– The funny looking building that I write too many posts about is turning 10 this week.
– Congrats Daddy Constantine.
– Glad to see crisis pregnancy centers having trouble with their deceptive advertising.
– When did appeals to realism become a trump card in pop culture criticism? And when did we agree that a certain kind of Internet commenter is the final arbiter of what is real and what is not? (has a blurred out, but maybe still NSFW picture)
The Downtown library is still a massively unpleasant building, 10 years later.
And Republicans are still a massively unpleasant party a year into Obama’s second term. (Man, that last phrase has a nice ring to it!) Maybe they’d come at least part way back to reality if voters gave them a good hiding this November.
The stock market seems to be on happy pills this morning, for reasons I can’t fathom. My take for today is pushing $2700. Now that workers aren’t paid anymore, shareholders get ALL the money! The next step in capitalism’s evolution is to charge workers rent for their desks, make them pay the utility bills for office lighting and phone lines, and collect parking fees for use of the employee parking lot. Workers need to get used to the idea that their jobs will be an expense, not a source of income, in the future. In a world in which capitalism rules supreme, people will pay to work, instead of being paid for their work.
Companies are missing the boat on $15 minimum wage. Really, they should support the highest possible minimum wage, because “wage” is going to become what employees pay companies for the privilege of working! If you’re a CEO, would you rather have a law requiring your employees to pay you $9.32 an hour, or $15 an hour, to employ them?
This concept was pioneered by banks that charge what’s called “negative interest,” i.e. if you have an account balance over $1 million, you have to pay the bank to keep your money for you. For example, on a $1 million account, at a -0.05% interest rate, the bank would charge $5,000 a year to provide you with account services.
Well, with wages increasingly trending toward zero, it’s just a matter of time before we see “negative wages.” For example, if waitstaff in a restaurant are making $20 an hour in tips, an entrepreneurial restaurant owner might start charging waitstaff for table access, say $25 an hour. People who want to work in the restaurant would pay the owner $200 at the start of an 8-hour shift, and then keep all the tips they make.
I’m sure there must be a way to extend this concept to other businesses, too, such as assembling Boeing airplanes or driving garbage trucks. Eventually, all workers will pay their employers to work. It’s simply a logical evolution of the economy from employers paying employees for their work. The latter made sense when work was worth something. As work becomes worthless, it makes sense for things to work the other way around, no?
Are there still employers who offer free parking? If I used the parking associated with my office building, I would be paying twice as much as I pay at a private lot.
How Does Your Pay Stack Up?
CNN Money gives us these average incomes for various occupations:
Under $10/hr – 18 million jobs
Fast food workers – $8.81
Waiters and waitresses – $8.94
Cashiers – $9.12
Maids – $9.51
Personal care aides – $9.67
$10 – $20/hr – 63 million jobs
Retail salespeople – $10.16
Janitors – $10.86
Construction laborers – $14.64
Secretaries and admin. assistants – $15.79
Tractor-trailer truck drivers – $18.61
$20 – $30/hr – 27 million jobs
Insurance sales agents – $23.18
Plumbers – $24.13
Office supervisors – $24.13
Electricians – $24.28
Police officers – $26.99
$30 – $40/hr – 13 million job s
Accountants – $31.29
Registered nurses – $31.84
Financial services sales agents – $34.92
Computer programmers – $36.60
Civil engineers – $38.83
$40+/hr – 10 million jobs
Construction managers- $40.58
Lawyers – $54.95
Air traffic controllers – $58.31
Dentists – $70.36
Chief executives -$82.50
Roger Rabbit Commentary: CEO pay seems to be understated here; they must be counting tiny companies. Also, I’d like to point out that many lawyers make nowhere near six figures; when I worked for the state, my top pay was about half of what is shown here, and for the majority of my state career I made less than $40,000 a year. Also, this chart omits Capitalist pay; I suppose that varies widely, and I can only tell you how I’m doing this morning, which in the 5 hours since the market opened is:
Roger Rabbit Capitalist Pay – $593.00/hr
Now look, I ain’t braggin’, my whole point in posting this is that I’M GROSSLY OVERPAID. I mean, seriously, I didn’t do a fucking thing to earn this money. I will in bed asleep when I made most of it. All I do is own stock, and I get paid for being an owner instead of a worker. Now, compare what workers get paid to what owners get paid, and I think you’ll agree with me that owners are overpaid and workers are underpaid. Rectifying this imbalance is a big job, but one place we can start is by passing a clean $15/hr minimum wage here in Seattle. I’m not talking about Mayor Sellout’s proposal, which was mostly written by business interests; I’m talking about a clean, straight-up, $15/hr minimum wage NOW. So that workers can afford to live. Capitalists like me don’t need more money for doing nothing. Really, we don’t. We’re just leeches, living off the labor of others. People and rabbits like me who can knock down $3,000 a day for just sitting on our haunches, producing nothing, adding nada to GDP, can afford to take a modest pay cut and pay slightly higher taxes so the Golden Goose doesn’t starve to death. After all, without the Golden Goose, we’ll have nothing, so that sounds reasonable to me.
