No more overtime pay?

[imperialprincess]

You boys are driving me to drink!!!

(Literally, I've had to spike my tea with bourbon just to calm down enough to begin this.)

Number one:

Be very clear about this.

I DO NOT own a pair of birkenstocks.

Never have, never will.

(Ugly shoes in my closet? I don't think so! I'd much prefer a pair of black patent leather stilettos--little boys like you Kryan, seem to respect them ever so much more.;>)) For comfort I have nike cross-trainers or thigh-high, flat-heeled boots (think medieval).

Seriously. All'ya'll seem like a smart little gaggle of young men (I assume most of you are in college or just out. Didn't somebody have a problem in their dorm?) who have not read a whole hellva lot of history. Feel free to correct me if I'm way of base here. I don't mean that as an insult, I am simply stunned by some of the assumptions in the posts I am reading.)

Are any of you familiar with some of the books by Robert Reich, Paul Volker, or that guy from like the Nixon admin Paul Paulson or Tom Tomplinson, whatever the hell his name is (one of the founders of the Concord Coalition but not a Senator), or even Alan Greenspan? --hell man he's on your side but I don't think you are going to find any quotes from him supporting what you are advocating. Have you read some of the biographies of Carnigie, Morgan, Melon, Vanderbilt, Rockerfeller and the like? Or one of my favs--the story of sugarland and the company store. How do you think these white Anglo-Saxon Juedo-christian (for the most part) men got to be "Captains of Industry?" I'll give you an easy one, since some of you are still in college (this is how I got to know a little bit). Open up your History 101 text (It may be the class about the second half of history depending on where they split the civil war) Now read some of the chapters about the banking problems of the 1870's, 1890's and the beginning of serious industrialization and labor disputes of that time and the early 1900's (say '10's- '35). Then look up some of the books listed at the end of those chapters called "for further reading". There is nothing like the feeling of tracking down through several books the original evidence your history text uses to justify it's opinions and finding that your interpretation of the facts might be quite different. When you read about the first time the federal government decided to feed a hungry person (civil war widows and orphans who were literally starving on the steps of city halls) maybe you won't be so quick to assume that we've never been free from the "burdens" of the social safety net and that life was so grand back then when charities were free to raise all they could from an untaxed populas..

I'll try to take on these ideas one by one but then this will be my last series of posts. As I said I have other priorities (than trying to get libertains and conservatives to admit that they've got it wrong on balance of corporations vs. people and I feel that this is essentially what this thread has come down to) and commonsense you haven't even brought me close to an epiphany yet, I don't find your evidence that persuasive. Sorry.

Kryan: You have made a fair point. I should support my assertions much more thoroughly. I admit that most of the stuff I've read on economics, corporations, labor history etc. I read ten years ago or more when I was just starting in college and it will take me a while to find my evidence again. If I get a chance, I'll post some of the sources I am remembering. (BTW… I would disagree that ABC news and CNN are anything like "reliable sources" except in the most cursory sense. I am thinking about books that I read. Or reports from policy think tanks--I prefer to compare what liberals say with what conservatives say and then make up my own mind.)

[imperialprincess]

To start with the end first--part of the reason employers don't make everyone salaried is the regulations re: exempt vs. non-exempt employees (basically hourly paid supervisors (defined as part of management) vs. in some case higher paid salaried workers who are not managers)--complicated stuff and I don't even pretend to be an expert on the regulations. This happens sometimes in fairly complex industries like, for example, refineries (My husband works at one.) Or at defense contractors, like Lemsco ( subsidery of what used to be Lockeed--my dad worked for them for about 40 years before he retired and died. Staunch yankee republican who also happened to be a Union Representative--never could understand how he could reconcile those two in his own mind.)

Leopard: I would say that your explanation of how the value of goods and services are set is way too simplistic--very educated economists still can't agree on how we should set the value of a dollar (much less the value of the goods and services it is suppose to by) which is why it "floats" on the world currency market--to be bought and sold just like all the rest of the commodities that we don't know the intrinsic value of.. Most conservatives think this is a really bad idea, remember Nixon and his attempts to get back on the gold standard, who also by the way was one of the only presidents in the modern era to set price fixes and wage freezes.

