The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Really.
Take a much needed break from the sober realities of the holiday season, and join me for a night of hoppy beer and hopped up political debate.
Not in Seattle? Washington liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.
Roger Rabbit rarely attends DL because it’s a long hop from Green Lake Park and I have to cross busy arterials choked with Republicans speeding in their SUVs. One of those scofflaws ran over my mommy … (sniffle)
WHY THE FUCK SHOULD ANYONE WORK?
I’ve already pointed out that our tax system creates powerful disincentives against work by taxing wages heavily while giving very generous tax breaks to people who get their income from inheritances and capital gains.
And then there’s bosses who demand that people perform heavy physical labor, work night and weekend shifts, and do dirty and unhealthy jobs for a minimum wage that’s been frozen for a decade at below-subsistence levels.
Here’s another reason why people shouldn’t work: Crappy management.
“Study Says Two of Five Bosses Don’t Keep Word
“By BRENT KALLESTAD
“AP
“TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Jan. 2) – For most people, it’s back to work Tuesday after a holiday weekend with family and friends. And for many, a new study shows, it will be under a bad boss.
“Nearly two of five bosses don’t keep their word and more than a fourth bad mouth those they supervise to co-workers, the Florida State University study shows. ‘ … [E]mployees don’t leave their job or company, they leave their boss,’ said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in the College of Business at Florida State University ….
“The findings include:
“39 percent of workers said their supervisor failed to keep promises.
“37 percent said their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
“31 percent said their supervisor gave them the ‘silent treatment’ in the past year.
“27 percent said their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
“24 percent said their supervisor invaded their privacy.
“23 percent said their supervisor blamed others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.
… ”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete article and/or copyright info, see http://tinyurl.com/yaz4ro
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Now that I’m financially independent and don’t have to work anymore, I don’t work. Why should I work my ass off so some asshole can drive a Lexus, and pay twice three times the tax rate as some rich guy sitting in a mansion cashing in his stock market and real estate winnings? Fuck work. American culture doesn’t respect people who work, it despises them. Companies don’t reward people for working; they underpay them and mistreat them. Despite all the lip service they pay to “the virtues of hard work,” three things are clear: The people who run our society (a) don’t work, and (b) don’t reward work, and (c) don’t respect workers. Fuck ’em. Let them do the work themselves. Why should we do it for them, when they don’t pay us, don’t respect us, and mistreat us? Fuck work.
Like the old-time Democrats used to say, “We’re Democrats so that someday we can live like Republicans.”
ON TOP OF THAT, we now (in the preceding thread) have wingnuts who make an art form of worshipping ignorance lecturing us to “get an education” by joining the military to get tuition reimbursements.
They want us to fight their fucked-up war in Iraq so — of course — they don’t have to. Fuck ’em! Let them fight their own war.
Roger,
So what is your solution? Every potential solution that I have named, you can’t accept any part of. Is your solution to raise the minimum wage to (Insert amount here) and control the costs of goods? Is your solution to tax the highest wage earners in Washington even more, to fund social programs and keep people on welfare? When does the responsibility of the Government end, and the responsibility of the people begin (insert the yearly income here). And finally, with control of the Governors office and the state legislature, for so many years, why haven’t all of these been enacted earlier by all of you dems?
The various Gerald Ford tributes and ceremonies we have seen over the past few days make clear how Democrats are uniters with great respect for the traditions of this nation. Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Jennifer Granholm deliver stirring speeches in his honor. Democrats of all stripes and walks of life say good things about the man. We saw similar displays when Ronald Reagan died. I cannot imagine Republicans exhibiting such respect when Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton pass on. The partisanship with which they treated these two presidents during life will surely continue after their death. Republicans, for the most part, are incapable of speaking well of Democrat politicians because they simply suffer from a lack of humanity.
Watch out! Pat Robertson is at it again – God told him there’d be a major terrorist attack in the US in late 2007.
Oh brother….
re 4: You ask questions in such a way that your assumed answer is already contained in the question:
i.e., “Is your solution to tax the highest wage earners in Washington even more, to fund social programs and keep people on welfare?”
