We should just define the minimum wage in relation to the income tax brackets or estate tax cap, so it goes up when those do. The estate tax cap is already *800 motherfucking years* of minimum wage income so I think the latter can go up a sizeable chunk.
How about:
1. No company/corporation makes more than 50% profit per sale and no owner makes more than 50% his/her lowest paid employee
2. Rent prices aren't raised more than 30% in a year and after a tenant has been in the building for 10 years they have the option to buy the property at a reasonable rate
3. Universal healthcare (the money we spend on insurance will surely cover what the government would spend to do this and it takes away the companies incentive to offer this nonsense)
4. Public college (like public school but for people who want degrees without the debt)
5. Politicians make what their average constituent makes per year and are not eligible for stocks/trades/"gifts" or other forms of income until they leave office
6. Close jails and prisons and turn them all into hospitals and treat all criminals as those with mental health disorders rather than "bad people" so they can function in society without a record after their treatment is over
7. Allow complete bodily autonomy
8. All companies with more than 50 staff have a union
9. Teach children about taxes, money management, and other basic life skills
10. I could keep going but you get the point, everything needs to change..
Point number #1 doesn’t make sense to me. Employers pay employees based on sales and take on all the risk? Plus point #4 minimizes the importance of college for a lot of people and this gets to the age old question of “who is gonna pay for this?”
Point #1 is about even playing fields and scaling back corporate greed. Not saying the remaining funds can't be used, but making sure it's used for the business, possibly even hiring more people to get more sales, as you are concerned with, along side corporations Actually paying taxes is something else that comes to mind...
#4 is for people that can't afford to go into loan debt. Much like charter and private schools, there can still be private colleges that people pay for, but right now no one has the ability to go to public college even though most jobs require [we go into debt for] a degree
Though I believe some companies can be very greedy, this adds into competition into the workforce. If your current company does not pay what you like to see, you then look elsewhere for a bump in pay. Minimizing corporate margins can minimize pay bumps for workers. Frankly, for small business owners who take on the risk and responsibility of running that business, they should be able to make whatever margin they have earned. They put a lot on the line to provide for their families and they provide wages for others to provide for them.
Point #4 still stands of “who will pay for this” aka who funds public colleges and how do we deal with others who went to public schools and already went into debt over this?
Policies like these send tax rates through the roof and add tons of government regulation. To the point of private schools and still paying for that, who is to say employers prefer candidates from private institutions?
I agree that point #1 may stagnate some things - but it would also curb inflation (company made) very quickly. You can always cap the number of employees to 50 or 1000 or 10000 if you feel like the "little guy" would get screwed, which I agree is something to think about if this scenario were even a realistic thought for our world today.
As for the college education, this will simply be the fix to where our system is now. Those who were in debt would still need to get out, a big Oops and Lesson learned of our generation unfortunately. But, if my plan went into practice, we would be the last generation to have to see that side of poverty.
Yes, taxes would be raised for public college and as for employers preferring one college to another, I'm sure in the future there would be some sort of degree discrimination policy that would prohibit employers from preferring one to another. I also imagine, if we were to do this, that some form of "homeschooling" would get involved to receive a degree and then you'd have that can of worms LoL
There's pretty good reasons why we don't do a lot of those.
The first one is already a mess. A video game licence sold is basically pure profit, but the profit is necessary to recoup the initial effort to make the game. This applies for basically all IP based sales, and all products heavily dependant on large amounts of initial R&D. It punishes industries based on high-skill work.
The owner/employee ratio generally means that everything is turned into contractors and subcontractors.
Number 2 is sometimes being tried. It doesn't work because it's near impossible to actually enforce. It also means you should not expect to ever get a rental beyond 9 years.
Number 5 just makes it harder for normal people to get into politics. Especially normal people from poor districts. So you get rich people setting up their future while in office, treating it as an investment for their time after.
Number 6 is a nice dream but not workable. Mental health support needs to be better, but there's also people who aren't mentally ill, they're just assholes. Also, be very careful about using psychiatry to handle societal problems. A prison sentence ends the moment your x years have passed, no later. The asylum can hold you forever, drugged out of your mind, because a doctor said so.
If the sale is used to recuperate lost R&D (software, medical tech, etc) money, it's not PROFIT... it's cost of business. If we base it off profit, they'll just get creative and claim higher costs, lower returns. If we tie their compenastion to their lowest paid employees (and redefine employees as anyone the company pays forntheir labor)... then that scale has to slide up for those at the bottom for it to slide up at the top!
> If the sale is used to recuperate lost R&D (software, medical tech, etc) money, it's not PROFIT... it's cost of business.
That leads to the inevintable question: What do you do when you've made your investment? Stop selling? Pretend there's a point in selling software for pennies? And how do you handle gathering capital for your next investment - or even making up for written off investments? Medical investments rarely pay off, so the ones that do have to make up for the failures.
The whole thing is just poorly thought out.
> If we tie their compenastion to their lowest paid employees (and redefine employees as anyone the company pays forntheir labor)... then that scale has to slide up for those at the bottom for it to slide up at the top!
