Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on July 15, 2013, 05:11:33 am
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Last night, in a respite from my weeks of ongoing sweat - literally - over the computer and rejigging the website, I turned for solace to the tv and caught the current episode of Top Gear which was largely filmed in Spain.
I knew there was a crisis locally on the islands - few local people eating out or having coffees on the pavements, not many new car registrations etc. but not until I actually saw the programme - ostensibly about cars - did I realise the scale of the madness and the size of the impossible debt that Spain faces.
From a deserted, huge airport near Seville to entire unsold and equally deserted towns en route to and also near Madrid, the scale of the development and consequent debt is staggering. One has to wonder where the money came from to do all this - presumably all the people were being paid as the work was progressing - so it must have existed in one way or another.
What a form of blind optimism from the developers and equally blind leap of faith from the banks. Where in hell did any of them think that the buyers were going to come from to take all the building off their hands? There aren't that many people alive!
Even if you care squat about cars, please try to catch this programme: Series 20, Episode 3. It'll blow your socks right off. The team thought it was dealing in humour, but it wasn't.
Rob C
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… did I realise the scale of the madness and the size of the impossible debt that Spain faces.
From a deserted, huge airport near Seville to entire unsold and equally deserted towns en route to and also near Madrid, the scale of the development and consequent debt is staggering. One has to wonder where the money came from to do all this - ...
Yes, that one surprised me as well.
They have shown those places and projects here in documentaries about the crisis, because apparently a specific dutch bank has invested quite heavily in many of those projects. It also includes a lot of EU subsidies by the way.
Indeed: what were they thinking. There are entire condo parks in places that rival Las Vegas in ecological constitution. That is: it would be desert if it wasn't for the continuous care and copious amounts of water that obviously has to come from elsewhere. Of course, now that none of the real estate is sold, and care is diminished to non-existence, you see how quickly nature takes over.
And what worries me more than anything is this: if you find that staggering for a country the size of Spain, then how in the world can we ever expect Greece to recuperate from the increasing amount of debt we incur on them?
I so hope that something is done with a new energy regime. I wish I remotely had the diplomatic skills to do something in that regard, because I would know exactly how to implement a vision for their future. Because that is ultimately the problem throughout the EU and probably elsewhere: lack of vision. Technocrats with finance backgrounds simply make lousy visionaries. And true visionaries is what the world needs right now.
It is one thing that actually is good about the Chinese political structure: at least it has a unified vision, something so desperately lacking in the grander scheme of a not-so-united EU.
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As I see it, government has bailed out the banks - partly, at least - so I suppose that means the government now owns much of this built-up wasteland. It seems to me that it would make sense to try to fill up these ghost towns with honest enough people who have lost their homes because their jobs vanished with the speculative dreams that created the mess in the first place.
I think that in the end, business is created through the concept of barter, in which case, where enough people live together, they end up requiring an exchange of services amongst one another. From that need springs private enterprise (in the non-global sense of enterprise) and in that manner there might be hope of these suggested new 'communities' finding their own employment salvation, as it were.
In any case, it's better than seeing the buildings rot away to valueless hulks destroyed by vandals and motoring-television crews! ;-)
Rob C
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Seems fair enough to me. What would also be a possibility is to forcefully move those bankers to live there and spend all of that cash that you apparently get for making horrible decisions, on their home maintenance and local leisure. That way at least the money would be spend back into the community on people that can and would like to do some actual honest work.
Another option would be to make the airport facilities available for street-races. You know, those youngsters that spend several thousands of euries on pimping their ride, and then hold street-races? Instead of fighting that behavior, allow them to do so under controlled circumstances by providing a saver environment with correct emergency facilities etc. That way they can also "learn" what's involved with racing. (And if you are able to spend that kind of cash on your car and understand the requirements of the facilities, a small contribution shouldn't present that much of a problem, no? Some sense of community-spirit included gratuitous. Unlike with a subsidised airport that no one requested in the first place).
And as for specific motor-television vand... uh crews: for people in the entertainment industry there is a best-before date, and it would be useful if people actually knew when that date has expired.
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So, I'm from Spain and I currently live in Spain and I can consider myself to be a lucky one since I still have a decent job (although the possibility I will have to leave to another country still exists)...
I remember perfectly the non-sense about construction madness in Spain, I'm one of the few that never consider getting my own house, the mortage rates were impossible. But also I was consider one of the alarmist ones, one of those who did not want to believe how "well" Spain was doing economically...
