Wealth Distribution in the USA

removed. Edited by NoNukes, : Respond elsewhere.

Really. Is the above the only option you see for resolving the difference between our positions?Well no Percy. I did not say or imply anything like the thoughts you are attributing to me. There is no fiduciary duty to operate a sweatshop that pays $2 for a full days work. Somehow Adidas found a way not to do that after they were exposed. There is no fiduciary duty to contract with people who cut corners on the factory structure so that the factory falls on the employees heads or to lock employees in a chicken processing plant so that they burn to death in a fire, all for the purpose of giving the shareholders a better return.I have a feeling that for every person, there is a subject of discussion for which the person will argue exactly like a creationist. Looks like we've found one of yours.

No, of course not. Preposterous.Besides, I will stand on my Dudley Do-Right defense.When Dudley would say something a bit off the voice over (usually Bill Conrad) would explain, "That wasn't quite right but Dudley knew what he meant so it's OK."

Hi NoNukes,You've become very confusing. First you say this: This sounds like you're confirming that you really do believe that businesses having a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders is evil, but then in the next paragraph you say: I didn't attribute any thoughts to you. I quoted your actual words, and they made so little sense that I asked if we could forget you ever said it.But what's most confusing is first you say "Really" as if confirming that's what you believe, then you deny saying or implying anything like that at all. What's the story here? Is there a missing smiley somewhere?Anyway, about Adidas and the $2/day salary, if this was at or above minimum wage for the country in question, then I can't agree it is evil, and characterizations like this are moral and subjective anyway. Don't you think the discussion should be based on more objective assessments. What country are we talking about, what is the cost of living there compared to where you live, and what is the basis for the $2/day figure?But maybe you should open another thread to discuss this. This thread isn't really about exploitation of the 3rd world. Tangle keeps trying to gently nudge this thread back onto topic, and we should try to help him out. Well, I think you're the one painting things in terms of good and evil while trying to paint me into the evil corner of the room.--Percy

On one hand you seem to accept that businesses can and do make meaningful economic judgements regarding the economic benefits Vs costs of filling specific positions. On the other hand you seem utterly resolute in your insistence that the economic benefit any given individual position brings to a business is entirely and obviously unquantifiable to the point that it cannot even be approximated for order of magnitude comparison purposes. This seems somewhat contradictory.On minimum wage specifically — I put it you that if the minimum wage is set at a level whereby the costs of employing a minimum wage worker are still less than the economic benefit of having those positions filled then there is no case for increased unemployment as a result of minimum wage legislation. Furthermore I would suggest that the reason empirical research on this matter shows that there hasn't been any effect on unemployment rates is because minimum wages have generally been set at a level above that which would be garnered by pure market forces but still less than that which makes employing low skilled workers non-cost-effective. But there obviously is an economic judgement that an additional network engineer is likely to provide more economic benefit to the company than the amount it costs to employ them. That was my point. It's nothing controversial.Any business that is employing people (minimum wage or otherwise) without making such judgements with reasonable competence is doomed to fail.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Yes, it does seem somewhat contradictory, but you'll have to take it up with whoever insisted that "the economic benefit any given individual position brings to a business is entirely and obviously unquantifiable to the point that it cannot even be approximated for order of magnitude comparison purposes."Some people think that companies have the ability to calculate the amount of each job's contribution to the bottom line. Some further believe that this value is greater than the job's salary and that it or some proportion actually belongs to the employee, not the company. I've responded that companies don't have the ability to make this fictional calculation, that it isn't useful anyway because of the way the bottom line bounces around, and that giving profits and losses to employees wouldn't be legal because they belong to the shareholders.I think you're trying to make a different point, namely that companies make economic decisions when hiring. I agree.But, to repeat, companies don't have the ability to calculate the amount of each job's contribution to the bottom line. Overhead jobs obviously have the most nebulous connection to the bottom line. Given that your company's main focus is construction and leasing, network engineer is overhead, just like accounting and payroll, security, etc.The value of a job is the wage paid for that job. The job's specific contribution to the bottom line is *not* the value of the job, and is not knowable anyway.--Percy

That isn't the point being made by me. The point I am making is that minimum wage legislation will only lead to increased unemployment if it is set at a level such that the costs of hiring low skilled workers exceed the economic benefit businesses gain from hiring such workers.If the minimum wage is set at a level whereby it is still cost effective to hire these low skilled workers (albeit not as profitably as at the pure market value they would otherwise receive) then either profits will just have to take the hit or those further up the pay-chain will have to be paid less in order to maintain profits.This is why setting a minimum wage at the right level is directly relevant to the wealth distribution issue that is the topic here. I think you'll find that profits are calculated after costs and that labour, much like materials, qualifies as a cost that needs to be deducted before profit. So I think you have invented a bit of a straw man for yourself with this. And yet I have explained to you in reasonable detail the sort of estimations that are actually used to determine whether an actual company is willing to hire an actual network engineer in real life. Whether that new position qualifies as "overhead" or not (which I agree it does in the case of my company).If the cost of hiring that person were, after the sort of analysis I provided you with, obviously more than the likely economic benefit of doing so then the work he is needed for would just have to wait or just not get done. If however the economic benefit of getting that work done is deemed to be greater than the cost of hiring a new network engineer then we will be advertising for a new position.What I certainly would not do (if I want to remain employed myself) is go to the IT director and suggest that we need a new network engineer to do some work the value to the business of which is entirely unable to be even remotely ascertained. It might exceed the cost of employing that new engineer. Or it might not. We have no idea. It's impossible to say. Because (to quote you) "It would be like trying to assign a value to each of your cell's contribution to your life."This would not go into a business case for a new network engineer no matter how passionately you mistakenly believe it to be true.