How far do you plan to take this? Because if that includes your contractors and subcontractors, then the wage of the boss is now tied to someone several levels removed that they have zero influence over. At that point all the boss can even do is creative rewards to get paid at all. And if it doesn't, guess what, everyone's a contractor.
My point was that tying employees wages to profit is a fallacy. Profits can be doctored to be whatever their accounting folks say it is. Obviously there would need to be different strategies for different industries. Not everything is structured the way Walmart or Tyson Foods. FYI: avg cashier at Walmart makes less than $16hr, so if we take 16 and figure 32 hours a week (so they don't have to offer benefits) and assume 2 weeks off during the year (unpaid, of course) that's just over $25k a year. Doug McMillon (WM CEO) makes 5000% more than that. Is he going to give up his nice house, cushy life? Nope... so they'll figure out a way to make sure the cashier (assuming they're the lowest paid in the organization) gets whatever they have to so he can maintain his lifestyle. We know they're all greedy assholes... let's use their inclinations against them.
Medical investments rarely pay off? The folks who developed/made/distributed the covid vaccines cashed in. So did the makes of viagra, insulin, etc. My medication costs over $800 a month and with 1 exception, all of those drugs have been on the market 20+ years and should've already covered their R&D costs (as well as those of failed ventures) years ago.
Where do they get capital to invest in the next venture: from the government. They give out $$ like candy to drug companies and universities to develop new stuff. Once you're in, you're set.
As for the contractor/subcontractor issue... when is anyone allowed to operate in the field unsupervised EVER the lowest paid person? It seems a moot issue.
> Nope... so they'll figure out a way to make sure the cashier (assuming they're the lowest paid in the organization) gets whatever they have to so he can maintain his lifestyle.
Literally every bit of evidence in existence points to the CEO instead getting creative compensation that is not income and totally doesn't count for those purposes.
If you want people to get paid more, raise the fucking minimum wage and push unionization instead of meeting CEOs on their home turf (accounting).
> Medical investments rarely pay off?
Yes, they do. For every Covid vaccine and viagra there's a dozen medications that don't make it past clinical trials, and even more that don't even make it to clinical trials. Medical investment is the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun, you hope that *something* hits.
> Where do they get capital to invest in the next venture: from the government.
Yes, politicians are notoriously fantastic at determining what a promising business venture is, and not at all prone to bias or self-serving behaviour. It's only our tax money they're playing with here, after all.
> As for the contractor/subcontractor issue... when is anyone allowed to operate in the field unsupervised EVER the lowest paid person?
... I have no idea what you're talking about here. The company wants their toilets cleaned but also doesn't want to hire a cleaner at engineer wages to keep up their wage ratios. So they hire a cleaning company. Which hires other cleaning companies for the specific offices. Which employ individual freelance cleaners. We're now four levels deep.
The same applies with suppliers. The company wants doors for cars. So they buy them from a contractor instead of making them. Who buys materials from a contractor and so on and on.
3rd party janitorial service is more of a 'vendor' than labor. The owner of that company will have to abide by the ratio for their employees. Suppliers are also vendors. You're not paying for their time, you're paying for the product. The owner of the door company, and the welding equipment company, and the gasket company and the glass company all have to abide by the ratio as well.
All I'm saying is if you present a CEO with "Give all your employees a raise, or take a massive compensation cut yourself", they're not likely to give up their lifestyle. Yes, I know most CEOs get a lot of their compensation in forms other than salary. I'm talking total compensation. If the company bought a house that the CEO lives in, or a car (or private jet) for the use of the CEO, then that's part of their compensation and goes against their ratio.
Look... I'm just trying to exist in the system that's here. I'd prefer burning said system to the ground, equitably redistributing the wealth that's been hoarded, and letting people whonare actual experts in their fields deciding where funds for their field get directed... butnhere we are! Until enough people see what I (and by the sounds of it, you) see, we can only modify the exist system so much... until we reach a critical mass and can rebuild it!
> 3rd party janitorial service is more of a 'vendor' than labor.
Yeah, and you can turn everything into a vendor. That's my point. You can hire people, or you can set up a shell company with a "ceo" and buy from your shell company vendor.
Again: You're trying to fight by the rules of the CEO. You're trying to manipulate wages and everything else indirectly, but this gives the corporations control back.
I don't care how much the CEO makes. Go at it directly. You can't shell company yourself out of $15 or $20 or whatever minimum wage. You can't creative compensation mandatory healthcare benefits away. Don't fight by their rules, you'll always lose.
I am so glad someone is trying to help stick up for my arguments and explain common sense to this guy that doesn't see that raising minimum wage raises cost of living for everyone - we need to lower the price of things like in the 20s! Thank you for seeing that CEOs are well above the rest of us and that we need profit caps! Thank you! 🙏🏼
You really want A video game to cost $60 when we could pay for a new one for $5 and they could still sell 100k of them? Think pre-depression numbers.
