the word. Rather, you got into legal academia by demonstrating an extraordinary aptitude to doctrinal thinking as a law student.

Lawyers in USia get the J.D. degree. Most law professors only have a B.A (or A.B) and a J.D. However, as J.D. students, they were at the tops of their classes, and most won appellate clerkships and served on the editorial boards of their schools' law reviews. Until recently, the consensus was that since J.D. grades, law review membership, and clerkships sufficiently distinguished students as to their doctrinal aptitude, a subsequent research degree was beside the point.

Now, legal academia has come under the influence of the rest of the university system. Professors now sometimes get Ph.D.'s or S.J.D.'s and write substantial works of scholarship. But a candidate who won the Sears Prize at HLS and clerked first for Garland, then Scalia, will get hired everywhere he applies, more than likely, and a Ph.D. would be superfluous.



[ Parent ]
Money problems | 10 comments (10 topical, 0 hidden)

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