I'm not sure how I could be any plainer about my position. A fiduciary responsibility is owed to the shareholders, but the fiduciary duty does not require the company to do every evil thing that generates more money for the shareholders.

I understand that, but it was the major point under contention when you began responding, saying that it *was* possible to calculate this value. I agree. The people making the claim have provided no specifics and no calculations, so I'm forced to fill in the blanks myself. The distinction you just made is not one that I think even occurred to them. Would you like me to go through the exercise of explaining why attempting this calculation based upon revenue/expenses/debt instead of profit/loss is fraught with very similar problems? Again, you're making a different claim than the people I was discussing with. They think that companies can calculate how much a job contributes to the bottom line, or to revenues if you like. That's "calculate" as in "arrive at a precise value," in the way that $517,314 is a very precise number. And they further think that (depending upon who you're talking to) that that value belongs to the employee, or that a proportion of that value belongs to the employee.But that value 1) *can't* be calculated; and 2) *doesn't* belong to the employee, or any proportion thereof.You're arguing that companies make business and economic arguments to justify hiring/firing decisions, and I agree.--Percy

No, the wage paid for a job is the wage paid for that job.This is why it is possible to sack people, or to judge that they're overpaid. If businesses used your criterion, they would have no basis to do so. "We pay him $100,000/yr to work for us, and what do we get out of it?" "He contributes value of $100,000/yr." "Oh yes, I was forgetting."

Like I said I think you are arguing against a straw man with regard to much of what you think other people are saying. The fact that these others keep telling you they don't mean what you keep telling them they do is something of a clue to this. Do you agree that businesses are able to estimate the economic benefits of filling specific positions and compare these to the cost of filling those positions? Or not? If not - How can they make economic arguments about hiring and firing people for specific positions? Cost benefit analysis of exactly the sort I discussed in reasonable detail for a network engineer demonstrates that real companies employing real people do exactly what you are saying cannot be done for real positions.It's not an exact science and there is no formula. But estimating the cost of employing someone to fill a position Vs the estimated cost of the work in question not getting done if the position is left vacant is a key part of any business case for a new position. I am amazed you are disputing this. If you want to define the term "value" to suit your argument I will simply use the phrase "economic benefit" instead. The economic benefit to a company of filling a particular position is not the same as the wage paid to the employee filling tha position. Some people are very arguably paid too much and some are very arguably paid too little. Do you also agree that those $2/day workers NoNukes was talking about could be paid more without exceeding this limit?Do you think the minimum wage in the US could be raised without exceeding this limit?If the wages I asked about above are increased to a level whereby it is still cost effective to hire these low skilled workers then either profits of the companies employing these people will take the hit or those further up the pay-chain will have to be paid less in order to maintain profits. Bearing in mind the OP - Do you think that paying people at the bottom more at the expense of shareholder profits and/or executive salaries would be a good or bad outcome?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Unless we're talking to you in post #172, in which case the value of a job is the value of that job, and the wages paid for that job have no effect on its value.

There's two different "values" being talked about. One is that which the company values the job at, and that is the wage they offer for the job. There is also the value to the bottom line that each job provides to the company, which can't be calculated for most jobs.Increasing the wage-value for a job does not add to the bottom-line-value for the company.

The question we're trying to discuss here is whether or not something needs to be done to change wealth distribution. One tool iis minimum wage legislation which is supposed to reduce poverty. Left to their own devices, businesses, with very few exceptions, will always attempt to drive down wages (except for those that set the wages of course.)Any minimum wage in a developed country is likely to be higher than that in the undeveloped world so if the work is relatively unskilled and not location dependant, jobs will effectively be exported. There are counter arguments of course, but essentially we see that happening in manufacturing.But is the overall effect beneficial to both economies? It seems so to me. It floats all boats; the devoped world gets cheaper products, high profits, becomes more skilled in service industries, intellectual property and high end design, the undeveloped world find a new economy, new skills and an export market. (It's often very unequal, but....).What I think is missing is some restraint on 'excessive' profit and global tax reform so that both companies and individuals can't game the system and create massive inequalities which harm society as a whole.

Needs to be done? In what way? What's the goal? I think minimum wage is due for an increase, but I doubt it'd noticeably reduce the poverty that I see around me. Meh, you can end up driving yourself out of workers and that'd be bad for business. And realize that the min-wage jobs are the ones that have low value to the workforce, too. Think about how bad it must be to be unemployed if you're willing to be that $2 a day shoe maker, or whoever. Some people were saying that these wages are so bad they're near starvation. Well that means that without those jobs, those people would just be dead. (I wonder if you can see effects on something like infant moratality rates of an area when a large business moves in) I feel ya. It'd be nice if society could just not buy the product because the jobs they use are too bad, or willingly pay more for them so they can be better. I don't see much personal eththics in business, so that's where government steps in. But that's almost just as bad as the businesses. And we don't want to end up screwing up the economy too much. Governments end up using a lot of money, so you need the businesses to thrive. It takes money to make money, and the more you make the more you can make. How much more money does your Queen have than you? The graphs in OP's video showed how much its snowballed. If something needs to be done, what's it going to be? How do you restrain profit without hurting business? I don't know anything about global tax. If you spread that money out to the left, then aren't you increasing the amount of people who are near starvation? Is that better? Can you change the curve? You'd have to change the formula. Hopefully it would be stable. We know it can get volatile. I don't think there's a simple answer to this one.