His solution may be to tax the highest wage earners and those who inherit vast sums of money, but I guarantee you that it is NOT: “…to … keep people on welfare?”
Although you are right about funding social programs. How is funding social programs any different than the corporate welfare that defense contracting represents?
Proud leftist @ 5.
I was growled at on another website for pointing out a few inconvenient truths about Pres. Ford.
East Timor–ouch!
Operation Frequent Wind & the Fall of Saigon on Apr. 29-30, 1975
Chose D. Rumsfeld as Chief of Staff then moved him to SecDef
Chose R. Cheney as Chief of Staff, to replace Rummy
Retained H. Kissinger as SecState
Retained W. Simon as SecTreas, who then worked with Arthur Burns (fed chairman) to generate “stagflation”
Swine flu vaccine, fubar & snafu
whl
That’s what I’m saying. Ford had endless flaws as a president, though I do believe he was a good man. Democrats can overlook Republican flaws in the interest of national unity. Republicans have no such ability.
What a ridiculous statement. How do you know this? Until Clinton or Carter dies no one knows if this statement is true or not. Note to the loonies here, I’m not wishing Carter or Clinton dead.
Do you not remember Paul Wellstone’s memorial, where Trent Lott was booed when he took the stage to eulogize Wellstone?
Right. Democrats never display partisanship at a memorial service for an elected official. See my previous post.
Endless flaws? That’s a bit of an exaggeration don’t you think?
Your philosophy seems to be “Democrat good. Republican bad.”
I’d like to thank loocy for a truly magnificent display of moonbat economic theory. This is moonbat economics at its finest:
headless lucy says:
“…but I insist on having my fair share. If taxing it away from the wealthiest is the way to get it, then that’s where i’m goin’….”
01/01/2007 at 10:11 pm
‘Nother one for the archive. Keep ’em comin’.
This one’s pretty good too…
Heathen Sinner says:
“… “Supply and demand” is a hoax….”
12/31/2006 at 2:55 pm
Here’s a test for you loocy…. Who were the “Malthusians”. Hint: It’s not the guys from Star Trek.
For those of you who may have missed it, loocy put forth an elaborate theory she copied from somewhere how economics is like checkers. In her narrow little moonbat mind, if someone has money, the only possible way they got it was to steal it from somebody else.
Since she is apparently in the shallow end of the economic pool, she uses her “checkerboard economic theory” to justify having gummint steal money from The Producers to give to The Bad Choice Crowd of which she is a lifetime member.
Very entertaining…
I guess Ford was not on my list of “good” guys. He seemed like a partisan hack to me & was selected by Nixon because they formed a matched set.
Ford wasted a few hundred hours trying to phony up an impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas (FDR/Liberal-Gifford Pinchot National Forest). Carl Albert, Hale Boggs, Tip O’Neill & Mike Mansfield welcomed the Ford move from minority leader to vice-president because it got Gerry out of their way.
In my opinion, getting Ford up & out made it possible, with John J. Rhodes as minority leader, for the impeachment process against Nixon to gain traction. Rhodes was one of the Republicans who went to Nixon & told him that their opposition to a Bill of Impeachment was over–& so was the failed presidency.
Unfortunately, “the fix was in” & Tricky Dick, the King of the Crooks, got his pardon. I say quid pro quo. Bastards.
re 12: Have you ever actually read anything by Adam Smith?
The Corporatist Overlords that we have to endure today are the same as the politically connected Mercantile System that Smith inveighed against in his own time.
How can you, with a straight face, call the machinations of monopolistic big oil the workings of the “free market”?
How can you be so obtuse?
Every time I call you on your obtuseness and lack of intellectual rigor, you trot out some irrelevant and arcane jargon and retreat behind your supposed “MBA”.
I started my own business in 1983 and ran it successfully until I sold it in 1998. I’m a veteran of the real world and there is not a single thing you have to say that has the ring of truth to it.
What was it you said the other day? Something about dropping all your bullshit for a moment to speak honestly.