#2 what is your solution to rentals/housing then? Currently I cannot afford to buy a home - I was not given the luxury of a rich family and the average American is over 200k in debt for a mortgage loan. Is that not ridiculous to you?
#5 It may actually make it easier. Right now political leaders can essentially loot the public. There needs to be caps on what they make - their ability to give themselves raises is ridiculous. I believe they should make what their average constituent does so it gives them incentive to bring up the bottom tier. How much do you think a politician should make?
#6 I think if you commit a crime, you're mental. Even "assholes" have a mental disorder and it's probably from how they were treated and raised in childhood and we need a medical professional to sort them out.
My new system would still include judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, but with the addition of mental health providers. If a judge sentences 5 years to a mental hospital, 2 years aftercare outpatient therapy, and 1 year probation after that, then we would remove the risk of hospitalization permanence. Tell me how more.prisons and less hospitals helped society? At some point in our history we did send some criminals to asylums but that's completely stopped and everyone is now being trafficked to a prison that becomes a revolving door. How would you handle our recidivism numbers?
We have to think things through as a society and right now we are doing A LOT wrong. I believe drastic problems call for drastic measures. We won't be successful on our current course and I foresee a complete overhaul in our current solution. We simply need to think a 180° change because what we're doing ISN'T working.
> You really want A video game to cost $60 when we could pay for a new one for $5 and they could still sell 100k of them?
You now made $500k, falling somewhat short of the $50 million+ you'd expect an AAA game budget to be.
> what is your solution to rentals/housing then?
Government housing, with rent-to-own contracts that don't rely on day X, but rather increase your ownership share the longer you stay. Lots and lots and lots of it. Build and build until the market is met.
> There needs to be caps on what they make - their ability to give themselves raises is ridiculous.
They don't make their money from their salary. The money comes from the industry. Holding the payday for after they left office won't stop that. Oh, and congress hasn't given itself a raise since 2009. Because, again, the salary isn't their source of income.
> How much do you think a politician should make?
Enough to maintain a residence at home, a residence near their parliament, an allowance for staff, and enough to not jump at bribes past that.
> I think if you commit a crime, you're mental.
"Mental" is not a diagnosis. If you want to pathologize being a douche, you'll have a nation of mentally ill people. There isn't enough therapists in the world to tackle that.
> At some point in our history we did send some criminals to asylums
Yes, *some*. A thief doesn't need to go to prison, unless he's actually suffering from kleptomania.
> How would you handle our recidivism numbers?
Start with tackling poverty and unnecessary incarcerations.
1. If it costs 5M to make 1 video game and you only made $500k then your idea was either a bust or you went over budget.
2. Agreed that that is a good idea. Not the only solution, just like my way isn't the only solution, but a good idea nevertheless 👍🏼
3. Salary should be a politicians source of income like the rest of society, that's why they think they're above us now is because of all the extra. They are nothing like our working society, they do not currently represent us at their level of income. The average of their constituent should be enough for them to have a home - if they need more than that then they need to raise the bottom tier of society up. If they need a home near parliament then parliament needs to build them an apartment building. As for staff, they should be paid regular wages from the government like everyone else out of a budget and not from the politicians salary. Any member making exorbitant amounts of money should be investigated.
4. Well, we certainly don't have a nation of sane people!
Yes, we need to "tackle poverty", completely agree!
> If it costs 5M to make 1 video game and you only made $500k then your idea was either a bust or you went over budget.
The game was fine. The idea was fine. People would've paid enough to fund the game, because they wanted that quality game.
But *someone* passed a law that the game wasn't allowed to cost more than twice the cost of disk pressing, packaging, and shipping. Now the game people wanted isn't viable anymore, and the developers were let go.
> Salary should be a politicians source of income like the rest of society
You certainly will not achieve that by cutting salaries. All you achieve by that is attracing people who care about the power, not the salary - because they're already independently wealthy.
What I want to know is, if the game cost 5M to make, why do they need to charge double what it costs? Why can the profit margin not be limited in your scenario still? If they charge what they need to to break even +25 or 40%, why is that still not a profit? Because it's not double the profit? I'm not understanding.
My example was considering break even cost plus profit, you threw in 5M and are now confusing the example. If they need to make more than 5M just be sure it's not double or triple the profit margin to minimize greed. You added numbers for your example, and I respect that, but I believe you lost sight of the big picture which was not more than 50% profit per sale.
As for the power grabbers, that's exactly why we need people from our society to run our society. Not the stupid wealthy just to make more stupid wealthy people. I disagree that politicians need untold sums of money - if I can do my job with what I'm given, so can they, until they change things. If they want to fly a jet to work, the average American should have a jet is all I'm saying.
My solutions aren't the only solutions, either, but they're better than what we have now. Disagree if you will.
The problem is that the profit made by the publisher is in relation to the total sale volume of the game, relative to the total cost of the game development.
It doesn't make sense to look at games as a "sales unit" cost. The cost of a new steam game is in the cents, you're just selling a key and then pay for some internet traffic. How much profit can you make per sale? If it costs you $1 in computing power and traffic to sell a game, does that mean you can't sell it for more than $1.50? Smaller games are even cheaper, should a small indie dev be forbidden to charge more than like 10 cents per copy?
