- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
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Well no wonder they need to pee so often 🙄
goes around handing everyone empty water bottles
aww. poor jeff. All he wanted was another megayacht, but those greedy warehouse workers demanded too much
He had to settle for a regular yacht like a peasant
poor jeff :(
only ten bathrooms in the yacht :(
Let’s be honest, he’s still got a mega yacht it’s just slightly smaller.
Not even, he has the world’s largest sailing yacht and fifth most expensive yacht in the world. He didn’t settle for anything. He could own a hundred of them if he wanted. He passed absurd levels of wealth a loooong time ago.
The image is actually true. Except for how it represents one person (Jeff Bezos) as one person, and it represents all workers as one person. Each one of those many workers receives an absolute sliver of the “water.” The drips going to Bezos in the image are massive using an appropriate comparison.
No it’s not, if you look at the actual numbers workers get close to nothing even if you count all of them as one person in todays mega cooperations
Amazon is a ridiculously frugal organization. Unfortunately, that permeates absolutely everything they do, including pay.
I have a friend that started working at Amazon recently and he said it is actually some of the best working conditions that he has experienced. He came from working in keitches so anything is better than that.
I have actually heard conflicting accounts on what it is like, so I think it honestly depends on who the warehouse manager is. Of course that could change it any moment so it’s probably still best to avoid the company.
I agree for only because their pay is so low and they only allow part time. I try not to support Amazon as much as possible.
All.
All those fatcat warehouse workers, earning 15 dollars an hour, not being able to afford housing and food.
The owner of a public company isn’t taking home all the excess profit as cash, the big net worth numbers come from the value of the stock going up.
Anyone with a 401k (or whatever) that’s invested in an index fund containing Amazon (or whatever else) also benefits from this rise. These are normal workers.
Bezos gets more upside, because he owns more stock… since he started the company and had it when it was worth nothing. He took all the risk in the beginning. Why would anyone take that risk if there was no upside? Also, I’d the stock goes down, Bezos can lose billions in a single day, while the workers still get their paycheck and don’t have to care. The workers aren’t assuming any financial risk, the owners are. It’s all risk vs reward.
More bootlicking takes like this over in Threads!
It’s not bootlicking, it’s just how things work. If you’re going to criticize something you can at least understand how it works.
No, you’re a boot licker. The inequality gap between top executives and worker income/salary is very well documented.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Increasing the value of an asset vs being paid a salary. Those are two very different things. And nothing it stopping someone working for a paycheck from trying to start a company. They are free to do so, but most (including myself) aren’t willing to take the risk and put that much skin in the game.
The employing company’s owner indirectly legally appropriates the positive and negative results of it, which the employees are jointly de facto responsible for. This is a violation of the moral principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match.
The claim that the employer has a right to these fruits of the employees’ labor based on the risk they take on is tautological. Assuming the risk means appropriating the negative fruits.
Worker coops can give non-voting shares to investors
Except fewer people of the younger generation are able to buy into a 401k. People with a 401k don’t really represent workers. And workers are at risk because they can be fired when stock goes down or doesn’t go up as hoped. Workers can lose their entire job while Bezos loses what is effectively a few numbers to someone of that wealth. Obviously the big CEOs aren’t taking home profits as cash, because then it would be easier to tax.
Assuming the company you work for offers a 401k, buying into it is a choice, nothing more. If the company doesn’t offer a 401k, a person can get a Roth IRA, that is also simply a choice. Information around it, and accessibility to it, has never been more available than it is today. The barrier to entry is lower than at any point in human history. If some chooses not to do it, that’s on them, not on Bezos or anyone else.
Losing a job sucks, but it’s not like they lose any of the money they were paid when working there. Once they get paid, that money is theirs.
The biggest assumption made here is that people’s financial literacy is 100% a choice and that it’s solely their responsibility. If they make poor financial decisions, sorry, get good. Ignoring the fact that some people will always struggle with comprehending concepts in the best of circumstances, our mandatory education doesn’t tell people how to even budget their salary, let alone how to save for retirement. Is it any wonder that many people of retirement age don’t have any savings?
While the financial knowledge might exist for people that know to look for it, they need to know to look for it. If their parents and family lack this knowledge and can’t pass it on to their kids, how are they supposed to learn the importance of it? This is a ripe system for perpetuating inequality of financial wisdom, allowing inequality to build generationally. By not distributing the basic knowledge required to not live in near or actual poverty in one’s old age, our country ensures that we are farther from the meritocracy you seem to think exists.