That one’s going in my file — you self described bullshit artist.
Mark the Wormboy, at it again. Glorying in his own perceived brilliance, living his hollow little life. What a pathetic creature.
hmmm… so Limbaugh is right again…. “to be a librul you have to believe that freedom comes from government and oppression comes from corporations.”
Fascinating…
Here’s a test for Mark The Cowardly Redneck.
What happens when you proclaim that the so-called WAR ON TERROR is the “MOST IMPORTANT CONFLICT OUR NATION HAS EVER FACED” yet you, your family, your relatives and your associates don’t see the need to go fight in that war while you happily send others to fight in your place? I’ll give you the answer since you were born out of wedlock to a brother and sister and are no doubt one dumb fuckhead.
The answer is – what happens is you get outed as a coward and a hypocrite.
Hey Moonbat!s, this really must piss you off:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/sto.....038;page=1
Catching a Killer, with help from a camera!
Roger Rabbit says: WHY THE FUCK SHOULD ANYONE WORK?
They called what you did work?
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
HeadMess Loocie:
Do you realize the books you teach from are made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize your alma mater, Arizona State endowment is in evil corporation stock?
Do you realize the desks were made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize the rug in the teacher’s lounge was made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize the toilet you sit your fat ass on was made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize the audible alarm system delineating the classroom start and stop times was made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize the bricks used to build the walls were made by an evil corporation?
Do you realize the sports equipment used the wrestling team was made by an evil corporation?
The list goes on and on and on!
CF@10-11: You have to forgive Moonbat!tiness.
A Moonbat! tries to make a worthless point. When reminded of the antithesis done by their Moonbat! friends, they enter into the hissy fit zone.
First the Moonbat!s have to say good things about Reagan. They made much money when he was in power. Two the USSR/CCCP crumbled into Russia. See Michail Gorbachev’s memoirs! Did you see Gorby at Reagans’s funeral?
HeadMess Loocie: Everything done in your workplace was made by an evil corporation. Even the pens and pencils and the paper was made by an evil corporation.
I suggest you quit teaching, slit your throat (Furball worthless humor) so you won’t be constantly reminded about evil corporation products!
headless lucy says: Have you ever actually read anything by Adam Smith?
Sure have. When did Adam Smith live Loocie? What economy did he espouse to that we have now? Why do you fall back on him when there are contemporaneous economists (except Paul Big Time Idiot Krugman) for your economic theories?
Mike Webb Sucks delivered wonderful commentary above in a row sweeping away worthless Moonbat!tic blog entries!
POLL SHOWS STRONG SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATS’ GOALS
Wingfucks who oppose raising the federal minimum wage are pissing up a rope! Read it and weep, cheap-labor fanatics:
“By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
“AP
“WASHINGTON (Jan. 2) – People overwhelmingly support two of the Democrats’ top goals – increasing the minimum wage and making it easier to buy prescription drugs from other countries ….
“A boost to the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage would be the first since 1997. Democratic leaders have proposed raising it in stages to $7.25 an hour. President Bush has said he supports the idea, along with help for small businesses. Fully 80 percent of survey respondents favor an increase ….
“Nearly seven of 10 adults, 69 percent, favor the government taking steps to make it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from other countries, where some medicines cost significantly less than in the U.S. …”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://tinyurl.com/yksyr7
22 “They called what you did work?”
You bet your lying wingnut ass it was work. Damn hard work. Underpaid and unappreciated work. You know nothing about real work, little boy.
Adam Smith
Economist and Philosopher
1723 – 1790
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice,
because its excesses are not subject to
the regulation of conscience.”
—Adam Smith
re 27: …and if ever there was a more self-important, deluded, moralistic prig, I don’t know who that could be other than yourself. Don’t Wikipedia me , you dweeb.
re 25: Nothing that I own was made by a corporation. It was made by people. And the machines, ultimately, are hand-made as well.
Do you know what a “machinist” is? — dope.
Show me a picture of a corporation making something. You can’t. Because it never happens.
