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It's so weird that Americans cling to feudal landlord mentality like a lifeline, and also call it "freedom".
And by landlord mentality I'm not just talking about conservative thinking. It also drives the idea that it's perfectly fine to learn skills by watching what other people do and then basing new work on it - but when software does that, it's "stealing". Righteous outrage! Not fair! That's mine! Just another form of landlordism, but it's the good kind! (as usual)
People always cry "communism bad" when anyone suggests anything having to do with any type of reform. Communism is shit and all but there's only one thing worse than communism: feudalism. You have to be subservient on someone more successful than you because all the prices and job wages are fixed in order to force this on as many people as possible. This can be in the form of joining the armed forces just for the guaranteed housing and healthcare, continuing to go to college and racking up endless debt just because it allows you to survive for a little longer, or living on your maga cousin's farm so you can do farm work in exchange for being allowed to live there for a price you can afford. It's literal feudalism.
Fuck all the idiots that have been brainwashed into fighting to "conserve" how awful and broken everything is. I have skills. I have a college education. I haven't ever been employed in anything besides fast food or retail. Corporations are too busy running the entire economy into the ground because it makes the stock go up to care about saving the economy or human rights.
If I could start over I would've spent all the money I spent on college instead buying a plot of land to legally be "homeless" on and maybe bought an rv. Unlike owning a home or living in apartment, it may be possible to keep costs of living low enough this way to be sustainable. Seems to be the last method of living they haven't colluded and price fixed to the point where no matter what, the costs of living are higher than jobs that are possible to actually get and keep, for now at least. Just wait until the "right" of land ownership is tied to proof of religion, neurotypical status or a thc drug test, I'm sure no one will even bother to fight back.
For an honest answer, it's because the green circle is too abstract. The others are numbers everyone sees on their paycheck.
If you work for a publicly traded company and wish to become radicalized, you can divide the year's profits (plus money wasted on stock buybacks) by the number of employees to roughly estimate your personal green circle.
You might even add the CEO's compensation to the numerator. I hear LLMs are ready for prime time.
Profits? Or do you mean income. It would probably be smaller otherwise
I mean profit = revenue - expenses. I cheekily suggested unsubtracting some expenses, e.g. excessive CEO pay, before computing profit per employee.
I assume you're also not including existing salaries in expenses then.
It was more of a "think about it" kind of comment than an algorithm. Glad you're thinking about it.
I wonder if that's intentional...
Its not. How would a workers actual real productivity be in terms of market value?
If I designed the graphics for some part of your website, how much did my graphic impact the profits of the company? How would you go about figuring out how the HR department brings in sales? Add up all the costs of lawsuits you imagine might have happened without them?
Between 1995 and 2021, on average, US companies spent 78 percent of their net income on paying shareholders https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-strategy-and-corporate-finance-blog/share-repurchases-still-dont-prop-up-value
noice 👏
Who says we arent mad about both, but we are more complicit with the green bit, thats what makes our cars, phones, and all the things "they" need us to have to be efficient workers.
Literally no one who doesn't already agree with this is ever going to even try to understand it
The same reason people running the company are trying to squish the yellow circle as much as possible.
But building a good community through the funding of public services via taxation is a moral/ethical good.
Striving to reduce labor costs to enrich yourself, especially to the detriment of that labor and to an excessive degree of wealth for yourself, is a moral/ethical evil.
Taxation, when run by and for the people who generate it, is a good thing that people should strive to support. It's a misunderstanding to not view taxation in a well working system (examining individual systems, not the whole in some binary fashion) as a cost efficiency for things you already want - childcare, education, healthcare, public transportation (busses, trams/railcars, trains, bicycle infrastructure), insurance, energy, food, research, protection, charity, infrastructure, etc.
This is where the argument always gets muddy. The whole point of government and taxes is that we all chip in to pay for things that benefit everyone, and the government administers it. In the US, especially now, this system has become so perverted that the job of the government has become funneling all that money to the richest people while convincing the general population that what's happening is to their benefit.
And I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of bytes wasted in this thread will absolutely change this right?
Which I understand and agree with. But to come to LateStageCapitalism and claim people who want to minimize taxes have the same motives as the people who want to minimize worker wages is I think too reductive for my taste.
I think the working man shoots himself in the foot when they push to minimize taxing. I think people need to hold taxation and public services in high esteem and it needs to be a pride for people. I think at the same time we have to be honest and outraged by how our tax dollars are spent (in the US at least.
The US being corrupt doesn't change the principle, it just changes how we address this specific instance. But the people who shake their fist at union dues are doing LateStageCapitalisms' work for the oligarchs, just the same as taxes. We should be pushing for more taxes on the wealthy, tax billionaires out of existence and cap millionaires at something reasonable and safe for democracy like let's say 5 million in assets.
Taxes can be a formidable tool against corporations and for the people.
100% agree. I blame entitled billionaires kids for just about all our problems and would love to see a 100% estate tax on any amount over say 10 million.
I'm Australian, living in Australia, but spent 10 years living in the US and have an American wife, and I'm constantly shocked by how little Americans accept for their taxes.
Here, I pay 2.5% of my income so that everyone can get health care when they need it. Not only am I fine with that, but I'd happily pay twice that if they throw in dental as well. But we also give billions in tax breaks to foreign mining companies to come and dig up our minerals and ship them overseas so that my kids and I get nothing from them.
I'm not anti tax, I'm more than happy to pay for healthcare, education, food, housing and more so that everyone has a decent standard of living. But I despise putting a single dollar in the pocket of anyone who is already independently wealthy.
Because basically nobody you know can even do their own taxes or read above an 8th grade level? Fucking nobody you ask has an answer to a best estimate of their "total economic value". Anyone who CAN give that estimate is outside the target audience of this post.
Should people be paid more? For sure yes. Do you think the target audience of this post can even accurately tell you the value of both gross income and AGI? Lol no.
When I actually looked at what was sucking up a third off my paycheck taxes was actually a fairly small portion. Most of it was paying united Healthcare to make me switch psychiatrists which I had to do twice because the first one (who I had to try first) was a telepsychiatrist who could immediately tell that I can't be managed that way. Whoever is going to claim responsibility for this clusterfuck needs to see me in person at least once a year plus a few times more I look particularly shitty. I could have told them that without having to risk somebody who doesn't know me getting me committed... twice in under a month!
Honest question: say it gets divided, who will decide on the right margin the company run with?
Democracy.
Makes sense, justlike shareholders vote on stuff today
That's oligarchy. Those who own things have power while those who do not have none. Democracy is where every person has equal power. I'd like a system where every employee gets a vote, no matter their status, from the forklift driver to the president of the board of directors. Employees have an incentive for their company to work well long-term because it is their livelyhood.
Shares could still be distributed by tenure rather than position
That just sounds like yet another unequal way to divide power, so it's still an oligarchy. Here's a radical idea: why not give everyone who is affected by an entity equal control over it? Why does anyone need more control than everyone else? How could you possibly keep that from being abused to benefit the people in power more than everyone else? This is just capitalism with a little extra shell-game on the side to try to make the inequality seem more just despite being just as unequal.
Who is the company?
We can pick Cooler Master for example