[Politics] The Heritage Foundation

[Severian]

Here's the thing, dog. I'm ultra-nationalistic, which means that any policy that I support must help my countrymen. If ends up harming them, then it gets thrown into the wastebasket. When I see manufacturing plants close up shop to move down to Mexico and a poverty-perpetuating service economy slowly emerging from the death throes of the greatest country that God or man has ever seen, I see a problem.

Free trade with fully-developed countries is good. Free trade with underdeveloped countries that allows the ultra-wealthy to exploit cheap labor at the expense of paying a living wage to my hard-working countrymen is bad policy and morally unconscionable.

And that's why I called you callous. Manufacturing jobs staying in America are more valuable to you than the hundreds of millions of people who would starve to death without international trade.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Here's the thing, dog. I'm ultra-nationalistic, which means that any policy that I support must help my countrymen. If ends up harming them, then it gets thrown into the wastebasket. When I see manufacturing plants close up shop to move down to Mexico and a poverty-perpetuating service economy slowly emerging from the death throes of the greatest country that God or man has ever seen, I see a problem.

Free trade with fully-developed countries is good. Free trade with underdeveloped countries that allows the ultra-wealthy to exploit cheap labor at the expense of paying a living wage to my hard-working countrymen is bad policy and morally unconscionable.

And that's why I called you callous. Manufacturing jobs staying in America are more valuable to you than the hundreds of millions of people who would starve to death without international trade.

Adopting protectionist policies is not the same as banning international trade.

[Severian]

Adopting protectionist policies is not the same as banning international trade.

When someone says their international relations policy is "prime directive" what else am I supposed to think?

[Username17]

Because it usually pays poorly and is difficult to unionize. McDonald's, Walmart, Buger King, Jimmy John's--guess what would happen if workers at a store decided to unionize? They're all fired or the business is closed without a significant loss to the company.

Before anyone accuses of him of making stuff up, a Wal-Mart in Quebec went union. Wal-Mart literally chained the doors shut and abandoned the property.

Also, I've mentioned how Coors (Now Miller-Coors) shut down the Golden, CO plant and expanded the Elkton, VA plant because Golden went Union and Elkton voted it down. (At which point they fired nearly all the full-time workers at Elkton and replaced them with temps.)

But Coors is a manufacturing industry, not a service industry. You just showed that corporations being big while unions were small was bad for the working individual, not that the service sector was primed for exploitation.

The unions are weak because Ronald Reagan used federal powers to break the unions, not because manufacturing is awesome.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Fair enough.

Would Wal-Mart be considered part of the service industry then? Because they totally did chain up a store in Quebec because they went union rather than work with a union.

[ckafrica]

Because it usually pays poorly and is difficult to unionize. McDonald's, Walmart, Buger King, Jimmy John's--guess what would happen if workers at a store decided to unionize? They're all fired or the business is closed without a significant loss to the company.

I believe it was Michael Pollan (though I'm not sure) I heard suggesting that Henry Ford used to pay his workers well so they could afford to buy his cars whil Walmart and co. pay their workers shit so they can only afford to buy their shit.

[Daiba]

I don't understand. How are unions supposed to exist without protection in the form of "government coercion"?

[sabs]

They're not. Unions have their leaders assassinated. They have the picket lines broken up by thugs who put people in the hospital and morgue.

People are so quick to go "Unions are the root of all Evil" That they forget WHY Unions were formed in the first place. They forget how much WORSE things were in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

They forget that Corporations are like a virus. They do no self-regulate, they grab as much as quickly as they can and screw the rest of the world. There is a reason that in France, the director of a Nuclear Plant is required to live within the 3 mile radius of the plant he manages. It's so that he's insentivized to make sure safety is priority one. Because if it's not and there's a meltdown, he and his family are fucking dead. Because time and time and time again Corporations have proven that if the cost of compensating people for death or sickness is lower than the cost of cleaning up/acting in a safe manner, they will kill people to save a few bucks. Relying on the cost of litigation to keep them out of court.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Because it usually pays poorly and is difficult to unionize. McDonald's, Walmart, Buger King, Jimmy John's--guess what would happen if workers at a store decided to unionize? They're all fired or the business is closed without a significant loss to the company.