What Adam Smith decried in Mercantilism was the fervent belief that vast sums of capital created wealth.
It doesn’t.
Smith rightfully pointed out that labor creates wealth — not capital.
Chew on that a while you nitwit.
re 23: “Corporations” are an intellectual construct. They have no corporeal existence. They are merely the sum of nothing.
12, 17 I’d settle for the wealthy paying their fair share.
As an addendum to my previous posts on this subject, I would add that top executives and business owners enjoy many tax-exempt perks that workers can only imagine.
Business lunches at swanky restaurants, first-class business travel (sometimes on company jets), company-paid country club dues — none of these are counted or taxed as personal income, even though they make life materially more comfortable. And how many executives and business people own yachts and hunting lodges they use for “business entertaining” — and write off as “business expenses”?
An minimum-wage employee living in a rural area far from his job can’t even deduct his gas for driving to work, let alone get a tax-deductible ride on the company plane to a weekend at the tax-deductible company hunting lodge.
When you factor in these uncounted and untaxed perks that wealthy business people enjoy, their share of national income is even larger than the published figures; and the gap between their share of the income pie and what they pay in taxes is even larger than appears.
Like I said, I’d settle for these pigs simply paying the same percentage of total taxes as they collect from total income.
MTR & MWS @ Multiple:
Forgive me for pointing out a little intellectual sleight-of-hand you’ve been doing.
Some people on this board have started companies, myself included. Almost all of us have worked in companies of various sizes from soda shops to Fortune 500 shops.
People who start companies and run them tend to be OK folks in my book. I’ve known a few who were rat bastards, but I think as a group, their percentage of rat bastardness is not too far off from the population as a whole.
The problems I have with people who work in companies (even large ones) has more to do with banality than evil. That is, I see much more stupidity than malice.
Now, if you work your ass off, build up your company, and do really well at that, something funny happens.
For various reasons, you will probably take your company public. The founders who worked their asses off will get compensated for their shares, and will stay on to manage the company, or go off to other projects. This is a good thing, because people who work hard and do well should reap the rewards of their work. They are what MTR calls PRODUCERS.
Now, at this point, the company that these (generally decent) people built has some new owners. They are not producers. They did not build the company. They bought a running organization. This is free-market capitalism, and nobody really forced the producers to sell to them, but seeing a multi-million dollar payday does funny things to some people’s heads. It sure would mine.
The new owners have two characteristics. First, they have capital. Second, they want their purchase to grow. Increasing the market value of their purchase is their only goal.
As an investor, you’ve probably heard of an “analyst call”. You may not have heard what goes on in those. The managers, often former owners, of the company, people I would call producers, get very explicit instructions on how they should run their company from the owners. To make your profit targets, you will lay off x number of employees. You will reduce the cost of your product by y through subcontracting. etc. etc.
This is fine, I suppose. People who own things get to do what they want with them. I can shine my shoes, or neglect them. I can invest my paycheck, or blow it on coke and whores. I can use my property to live in, generate revenue, or use it as housing for bums and raccoons.
Some institutional owners (like Warren Buffet) buy and hold companies. They reap their rewards through superior management of their holdings. Others focus on making their quarterly profit targets. What havoc is wreaked on the employees, the long-term future of the company, or anything else doesn’t matter. When the company ceases to be maximally profitable, sell and move on.
I won’t say this form of ownership is inherently evil or amoral, but let’s say the structural tendencies of this form of ownership move in that direction.
It has one great advantage though: at least in the short term, it makes a LOT of money for those who partake in it.
Do not call these people producers, they aren’t.
It’s amazing what lengths CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES go to trying to justify their schemes to rip off the working man and woman — so they can live like princes and do no work themselves!
“When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just ‘dime-store economics’ – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don’t really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don’t. It all gets down to two simple words. ‘Cheap labor’.
“That’s their whole philosophy in a nutshell … cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America – whose fortunes depend on labor. … The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you’ll work …. If you are a wealthy elite – or a ‘wannabe’ like most dittoheads – your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool forced to work cheap.”