Spain has a culture of easy money, do something to get a lot of money quick, without thinking into the future. Lot of people from outside Spain were buying houses to spend the summer time under the sunny Spain (typically the East and South regions of Spain...). Councils were getting a lot of money selling public soil to construction companies, and they started to think all the years will get the same amount of money and they waste it in stupid things that make the cities/town look nice but it just created public debt. Construction companies were selling houses like potatoes, they were paying politicians and technicias to look other way, and they were getting a lot of easy money from the banks... the banks were giving mortages to people who could not pay them in their entire live... and people, seeing how easily they get money from the banks were like crazy buying houses and cars more expensive they could afford... there was also this stupid theory that prices of houses never went down, buying one or more houses were believe like a really good oportunity... now a lot of people have to sell their houses but they still have a debt with the banks (in Spain the law says you have to pay the bank the price of the house + rates... if you give the house to the bank, in case you can not pay the mortage, you still have the debt of the rates, and usually more, because now the price of selling your house is lower than the price you have to pay for it)..
And of course, we have a good collection (nearly all of them) of corrupt politicians (if you look now at the news you will see that people related to the actual party in power in Spain have accounts of more than 40 million euros in foreign banks.... and looks like the prime minister is implicated, but here, nobody resigns... also, another spanish tradition).
But the situation it is worse than that... the spiral down looks it is not stopping, young people are living the country looking for jobs outside, the problem it is the young people with quite good cv the one leaving, people that we have to pay their public education, those people are going to another country, paying taxes there, and Spain is not recovering the investment done in them (our politicians are saying this is a good thing... other countries want our young people because they are good workers... if I could just slap them in the face each time they say that... ). Innmigrants are also leaving Spain... looking for better oportinities in other countries... and Spain is left with a working class that gets lower and lower, with fewer people paying taxes and wit a bigger debt each day... I'm just waiting to see when they start saying they can not pay for basic things like an ER room... public schools... etc...
So, if you think I'm pointing a very apocaliptic scenario it is because I fear that we have not reach the bottom yet... meanwhile I'm still wondering why I did not cross yet the frontier to go north in Europe, at least to a country were the politicians, when they fail, they leave the positions and not blame other people of their own faults...
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a country were the politicians, when they fail, they leave the positions and not blame other people of their own faults...
Good luck finding one of those.
Jeremy
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Rob, this sort of thing is happening all over the world. Search "empty Chinese cities" for example.
My take on this is that these places are just part of a developing financial black hole that will take out national economies, most pension schemes and anything the world's big financial institutions can plunder before they too come apart.
Not a good time to be in debt or to have shares or to think you can go it alone. But a good time to move to a place where you have lots of connections, where you can contribute on a local level and know that people will take care of each other independently of governments. A good time to keep your sense of humour, and not be a rabbit in the headlamps.
The next ten years are going to be "interesting".
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To give it a photographic spin, check Brian Ulrich' haunting photographic essay (http://notifbutwhen.com/copia/dark-stores/#i1) on post-crisis deserted shopping centers in America.
For me, all I have to do is take a drive or walk through our relatively affluent suburb to see prime retail locations eerily empty for years, including those smack dab in the middle of our downtown. In other words, it is not just new construction that got abandoned.
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Not to worry. This is "creative destruction" at work. What emerges will be more efficient for everyone, you'll see, the free market will fix everything. In the long run, we'll all be dead anyway, right?
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Not to worry. This is "creative destruction" at work. What emerges will be more efficient for everyone, you'll see, the free market will fix everything. In the long run, we'll all be dead anyway, right?
But not, I hope, our kids and their kids.
No; I do think that it will come back to a working condition again - it simply has to, and that makes people bite bullets. They did it in Russia and in China, so since the rest of us have a wider experience of markets at work, I don't think we'll slip too far before we recover. With luck, there will be real controls on crazy speculation this time around. It ain't the system - it's the rustlers who also ran as sheriff: that shouldn't have been allowed to happen.
Rob C
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...It ain't the system - it's the rustlers who also ran as sheriff: that shouldn't have been allowed to happen.
Rob C
ah... the bad set-up
so no kidding there aren't enough cops in the world to shut down the evil doers we've all been told only exist as rogue
financiers
BofA has a 63% increase in profit as more and more bad loans, bad risks, bad deals, and bad people get the shaft as the godamn rich get richer,
yeah I know, rogue speculators, they did this,
damn poor people they did this,
friggin democrats it was them,
liberals, conservatives, hawks, doves,
shit!
