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US Fast Food Workers Plan to Strike and Want $15/hr Minimum
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Titus

Joined: 19 May 2012

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 6:16 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Let them go (after paying a punitive tax rate on the wealth they tried to cut and run with) and close the door after them by barring them or any organization which employs them from economic commerce with the United States.

Are you, like me, thinking Specifically of Eduardo Saverin?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Saverin

Quote:

Eduardo Saverin was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to a wealthy Jewish Brazilian family,[11][12][13][14] and his family later moved to Rio de Janeiro. Eduardo's father was an industrialist working in export, clothing, shipping, and real estate.[15]

By 1993, Saverin's father had become wealthy, and in 1993 it was discovered that his son Eduardo's name had been placed on a list of potential kidnapping victims by gangs specializing in kidnapping for ransom. As a result, the family emigrated to the United States to find a safer place to live, and settled in Miami, Florida. Saverin attended Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, and went on to Harvard University, where he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club as well as president of the Harvard Investment Association. While an undergraduate at Harvard, Saverin took advantage of Brazil's lax insider trading regulations and made $300,000 via strategic investments in the oil industry.

After the US kept him safe, he participated in the theft of an idea from an American, make a billion, and took off to Singapore.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 6:53 pm Post subject:

Titus wrote:

Fox wrote:

Are you, like me, thinking Specifically of Eduardo Saverin?

I actually originally included him as an example in my post. If parasitic "investors" are modern American culture heroes, this guy is Diomedes.

Titus

Joined: 19 May 2012

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 6:59 pm Post subject:

wishfullthinkng wrote:

disclaimer: i do have credit cards and don't plan on getting rid of them anytime soon.

It isn't really possible to ditch them, unless you're going to go Dick Proenneke and say goodbye to civilizaiton. Flights, rental cars, hotels, subscription services, Amazon.com etc..

Fox is right. I believe the historical record is clear. If a political economy allows usury then that PE will eventually be controlled by the usurers.

The most nefarious aspect of usury (and taxation, though that's another story) was captured by Hilaire Belloc:

http://www.catholictradition.org/Classics/belloc2-2.htm

Quote:

Usury is hidden in the general productive scheme; the usurious character of certain receipts is not distinguished from the legitimate character of the majority.

I'm ranting. The only economist I am aware of who studies the % of costs that are cost of capital (usury) is a lady named Margrit Kennedy in Germany.

http://www.shiftfrequency.com/tag/margrit-kennedy/

Quote:

According to Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher who has studied this issue extensively, interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy. We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production. Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell.

For government projects, Kennedy found that the average cost of interest is 50%. If the government owned the banks, it could keep the interest and get these projects at half price. That means governments—state and federal—could double the number of projects they could afford, without costing the taxpayers a single penny more than we are paying now.

..

Dr. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12 percent for garbage collection, to 38 percent for drinking water, to 77 percent for rent in public housing in her native Germany.

The above is from a quick google search. I don't want to reread her essays to find the direct quotes.

The numbers are certainly higher in the USA, UK and Canada. Imagine, 40% of every purchase being directed into the pockets of usurers. The sums are vast. These gains buy our governments, it buys all media.

I started thinking about the cost of capital and how it impacts the general cost level from my time living in South Florida. Miami built a stadium with these terms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlins_Park

Quote:

Miami-Dade County 59.4% $376.3 million
City of Miami 20.9% $132.5 million [a]
Miami Marlins 19.7% $125.2 million [b]
Cost (principal) -- $634 million

a The city's contribution includes $10 million towards demolition of the old Orange Bowl stadium, and $94 million to build the parking facilities.
b The Marlins may spend up to $89.5 million of their contribution on "soft costs"—or, non-construction costs. These include fees paid to designers, consultants, attorneys, and political lobbyists.

The total cost to the county is $2.4 billion, spread over 40 years, to repay $409 million in bonds that will primarily, though not exclusively, cover stadium construction. Roughly $100 million will refinance existing bond debt and another $9 million goes into a debt service reserve fund. The remaining $300 million is for stadium construction, financed in two ways.

Ignore for a moment how stupid it is for broke cities to build cathedrals to professional athletes. 634m becomes 2.4b after interest. Extrapolate this relationship into sewer projects and everything else. It's shocking.

So to end the rant, yes. Pay the poor burger flippers 15$. It is a start. The roots of this rot run very deep.

Titus

Joined: 19 May 2012

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 7:04 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Titus wrote:

Fox wrote:

Are you, like me, thinking Specifically of Eduardo Saverin?

I actually originally included him as an example in my post. If parasitic "investors" are modern American culture heroes, this guy is Diomedes.

