A Republican ideal, work until you die

[rjs330]

Everybody retires.

I get that. That's why I said sometimes you have too due to circumstances beyond your control. But if you are healthy enough you should keep working at something. It's better for you and provides a better quality of existence.

 

[rjs330]

Chock full of inconsistency here? What will you have to live for?

Why on earth would you say this? Oh I know, you are trying to ignore the rest of my posts on the subject in order to twist what I say for your own reasons.

Why would you do that?

 

[rjs330]

Customers

So in essence it's the customers that are paying people's salaries. And when the salaries go up so does why the customer has to pay and those that are making more money to have to pay more for the goods they buy, which in turn demands they make more money etc etc.

Are you proposing some sort of law that limits profits or perhaps forces businesses to divy out their profits to their employees in a certain fashion?

That would be nice, but that ship sailed a long time ago, otherwise investment bankers and FAANG software bro’s wouldn’t be making as much as surgeons or 10x as much as teachers.

But as long as we enforce that hierarchy on poor people, right?

Are you missing my point on purpose? Are you trying to equate every single business with every single other business as equal and the same? You are making no sense at all by making such a comparison.

You think the CEO of Boeing is the same thing as the head of the local department store? You might as well think that with your comparison.

You actually think for a second I was doing that?

 

[JustOneWay]

Why on earth would you say this? Oh I know, you are trying to ignore the rest of my posts on the subject in order to twist what I say for your own reasons.

Why would you do that?

why?

"I don't think we humans were meant to actually retire."

"I'm am going to be retiring from my job in a few years."

That's why.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Are you proposing some sort of law that limits profits or perhaps forces businesses to divy out their profits to their employees in a certain fashion?

If I wanted to propose that, I would've done so.

Are you missing my point on purpose?

On the contrary, I'm reading exactly what you say. You're just doing a poor job of both understanding my point and articulating your own.

Are you trying to equate every single business with every single other business as equal and the same? You are making no sense at all by making such a comparison.

You think the CEO of Boeing is the same thing as the head of the local department store? You might as well think that with your comparison.

You actually think for a second I was doing that?

Let's recap this particular line of conversation. Back in post 377, @BPPLEE said:

When you set a mandatory wage for the lowest workers on the pay scale then raise it what about the people that were earning a little more than that?
They don’t get raises and a guy working at McDonalds is suddenly making the same as someone who has been working for 20 years

to which I replied:

So? Do you have some vested interest in maintaining some hierarchy or pay strata?

I don't think it's good that a company pays an employee with that much tenure that little, but that's not a good reason to keep the floor even lower, to allow that guy to be beating somebody. If anything, the increased minimum should be a wakeup call to both the 20yr employee and his employer that his wages ought to be rising, too.

@ThatRobGuy followed with:

I think most organizations have a vested interest in some form of hierarchy (to some degree or another).

and I replied:

Within an organization, sure. I understood the other poster's comments to be supporting strata across organizations, e.g. now that minimum wage is going up, Dwight at Dunder Mifflin is making no more than the kid at McD's.

then you came back with:

Are you telling us that there shouldn't be any pay hierarchy or pay strata?

and I replied:

If I’d wanted to make that argument, I would have. But if you’d care to explain why we should enforce pay hierarchies across businesses, I’m all ears.

to which you responded:

You don't think pay should be commensurate with responsibility?

and then this, from me:

That would be nice, but that ship sailed a long time ago, otherwise investment bankers and FAANG software bro’s wouldn’t be making as much as surgeons or 10x as much as teachers.

But as long as we enforce that hierarchy on poor people, right?

Perhaps you'd have a better grasp of my point if you read the entire thread, particularly my comments to @ThatRobGuy (including posts 399 and 400, which I didn't include here) instead of jumping to wild conclusions like that I think pay scales should be flat or I don't think there should be any association between pay and responsibility.

This whole branch of the conversation stemmed from one poster's lament over the guy with 20 years' tenure having his wage premium over McD's eroded by increased minimum wage. The logical conclusion of that argument is that maintaining this hierarchy is more important than improving the McD's worker's quality of life.