When it comes to losing a job, you view things in an absolute sense and not a relative sense. Ergo, what does a financial loss mean for one’s material conditions? Most people spend most of their salary on living, so most of that salary is not in fact something they have a choice in how to spend. If they lose a job, they might have a pittance that they were able to save and is still theirs, but if they have trouble finding a good job, they might have to give up even some of that. This is a big deal and people risk losing their homes, their health, and access to basic necessities.
If a big time CEO sees their stock price drop, even if it drops off the map, they might lose sleep, or get sad, but they probably aren’t going to lose access to housing. They will still be able to go to their doctors. They won’t fucking starve. They have so much wealth they could lose 99% of it and still be very well off. If they somehow end up in the place the average American ends up when they lose their job, idk, maybe they can get good?
some people will always struggle with comprehending concepts in the best of circumstances
I do think some changes could be made to help provide some common sense defaults to save people from themselves. Making something like a 401k opt-out instead of opt-in would be a good start. When someone starts a job, give them 2 weeks to setup their stuff, if they don’t, just enroll them in a target date fund and call it a day. Of course, people need to understand this up front so they can make sure to live within their means. At some point there has to be some personal responsibility there, as the government can’t provide a person accountant for every citizen.
While the financial knowledge might exist for people that know to look for it, they need to know to look for it. If their parents and family lack this knowledge and can’t pass it on to their kids, how are they supposed to learn the importance of it?
Wouldn’t knowing to look for it being common sense? Like, “why am I always broke with no savings… maybe I should look into how to better manage my money so I don’t feel this way.” It’s like that with anything, people who are willing to put in the effort get the reward. My house is dirty, I don’t put a lot of effort into learning how to take really good care of it. Someone who does put effort/action into that has a house that is better maintained and is able to enjoy that. That’s my fault and something I need to work on.
By not distributing the basic knowledge required to not live in near or actual poverty in one’s old age, our country ensures that we are farther from the meritocracy you seem to think exists.
This is what I’m saying though… the information is and access is more available than it has even been in human history. Could/should it be taught in schools, yeah, probably… and it’s happening. Dave Ramsey has his stuff in 45% of high schools to teach budgeting, investing, and staying out of debt.
https://www.ramseysolutions.com/education/foundations-personal-finance-hs
Beyond that there is a ton of stuff on YouTube and around the internet. The hardest part about that is sorting on what to trust… I will admit that can be an issue if someone is starting from 0, but various communities can help with that.
When it comes to losing a job, you view things in an absolute sense and not a relative sense. Ergo, what does a financial loss mean for one’s material conditions? Most people spend most of their salary on living, so most of that salary is not in fact something they have a choice in how to spend. If they lose a job, they might have a pittance that they were able to save and is still theirs, but if they have trouble finding a good job, they might have to give up even some of that. This is a big deal and people risk losing their homes, their health, and access to basic necessities.
Yes, an unexpected job loss can be hard and can have a negative impact. My point was more that, while employed, it’s all upside in the paycheck and they don’t assume any downside risk. If the company doesn’t hit earnings it’s not taken out of their check, and it’s not like a company is going to lay off their entire workforce for missing earnings by a few percent. In any given team, it’s usually pretty obvious who the people are would get laid off it if came to that. If you don’t know how it is, it’s probably you, so then it’s time to start asking yourself why that is and what you can do to change it. Most of the time, it’s not that hard to not be the worst person. At my first job it was just being honest, that put a person in the top 5%.
If a big time CEO sees their stock price drop, even if it drops off the map, they might lose sleep, or get sad, but they probably aren’t going to lose access to housing. They will still be able to go to their doctors. They won’t fucking starve. They have so much wealth they could lose 99% of it and still be very well off. If they somehow end up in the place the average American ends up when they lose their job, idk, maybe they can get good?
That all depends on where the CEO is in the development of the business. Most founders have stories from when they were young of sleeping in their cars, losing their house, or whatever… because their business failed. A lot of these people are all-in, so if the business fails, their whole life comes crashing down. Once a company is huge, they’ve generally been able to setup a safety net for themselves so they aren’t as vulnerable to that. Normal folks can do that too, in the form of an emergency fund (something else that Ramsey class would teach). If someone has 3-6 months of expenses saved up for emergencies a job loss can become more of an inconvenience than an emergency.