I believe it was Michael Pollan (though I'm not sure) I heard suggesting that Henry Ford used to pay his workers well so they could afford to buy his cars whil Walmart and co. pay their workers shit so they can only afford to buy their shit.

Henry Ford TRIED to pay his workers enough to afford his cars. He got sued by his shareholders because the pay raises would lower profits. The shareholders won.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Unpolished brainstorming idea: What would be the effects of making stock buying illegal? Because it seems from my perspective that a lot of really bad shit happens because some rich asshole decides he's not getting enough money despite not working for it, and it screws over the people working.

I can't shake the fact that all the hard work I've put in is only to make some asshole in a mansion even richer while I am barely getting by, and it infuriates me.

[RobbyPants]

Unpolished brainstorming idea: What would be the effects of making stock buying illegal? Because it seems from my perspective that a lot of really bad shit happens because some rich asshole decides he's not getting enough money despite not working for it, and it screws over the people working.

I can't shake the fact that all the hard work I've put in is only to make some asshole in a mansion even richer while I am barely getting by, and it infuriates me.

Well, could you still indirectly buy stock, like through mutual funds? If not, then it really screws over the middle-class person trying to save for retirement.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Then I guess in practice that would be bad. At least, so I'm told; I only care about the wealth of the middle class in a theoretical fashion. (Don't ever see myself becoming that immensely wealthy, and the worst coworkers to have are former middle class people that are now broke and want to act like working at a box store is beneath them.)

But I do know a couple of decent middle class people, and I would be upset if something bad happened specifically to them.

[tzor]

Unpolished brainstorming idea: What would be the effects of making stock buying illegal?

The death of capitalism? Currently the only way to "raise" capital is to sell stock. If no one can buy it, you can't really sell it.

[Psychic Robot]

Manufacturing jobs staying in America are more valuable to you than the hundreds of millions of people who would starve to death without international trade.

Yes. They can grow their own crops.

The unions are weak because Ronald Reagan used federal powers to break the unions, not because manufacturing is awesome.

Is there anything in particular that he did besides firing the air traffic controllers? While I have nothing but contempt for Reagan, their strike was illegal at the time.

[Juton]

Unpolished brainstorming idea: What would be the effects of making stock buying illegal?

The death of capitalism? Currently the only way to "raise" capital is to sell stock. If no one can buy it, you can't really sell it.

While my opinions of the stock market wax and wane, what really needs to be stopped is derivatives trading. Supposedly their is something like 700 trillion dollars worth of derivatives out there, several times more than all the real capital in the world combined. Which would be fine if wall street wasn't trying to trick people that all their fake money was worth real money, any time some trades real capital for a derivative a fraud takes place. Eventually all those derivatives will come to account, the results will not be good.

[tzor]

While my opinions of the stock market wax and wane, what really needs to be stopped is derivatives trading.

"Derivatives" is a broad term; getting rid of them all might be a bad idea; getting rid of some might be a good idea. In the Euqity market (oh crap, now I'm talking work talk in TGD) there are several types of derivatives: (Note some of these I'm going to default to Wiki's somewhat plain english which is even just as confusing.)

• Options: The ability to buy/sell a stock at a set price that can be exercised within a certain time frame.
• Warrants: The right to buy the stock at a certain price which is normally lower than the price of the stock at the time of issue.
• Convertable bond: A bond that can be converted into shares of stock. That's a nasty one from my point of view; like "crossing the streams" since bonds are "fixed icome" and not "equity."
• Stock market index futures: "futures contracts used to replicate the performance of an underlying stock market index." I think that's a fancy name for legal gambling.
• Equity basket derivatives: "futures, options or swaps where the underlying is a non-index basket of shares. They have similar characteristics to equity index derivatives." Sounds nasty; let's get rid of them.
• Single-stock futures: that is a future on a single stock, as opposed to the whole market.
• Equity index swaps: "an agreement between two parties to swap two sets of cash flows on predetermined dates for an agreed number of years."
• Equity swap: " like an equity index swap, is an agreement between two parties to swap two sets of cash flows."

The first two are really bread and butter derivatives. Options are generally cheap and if you bet the market and loose you loose only the price of the option. (I paid X to buy Y at Z ... if I can buy Y at a lower price I "loose" only the cost of X.) Warrants are still great ways to pay a CEO.

I mean without those two, my database would be so much smaller and my life would be so much easier ... probably too easy ... so I'd prefer headaches and employment to no headaches and redundancy.