ENOUGH
It is the unearned increment that drives you people,
but hey what do I know,,,...
apparently nothing
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but hey what do I know,,,...
apparently nothing
Apparently.
Jeremy
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Apparently.
Jeremy
Nope, Jeremy, nobody else who also loves and/or remembers this blaring out of the Bal Ami is all bad!
Reminds me of when I was still alive, in love and the world was wide, wide open and dreams were about to come true. Which, largely, they did.
http://youtu.be/BUSGKlGCIT4
Rob C
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Not to worry. This is "creative destruction" at work. What emerges will be more efficient for everyone, you'll see, the free market will fix everything. In the long run, we'll all be dead anyway, right?
Exactly, but, as Rob points out, it may take a long time. We have to get to a point once again where the majority understands that there's no free lunch. But Keynes's offhand comment: "In the long run we are all dead" doesn't help to get that point across.
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Exactly...
Russ, I suspect Robert simply forgot to put a sarcasm smiley at the end of his post.
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I'm sure you're right, Slobodan. But so what? It's true whether it's sarcasm or not. As sarcasm it misses the mark.
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Funny how when the creative destruction happened at GM, for instance, the union members lost some of their pensions and health benefits, but the generation of managers (at the top of the Maslow pyramid) who made all the bad strategic decisions never had to pay their bonuses back. Why is that? We're a little selective about what we destroy when we're being efficient.
The sanctimonious media display about the greedy unions was hilarious to watch. In a bad way. At every step of the way, members of that management team on the other side of the table, who were being well paid for their supposed long-term wisdom, signed off on all those union agreements. I don't remember reading many media reports about the incompetence of the GM management at the time. All I remember is the anti-union fog. At best, it's a skewed view. It's certainly an incomplete analysis, but makes for a cute sound bite.
I grew up in Montreal, you don't have to lecture me about corrupt unions, but I don't have much time for free market 101 level platitudes either.
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Funny how when the creative destruction happened at GM, for instance, the union members lost some of their pensions and health benefits, but the generation of managers (at the top of the Maslow pyramid) who made all the bad strategic decisions never had to pay their bonuses back. Why is that? We're a little selective about what we destroy when we're being efficient.
The sanctimonious media display about the greedy unions was hilarious to watch. In a bad way. At every step of the way, members of that management team on the other side of the table, who were being well paid for their supposed long-term wisdom, signed off on all those union agreements. I don't remember reading many media reports about the incompetence of the GM management at the time. All I remember is the anti-union fog. At best, it's a skewed view. It's certainly an incomplete analysis, but makes for a cute sound bite.
I grew up in Montreal, you don't have to lecture me about corrupt unions, but I don't have much time for free market 101 level platitudes either.
That's exactly why I wrote that it doesn't work when the sheriff's also the rustler.
The external financial watchdogs were apparently there, but busy eating from the plate of green goodies.
In Britain it has long been the custom that managerial failure at the top is rewarded with a golden handshake. I'm reliably (?) informed that much of the problem associated with the Spanish property bubble exists because the top structure of the banks was largely filled with contruction moguls who were not going to hold back mortgage approvals nor, for that matter, any lending to the construction industry...
I think this is slightly different to the sub-prime system in the States, where it seems to have been inspired by a merry-go-round of passing the buck between buying fancy instruments consisting of mathematical wet dreams, banks lending mortgages and insuring them, those deals being reinsured one against the other in the hope the music never stops and that the parcel will have become permanentlly lost during the dance anyway...
Simple works, and over complex causes disaster.
Rob C
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mathematical wet dreams
You're a poet.
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... a merry-go-round of passing the buck between buying fancy instruments consisting of mathematical wet dreams, banks lending mortgages and insuring them, those deals being reinsured one against the other in the hope the music never stops and that the parcel will have become permanentlly lost during the dance anyway...
Actually, Rob, your "wet dream" phrase is very close to reality. There was this guy who invented a sophisticated statistical risk model, used by banks to justify increasingly riskier and riskier derivatives, who hoped to get a Nobel Prize for it one day (his wet dream?). He lost his job instead (there must be some cosmic justice in it).
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There was this guy ...
Who?
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Who?
Are you genuinely interested or you just want to test my recollection or googling skills? ;)
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I wondered who you were talking about - I don't care that you don't have on the name on the tip of your tongue.
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David X. Li
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Li
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Thanks.