So, how do they do it?
“Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like social spending or our ‘safety net’ … [b]ecause when you’re unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you … next to nothing … they want you ‘over a barrel’ and in a position to ‘work cheap or starve’.
“Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions [because] these reforms undo … their efforts to keep you ‘over a barrel’.
“Cheap-labor conservatives like ‘free trade’, NAFTA, GATT, etc. … [b]ecause there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who … will work cheap. …
“Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like unions … [b]ecause when labor ‘sticks together’, wages go up.”
And what is their real agenda?
“The Cheap-Labor Conservative ‘Dirty Secret’: They Don’t Really Like Prosperity
“Maybe you don’t believe that cheap-labor conservatives like unemployment, poverty and ‘cheap labor’. … The ugly truth is that cheap-labor conservatives just don’t like working people. They don’t like ‘bottom up’ prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. … Once you understand this about the cheap-labor conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense.
“Remember, cheap-labor conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits the guy – or more often the woman – who works for an hourly wage.”
http://tinyurl.com/lnzs3
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Is this source just blowing smoke, or has he perfectly described Mike Webb Sucks, MTR, Roadkill McGavick, and some of the other wingfucks polluting our state? Well, geez, what kind of cheapskate gets a bee in his bonnet about raising the minimum wage from 5 fucking dollars and 15 fucking cents an hour, for chrissakes? A cheaplaborskate, that’s who. A welsher who doesn’t pay his gambling debts. A blowhard making $28 million for two months of part time “consulting” work wyho supports legislation that would let restaurant owners empty the waitress tip jar into their own pockets. What a bunch of evil shameless pigfuckers.
Well, it was hard for me to imagine the criminally incompetent Bushistas screwing things up more in Iraq. . .but by fumbling the execution of Hussein, they’ve really done it.
Setting aside any irrelevancies like Saddam being a thoroughly despicable piece of human trash, they’ve managed to inflame the few remaining moderate Sunni’s. We have installed a Shiite backed government and foolishly allowed this lashup to become the internationally recognized government. . .and now, after destroying the oil production capacity of Iraq, and leaving us at the mercy of Tehran, Riyadh, and Caracas. . .we seem to be drifting toward pissing off both the Saudis and the Turks.
Al Maliki executed Saddam on the first day of the Eid al Adha according to the Sunni Calendar, in Clear violation of their own law not to execute ANYONE on Holy Day. Further driving home the contempt his government has for Sunni’s because the Shia Calendar starts the Feast of Sacrifice on Sunday. We already have enought Sunni Suicide bombers without making Saddam out to be a martyr.
Is there nothing these fools cannot make worse?
34 There’s a species of buyers-and-sellers of companies you overlooked. They take over a company, loot it and strip it of assets, and walk off with a LOT of money — leaving a bankrupt shell behind, creditors holding an empty bag, and ex-employees unemployed. “Rat bastards” is too kind a word for these scumbags. It should be a hanging offense.
No Rog, I would say that’s just a very extreme case of maximizing the corporation’s short-term value, in this case by hacking it into pieces.
I also disagree on punishment. Hanging is reasonbly painless, and frequently results in a major erection as well as creaming your jeans. As such, it is unsuitable. Consider instead the traditional Qing dynasty method of dying by a thousand cuts. There’s a certain ironic poetry that those who profited by hacking away at something should they themselves be hacked at.
OK so you guys are drinking after our guys were bedeaded and they are crying about a WAR CRIMINAL tried and convicted was taunted as he was hung…???
OK you have finally given the DNC away. You are the enemy to democracy, no matter who it is!
Hey JSA (Joint Smoking Anarchist)-
Those generally decent new owners, who have capital, how do you think they got it, dumbass. They, or someone before them, did it better and more than idiots in your start up. That is why they make the rules…
And Rabid ROger never added anything to the equation, he remains as he always was, a gastropod living off hte growth that others have planted.
Observer
If you’re trying to make me upset, you have to try a LOT harder. I dish out better abuse than that before breakfast.