As you can see from the CNN figures I posted above, well over half of U.S. workers make $20/hr or less. How can anyone expect to sustain a consumer economy on that?
If you read investing blogs, as I do, you’ll see a lot of debate in the comment threads about what’s wrong with the economy. Of course, we know what it is — lack of demand. But conservative commenters don’t want to acknowledge that, because it follows that the economy can’t get better until wages are higher, so you’ll seem them posting all kinds of whackadoodle theories about what ails the economy. And, of course, their solution is always the same: Increase business investment by eliminating taxes on the rich.
Of course, they completely ignore the fact our economy is awash in investment money that can’t find anything to invest in. That’s why companies are boosting dividends, buying back stock, and looking for acquisitions. That’s why bank CDs and bonds pay near-zero interest. It’s why corporate spending on R&D is sinking like a waterlogged rock and capital spending is limping on crutches. Businesses don’t invest if they can’t find customers for their products. And if workers don’t have jobs and decent incomes, they can’t be customers!
The stupid thing about all of this is, if conservatives got their way, the economy would sink to zero — and they’d go down with it! We’re all in this boat together. If workers prosper, so will business owners. If the cheap labor conservatives keep beating down wages, eventually nobody will have nuthin’, including them. But then, being smart about economics was never their forte, was it?
Why do stocks keep going up, up, up? The answer is simple. There’s way more investment capital than investment opportunities.
With all the hedge funds and private equity firms scooping up companies, the number of publicly traded companies has declined drastically.
With so many companies making massive profits they can’t reinvest in their businesses because there’s no demand using their excess cash to buy back their own stock, the aggregate share float (i.e., number of shares available on public exchanges) has declined drastically, too.
Thus, more investment capital chasing fewer shares = rising stock prices. This is absolutely true. Last year, in 2013, stock prices went up six times faster than earnings. Clearing, something besides profit growth is driving stock prices, and it’s obvious what it is:
THERE’S TOO DAMNED MUCH CAPITAL!
So why would we want to create more by giving tax cuts to rich people? That makes no sense at all. What the economy really needs is to create more consumer demand by giving wage increases to workers. Even a dumb rabbit can see it. Why can’t conservatives see it? Are they deliberately dumb?
@7. I liked very much the third paragraph. I think it summarized the whole problem. Now. What do we do about it?
Is the obvious answer, get rid of corporate personhood, raise taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, raise the wages of the middle and lower classes, punish companies who out source and off shore and tax dodge and don’t invest in R&D, and finally raise tariffs, at the cost of company record profits and rich people wealth?
How realistic is that?
“Last year, in 2013, stock prices went up six times faster than earnings”</i
Does that mean we have a stock market bubble? That didn't do so well in 1929.
@10 “Does that mean we have a stock market bubble? That didn’t do so well in 1929.”
We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. It’ll take another year or two.
Something more for the Cheap Labor Conservatives to deny is happening, or at least deny humans should try to do anything about.
http://www.motherjones.com/env.....t-collapse
Facts have a liberal bias.
Another source
http://www.businessinsider.com.....lts-2014-5
Globul warming? What globul warming? They ain’t no globul warming! It’s just sun spots! Been going on for millions of years! (Even though the Earth is only 6,000 years old.)