I think the take-away is -- "In hindsight, ignoring those warnings looks foolhardy. But at the time, it was easy. Banks dismissed them, partly because the managers empowered to apply the brakes didn't understand the arguments between various arms of the quant universe. Besides, they were making too much money to stop."
Presumably you've come across The Big Short (http://books.google.com/books?id=TNarLsnZyPoC) and Boomerang (http://books.google.com/books?id=x5Q308_4S3kC).
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Easy money is what caused the problem apparently in Spain and certainly here in America. In the recession of 2000-2001, the Fed lowered interest rates to 1% which drove the real estate market from 2000 to 2008 when the bubble busted.
So what are doing now for the new recession of 2008? The Fed lowered interest rates even more to effectively 0 percent and added printing more dollars to the tune of $45 billion a month for mortgages. So we are creating a new bubble in real estate (and the stock market) that will also go bust. Add to the deficit spending and debt this country is piling up, and we're mortgaging the rest of our economic future. We never learn.
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David X. Li
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Li
Thanks for that link Slobodan - fascinating.
Graeme
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... I do think that it will come back to a working condition again... I don't think we'll slip too far before we recover...
Perhaps, but not very likely in our lifetime.
Just came across the following excerpt from the University of Chicago Magazine (emphasis mine):
Middle-class positions disappeared during the recession and they’re not coming back even as the economy adds jobs. About half of the 7.5 million American jobs that disappeared in the 2008 recession were middle-class positions, earning $38,000 to $68,000 per year. But of the 3.5 million jobs picked up since the recession ended in 2009, only 2 percent pay middle-class wages. Instead, nearly 70 percent of the economy’s job growth has been happening in lower-wage industries.
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Care to venture a guess about why? Think the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might have something to do with it? My third son and his partner own a specialized business that includes a call center. They have more than 60 employees. If the PPACA begins to be enforced they're going to have to consider either laying off enough people to get below 50 employees, or convert their employees into part-timers and keep their weekly time below 30 hours. If you were faced with this situation, would you hire more people? Would you expand?
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Care to venture a guess about why? Think the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might have something to do with it?...
I am in the mood to dig out my old posts today. This one is from last November:
Russ, you sound so, how shall I put it, hmmm... let's just say: senatorial.
Roman Senate, to be more precise. Or, to be even more precise, like the Roman Senator known as Cato the Elder, a.k.a. Marcus Porcius Cato. He was known to insert, during his speeches in Senate, regardless of topic, his famous motto: "Carthage Must be Destroyed" (a city). No matter what he was talking about, he would find a way to insert those words.
Sounds you have the same issue with government, like Cato with Carthage. No matter what we talk about in these forums, global warming or global obesity, you somehow turn it anti-government ;)
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Care to venture a guess about why? Think the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might have something to do with it? My third son and his partner own a specialized business that includes a call center. They have more than 60 employees. If the PPACA begins to be enforced they're going to have to consider either laying off enough people to get below 50 employees, or convert their employees into part-timers and keep their weekly time below 30 hours. If you were faced with this situation, would you hire more people? Would you expand?
so those 60 people are making a middle class wages in that call center (before PPACA), huh :D ...
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Care to venture a guess about why? Think the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might have something to do with it? My third son and his partner own a specialized business that includes a call center. They have more than 60 employees. If the PPACA begins to be enforced they're going to have to consider either laying off enough people to get below 50 employees, or convert their employees into part-timers and keep their weekly time below 30 hours. If you were faced with this situation, would you hire more people? Would you expand?
Would I start thinking about giving my employees decent wages and benefits to start with?
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Would I start thinking about giving my employees decent wages and benefits to start with?
no, we shall cut federal pension/ret. benefits obligations, really.
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They all have decent wages. That's not the problem, and if you're familiar with the legislation you'll know wages aren't the problem.
Can't figure out how this kind of thing might affect the unemployment ratio? Think about it.
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I am in the mood to dig out my old posts today. This one is from last November:
Of course the government COULDN'T be a problem, could it, Slobodan? Check Detroit. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. When I joined the Air Force in 1951 it was a beautiful city. Government couldn't have had anything to do with its demise, now could it?
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http://www.cato.org/events/end-near-its-going-be-awesome-how-going-broke-will-leave-america-richer-happier-more-secure
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Of course the government COULDN'T be a problem, could it, Slobodan?...