What's worse, sophisticated investment planning would have placed his taxes below 10%. 10% on 10 figures is a big sum of money, but he's never going to be able to spend a billion. The utility of money must decrease at some point. It is so greedy.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 7:57 pm Post subject:

Titus wrote:

Fox wrote:

Titus wrote:

Fox wrote:

Are you, like me, thinking Specifically of Eduardo Saverin?

I actually originally included him as an example in my post. If parasitic "investors" are modern American culture heroes, this guy is Diomedes.

Greed isn't even the right word really. Plenty of the ultra-wealthy are happy to give away huge chunks of their money, so long as they get it in the first place and they get to dispense it. Think about that, being willing to ruin people's lives on a moderately large scale in order to earn money you're then willing to just give away. It's sick, and a society which idolizes sickness cannot help but be unhealthy itself.

radcon

Joined: 23 May 2011

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2013 9:04 pm Post subject:

You hear the ultra rich these days say they don't care about the money. The money is just a way to keep score. I find it so laughable when ever a tax hike on the super rich "job creators" is proposed the opponents always say " If you raise taxes on these people they will have no incentive to work and they will just close up shop and stay home and lay about all day." Bullocks.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:36 am Post subject:

wishfullthinkng wrote:

the only way to stick it to a credit card company would be to . . .

. . . file bankruptcy, then cut up the cards. Its unsecured credit.

wishfullthinkng

Joined: 05 Mar 2010

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:26 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

wishfullthinkng wrote:

the only way to stick it to a credit card company would be to . . .

. . . file bankruptcy, then cut up the cards. Its unsecured credit.

nope. if you read my earlier point i was saying that no matter what these companies will do anything it takes to try and hit their quarterly earnings, even if it means upping the super high interest rate for a new line of card being introduce to make up for a bunch of defaults.

radcon

Joined: 23 May 2011

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 11:44 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

wishfullthinkng wrote:

the only way to stick it to a credit card company would be to . . .

. . . file bankruptcy, then cut up the cards. Its unsecured credit.

Because of that bankruptcy you won't be able to apply for a new job, rent an apartment, or get a fair price on car insurance.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:00 pm Post subject:

radcon wrote:

Kuros wrote:

wishfullthinkng wrote:

the only way to stick it to a credit card company would be to . . .

. . . file bankruptcy, then cut up the cards. Its unsecured credit.

Because of that bankruptcy you won't be able to apply for a new job, rent an apartment, or get a fair price on car insurance.

That's true. There will be credit consequences for approximately 3 years. But you can position yourself as employed, in an apartment, and having purchased car insurance (reaffirming any car debt), before you file. An employer cannot terminate you for filing bankruptcy. There are consequences to many legal decisions, and these are some. But yes, you will stick it to the credit card companies if you file.

Back to the thread.

It costs the Federal gov't an average of $904,542 per Walmart because their low wages push employees into Federal support programs.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:33 pm Post subject:

So, let's suppose we double the wages and benefits of every McDonald's employee, and refuse to reduce profit-margins for franchise-owners. How much would this increase prices at McDonald's?

Quote:

[S]mall-business owners who run McDonald's franchises spend about a third of their income on wages, which would mean the price of a Big Mac would go up by $1.28 to $5.27.

A doubling of wages at McDonald's would almost certainly involve some layoffs, asserts Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a HuffPost blogger. At the same time, more workers would stay in their jobs longer, Baker added.

Experts generally assume that roughly one-third of the cost of increased wages gets passed on to consumers, with much of the rest of cutting into profits, Baker said. Regardless, McDonald’s is so vast and lucrative that it could easily survive a major wage increase, Baker added.

“The idea that it’d put McDonald’s out of business, there’d be no way,” said Baker.

McDonald's franchises would invest in more technology to displace unskilled labor, but the surviving unskilled labor would have a living wage and there would be skilled labor to manufacture, assemble, and maintain the technology.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 pm Post subject:

Careful Kuros. To you or I that dollar increase in the price of your hamburger is just a dollar, but to some people, it's the destruction of the middle class.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 8:01 pm Post subject:

Fox wrote:

Careful Kuros. To you or I that dollar increase in the price of your hamburger is just a dollar, but to some people, it's the destruction of the middle class.

You joke but Australia has a $15/hour minimum wage. And look what happened there.

Axiom

Joined: 18 Jan 2008
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2013 11:19 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

Fox wrote:

Careful Kuros. To you or I that dollar increase in the price of your hamburger is just a dollar, but to some people, it's the destruction of the middle class.

You joke but Australia has a $15/hour minimum wage. And look what happened there.

Actually min wage in Australia for casual staff, 21 and over, is $20.30.

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay/national-minimum-wage/pages/default.aspx

+ 9% superannuation (pension) + weekend and evening penalty rates

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