I went to some seminar thing where 95% of people were business owners… I’m not sure why I went, I felt very out of place. But it was interesting. A speaker brought up having trouble making payroll and all these business owners started telling their stories (it was all private, so they had no reason to lie). They were taking 2nd mortgages on their homes, not taking dime for themselves, and going hungry, so they could make sure their employees got paid… that’s what I mean by they take the risk. The employees get paid, the owner suffers. A lot of these guys starts crying while talking about it. Owning a business isn’t all lambos and yachts.
Wouldn’t knowing to look for it being common sense?
How do things become common sense Bob? Someone needs to teach it to them. You’re relying on people being taught not only financial information, but also how to problem solve. In case you haven’t noticed, schools do a shit job at teaching problem solving and critical thinking as well, especially because it often isn’t an explicit part of the curriculum.
That isn’t the main issue though. Going back to something you said earlier
At some point there has to be some personal responsibility there, as the government can’t provide a person accountant for every citizen.
Ignoring the fact that A.I. might actually be able to actually do that soon, you have the classic attitude of personal responsibility being necessary for someone’s life. Your life is your responsibility. While this may be true to an extent, in practicality people get screwed over by forces outside their control far too often for it to automatically be what one should assume.
This point of view is called an internal locus of control, and it is very useful in motivating people to keep trying to help themselves despite the odds. The insidious thing about our culture is how it is used to keep people from fully interrogating our unfair system. It’s a foundational belief that is inaccurate on a few levels.
First, people are not in control of ourselves to a larger extent than we’d like to believe. Even Freud could tell that certain desires and impulses control our behavior more than our conscious mind. On one hand, things like fear and hunger can override our consciousness to make us act illogical. On the other, societal training and preconceived notions can cloud our perception and make us conform to societal notions we don’t even support. Things like gut bacteria and environmental factors can totally change the way we think or what we want.
Bigger still, we are all biologically and neurologically different. Some people are born with a diminished capacity for controlling their impulses, understanding certain concepts, or thinking in certain ways. Some people just won’t get financial management until the 100th time it’s explained to them. Some people will have trouble getting themselves to do things they don’t enjoy, even if they want to and hate themselves for not being able to. Some people are born dyslexic, have exceptional trouble doing basic math, or have other disabilities. There are way more of these people than you think, and without the proper resources, have trouble doing the things you seem to assume are within everyone’s capabilities.
The thing is, most people with disabilities can be productive members of society, some even more productive than average. There’s a fine line between disability and advantage. Some people are born unlucky, having a net lack of merit in a meritocracy. Under the current system only disabled people with a wealthy enough family can become high enough functioning to not fucking die from how they were born. Some people will always need help, that they currently only get if their family can support them.
When you were talking about small business owners struggling, you were missing my point. I wasn’t talking about 95% of business owners. I was talking about the 1% of business owners who have the majority of the wealth. They may have capital, but they have more in common with the working class than the people lucky enough to win Monopoly. That is what we’re playing with the free market capitalism, a game of Monopoly where eventually one person owns everything. Even people with the same start as the eventual winner can end up with nothing based on pure luck. The game was made by a socialist to demonstrate this truth, true fact.
The ultimate lesson is that luck defines most things, from your merit to your ability to even make choices. This doesn’t mean we stop trying, it means we need to make a society where people without “merit” don’t die for being cosmicaly unlucky. Where we use modern technology from teaching ideas to surgeries and drugs to make sure no one is left behind. We need to ultimately force the lucky to not let people needlessly suffer. This means redistribution. Fuck who earns it, no one fully earns so much power.
If someone can’t do basic problem solving they’re going to fucked no matter what they do. I’m obviously not talking about people with severe mental disabilities in all this, so I’m not sure why we needed to go down they road of excuses.
At the end you say don’t stop trying, but nearly everything you said leading up to that read as…. You can’t win, don’t try, just let the world punch you in the face over and over again until you die. I don’t know how’d I’d wake up in the morning with that kind of outlook on life. I’m not the most positive person in the world, I’m pretty damn negative, but I at least try and maintain the belief that I can improve. Without that I’d quit my job and drink myself to death within 6 months.
Sure, there is a certain amount of luck in everything, but you can do things to make yourself more lucky. What’s the old saying… “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” If you chalk everything up to luck, you basically set yourself up for failure and prove yourself right, because you’re never prepared for the opportunists and aren’t putting yourself in positions to make those opportunities more likely to happen.