Investment trusts are generally not any one individual who made a pile. It is a large group of people who toss in larger or smaller quantities of capital. The only competency is a manager or managers who pick stocks. See above.
Get something straight before you set up straw men. I work my ass off, I’ve invested a lot of what I made (way more than I spend) and I like capitalism just fine, snarky abbreviations you concoct to the contrary. If pure laisez-faire capitalism was as great as you seem to think, the wealthiest place in the world would be an island floating in the Pacific where the only law was “go make more money” No pesky laws, regulations, etc., just the golden rule of he who has the gold, rules.
(several overly dogmatic libertarians have tried setting up islands just like this. Somehow they never seem to amount to much. I’m not sure why. Maybe they just needed better backers)
Back here on planet Earth, the most sucessful economies have some brakes on freeboot capitalism. Often they have quite a lot of regulations. People make money anyhow as long as you have rule of law and clear respect for property rights.
Let me ask something. Why do you think capitalism by fund managers is such a cool thing? Do you yourself manage a fund, or is this some sort of one-sided crush where you hope your relentless admiration will get The Great and Good to smile on you? I got over my crushes once I got out of my teens. Seems to me you never did.
JSA: Ignoring HeadMess Loocie, you made good points until here:
“As an investor, you’ve probably heard of an “analyst call”. You may not have heard what goes on in those. The managers, often former owners, of the company, people I would call producers, get very explicit instructions on how they should run their company from the owners. To make your profit targets, you will lay off x number of employees. You will reduce the cost of your product by y through subcontracting. etc. etc.
– I disagree. The unions see the profits explode because of good management or a good product and DEMAND more of the profits so they can get their “cut”. Instead of demanding a more even level of payment they want it now. Look at the car industry. Why are these evil corporations running into problems? Bad cars or bad people making cars expecially on Monday and Friday.
This is fine, I suppose. People who own things get to do what they want with them. I can shine my shoes, or neglect them. I can invest my paycheck, or blow it on coke and whores.
-Funny how that works. Most Moonbat!s like to do that! Take a ride down Rainier Valley some night and see if Moonbat! friends are plying their wares!
I can use my property to live in, generate revenue, or use it as housing for bums and raccoons.
– But either way the FUWA will tax you on your property that you really don’t OWN and take it away if you don’t pay taxes!
Some institutional owners (like Warren Buffet) buy and hold companies. They reap their rewards through superior management of their holdings.
-You nailed it. Superior Management. They keep raw material costs down and labor costs under control.
Others focus on making their quarterly profit targets.
– Why is that? Because Moonbat!s and neocons want the fast buck. I have friends who speculate on companies all the time making the quarterly buck. I inv est for the long term.
What havoc is wreaked on the employees, the long-term future of the company, or anything else doesn’t matter. When the company ceases to be maximally profitable, sell and move on.
– Why is that JSA? You didn’t cover it. Usually the raw material costs increase and/or labor costs increase but the market forces won’t allow you to radically or rapidly price increase. You are forced to perform pain at someone’s expense because the shareholders of public companies want their fast returns!
I won’t say this form of ownership is inherently evil or amoral, but let’s say the structural tendencies of this form of ownership move in that direction.
_ HeadMess call every corporation evil.
It has one great advantage though: at least in the short term, it makes a LOT of money for those who partake in it.
Do not call these people producers, they aren’t. 01/02/2007 at 10:43 pm
– Only the original owners are. Everyone else is in for the money.
HeadMess stop with the crap. Your puny arguments become microscopic!
headless lucy says:
Adam Smith
Economist and Philosopher
1723 – 1790
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice,
because its excesses are not subject to
the regulation of conscience.”
—Adam Smith
re 27: …and if ever there was a more self-important, deluded, moralistic prig, I don’t know who that could be other than yourself. Don’t Wikipedia me , you dweeb.
Poor poor HeadMess. I didn’t Wikipedia you. STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID Moonbat!
Adam Smith, hardcover, Wealth of Nations ISBN: 0679424733
Explain the “Fable of the Bee” or the “Universal Merchant” Moonbat!
