Interesting article by a billionaire - So what do I see in our future? Pitchforks.

[26 Inf]

Are you aware of how tilted the entire premise of that argument is? When they designed it, it was to skip right over any debate about everyone being "owed" some minimum lifestyle, regardless of lack of skill and/or effort.

I'd answer you but I don't understand what you mean from that snippet quoted and your comments.

[26 Inf]

People don't understand the Ford quote. The key fact isn't that he paid them $5/day because they were worth it. They added value. Sure, there was a bootstrap effect to it, but the key to paying people more is that they add value- as in are people willing to pay for the good they produce. That all came from the combustion engine and the assembly line. Tech and production.

[I]Here is Henry Ford's take on it, noted in a 1926 book, Today and Tomorrow. It’s as a challenging a statement today as it as 100 years ago. “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”

“We increased the buying power of our own people, and they increased the buying power of other people, and so on and on,” Ford wrote. “It is this thought of enlarging buying power by paying high wages and selling at low prices that is behind the prosperity of this country.”

In 1919, Ford raised his minimum wage again, this time to $6.00 a day. Again, the wage hike produced higher production numbers. Ford told Garrett, “The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar-a-day wage is cheaper than the five. How far this will go we do not know.”

He learned how far in 1929. In the aftermath of the stock market crash, he raised wages to $7.00 a day, hoping it would spark an economic recovery. But this time, it didn’t work. Orders fell, production slowed, hours were reduced. But Ford didn’t blame the workers for the sluggish economy. The fault lay in business leaders who were “continually putting the profit motive over what he called the wage motive.” Ford told Garrett, “When business thought only of profit for the owners ‘instead of providing goods for all,’ then it frequently broke down.”[/I]

The article is interesting: http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2...imum-wage.html

[The Dumb Gun Collector]

I figure the left had to chang the argument from poverty to income inequality because almost all Americans live more comfortable lives than the Pharaohs.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Ford told Garrett, “When business thought only of profit for the owners ‘instead of providing goods for all,’ then it frequently broke down.”

I don’t know what to do with people that somehow think that profits aren’t tied to business success (sales). You can’t have profit if you aren’t meeting a demand, as in sales. You can only skinny so much profit out, especially in the long term. Run your company based on short term profits and eventually you get squished.

I think the Ford quote and wages does show that the macro-economic conditions are paramount to these things working. You had the twin technological changes of assembly line and internal combustion engine at the same time. That is a pretty powerful one-two punch.

You also can look at the times when that was written, perhaps as a way to immunize Ford from being seen as other socially irresponsible big business people.

Ford sold a good that people wanted and were willing to pay for. He also decreased costs through efficiency and lowered prices and expanded sales.

Since when did working at McD have to be a career for people. It used to be a marginal job for most people, not a way to raise a family while working the counter. It used to actually teach skills to people. I know a lot of successful and intelligent business people who worked there during school and had positive experiences and good life lessons. None work there now.

[Averageman]

If the left wants people to prosper they may want to reconsider the way they are managing the stranglehold on the Teacher's Union and how the Department of Education rules it's roost.
People with skills earn wages, people learning skills make minimum wages.
If you could graduate HS with a skill and walk in to a job as a Plumbers or HVAC Apprentice, we would all be a lot better off.

[MegademiC]

For perspective, Ford wasnt successful because he paid more, he was able to pay more because he pioneered a new manufacturing method that destroyed his competition. He was also very demanding if his employees.

The reason for income inequality IMO now is that we have coprs that are larger than ever. Look how huge GE ir microsoft are compared to businesses 50 years ago. Maybe im off, but i always thought they were much larger now. A ceo now might be in charge of a corp 5x the size of one years ago, so making 5x as much is not unfair.

Lastly wealth is not set and horded, its created.

[Todd.K]

...subsidizing profits for McDonald's and others by allowing their lower wages and shoring them up with govt assistance programs.

The "subsidizing profits" talking point, it starts the debate with an arbitrary minimum wage+welfare as if it's settled, and should in no way be contingent on skill and effort.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

If the left wants people to prosper they may want to reconsider the way they are managing the stranglehold on the Teacher's Union and how the Department of Education rules it's roost.
People with skills earn wages, people learning skills make minimum wages.
If you could graduate HS with a skill and walk in to a job as a Plumbers or HVAC Apprentice, we would all be a lot better off.

I've never understood how the left wants the govt to take over all kinds of things like medicine- all the while saying that they need a union to protect govt workers from the govt....

[Averageman]

I've never understood how the left wants the govt to take over all kinds of things like medicine- all the while saying that they need a union to protect govt workers from the govt....

Imagine at a High School Graduation with corporate sponsors.
After a high caliber GPA and four years of training in High School,
BMW wants to send a Student through a work/study program for four years.
Trane Air Conditioning wants to send a Student through two years of on the job training and an apprenticeship program.
BNSF needs trained Mechanics and they could have the pick of the best and the brightest before they wasted four years in College and untold thousands of dollars studying underwater basket weaving.
We're lying to kids when we tell them there is no future in the trades, we need to quit doing that and it will fix a lot more than just economic issues.
As it is now, someone comes out of school with debt and few opportunities and yet the failed system goes on and we subsidize it.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I hadn’t thought of it being direct or sponsored like that, but some kind of feedback loop on scholarship resources and economic needs really needs to be done. Tax the bejesus out of those top 20 endowment school’s endowments. That’s dead money doing nothing.