 

[BPPLEE]

If I wanted to propose that, I would've done so.



On the contrary, I'm reading exactly what you say. You're just doing a poor job of both understanding my point and articulating your own.





Let's recap this particular line of conversation. Back in post 377, @BPPLEE said:



to which I replied:


@ThatRobGuy followed with:


and I replied:


then you came back with:


and I replied:


to which you responded:


and then this, from me:


Perhaps you'd have a better grasp of my point if you read the entire thread, particularly my comments to @ThatRobGuy (including posts 399 and 400, which I didn't include here) instead of jumping to wild conclusions like that I think pay scales should be flat or I don't think there should be any association between pay and responsibility.

This whole branch of the conversation stemmed from one poster's lament over the guy with 20 years' tenure having his wage premium over McD's eroded by increased minimum wage. The logical conclusion of that argument is that maintaining this hierarchy is more important than improving the McD's worker's quality of life.

It won’t improve. Businesses will cut hours, eliminate jobs and raise prices. The guy who got a raise will see it eroded by price increases and fewer hours on his schedule
Of course everyone else will be paying more too.

 

[BCP1928]

I get that. That's why I said sometimes you have too due to circumstances beyond your control. But if you are healthy enough you should keep working at something. It's better for you and provides a better quality of existence.

Yes, but it still is a choice the individual should make. In particular, there is no reason at all that "work" must be done as an employee. I'm a retired vocational trainer and training designer. I took my retirement as early as possible and now do work for free for non-profit orgs which would not be able to afford my rates. Consequently, since I've retired I have been able to spend months or years at a time on training projects in places like Samoa, Vanuatu, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without the backup of my Social Security. Alternatively I could have been a good citizen, hewing to the "work ethic" and continuing to be employed, but Pooh on that.

 

[RDKirk]

No, nobody's going to fall apart (except those who still do hard physical work in this country) but we just don't like it and there is no reason we should.

Everyone falls apart. How relevant it is to what they're still able to do--and whether what they're still able to do is marketable--varies enormously. But everyone falls apart, and by 65 it's noticeable compared to how they performed at 45.

 

[BCP1928]

It won’t improve. Businesses will cut hours, eliminate jobs and raise prices. The guy who got a raise will see it eroded by price increases and fewer hours on his schedule
Of course everyone else will be paying more too.

Of course that's true if you enforce a minimum wage law and nothing else changes. The only thing you didn't mention was that profits and the compensation for upper management will continue to rise regardless. The key, of course, is only if nothing else about the economy changes.

 

[BPPLEE]

Of course that's true if you enforce a minimum wage law and nothing else changes. The only thing you didn't mention was that profits and the compensation for upper management will continue to rise regardless. The key, of course, is only if nothing else about the economy changes.

Exactly. They pass the cost on to the consumer

 

[iluvatar5150]

It won’t improve. Businesses will cut hours, eliminate jobs and raise prices. The guy who got a raise will see it eroded by price increases and fewer hours on his schedule
Of course everyone else will be paying more too.

And yet, we can see that real wages continue to grow (i.e. wage growth outpaces inflation), especially at the lower rungs as of late.

 

[RDKirk]

Ahh yes. IF only everyone just too responsibility for themselves.

The servers making 7.25 plus tips OBVIOUSLY can afford to sock away a useful amount of cash.

Right now, 78% of Americans are living paycheque to paycheque. What does that mean? Best case scenario is that they MAYBE could sock away 50$ (and that would be if they sacrifice the very few enjoyments they have in life) for when they are almost ready to die and VERY very likely won't enjoy. The mere creation of a "retirement account" does not then say you will be able to sock away enough cash.

The idea of "saving money for retirement" is ALMOST a uniquely "boomer" capacity. Almost nobody has the financial means to do so.

Most Boomers could not and did not either. We Boomers and the Silent Generation road an economic bubble created by World War II that enabled corporations (including unions) to provide pension programs. Relatively few people were able to directly invest enough into individual retirement accounts to depend solely on their own efforts for retirement.