Is that the same incompetent, corruptible, mistake-prone, wasteful, malevolent government that, when it comes to national security, is suddenly competent, non-corruptible, unmistakable, benevolent? ;)
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Is that the same incompetent, corruptible, mistake-prone, wasteful, malevolent government that, when it comes to national security, is suddenly competent, non-corruptible, unmistakable, benevolent? ;)
Some things are not all good, nor all bad. I certainly hope there are shades of grey in your BW photos, SLOBO! :D
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Is that the same incompetent, corruptible, mistake-prone, wasteful, malevolent government that, when it comes to national security, is suddenly competent, non-corruptible, unmistakable, benevolent? ;)
You're confusing the political cesspool with the national defense establishment, Slobodan. One problem we run into more and more often as time goes by is the problem posed by politicians without any military or national defense experience trying to make national defense decisions that are way outside their area of expertise. Fifty years ago the draft ensured that a majority of the people in our government understood first-hand what war is all about. Now they've been replaced by the sixties crowd.
When it comes to economics, our politicians have demonstrated again and again that they're incompetent, corruptible, mistake-prone, wasteful, and sometimes malevolent. But they've pretty much left defense to specialists. 9/11 resulted from one of the times when ignorant politicians intervened -- incompetently as we now realize.
There are flakes in every group of people, and the fact that Snowden even was hired demonstrates that not everybody in the NSA is competent. But on balance the military and our intelligence outfits are busting their butts to save yours, Slobodan.
Here's a thought: Most of the functions of the NSA necessarily are secret. But there's no reason why this kind of communications analysis needs to be secret. There's nothing illegal or threatening about having a computer track telephone connections, and there's no reason why this operation shouldn't have been set up somewhere outside the NSA. I'm sure every intelligence agency in the world was thoroughly aware that it existed and knew how it worked -- long before Snowden "revealed" it. Considering the easy availability of super computers I'd also be willing to bet that every even moderately advanced country out there has a similar program, and I'm sure they'd all be happy to tell our stupid "media" that they're "shocked. . . shocked" that ours exists.
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They all have decent wages. That's not the problem, and if you're familiar with the legislation you'll know wages aren't the problem.
Can't figure out how this kind of thing might affect the unemployment ratio? Think about it.
Well, the answer seems to depend on whose propaganda one is listening to, a common problem these days where ideology is valued more highly than truth. http://www.nbcnews.com/health/obamacare-wont-slash-workers-hours-report-finds-6C10732487#health/obamacare-wont-kill-jobs-slash-hours-report-finds-6C10732487
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Alan, my son's not the only one. I talk to plenty of local businesspeople. I was mayor of my city for six years and on the council for two years before that, and I know a lot of local people who are in business. A whole bunch of them are backing off because of Obamacare. I think the uncertainty is the main problem. Nobody has a clue what's going to happen next.
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... I think the uncertainty is the main problem. Nobody has a clue what's going to happen next.
"It's hard to make predictions - especially about the future."
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with the national defense establishment
military industrial complex, people who used to spend the money
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They all have decent wages.
in a call center :-)... so what do you call a decent wage ? I guess the decent wage is when one wage earner (spouse not working) can afford to send > 1 kid to 4 years state (not private) college w/o any loans/grants... that is a decent wage in a greatest country, isn't it ? so do they earn that much ?
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Some things are not all good, nor all bad. I certainly hope there are shades of grey in your BW photos, SLOBO! :D
Not sure what you point is (in relation to what you quoted)?
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military industrial complex, people who used to spend the money
Vlad, I'm sure you'd find Russia a lot more congenial than the U.S. You haven't deigned to tell us where you're located but it sounds as if you're right here in the U.S. Surely relocating to Russia would make you more comfortable. After all, in Russia everybody earns a decent wage, and the political establishment doesn't suffer from the same shortcomings Slobodan's listed: "incompetent, corruptible, mistake-prone, wasteful, malevolent." In Russia it's all sweetness and light, no?
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Vlad, I'm sure you'd find Russia a lot more congenial than the U.S.
nobody compares... we are talking about the greatest ever democracy here ;)
so you think it is OK for taxpayers to fund your medical, but it is not OK for your son go provide a rudimentary medical insurance for his employees ?
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If my son goes out of business those employees will be screwed. There aren't many jobs like that in this area. They won't have jobs, they won't have wages, and they won't have medical benefits. I guess that in your estimation it would be a lot better to be unemployed at a high wage than to be employed at a lower wage.