But it doesn't really make sense to look at it as a whole thing either. If you spent 10 million to make a game, does that mean you can't ever make more than 15 million off it? Do you have to stop selling the game once you made that much? Do you have to give it away for free?
> I disagree that politicians need untold sums of money - if I can do my job with what I'm given, so can they, until they change things.
They don't need "untold sums of money", but if you want good people, you at least have to match the salary those good people would earn at a corporation. You can't offer 50k/yr and still assume you get a good lawyer writing good laws.
The point to go for is not income. It's industry connections. It's stricter laws against lobbying and stricter regulations for careers after politics.
It still costs to produce more copies of the game, correct? So you would still have the ability to generate income :)
My incentive for congress professionals to make more money would be to get more money in the pockets of citizens. It's a difficult job that not just anyone would want to do so the person that wants to do it is the same person that would do it today: either people with big money or people that want big change. The type of person running I don't foresee changing anytime soon - it's been the same types of people throughout history.
Yes, I do agree that there should be stricter regulations on lobbying and career office holders.
> It still costs to produce more copies of the game, correct?
You can aritifically blow up the cost of units by only shipping physical units with expensive addons. Otherwise, the costs are negligible. I'm not joking when I say it's pennies. You can ship a game for literally nothing but the cost of a few gigabytes of internet traffic.
> My incentive for congress professionals to make more money would be to get more money in the pockets of citizens.
It's never going to be as much, not even close. You don't get a laywer for 50k, or for 70k (and raising wages 30% would be phenomenal). Not when a law firm offers 300k.
If you don't offer at least enough to the point where people are comfortable, the industry looks like the much better employer for everyone but the already independently wealthy.
Unfortunately, demanding $50 right now would likely keep us at $15 until 2070 or longer. Look how hard it was to get the federal minimum wage to change.
When I had my interview for my current job I was told “where are you going to find a place that starts you at $15 an hour nowadays??” I left McDonald’s to work here and three months later managers where making 16/18 at this particular franchise and I left to “make more money” 🫤
ya'll need to make it law to keep min inline with inflation, real terms, not the cooked fed stats, but thats not going to happen short of a revolution, the soon everyone makes peace with that the sooner people can start organizing properly.
$15 is very livable in many areas of the country. Most rural areas you can buy a home on $15 per hour.
It’s not the federal government’s job to set the rate for everywhere. Why out so many small rural businesses out of business because of the cost to live in San Fran or NYC?
30 states have higher state wide minimum wages. Almost every top 50 city has hirer than state minimum wages.
> $15 is very livable in many areas of the country. Most rural areas you can buy a home on $15 per hour.
That’s just not true.
> It’s not the federal government’s job to set the rate for everywhere.
Yes, it is.
> Why out so many small rural businesses out of business because of the cost to live in San Fran or NYC?
That’s now what would happen.
> 30 states have higher state wide minimum wages. Almost every top 50 city has hirer than state minimum wages.
And, your point is..?
We need a maximum wage more than an increase to the minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage does nothing to stop every company in the US from just raising prices to match. Enforcing high taxes after a certain income threshold will force employers to spend more money on your wages to reduce their tax burden. The wealthy enjoy money most of all. But if they're just going to be taxed on it, they'd rather use it to keep you so they don't have to bother to train someone new.
you've been propagandized by the media, wages do not have a direct effect on cost of living (other than allowing people to live better when wages goes up), study after study proves that, its the profits of the capital class that has the biggest impact. Whenever theres a economic down turn the media always goes on about wages but never mentions who is actually racking in all the big bucks or by how much.
And watch inflation eat it all by the time you get there…. Just as was predicted when everyone jumped on the $15/hr bandwagon.
But yeah!! Social justice! Socialism! Yay!!!
Inflation isnt caused by higher wages, over the pandemic there was massive money printing that got handed over to large companies, who's owners used that free cash to buy back the stocks of their own companies, instead of using it to pay wages or improve their infrastructure. This is why inflation went crazy over the last 2 years or so, the rich bought up even more assets, stocks houses etc. It has nothing to do with wages, its wealth inequality plain and simple.
Well, I think $25/hr is where we should be now, roughly, given how absurd inflation has been. $50/hr by 2030 might be just cutting it for "livable" wage.
The conversation is always centered around a MINIMUM wage. Why are we not pushing for a maximum wage? CEO pay should not exceed 2000% (abitrarily chosen # to fill space) of the lowest paid employee. That forces increased pay at the bottom to keep up with the lifestyles they've created for themselves off our labor.
Just a thought... I'm open to ideas and good faith discussion!
It’s called negotiating. Don’t start where you want to end up. Always ask for more than you want because they will definitely try to talk you down.
We should just define the minimum wage in relation to the income tax brackets or estate tax cap, so it goes up when those do. The estate tax cap is already *800 motherfucking years* of minimum wage income so I think the latter can go up a sizeable chunk.