From everything I have both seen personally and read about, both historically and currently, in most places bosses usually find it cheaper (even paying overtime) to get a worker to work as many hours as possible rather than hire a second worker. So your theory that all workers who want to work more are somehow "forced" (because of overtime laws) to get a second job, is not what I've seen or experienced or read about. Now when work is slow, I've seen a lot of people take second or even third jobs but that is because the business has less than 40 or sometimes 30 hours of work available. Or sometimes a worker will work 50 hours at one and 30 at another. Besides, I disagree with your notion that they are "forced" to accept the hours they are assigned (whether 30 or 40 or 100). There is no law saying a worker can't quit. Using your definition of force--the force of law.

But of course even that is a logcial fallacy because we are all "forced", though there is no law doing so, to survive. To seek, food, shelter and clothing (not put our kids through college--whoever equated those is being silly) and to some degree "pay the bills." For example, we are all forced to seek water and in the vast overwhelming majority of this country, water isn't free. You have to pay for it. Even very, very basic medical care, we are "forced," to seek it to continue breathing, for example, again, for the most part, no where in this country is canned oxygen free. So to some degree, to merely survive in a capitalist society we are "forced" to work. I am not saying that is bad! I think history has proven it to be a fair and good system better than any other, but it is not perfect. It's imperfections, in a few limited circumstances, must be mitigated by law and the government, if we are to be a just and civil society.

Some of the points made about child labor, to my mind at least, are even easier to make. BTW this thread did NOT start off talking about the very low wage range such that a child might earn to eat, I don't know of any work a child might do to eat that would earn over 24k. (Leaving out maybe entertainers.) In my part of south Texas I am very well aquatinted with this scenario. We have a large population of migrant children (children of the workers who pick Texas produce, further south they pick Texas oranges and grapefruit, if you buy an orange with a sticker on it that says "Texas," I think the chances are something like one in four that a child under 14 picked it), who do indeed work to eat and who for the most part are hungry, except when they go to school and get a free govt hand out for breakfast (most days in the elementary school my stepdaughter attends this is a biscuit and 4 oz of milk. they get about 2 TBLSPs of egg once a week.) and lunch (usually and apple, about 2 TBLSP of a vegetable, 1 tsp of meat and about 1/2 cup of pasta and 4 oz of milk). At her school, something like 75% of the kids who attend qualify for free or reduced priced meals. It is higher further south.

I won't go much into my personal experience with low wages "laborers" in my area. Because it is sunny and warm in South Texas our homeless shelters are never not overflowing. I am a member of the steering committee for one of our local shelters that takes anyone who wants to work (virtually all do) in a van to clean hotels, 12-14 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. They can never get enough workers.

Because this "new" rule wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed at people like my Dad (union) or his father (no union) or my mom's dad (both) and her step-grandfather (union)or my husband (no union). Only my Aunt worked in a non dangerous, nor physically demanding job (she was a secretary--non union, big corporation). Her husband owned a med sized corporation (a true entrepeneur) and they both still believed, **felt** from their experiences they had that they and the country were better off with worker protections. They were all paid hourly and earned more than 24k a year but never made it into a "salaried" postion. (And yes some "salaried" people are paid overtime (I have an acquaintance that is a chemical engineer who is so paid when she works over a certain contracted for amount of time) but they are in the "exempt" category for federal regulation purposes and have no protections. Often to your determent, though you don't know it. How safe would your calculations be if you had worked 20 hour days for a week? Happens quite often in industrial plants. Aren't you glad you don't have to turn on a pipe whose new pressure was calculated by an tired, sleep deprived, engineer (not the same previously mentioned engineer?)

I guess I feel so strongly about it because when I first read about all this stuff in college I could relate it people in my family who had been on many of the different sides of the argument. Like when my grandfather, who worked for a big electric company (Westinghouse I think or maybe it was GE) and got badly hurt (electricuted, lost his foot and eventually his leg) and was fired. (This was between 1920 and 1930) It deeply affected his family. My grandmother went to work as a maid in someone's mainsion to make sure they could pay (though not "forced" not exactly a choice in up state New York) for the coal my Dad had to shovel to keep the house warm. My Dad was fairly young and missed his mother terribly because she had to live at her boss's house during the week and he only got to see her on Sunday for years. They tried everything to find different kinds of work but they had to make ends meet in the mean time.

I suppose my point is that corporations are NOT just property--maybe if they were things would be different? Read the Supreme Court rulings, about corporate privacy and such. Corporations have all of the same rights that individuals have but few of the responsibilities. And I think that is why we are in the trouble we are in.

