Reply to Thread New Thread |
![]() |
#23 |
|
They asked JC Penny once, "What is more important, customers, employees or shareholders?" He said, take care of the first two, and the third is automatic. We have to make a conscious decision, what is more important, the long term health of the company, or a quick return for the shareholder? Helping Americans keep jobs or making more for the shareholders by moving overseas? Eventually, as is happening now, to many Americans can no longer afford to buy our own products, let alone China's. So, to me, the question is, if you are really an American company, why are you hurting Americans by moving overseas? Perhaps this in an insular view, but I'm an American, and I'm tired if individual greed ruining this nation.
|
![]() |
![]() |
#24 |
|
They asked JC Penny once, "What is more important, customers, employees or shareholders?" He said, take care of the first two, and the third is automatic. We have to make a conscious decision, what is more important, the long term health of the company, or a quick return for the shareholder? Helping Americans keep jobs or making more for the shareholders by moving overseas? Eventually, as is happening now, to many Americans can no longer afford to buy our own products, let alone China's. So, to me, the question is, if you are really an American company, why are you hurting Americans by moving overseas? Perhaps this in an insular view, but I'm an American, and I'm tired if individual greed ruining this nation. Sadly, too many American companies don't think of themselves as American companies. They think of themselves as just a business in the world market. |
![]() |
![]() |
#25 |
|
Anyway, be that as it may -- respect and liking for women, although I will certainly own it, isn't the reason I'm a socialist. And the problem isn't that our system rewards those who start businesses and exercise initiative. It's that it doesn't reward or empower those who do the work to make their visions a reality. What's more, it doesn't even reward those who start businesses or exercise initiative. It rewards those who have money. Everyone else has to struggle, including entrepreneurs, most of whom fail. Granted, aligning with women is much like aligning with underdogs, the operative word being "under", as in underlings in the money system heirarchy against which socialists rail. That women have yet to rise to power not only accounts for why their likely more preferred method of economic management is not in vogue, but may illustrate that women, by nature, prefer not to rise to power. I am no champion of capitalism .. but neither do I champion socialism, communism or any other form of money system management. I recognize that it is only fair that men and women live together and find a way to carve out a good economic relationship that works for both. Historically, capitalism as a money management tool, has not done well for women. Though men have all the power, hopefully some at least have enough heart to find a better way to progress with women more as equals, if that's truly possible. I believe it is important for men and women not to lose who they are in that process. Thus the challenge remains: find an economic system that works for both without taking the male out of men or the female out of women. |
![]() |
![]() |
#26 |
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
#27 |
|
Dragontalk
Actually, Marcus, it doesn't make much difference whether the CEO is paid in salary or in stock options. He's still being overpaid, while the workers are being underpaid, harming not only the workers themselves but the entire economy, and the difference you're talking about is an unimportant one. If the other workers are being underpaid, why don't the leave and get jobs that pay them what they are supposedly worth? Hell, for much of the period we are discussing, there was a very tight labor market, and skilled labor was in incredibly high demand. Just because one group is "overpaid" does not in any way, shapre, or form mean anyone else is being underpaid. If someone is being overpaid, then it is the shareholders who are not getting their due, not some other worker. And yes, it does make a HUGE difference what form the compensation takes. If someone is paid strictly in guaranteed salaray, their incentives vis-a-vis short-term profit and stock price manipulation is very different from those whose compensation is directly tied to those things. Incentives matter. Dragontalk As for the compensation properly belonging to the shareholders rather than the workers, that's the essential flaw at the heart of the capitalist system: that ownership of wealth goes to the owners of capital, not to those who do the work to produce it. It's a form of theft, essentially: a way to steal from a person the fruits of his labor. What you say is legally true. Morally, however, it's a travesty. It's the workers who produce all of the wealth going to anyone, CEO, shareholders, or themselves, and if the law doesn't entitle them to that wealth, which I agree it does not, then the law as it stands is the problem. WHy is it a travesty? Investors are the ones more often than not actually taking a RISK. Does the average workers pay week to week depend on the company's performance? If a business loses money is it morally repugnant to you that the workers still get paid, while investors lose out? If capital is utterly unimportant, then why don't all those workers just go start up their own business that they own? Suppose there is a very succesful restaurant, with an empty lot across the street. The owner makes HUGE profits. Why don't the workers all just walk across the street to the empty lot and compete? Because businesses rely on investment and capital LONG before they need workers. Furthermore it is just stupid to suggest that the employeer/employee relationship is "stealing". Both enter into the relationship freely. If ANYTHING in our society is the moral equivalent of theft, it is the income tax (or any tax) to the extent it extracts from someone what they have earned (which according to you is less than what they are entitled to to begin with) and have it given away to someone else who did not earn it. |
![]() |
![]() |
#28 |
|
If the other workers are being underpaid, why don't the leave and get jobs that pay them what they are supposedly worth? WHy is it a travesty? For two reasons. One, as I said, the workers are the ones actually producing the wealth. And two, because the economy depends on having the wealth be widely shared; otherwise, consumer demand slumps and we get an underperforming economy such as we've had for the past thirty years. For working people to receive a decent share of the wealth that THEY produce is fair. For MANY people to receive a decent share of the wealth that we all produce is necessary. And for both those reasons and by both those measures, wages in this country are too low. If capital is utterly unimportant I did not say that. If you wish to slay straw men, that's your privilege, and it's mine to ignore it, which I will. Furthermore it is just stupid to suggest that the employeer/employee relationship is "stealing". Both enter into the relationship freely. "Work for me, work for my competitors, or starve" is not a free choice. |
![]() |
![]() |
#29 |
|
Jobs are created by investors & entrepreneurs taking risks.