 

[BPPLEE]

And yet, we can see that real wages continue to grow (i.e. wage growth outpaces inflation), especially at the lower rungs as of late.

I didn’t know the minimum wage had been raised

 

[BCP1928]

Exactly. They pass the cost on to the consumer

And of the costs they pass on, only a part is due to the wages of the lower and middle income part of the labor force.

 

[RDKirk]

I think that as long as they're working that type of job, they would be wise to keep their expenses down and not expect to have everything right away.

"Everything" in this case would be a family.

Let's not get tied up in specific occupations. The truth we see in statistics is that the vast majority of individuals today cannot make enough to support a family. I say "cannot" because all those golden "...just learn to do..." lucrative jobs are not realistic possibilities for the vast majority of people. That hasn't changed over thousands of years. The US started going into a pit in the 80s when I heard pundits saying "The US must evolve beyond a production economy." Those short-sighted fools were selling the country down the river even back then.

When we cut through the details, we see that across the country, it takes more than 60 hours of labor a week at whatever wage is "median" for a locality to support a family. That means one person working very hard or two people working....just to pay the expenses of the family.

 

[BCP1928]

I didn’t know the minimum wage had been raised

The Federal minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. Many states and localities have instituted higher rates since.

 

[RDKirk]

Ben Shapiro a few days ago has turned into a meme saying "I don't understand why people retire anyways"?

My personal opinion is that you are INCREDIBLY entitled in ways you wouldn't expect if you felt that "nobody" should retire. I don't mean that to sound as acerbic as it is, but it's true. There are dozens and a dozens of jobs done by human people that are so hard on the body, the idea of doing them for their entire life, should be an affront to anyone.

It also also been my VERY limited experience seen that anyone who argues that people shouldn't retire, invariably have fairly easy jobs.

I have had a relatively easy physical life, one career (with a pension) as military intel and a second career (also with a pension) in IT. Desk jobs all my life...I've literally had a computer terminal on my work desk since 1973 (and on my home desk as well since 1983).

Even then, I could detect by the end of my military career that I was aging. When I was in my twenties back in the 70s, I could work all day, literally "disco 'til dawn," grab a shower and a nap and do it all again. There were times we had to work 20/7 weeks...no more than four hours sleep until the situation was over, sometimes for weeks. And we had to be on the ball...we were supplying critical life-and-death information to combat operators. But by the end of my career, I had realized that I couldn't do that stuff anymore. Of course, by then I had been promoted to a level that I wouldn't have to...I was managing such people. But the military itself understood it was a game for the young, so "get promoted or get out" was strict policy, and it was a practical reality even in desk jobs.

Everyone's abilities decrease over time. Warren Buffet doesn't think as acutely as he did when he was 45...but his position and wealth shield him from having to be that kind of wolf anymore.

These are things, though, that I don't think younger people actually feel until they get old enough to realize it.

 

[RDKirk]

Then I stand by the notion that they can.

That takes 60 hours of work a week, which becomes very difficult to do well over the age of 65, regardless what the work is.

 

[RDKirk]

Yes, but it still is a choice the individual should make. In particular, there is no reason at all that "work" must be done as an employee. I'm a retired vocational trainer and training designer. I took my retirement as early as possible and now do work for free for non-profit orgs which would not be able to afford my rates. Consequently, since I've retired I have been able to spend months or years at a time on training projects in places like Samoa, Vanuatu, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without the backup of my Social Security. Alternatively I could have been a good citizen, hewing to the "work ethic" and continuing to be employed, but Pooh on that.

Yes, we're talking about earning living income, though...work that continues to make enough money so that a person doesn't have to depend on any kind of pension.

That hasn't been possible for thousands of years...that's why the apostle Paul speaks in scripture about churches having pension plans for widows over 60 years old. Yes, they are expected to continue being useful, but not to be able to do the kind of work that pays a living wage.

 

[BCP1928]

You think the CEO of Boeing is the same thing as the head of the local department store? You might as well think that with your comparison.

There is no comparison. The CEO of Boeing was just fired for incompetence. Do you want to compare his severance package to the severance package an incompetent local department store manager is likely to get?