Even neocons read STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID Moonbat! You self denuded and deluded moralesslistic pig. So fuck you!
HeadMess asked what is a machinist.
He used to be a smart man or woman who read blueprints and created metallic pieces of art for use in industry. Now a machinist uses a metal cutting machine made by an evil corporation and he pinches in some coordinates and sits on his ass while the machine cuts the piece. Then he removes the finished piece and places another block into the system.
Loocie: Who are today’s Universal Merchants? Do they pay dividends and fair wages to their masses?
If you were so underpaid and underappreciated, why didn’t you get a better job and leave? Clearly you think a lot of yourself, so if you were so great at your job getting another one should have been easy.
Apparently you worked in the Soviet Union and didn’t have a choice.
CF Furball worked as an underpaid (his fault) underappreciated (his fault again) lawyer for WA State, the Soviet Union of the US!
Poor Poor Furball. HorsesAss’ first emasculated bestiality man!
HeadMess used this quote from Adam Smith. “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”
Too bad the quote used doesn’t explain the political positions of HeadMess. You have no virtue. September 2005 racist commentary against PacMan and Puddy! No have no conscience. On or about November 2005 told Cynical to drop dead!
Funny how that works!
Notice TFF AKA KillaFraud hasn’t been paying attention to the news:
Tree Frog Farmer says: Well, it was hard for me to imagine the criminally incompetent Bushistas screwing things up more in Iraq. . .but by fumbling the execution of Hussein, they’ve really done it.
How is that KillaTree? The libtard MSM admits now the US Military tried to stop the hanging. The Shiites were the ones shouting Muqtada not the US.
Another Deluuuuuuuuuuuuuusional STUUUUUUUUUUUUPIIIIIIIIIIIIID Moonbat!
Furball ejaculated in one of his furry beasts: ““Cheap-labor conservatives like ‘free trade’, NAFTA, GATT, etc. … [b]ecause there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who … will work cheap. …”
So why did Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, Richard Ruben, Rahm Emamuel all like it? – all libtard Moonbat!s
““Cheap-labor conservatives don’t like social spending or our ’safety net’ … [b]ecause when you’re unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you … next to nothing … they want you ‘over a barrel’ and in a position to ‘work cheap or starve’.”
No Furball wrong again. When people use the “safety net” as a continual crutch and never try and make it on their own is why conservatives call your libtard friends on it. Why are so many poor in inner cities? I thought Moonbat!s had a lock on them. They continually vote in these libtard mayors and nothing improves! Why are so many welfare cheats found there. Clean up the system and everyone benefits Furball.
Furball uses the same tired crap because he like YLB/Clueless have no new arguments! If they repeat the same tired crap they think they are making a point. A worthless point destroyed by facts!
When the Wingnuts are toostupid to win an argument they resort to namecalling and personal attacks.
re 44: Post a picture of a corporation making something and I will stand on my head til my face turns red.
re 43: Yes. Neocons read. They read blurbs on the internet and Cliff’s Notes for depth and substance (as much as their tiny minds can attain).
So, the computer and the program created itself? Show me a picture of a corporation making a computer and writing programs.
Labor creates wealth, not capital. That’s Adam Smith. Deal with it , chump.
Labor’s problem is that it doesn’t control enough capital even though it gets paid to create capital. The guys and gals in the unions need to own part of the biz so that they have a stake and a voice.
6 I hereby nominate Pat Robertson for the first official STFU award of 2007.
Mike Webb SUCKS @ 42:
JSA: Ignoring HeadMess Loocie, you made good points until here:
Headless lucy is allowed to have her opinions on how capitalism works. I am only reponsible for mine.
– I disagree. The unions see the profits explode because of good management or a good product and DEMAND more of the profits so they can get their “cut”. Instead of demanding a more even level of payment they want it now. Look at the car industry. Why are these evil corporations running into problems? Bad cars or bad people making cars expecially on Monday and Friday.