And you didn't answer my question. Isn't Russia a lot better than the U.S.? Aren't the wages higher? Aren't the medical benefits better? Of course they don't do nasty things like communications traffic analysis, or put people who spy on them in jail. Right?
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If my son goes out of business those employees will be screwed. There aren't many jobs like that in this area. They won't have jobs, they won't have wages, and they won't have medical benefits. I guess that in your estimation it would be a lot better to be unemployed at a high wage than to be employed at a lower wage.
And you didn't answer my question. Isn't Russia a lot better than the U.S.? Aren't the wages higher? Aren't the medical benefits better? Of course they don't do nasty things like communications traffic analysis, or put people who spy on them in jail. Right?
You should be a little careful about the wording. It almost sounds as if you think your son is doing those employees a favour, whereas they're actually generating his profit. Employees make money for companies, they don't cost money.
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You should be a little careful about the wording. It almost sounds as if you think your son is doing those employees a favour, whereas they're actually generating his profit. Employees make money for companies, they don't cost money.
Who had the vision and idea for the business? Who had the balls and took the risks to actually start a business? Who takes the legal and financial risk every day to stay in business? Now that there is a business that's providing jobs for workers (and hopefully a profit for the entrepreneur) it's just wrong to position either party as doing any "favours" for anyone. Good business is about partnership.
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Who had the vision and idea for the business? Who had the balls and took the risks to actually start a business? Who takes the legal and financial risk every day to stay in business? Now that there is a business that's providing jobs for workers (and hopefully a profit for the entrepreneur) it's just wrong to position either party as doing any "favours" for anyone. Good business is about partnership.
Yes, of course. And that's why the owner/principal/partner receives greater rewards than his employees. That's as it should be, I never implied otherwise. I just meant to emphasize that employees are assets, not liabilities (mostly), it's easy to forget that.
As an aside, we should take care to not only view the world through the lens of a owner/entrepreneur who starts/runs a successful hands-on business. That's probably the model for self-employed photographers, so there may be a bias towards that view of the world in this forum. I don't think it's entirely correct to project that model onto how large corporations work. It's not the same thing.
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Yes, of course. And that's why the owner/principal/partner receives greater rewards than his employees. That's as it should be, I never implied otherwise. I just meant to emphasize that employees are assets, not liabilities (mostly), it's easy to forget that.
+1. 8)
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Glad that's cleared up, Mezzo. And by the way, there are plenty of situations, especially at the moment, where the employer who took all the risks doesn't receive greater rewards than his employees. Of course that can't go on for long or the business fails and nobody receives any rewards. At the moment large corporations in general are doing fine; it's small business that's in trouble, and it's small business that hires most of the employees. It's small business that makes the U.S. strong, and with Obamacare coming on, that strength is slipping.
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it's small business that hires most of the employees
For some definition of "small business" ;-)
"The majority of all business establishments in the United States are nonemployers (http://www.census.gov/econ/nonemployer/), yet these firms average less than 4 percent of all sales and receipts nationally."
"The Census Bureau does not define small or large business, but provides statistics that allow users to define business categories (http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html) in any of several ways"
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And you didn't answer my question. Isn't Russia a lot better than the U.S.?
what that has to do w/ your son paying low wages and not providing any health insurance for his employees ? did I use Russia as an example anywhere here ? I understand that it is better to talk about bad Russia and not about you good son ;D ... but let us stay on the original question.
Aren't the wages higher?
no, neither is cost of living or cost of private medical insurance... but it is a poorer country and naturally people make less... did I say otherwise anywhere ? what I said is that I expect the greatest country to be better, way better for humans... but I guess you and your son do no consider those employees as such ::)
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where the employer who took all the risks
I do not think you son setup his operation to expose his personal wealth to any liabilities, it is a corporation or LLC at least...
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When I was running our IT consultancy, we provided all our employees with medical coverage, and not only that, we covered 100% of the premium, something even most corporations do not do. Yes, we were forced to close the business, but not because of high wages, or health premiums, but because of no new projects (thank you, the Great Recession). If you can't provide a decent compensation to your employees (and yes, that includes decent benefits, including medical) you are in the wrong business.
Everybody and his mother would be a successful entrepreneur if they could treat their workers as slaves, herd them into company dormitories, wake them up at midnight with a whistle, give them a cup of tea and a biscuit and ask them to work next 14 hours on it, in unsafe factories, exposed to unsafe material. When that is not enough, hire their children, they are even cheaper. And along the way remind them that "low wage is better than no wage." While your company amasses historic, record-breaking profits and cash reserves.