On the topic of “fuck who earns it,” ummm… no. I sacrificed the last 20 years of my life to get my paycheck. I’m not the 1%, but I’m almost getting to the point where I feel like I can breath. I recently discovered all this stuff I’ve felt my whole life was really bad anxiety, and a lot of it is around money, which is why I’ve busted my ass, as it’s the only think I can think of that might calm my mind down (it probably won’t, but I have to try). Why should I have what I sacrificed for stolen from me by someone who wasn’t willing to make those sacrifices? That’s not fair either. What did I do it all for if that’s the end result… I might as well go back to drinking myself to death. At least with the current setup I can try and I can get better, and I can build a life. What I’m reading from you is that to matter how hard I try it doesn’t matter, because if you deem I have too much it will be taken from me, because I was just lucky. Why would anyone do anything in a system like that? The only thing to do in that environment is drugs.
Oh, so common mental disorders that make it harder for someone to do everything needed for success are just excuses. Of course they need to work hard, but that doesn’t mean they’ll ever reach your level of success. You sound like you’ve worked hard to get to where you are, and all that work was necessary in the current system. But someone who finds doing the things you do twice as difficult, can’t work twice as hard as you did. People have a finite capacity to work hard, and if you were working near the limit for an individual, how could someone with less luck ever be financially stable. ADHD for instance affects 1 in 20, and makes it very hard for people to learn and work. That’s not the only condition that makes life harder, and any portion of people over 1% in America means millions of people. I go down that road because millions of people don’t deserve to die for things outside of their control. It just isn’t right when society can do so much more to help them.
Many people have this misconception about determinism meaning we should just give up and die. This couldn’t be further from the truth. An important point in my outlook is that you might never be able to win a rigged game. If you’re born with little economic merit and a limited capacity to gain more, then you will probably not win the capitalist game. Hell, you might not even be able to survive in it. That’s why we must change the game, reform or rebuild the system to allow even the least economically productive people to have secure housing, food, water, and other necessities. So that everyone has economic security and any wages earned can be used for one’s self actualization rather than for survival.
Another part of my outlook is that I see humans as machines. I don’t believe people deserve human rights because of their immortal soul or anything like that, but I believe human rights are foundational to making a world worth living in. Therefore everyone must be given human rights, because otherwise all our rights are on the chopping block for profit. Therefore people starving in the richest country on earth is an existential threat for me.
I have the belief we all can improve and become better than our past selves, but that requires technology in the the form of ideas, and resources like time and energy. The internal locus of control and therefore the protestant work ethic are individually useful for motivation, requiring far less thought to get good results than what I believe is the truth. However, ignorance and an incorrect view will eventually lead us off course. So we should get a new tool, a new technology to lead us down a better path.
In order to not get crushed in hopelessness and depression, I turned to Buddhist philosophy mixed with classical Greek philosophy. If everyone is a product of luck and the circumstances that got them there, everyone is at all times trying their best. This might sound bad if one looks down on someone’s best not being good enough, but if one sees the unknown value and potential that exists in such complex and awesome creatures, it lifts a burden off one’s chest. People can be augmented with ideas and physical tech, allowing a blind person, a psychopath, or anybody with any deviation from “optimal” standards to live fulfilling lives that benefit everyone. The big point is that we just don’t know for certain, and unless the cost would be so great as to jeopardize other people even more, we must try to give people the help they need.
I want a world where a younger you doesn’t have so much anxiety about your financial security. Where the consequences of you making a mistake aren’t so serious because you know you can always have a solid safety net you can fall into. What you worry about won’t be existential, and as much is guaranteed for you as technology permits. Tech has boosted human productivity so far, that we need fewer and fewer people to provide everyone with necessities. The excess people power can be used on improving lives beyond that point. We just need to defeat the notion that the goal of humanity is to increase profits for a small elite. Society must serve people, not the other way around.
Honestly, you sound a bit like you’re demanding the younger generations go through the same hardships you did simply because it’ll make you feel like your struggles weren’t meaningless. Your struggles and sacrifices were valiant and brave. Future people not having them does not make what you did any less impressive or noble. Besides, we have our own challenges and have to make our own sacrifices thanks to climate change and the fact that we still need to fix this system.
Of you don’t take advantage of the 401k that the job helps with, you are the only person at fault.