[sabs]

What about Microtrading? using super computers to buy stock at X and sell it at X+0.01 by the millions of shares in the space of a second.

Is that cool? Or is that a skimming scheme.

[RobbyPants]

Isn't there usually some fee associated with buying and selling, or is that just if you go through a broker?

[Username17]

Fair enough.

Would Wal-Mart be considered part of the service industry then? Because they totally did chain up a store in Quebec because they went union rather than work with a union.

Wal-Mart lives in a weird world in economics. Retail sells goods, but also customer service, which is of course a service. Wal-Mart has some jobs that are basically service (those creepy greeters, for example), but the main thrust of the business is clearly selling physical goods rather than services.

But the category of work isn't super important. After all, whatever you decide to classify Wal-Mart as, Costco presumably gets the same classification, right? And they have unionized locations and give health insurance to 85% of their workforce and pay decent money and all that shit. Wal-Mart provides shitty working conditions because Wal-Mart is evil, not because of anything special about the industry they are in.

Wal-Mart is allowed to take a dump on its workers and crush unions and all that shit because the government protects their leaders from being dragged to the guillotine by an angry crowd, but does not protect the workers from being exploited. This asymmetry, where Wal-Mart is allowed to withhold wealth from the poor while they starve if they don't do what Wal-Mart demands while the starving poor are not allowed to take boxes of Cheerios until Wal-Mart meets their demands means that the government is basically using the threat of violence to give Wal-Mart an unfair negotiating position.

But that doesn't happen because of the service/production divide, it happens because the government has a disproportionate interest in letting rich people get away with shit, and a lot of rich people are douche bags. Especially when they realize that the government is going to enforce them getting their way even if they act like douche bags.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

The Costco near my place pays $15/hour and isn't unionized. Nice to see some companies doing what's right.

[Psychic Robot]

So what about that minimum-wage earner that Kennedy and his allies want to elevate above poverty?

A family of four with an annual household income of $11,000 (equivalent to what a full-time minimum-wage job yields) could qualify for $33,000 in supplemental welfare benefits. Kennedy's plan would, assuming no loss of employment, boost that family's yearly paycheck to $15,000. But, due to the way benefits phase out as incomes rise, that family's benefit package would decline by $7,000. Thus, total annual income-earned income plus welfare benefits-would actually fall by $3,000. Surely, reducing welfare assistance to half a million working poor families isn't what the senator from Massachusetts had in mind.

Classic example of intellectual dishonesty from them. "Raising the minimum wage would let a family earn more but reduce their benefits! We can't do that; it would hurt the poor!" Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation argues to cut minimum wage and social services.

[Maj]

Costco also models the idea that giving something away for free translates into more sales of that something.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The Costco near my place pays $15/hour and isn't unionized. Nice to see some companies doing what's right.

Huh. I need to see if the local costco is hiring then. I can't identify which store I work in because I'd be fired, but I could do very well with $15 an hour.

EDIT: Don't care about unions. There is one union retail store in the area, and they pay less than the non-union stores. I also remember taking lots of verbal abuse because I wasn't union, which I think is very non-cool.

[Juton]

Maybe I should have said 'synthetic derivatives', as someone who doesn't have money in the market the distinction is blurry to me.

What about Microtrading? using super computers to buy stock at X and sell it at X+0.01 by the millions of shares in the space of a second.

Is that cool? Or is that a skimming scheme.

The best solution of heard of is a 1% Wall Street sales taxes, sometimes called a Tobin tax I think. If a brokerage house wants to buy then sell the same stock a hundred times a second then let them, as long as the government gets it cut. I think huge sections of the political machine (both wings) would have a shit fit if something like this was suggested seriously, which makes me inclined to like it.

[Sashi]

Unpolished brainstorming idea: What would be the effects of making stock buying illegal? Because it seems from my perspective that a lot of really bad shit happens because some rich asshole decides he's not getting enough money despite not working for it, and it screws over the people working.

That's pure commie talk you're speaking there.

Currently we're in a "worst of capitalism" way, but communism doesn't help much, either.

I think the answer is to keep open-traded companies, but make it so some minimum percentage of the company must be employee-owned. That way employees actually have a vote on decisions like "Should we screw the employees to the wall so investors get an extra buck?".