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... but it is a poorer country and naturally people make less...
Any idea why that's true, Vlad? At the end of WW II, Russia was devastated but so was Western Europe, especially Germany. Care to check out the difference now and speculate on the causes?
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I do not think you son setup his operation to expose his personal wealth to any liabilities, it is a corporation or LLC at least...
Vlad, all that statement does is make it clear you don't understand what it takes to set up a small corporation in the U.S. Financing requires personal, individual collateral.
Oh, and by the way, Slobodan, did I say they don't provide medical coverage? You assumed that. The difference and the crunch is the kind and cost of medical care demanded by Obamacare. Once you have a job again, Slobodan, under Obomacare you'll have coverage for pregnancy and also for abortion.
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Any idea why that's true, Vlad? At the end of WW II, Russia was devastated but so was Western Europe, especially Germany. Care to check out the difference now and speculate on the causes?
Hmmm... let me see... huge infusion of capital (Marshall Plan) in order to make it a display of the West advantage and "in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism" (per Wikipedia)?
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Oh, and by the way, Slobodan, did I say they don't provide medical coverage? You assumed that. The difference and the crunch is the kind and cost of medical care demanded by Obamacare. Once you have a job again, Slobodan, under Obomacare you'll have coverage for pregnancy and also for abortion.
In the six years before the Great recession, thus before Obamacare, we (our company) have experienced annual cost of health plans going up on average 10-20 % per year, resulting in doubling of our initial cost. None of which caused us to reconsider paying it, or to close our shop.
Not sure I understand your reference to pregnancy and abortion!?
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No kidding, Slobodan. You actually believe that?
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No kidding, Slobodan. You actually believe that?
I assume that refers to the Marshall Plan? In which case, I forgot to add: and to create demand for American products and businesses.
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Bye. Can't swallow any more of that.
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Any idea why that's true, Vlad? At the end of WW II, Russia was devastated but so was Western Europe, especially Germany.
Germany = yes, as for the rest of Western Europe - do not kid yourself, you want to compare the level of destruction or population loss in % or absolute numbers in France or in Holland (Western Europe) vs for example Belarus (Eastern Europe) ? you really need to update yourself about the facts... and why that is true ? apparently because medical insurance was provided by the gov't no less ;D ...
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Everybody and his mother would be a successful entrepreneur if they could treat their workers as slaves, herd them into company dormitories, wake them up at midnight with a whistle, give them a cup of tea and a biscuit and ask them to work next 14 hours on it, in unsafe factories, exposed to unsafe material. When that is not enough, hire their children, they are even cheaper. And along the way remind them that "low wage is better than no wage." While your company amasses historic, record-breaking profits and cash reserves.
sounds like mainland China in many aspects
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sounds like mainland China in many aspects
Sounds like the history of all developed nations and the reality of all currently developing nations.
If one wishes to be ruthlessly honest about the matter, all civilizations in the past have been based upon slavery, including our own. Without the economic advantages of cheap labour, those great civilizations of ancient China, Greece and Rome could not have existed.
Likewise, without the cheap labour that China has provided during the past few decades, corporations in the developed West would not have rushed over to China to relocate their operations and manufacturing there.
Personally, I'm very disappointed that there has not been more extensive development of robots. When I was at high school over 50 years ago, I confidently predicted that in 50 years time or less, all menial, repetitive and boring tasks would be done by robots, so that most of us could devote our time to more creative tasks, such as photography, or painting, or scientific research, or helping the under-privileged, or designing ever-more sophisticated robots.
How wrong I was. Instead, it seems we're still relying upon cheap human labour in sweat shops to produce many if not most of our goods. One can't even get a decent robot vacuum cleaner.
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How wrong I was. Instead, it seems we're still relying upon cheap human labour in sweat shops to produce many if not most of our goods. One can't even get a decent robot vacuum cleaner.
Why do you want these laborers to starve? Don't they have a right to eat too from their work as you and I do?
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Personally, I'm very disappointed that there has not been more extensive development of robots. When I was at high school over 50 years ago, I confidently predicted that in 50 years time or less, all menial, repetitive and boring tasks would be done by robots, so that most of us could devote our time to more creative tasks, such as photography, or painting, or scientific research, or helping the under-privileged, or designing ever-more sophisticated robots.