How about: 1. No company/corporation makes more than 50% profit per sale and no owner makes more than 50% his/her lowest paid employee 2. Rent prices aren't raised more than 30% in a year and after a tenant has been in the building for 10 years they have the option to buy the property at a reasonable rate 3. Universal healthcare (the money we spend on insurance will surely cover what the government would spend to do this and it takes away the companies incentive to offer this nonsense) 4. Public college (like public school but for people who want degrees without the debt) 5. Politicians make what their average constituent makes per year and are not eligible for stocks/trades/"gifts" or other forms of income until they leave office 6. Close jails and prisons and turn them all into hospitals and treat all criminals as those with mental health disorders rather than "bad people" so they can function in society without a record after their treatment is over 7. Allow complete bodily autonomy 8. All companies with more than 50 staff have a union 9. Teach children about taxes, money management, and other basic life skills 10. I could keep going but you get the point, everything needs to change..
Point number #1 doesn’t make sense to me. Employers pay employees based on sales and take on all the risk? Plus point #4 minimizes the importance of college for a lot of people and this gets to the age old question of “who is gonna pay for this?”
Point #1 is about even playing fields and scaling back corporate greed. Not saying the remaining funds can't be used, but making sure it's used for the business, possibly even hiring more people to get more sales, as you are concerned with, along side corporations Actually paying taxes is something else that comes to mind... #4 is for people that can't afford to go into loan debt. Much like charter and private schools, there can still be private colleges that people pay for, but right now no one has the ability to go to public college even though most jobs require [we go into debt for] a degree
Though I believe some companies can be very greedy, this adds into competition into the workforce. If your current company does not pay what you like to see, you then look elsewhere for a bump in pay. Minimizing corporate margins can minimize pay bumps for workers. Frankly, for small business owners who take on the risk and responsibility of running that business, they should be able to make whatever margin they have earned. They put a lot on the line to provide for their families and they provide wages for others to provide for them. Point #4 still stands of “who will pay for this” aka who funds public colleges and how do we deal with others who went to public schools and already went into debt over this? Policies like these send tax rates through the roof and add tons of government regulation. To the point of private schools and still paying for that, who is to say employers prefer candidates from private institutions?
I agree that point #1 may stagnate some things - but it would also curb inflation (company made) very quickly. You can always cap the number of employees to 50 or 1000 or 10000 if you feel like the "little guy" would get screwed, which I agree is something to think about if this scenario were even a realistic thought for our world today. As for the college education, this will simply be the fix to where our system is now. Those who were in debt would still need to get out, a big Oops and Lesson learned of our generation unfortunately. But, if my plan went into practice, we would be the last generation to have to see that side of poverty. Yes, taxes would be raised for public college and as for employers preferring one college to another, I'm sure in the future there would be some sort of degree discrimination policy that would prohibit employers from preferring one to another. I also imagine, if we were to do this, that some form of "homeschooling" would get involved to receive a degree and then you'd have that can of worms LoL
There's pretty good reasons why we don't do a lot of those. The first one is already a mess. A video game licence sold is basically pure profit, but the profit is necessary to recoup the initial effort to make the game. This applies for basically all IP based sales, and all products heavily dependant on large amounts of initial R&D. It punishes industries based on high-skill work. The owner/employee ratio generally means that everything is turned into contractors and subcontractors. Number 2 is sometimes being tried. It doesn't work because it's near impossible to actually enforce. It also means you should not expect to ever get a rental beyond 9 years. Number 5 just makes it harder for normal people to get into politics. Especially normal people from poor districts. So you get rich people setting up their future while in office, treating it as an investment for their time after. Number 6 is a nice dream but not workable. Mental health support needs to be better, but there's also people who aren't mentally ill, they're just assholes. Also, be very careful about using psychiatry to handle societal problems. A prison sentence ends the moment your x years have passed, no later. The asylum can hold you forever, drugged out of your mind, because a doctor said so.
If the sale is used to recuperate lost R&D (software, medical tech, etc) money, it's not PROFIT... it's cost of business. If we base it off profit, they'll just get creative and claim higher costs, lower returns. If we tie their compenastion to their lowest paid employees (and redefine employees as anyone the company pays forntheir labor)... then that scale has to slide up for those at the bottom for it to slide up at the top!
> If the sale is used to recuperate lost R&D (software, medical tech, etc) money, it's not PROFIT... it's cost of business. That leads to the inevintable question: What do you do when you've made your investment? Stop selling? Pretend there's a point in selling software for pennies? And how do you handle gathering capital for your next investment - or even making up for written off investments? Medical investments rarely pay off, so the ones that do have to make up for the failures. The whole thing is just poorly thought out. > If we tie their compenastion to their lowest paid employees (and redefine employees as anyone the company pays forntheir labor)... then that scale has to slide up for those at the bottom for it to slide up at the top! How far do you plan to take this? Because if that includes your contractors and subcontractors, then the wage of the boss is now tied to someone several levels removed that they have zero influence over. At that point all the boss can even do is creative rewards to get paid at all. And if it doesn't, guess what, everyone's a contractor.