I have only worked in a union shop once in my life. It was not a really happy place. Most of my work experience is in high-tech where there is very little union representation. My half-assed opinion is that if managers don’t completely abuse their labor force, it’s a lot less necessary to form unions.
The sort of companies that you are talking about generally have pretty poisonous relations all the way around. Management and employees both think the other side is out to fuck them. There’s a certain Chicago-based aerospace company that’s a a major employer in these parts with that particular dysfunction. Both parties seem to lose sight that everyone goes in with the same job every day, which is to do good work and make money. I grew up knowing a lot of the workers in that company, and a lot of the managers. I have a perfectly nice dysfunctional biological family. I decided I didn’t need to hire on to work at another one.
-Funny how that works. Most Moonbat!s like to do that! Take a ride down Rainier Valley some night and see if Moonbat! friends are plying their wares!
Did you have something you wanted to say to the class, or are you just throwing a fit? We were talking economics, not whether some people like coke and whores.
– But either way the FUWA will tax you on your property that you really don’t OWN and take it away if you don’t pay taxes!
I own property. I pay taxes. The city and county in turn paves the streets, plumbs the sewers, sets up libraries, parks, schools, etc. It seems like a fair trade to me. If I wanted to ignore the services I’m getting and instead consider every penny of this theft, I might decide to toss in and be a right-winger like you.
-You nailed it. Superior Management. They keep raw material costs down and labor costs under control.
Of course you keep costs under control. That’s business. It’s when the company is not making money, the employees are being told to tighten their belts, and the bosses are running off with millions that you have problems (See Home Depot’s now ex-boss in today’s Business section).
You can have bad employees too. We don’t have that problem here. We have this time-honored technique. The ones that do fantastic work are paid well and treated well. The ones that don’t are hustled out the door pretty quickly. My take is that if you can’t pay your workers well (not exorbitantly — well) and make a profit, you’re just not that good a businessman, but what do I know?
Others focus on making their quarterly profit targets.
– Why is that? Because Moonbat!s and neocons want the fast buck. I have friends who speculate on companies all the time making the quarterly buck. I inv est for the long term.
Good for you. Ascribing fast bucks to lefties is pretty disingenuous. Lazy people who don’t want to work exist across the political and economic spectrum. One group of those people (the ones who pull paychecks) can be fired if they don’t do their job. When MTR calls the other group (the ones who hold capital) PRODUCERS and says that you shouldn’t set up some regulations to curb their worst excesses, I get cheesed.
– Why is that JSA? You didn’t cover it. Usually the raw material costs increase and/or labor costs increase but the market forces won’t allow you to radically or rapidly price increase. You are forced to perform pain at someone’s expense because the shareholders of public companies want their fast returns!
No. You got the point. “Shareholder value” (i.e. maximizing returns on a quarter-by-quarter basis) frequently works against the long-term interests of running a successful corporation.
_ HeadMess call every corporation evil.
That’s her perogative. I’ve heard people say that before, and I don’t agree. For one thing, I own a corporation (employees: 1). I’m not evil, and my employee agrees with me. Mostly I have a pretty narrow definition of evil. I define evil as having thought through the ethical ramifications of your decision, fully knowing right from wrong, and willfully and deliberately choosing wrong. If I kill someone in cold blood because they make me mad, that’s evil. If I am the owner of a company and I keep wages somewhat below prevailing rate in order to maximize profits, that’s bad business (the employees that can be employed elsewhere for higher wages will drift off, leaving me with the dregs who are unemployable elsewhere), but it’s not evil.
Do not call these people producers, they aren’t.
– Only the original owners are. Everyone else is in for the money.
That’s right. I don’t have a problem with a system that rewards the owners and demands a resonable share of the spoils from those who are just in it for the money. MTR and Observer define making money as the most noble activity in the world and lash out at anyone who would dare restrict anyone in this most noble of pursuits. I think they’re full of it.
Heads Up– The Montlake Alehouse is CLOSED tonight due to a hood vent breaking in the kitchen…. Sorry Everyone! Hope to see you next week!!!