Burger robot could revolutionize fast food industry (http://au.businessinsider.com/burger-robot-could-revolutionize-fast-food-industry-2012-11)
Robots are starting to take over fast food jobs (http://www.infowars.com/robots-are-starting-to-take-over-fast-food-jobs/)
... but what will those people now do for a crust?
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sounds like mainland China in many aspects
I was actually referring to Apple in China.
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Why do you want these laborers to starve? Don't they have a right to eat too from their work as you and I do?
Nobody starves in a civilized country, unless he wants to. Taking care of the underprivileged and the disadvantaged is the hallmark of a civilized country. The greater productivity that results from the use of sophisticated robots can ensure that everybody is better off, including the unemployed and the unemployable.
It's far more sensible to pay an unskilled labourer to attend a school to learn something, to learn anything, than to pay him to do boring work that can be done far more efficiently by a robot.
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Ray, pass whatever you are smoking, please! ;)
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Slobodan,
My great clarity of insight results from a complete abstinence from smoking. ;)
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Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.
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Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.
That should read "enough wealth", not "greater wealth" imo, because that is the core of the entire problem. Current economic models being particularly aimed at growth.
We need to find some kind of equilibrium between the number of people that earth will sustain and the amount of wealth required. Finding that equilibrium is an evolutionary process currently, which unfortunately means there will be times of abundance, times of scarcity, times of growth, and times of devastation as evolution does its thing.
If we somehow want to move beyond evolution, we need to define what "enough" wealth means, which obviously is vastly different for everyone. And that requires everyone to have some remote sense of what it means to be alive, what's important in their life, or more succinctly: what's the meaning of life?
Since the current western economic model doesn't seem to answer (or even want to answer) that question and leaves it to the greed-is-good, survival-of-the-fittest paradigm, we will have to accept that evolution is taking its course for a little while longer...
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Do robots receive a wage? No wages means less money being spent. Less money being spent means less goods being bought. Less goods being bought means less workers creating the robots etc etc. What is need is more workers being employed and creating greater wealth.
You're arguing against the industrial and computer revolutions. The fact is that "robots" and more efficient ways to be more productive provide more goods for more people at less cost. That benefits society overall by raising everyone's standard of living creating greater wealth for more people than ever before.
If you look at Chinese photos of decades ago you'll see hundreds of laborers constructing a single road. Now they use road pavers and heavy mechanized machines producing more and better road for more people at less cost. Yet China is richer today then it was then. The IT department in the construction management company I work for with a total of around 950 people has almost 90 technology empoloyees. Those jobs would not exist without computers and the tech revolution.
The bottom line is that more productivity creates greater wealth not more people working. Jobs will follow. Before the current recession we were out about 4% unemployment. How could that have been since automation and other technology was at it's max at that point? There are reasons we have less employment today. But it doesn't have to do with technology, robots, and systems that increase productivity.
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This thread has turned into a nonsense.
Egalitarian dreams built upon relatively limited supplies of personal, hands-on running of anything.
1. People are not born equally talented.
2. Pupìls in the same school, attending the same class will achieve vastly different degrees of success, despite sitting before the same teacher. Some kids are there to learn where others to disrupt and appear cooler than thou to their equally ignorant mates. The variations can and often do exist amongst kids from the same parents. I know this, from experience. It is not based on opportunity; it is based upon individual personality.
3. Employment. People find jobs because someone else needs them to perform a function for which they are, hopefully, trained. There is huge confusion in some circles about that relationship, some thinking that the employee is the person of principal value within that context. Yes, he or she can be, depending on rôle, but more often than not can be replaced whereas the entrepreneur cannot.
4. Some are born into riches and develop them further; others simply squander and often the third generation closes the business down or loses control to outside money.
5. Supply and demand is always the factor that governs the success of something, and when that product’s time is up – heavy engineering in the UK, for example, time is up, however hard it is for those once flourishing within it. It hits huge companies and even nationalised industries every bit as much as minnows such as myself. When it creased to make sense for me to plough money into stock photography, that’s the same logic that tells a government to stop backing redundant industries. That in my case it’s a part of one family that takes the hit makes it no less real a hit; that miners and shipyard workers and their families get hit is unfortunate, but they deserve no more sympathy than do I and mine. Whether it’s one or a group, the pain is the same.
6. This thread was never intended to create bitter splits in Lula, and perhaps it hasn’t: it may have just given opportunity for the usual suspects to unwind their bloodied, crimson banners another time. Either way, I’m afraid I see no further value here on this theme.
Rob C