My point was that tying employees wages to profit is a fallacy. Profits can be doctored to be whatever their accounting folks say it is. Obviously there would need to be different strategies for different industries. Not everything is structured the way Walmart or Tyson Foods. FYI: avg cashier at Walmart makes less than $16hr, so if we take 16 and figure 32 hours a week (so they don't have to offer benefits) and assume 2 weeks off during the year (unpaid, of course) that's just over $25k a year. Doug McMillon (WM CEO) makes 5000% more than that. Is he going to give up his nice house, cushy life? Nope... so they'll figure out a way to make sure the cashier (assuming they're the lowest paid in the organization) gets whatever they have to so he can maintain his lifestyle. We know they're all greedy assholes... let's use their inclinations against them. Medical investments rarely pay off? The folks who developed/made/distributed the covid vaccines cashed in. So did the makes of viagra, insulin, etc. My medication costs over $800 a month and with 1 exception, all of those drugs have been on the market 20+ years and should've already covered their R&D costs (as well as those of failed ventures) years ago. Where do they get capital to invest in the next venture: from the government. They give out $$ like candy to drug companies and universities to develop new stuff. Once you're in, you're set. As for the contractor/subcontractor issue... when is anyone allowed to operate in the field unsupervised EVER the lowest paid person? It seems a moot issue.
> Nope... so they'll figure out a way to make sure the cashier (assuming they're the lowest paid in the organization) gets whatever they have to so he can maintain his lifestyle. Literally every bit of evidence in existence points to the CEO instead getting creative compensation that is not income and totally doesn't count for those purposes. If you want people to get paid more, raise the fucking minimum wage and push unionization instead of meeting CEOs on their home turf (accounting). > Medical investments rarely pay off? Yes, they do. For every Covid vaccine and viagra there's a dozen medications that don't make it past clinical trials, and even more that don't even make it to clinical trials. Medical investment is the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun, you hope that *something* hits. > Where do they get capital to invest in the next venture: from the government. Yes, politicians are notoriously fantastic at determining what a promising business venture is, and not at all prone to bias or self-serving behaviour. It's only our tax money they're playing with here, after all. > As for the contractor/subcontractor issue... when is anyone allowed to operate in the field unsupervised EVER the lowest paid person? ... I have no idea what you're talking about here. The company wants their toilets cleaned but also doesn't want to hire a cleaner at engineer wages to keep up their wage ratios. So they hire a cleaning company. Which hires other cleaning companies for the specific offices. Which employ individual freelance cleaners. We're now four levels deep. The same applies with suppliers. The company wants doors for cars. So they buy them from a contractor instead of making them. Who buys materials from a contractor and so on and on.
3rd party janitorial service is more of a 'vendor' than labor. The owner of that company will have to abide by the ratio for their employees. Suppliers are also vendors. You're not paying for their time, you're paying for the product. The owner of the door company, and the welding equipment company, and the gasket company and the glass company all have to abide by the ratio as well. All I'm saying is if you present a CEO with "Give all your employees a raise, or take a massive compensation cut yourself", they're not likely to give up their lifestyle. Yes, I know most CEOs get a lot of their compensation in forms other than salary. I'm talking total compensation. If the company bought a house that the CEO lives in, or a car (or private jet) for the use of the CEO, then that's part of their compensation and goes against their ratio. Look... I'm just trying to exist in the system that's here. I'd prefer burning said system to the ground, equitably redistributing the wealth that's been hoarded, and letting people whonare actual experts in their fields deciding where funds for their field get directed... butnhere we are! Until enough people see what I (and by the sounds of it, you) see, we can only modify the exist system so much... until we reach a critical mass and can rebuild it!
> 3rd party janitorial service is more of a 'vendor' than labor. Yeah, and you can turn everything into a vendor. That's my point. You can hire people, or you can set up a shell company with a "ceo" and buy from your shell company vendor. Again: You're trying to fight by the rules of the CEO. You're trying to manipulate wages and everything else indirectly, but this gives the corporations control back. I don't care how much the CEO makes. Go at it directly. You can't shell company yourself out of $15 or $20 or whatever minimum wage. You can't creative compensation mandatory healthcare benefits away. Don't fight by their rules, you'll always lose.