Senate Polls: Bad News For GOP
A new NBC/Marist poll released today contains a quadruple dose of bad news for Republicans hoping to win a Senate majority this fall, because it shows Democratic candidates tied or leading in 4 races that are GOP must-wins, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky seat.
http://politicalticker.blogs.c.....?hpt=hp_t2
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This year’s election map favors the GOP, but they need to flip 6 Senate seats to win a majority, which basically means they need to win every seat in play, and the fact they’re struggling in 4 of those 6 races doesn’t auger well for them. Retaining Senate control would be a huge win for the D’s, because Republicans will face a near-impossible election map in 2016, and failure to win the Senate this year will mean President-To-Be Hillary Clinton* will have, at worst, a hostile House majority to deal with.
* GOPers don’t have a fucking prayer of winning the White House in 2016.
Why is there a bullet hole next to my last comment?
Better@12 spews:
Facts have a liberal bias.
Better to say liberals have a factual bias.
Why is there a bullet hole next to my last comment?
Because your comment is as scary as a kid armed with a bag of skittles.
@18 I thought maybe it was a stray round from Cliven Bundy’s ranch.
Plain Talk From A State Senator
I got hold today of a newsletter from Sen. Maralyn Chase to her constituents, and there’s some stuff in it worth quoting.
On Boeing:
“For years, business and labor and taxpayers of our state have had what I call a grand bargain. We all want our businesses to thrive and have provided tax incentives and regulatory relief so they can make healthy profits. In return, we expect these businesses to accommodate our need for high wages and a … healthy environment for our citizens. …
“In this grand bargain, businesses make strong profits for their shareholders, middle class workers make more than a living wage to support their families and pay sales taxes, and government reaps sufficient revenue to provide the services the Washington State Constitution mandates.
“The key to the grand bargain is that each leg of the stool succeeds, as opposed to one leg succeeding at the expense of the other two. Unfortunately, our grand bargain has fallen apart. Boeing is paying lower taxes to the state, is paying lower wages to its employees, is paying fewer employees as it sends more jobs out of state, and is polluting our environment, endangering public health and not fulfilling its share of the bargain.”
On taxes:
“The retail sales tax is Washington’s principal revenue sources for the general fund. … Washington State’s general fund is dependent upon consumer shopping. This presupposes sufficiently high wages to produce disposable income that can be spent on houses, cars, washing machines and other products that generate sales taxes.
“When workers are not working, or are working for very low wages, they do not have disposable income to go shopping. … Low-wage jobs will not bring about recovery of the state’s general fund. Taxing low- and middle-income workers will not solve our state’s revenue shortage.
“Washington State has the most regressive tax system in the entire nation. We tax our middle-class working families, living paycheck to paycheck, and elders on social security at a higher rate than any other state. At the same time, we tax our wealthy citizens the least of any state.
“We know how to fix this.”
Roger Rabbit Commentary: What makes Boeing especially obnoxious is they’re the biggest whiners around when it comes to complaining about lack of public investments in the infrastructure they say their business needs. With what money? Answer: The taxes they’re not paying.
As for our regressive tax structure, I’ve argued for years on this blog that we can’t pay for things like education and transit by loading even more regressive taxes on those least able to pay. We’ve GOT to have tax reform in this state, or we will NOT be able to maintain, much less improve, these public services. Repeated defeats at the ballot box of measures like the recent transit funding initiative prove my point.
Our elected leaders have not done enough to get out in front of this issue. Voters need to be educated about the need for tax reform. They don’t seem to understand that must people will pay less taxes if we reform our tax structure. In particular, most or all of our recent governors have lacked the courage to lead on this issue. Tax reform won’t happen by itself, nor will it happen simply by introducing legislative bills or by well-meaning citizens trying to put initiatives on the ballot. Our leaders have to LEAD by using their bully pulpit to educate our citizens about what tax reform is, why we need it, how they’ll benefit from it, and what will happen if we don’t do it.
Chuck Todd tells republicans what they don’t want to hear:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/tod.....e-answers/
As reality forces the wing nuts to abandon their obamacare hysteria, the stupid party has decided to double down on stupid once again, just in time for 2014.