If the risks fail, investors & entrepreneurs lose the most money by volume. But investors & entrepreneurs rarely risk everything, so by percentage they are not risking so much. Employees, on the other hand, gain 100% by getting a job and they lose 100% by losing a job. As long as everything that happens here is based on money holdings, who holds the money, I don't see how this could go any differently. Investors & entrepreneurs expect the same or a little profitably greater percentage in return for their investment. Employees just want to keep earning a paycheck. The two live in different worlds. Until we find another way to create jobs, a way that allows both to live in the same world and the jobs still get created and kept, I don't see how this could be any different. |
![]() |
![]() |
#30 |
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
#31 |
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
#33 |
|
Didn't the republicans take control of the house at the beginning of the year? |
![]() |
![]() |
#34 |
|
Seems like unemployment is pretty bad. Seems like cutting up to a million jobs like the Repubs want to do with their budget is a bad idea . Does a high deficit prevent people from putting food on their table (assuming they even have a table)? No. Deficits can wait, jobs cannot. When will the Dems hit the Repubs hard on this?
|
![]() |
![]() |
#35 |
|
Seems like unemployment is pretty bad. Seems like cutting up to a million jobs like the Repubs want to do with their budget is a bad idea . Does a high deficit prevent people from putting food on their table (assuming they even have a table)? No. Deficits can wait, jobs cannot. When will the Dems hit the Repubs hard on this? Although I think he tried that by hiring over 200,000 but heck he needs to step up and get on with hiring and expand government by a million or more people. Heck with that deficit stuff. |
![]() |
![]() |
#36 |
|
To hear some people talk, the Republicans don't care about creating jobs. I think that's understating the case. I think they do care, and that creating jobs is the last thing they want to do.
Partly that's in service to the corporate interests that pull their strings, partly it's for political reasons. Regarding the first, high unemployment means a buyer's labor market, which employers like. Regarding the second, anything that makes Obama look bad is, in their view, good. |
![]() |
![]() |
#37 |
|
Wait on minute, I don't believe that chart, Obama told us unemployment would not go above 8% if we hurried and approved his trillion dollar stimulus bill. So that chart is dead wrong. A reporter asked Carney why unemployment is at 9% and not 7%, the percentage projected if the stimulus worked. Carney dismissed the question. "We've said repeatedly that we don't want to relitigate the battles of the past," Carney told the reporter. RealClearPolitics - Video - WH's Jay Carney: Stimulus "Goals Have Been Met" Obama never really thought the stimulus package would work. The "shovel ready jobs" were fictional. He even told that to some reporters. "There's no such thing as shovel-ready projects," B. Hussein Obama told the NY Times. Obama: "No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Projects" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News |
![]() |
![]() |
#38 |
|
|
![]() |
![]() |
#39 |
|
To hear some people talk, the Republicans don't care about creating jobs. I think that's understating the case. I think they do care, and that creating jobs is the last thing they want to do. Nice try on your spin but reality is the Dem's could care less about jobs, take the gulf that Obama has shut down, his stimulus was not about jobs it was about payback. So try as you might Dem's have never cared about jobs. They only care about entitlements. |
![]() |
![]() |
#40 |
|
That's just nonsense. |
![]() |
Reply to Thread New Thread |
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
|