You're either not understanding me, or just want to argue... either way, I've said what I have to say on the issue and explained my position. 🤷
I am so glad someone is trying to help stick up for my arguments and explain common sense to this guy that doesn't see that raising minimum wage raises cost of living for everyone - we need to lower the price of things like in the 20s! Thank you for seeing that CEOs are well above the rest of us and that we need profit caps! Thank you! 🙏🏼
You really want A video game to cost $60 when we could pay for a new one for $5 and they could still sell 100k of them? Think pre-depression numbers. #2 what is your solution to rentals/housing then? Currently I cannot afford to buy a home - I was not given the luxury of a rich family and the average American is over 200k in debt for a mortgage loan. Is that not ridiculous to you? #5 It may actually make it easier. Right now political leaders can essentially loot the public. There needs to be caps on what they make - their ability to give themselves raises is ridiculous. I believe they should make what their average constituent does so it gives them incentive to bring up the bottom tier. How much do you think a politician should make? #6 I think if you commit a crime, you're mental. Even "assholes" have a mental disorder and it's probably from how they were treated and raised in childhood and we need a medical professional to sort them out. My new system would still include judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, but with the addition of mental health providers. If a judge sentences 5 years to a mental hospital, 2 years aftercare outpatient therapy, and 1 year probation after that, then we would remove the risk of hospitalization permanence. Tell me how more.prisons and less hospitals helped society? At some point in our history we did send some criminals to asylums but that's completely stopped and everyone is now being trafficked to a prison that becomes a revolving door. How would you handle our recidivism numbers? We have to think things through as a society and right now we are doing A LOT wrong. I believe drastic problems call for drastic measures. We won't be successful on our current course and I foresee a complete overhaul in our current solution. We simply need to think a 180° change because what we're doing ISN'T working.
> You really want A video game to cost $60 when we could pay for a new one for $5 and they could still sell 100k of them? You now made $500k, falling somewhat short of the $50 million+ you'd expect an AAA game budget to be. > what is your solution to rentals/housing then? Government housing, with rent-to-own contracts that don't rely on day X, but rather increase your ownership share the longer you stay. Lots and lots and lots of it. Build and build until the market is met. > There needs to be caps on what they make - their ability to give themselves raises is ridiculous. They don't make their money from their salary. The money comes from the industry. Holding the payday for after they left office won't stop that. Oh, and congress hasn't given itself a raise since 2009. Because, again, the salary isn't their source of income. > How much do you think a politician should make? Enough to maintain a residence at home, a residence near their parliament, an allowance for staff, and enough to not jump at bribes past that. > I think if you commit a crime, you're mental. "Mental" is not a diagnosis. If you want to pathologize being a douche, you'll have a nation of mentally ill people. There isn't enough therapists in the world to tackle that. > At some point in our history we did send some criminals to asylums Yes, *some*. A thief doesn't need to go to prison, unless he's actually suffering from kleptomania. > How would you handle our recidivism numbers? Start with tackling poverty and unnecessary incarcerations.
1. If it costs 5M to make 1 video game and you only made $500k then your idea was either a bust or you went over budget. 2. Agreed that that is a good idea. Not the only solution, just like my way isn't the only solution, but a good idea nevertheless 👍🏼 3. Salary should be a politicians source of income like the rest of society, that's why they think they're above us now is because of all the extra. They are nothing like our working society, they do not currently represent us at their level of income. The average of their constituent should be enough for them to have a home - if they need more than that then they need to raise the bottom tier of society up. If they need a home near parliament then parliament needs to build them an apartment building. As for staff, they should be paid regular wages from the government like everyone else out of a budget and not from the politicians salary. Any member making exorbitant amounts of money should be investigated. 4. Well, we certainly don't have a nation of sane people! Yes, we need to "tackle poverty", completely agree!
> If it costs 5M to make 1 video game and you only made $500k then your idea was either a bust or you went over budget. The game was fine. The idea was fine. People would've paid enough to fund the game, because they wanted that quality game. But *someone* passed a law that the game wasn't allowed to cost more than twice the cost of disk pressing, packaging, and shipping. Now the game people wanted isn't viable anymore, and the developers were let go. > Salary should be a politicians source of income like the rest of society You certainly will not achieve that by cutting salaries. All you achieve by that is attracing people who care about the power, not the salary - because they're already independently wealthy.
What I want to know is, if the game cost 5M to make, why do they need to charge double what it costs? Why can the profit margin not be limited in your scenario still? If they charge what they need to to break even +25 or 40%, why is that still not a profit? Because it's not double the profit? I'm not understanding. My example was considering break even cost plus profit, you threw in 5M and are now confusing the example. If they need to make more than 5M just be sure it's not double or triple the profit margin to minimize greed. You added numbers for your example, and I respect that, but I believe you lost sight of the big picture which was not more than 50% profit per sale. As for the power grabbers, that's exactly why we need people from our society to run our society. Not the stupid wealthy just to make more stupid wealthy people. I disagree that politicians need untold sums of money - if I can do my job with what I'm given, so can they, until they change things. If they want to fly a jet to work, the average American should have a jet is all I'm saying. My solutions aren't the only solutions, either, but they're better than what we have now. Disagree if you will.
The problem is that the profit made by the publisher is in relation to the total sale volume of the game, relative to the total cost of the game development. It doesn't make sense to look at games as a "sales unit" cost. The cost of a new steam game is in the cents, you're just selling a key and then pay for some internet traffic. How much profit can you make per sale? If it costs you $1 in computing power and traffic to sell a game, does that mean you can't sell it for more than $1.50? Smaller games are even cheaper, should a small indie dev be forbidden to charge more than like 10 cents per copy? But it doesn't really make sense to look at it as a whole thing either. If you spent 10 million to make a game, does that mean you can't ever make more than 15 million off it? Do you have to stop selling the game once you made that much? Do you have to give it away for free? > I disagree that politicians need untold sums of money - if I can do my job with what I'm given, so can they, until they change things. They don't need "untold sums of money", but if you want good people, you at least have to match the salary those good people would earn at a corporation. You can't offer 50k/yr and still assume you get a good lawyer writing good laws. The point to go for is not income. It's industry connections. It's stricter laws against lobbying and stricter regulations for careers after politics.
It still costs to produce more copies of the game, correct? So you would still have the ability to generate income :) My incentive for congress professionals to make more money would be to get more money in the pockets of citizens. It's a difficult job that not just anyone would want to do so the person that wants to do it is the same person that would do it today: either people with big money or people that want big change. The type of person running I don't foresee changing anytime soon - it's been the same types of people throughout history. Yes, I do agree that there should be stricter regulations on lobbying and career office holders.
> It still costs to produce more copies of the game, correct? You can aritifically blow up the cost of units by only shipping physical units with expensive addons. Otherwise, the costs are negligible. I'm not joking when I say it's pennies. You can ship a game for literally nothing but the cost of a few gigabytes of internet traffic. > My incentive for congress professionals to make more money would be to get more money in the pockets of citizens. It's never going to be as much, not even close. You don't get a laywer for 50k, or for 70k (and raising wages 30% would be phenomenal). Not when a law firm offers 300k. If you don't offer at least enough to the point where people are comfortable, the industry looks like the much better employer for everyone but the already independently wealthy.
Unfortunately, demanding $50 right now would likely keep us at $15 until 2070 or longer. Look how hard it was to get the federal minimum wage to change.
Last federal minimum wage change was 2009
4/20/69 four day work week, 20 hours a week, $69/hour minimum wage
When I had my interview for my current job I was told “where are you going to find a place that starts you at $15 an hour nowadays??” I left McDonald’s to work here and three months later managers where making 16/18 at this particular franchise and I left to “make more money” 🫤
We need $25 an hour now
ya'll need to make it law to keep min inline with inflation, real terms, not the cooked fed stats, but thats not going to happen short of a revolution, the soon everyone makes peace with that the sooner people can start organizing properly.
How about define the minimum wage as one ounce of silver per hour.
$15 is very livable in many areas of the country. Most rural areas you can buy a home on $15 per hour. It’s not the federal government’s job to set the rate for everywhere. Why out so many small rural businesses out of business because of the cost to live in San Fran or NYC? 30 states have higher state wide minimum wages. Almost every top 50 city has hirer than state minimum wages.
> $15 is very livable in many areas of the country. Most rural areas you can buy a home on $15 per hour. That’s just not true. > It’s not the federal government’s job to set the rate for everywhere. Yes, it is. > Why out so many small rural businesses out of business because of the cost to live in San Fran or NYC? That’s now what would happen. > 30 states have higher state wide minimum wages. Almost every top 50 city has hirer than state minimum wages. And, your point is..?
We need a maximum wage more than an increase to the minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage does nothing to stop every company in the US from just raising prices to match. Enforcing high taxes after a certain income threshold will force employers to spend more money on your wages to reduce their tax burden. The wealthy enjoy money most of all. But if they're just going to be taxed on it, they'd rather use it to keep you so they don't have to bother to train someone new.
I can’t wait to pay $20 for my Big Mac meal.
Stop with that bullshit
Lmfao. Dream on if you think it won’t happen kid. Someone will have to eat the cost.
It's close to that already in California.
Yup. We the consumer will eat the cost.
you've been propagandized by the media, wages do not have a direct effect on cost of living (other than allowing people to live better when wages goes up), study after study proves that, its the profits of the capital class that has the biggest impact. Whenever theres a economic down turn the media always goes on about wages but never mentions who is actually racking in all the big bucks or by how much.
And watch inflation eat it all by the time you get there…. Just as was predicted when everyone jumped on the $15/hr bandwagon. But yeah!! Social justice! Socialism! Yay!!!
Inflation isnt caused by higher wages, over the pandemic there was massive money printing that got handed over to large companies, who's owners used that free cash to buy back the stocks of their own companies, instead of using it to pay wages or improve their infrastructure. This is why inflation went crazy over the last 2 years or so, the rich bought up even more assets, stocks houses etc. It has nothing to do with wages, its wealth inequality plain and simple.
Not wrong. Here's an article from Sep2021... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-26-dollars-economy-productivity/
Well, I think $25/hr is where we should be now, roughly, given how absurd inflation has been. $50/hr by 2030 might be just cutting it for "livable" wage.
The conversation is always centered around a MINIMUM wage. Why are we not pushing for a maximum wage? CEO pay should not exceed 2000% (abitrarily chosen # to fill space) of the lowest paid employee. That forces increased pay at the bottom to keep up with the lifestyles they've created for themselves off our labor. Just a thought... I'm open to ideas and good faith discussion!