Fellows, you'll have to do a much better job if your aim is to convince me that going back to dueling (which I don't think of as chivalrous but as testosterone driven, netherthal behavior only a male could admire)is a better solution.

[imperialprincess]

Forgive me (I think this is so assinane but I can't resist):

K said:

Would you support or oppose the following ideas:

1. Letting workers exempt their employers from paying them overtime, workman's comp, and the like via a notification to government filed with income taxes. This would refund the money to the employer without giving them the ability to force new recruits to exempt them.
2. Letting people who make less than $40k/yr exempt themselves from paying for social security, medicaid, medicare, and other public services they do not wish to use. This does not apply to the military or justice system.

I suppose you are asking me if I want to see a law passed reflecting these two ideas. My gut reaction on the first is that I would be neither for no against, on the second, as a taxpayer I'd like to know what will happen to all the old people who will show up at the emergency rooms and who is going to pay for enough people to tell them they can't come in and to shove them back out into the streets. (If you have no clue, then I would be against) Further more the federal overtime regulations are totally different than state run (and regulated) worker's comp laws. I thought you libertains were all for state's rights? Do you propose passing federal laws to tell states what they can and can't regulate? In Texas, all businesses are free to not participate in the worker's comp system, as they so chose. So what would you change? I think you need to be a little more specific about "and the like"? Unless you are only including similar systems with different names rather than other catagories such as OSHA laws or enviromental laws, sexual harrasment laws or discrimination laws.

[Leopard]

Originally posted by imperialprincess, Leopard: I would say that your explanation of how the value of goods and services are set is way too simplistic--very educated economists still can't agree on how we should set the value of a dollar (much less the value of the goods and services it is suppose to by) which is why it "floats" on the world currency market--to be bought and sold just like all the rest of the commodities that we don't know the intrinsic value of.. Most conservatives think this is a really bad idea, remember Nixon and his attempts to get back on the gold standard, who also by the way was one of the only presidents in the modern era to set price fixes and wage freezes.

Sweet Princess,
It confounds me that you cannot see the irrationality in the above statements you make. In your post you claimed to have taken some economics courses, yet you seem to think that 'values' are set by certain people (presumably 'well-educated economists'). First, show me an economist that is currently trying to determine what the 'value' of a dollar should be, it is impossible! Every and any economist (except perhaps some throwback communistic-type) knows better that to try to determine some sort of set value of any commodity in the market, let alone the 'value' of a non-commodity (like fiat money, ie: the dollar). Tell me, where does 'value' come from? Here is a hint - 'value' does not exist in the universe without humans. There is no such thing as 'intrinsic' value. There is mass, physical properties, and a variety of other easily measurable 'natures' of things, but value is not one of them. A hunk of gold having the mass of 2 kilograms will continue and always have that mass unless it is acted upon in some fashion. Yet the 'value' of that hunk is determined by the usefullness that each and every human valuating it defines - this means that 'value' is not a stagnant, universal constant, but rather, a fluid, relative thing that will fluctuate as people determine different uses for its particular properties. Take oil, for instance... oil has been around since before man walked the earth and throughout most of that time its value was more negative then positive: if you had a pond of oil on your land it tended to be worth less than a property without such a pesky feature. Yet, in the last century or so, we discovered new uses for properties intrinsic to oil and these uses were/are highly desireable to folks: this translates to oil gaining significant 'value' to humans. Yet, take a 100 gallon drum of oil to a tribe removed from most of society and the oil becomes 'valueless' once again (to them).

Economics is simple (and yet complex) in that it is an understanding of human action. Sometimes this is easy to determine, sometimes it is quite complex. My above post on pricing was simplistic (yet totally true, dare you to dispute it - or dare ANY economist, 'well-educated' or not, to do so) for two reasons: (1) to give a primer of the fundamentals of economics to those who have not really put any thought into it (a VERY dangerous position), (2) to explain why socialism and communism simply cannot exist for extended periods of time without causing great harm/pain/suffering to those who are forced to live with the results. Lets take #1. Why would I care if others know these things? I hope you do not mind, but I would like to use your statement to explain...

you stated:
very educated economists still can't agree on how we should set the value of a dollar
There are three presumptions within your statement which are very dangerous: (1) that 'value' is some set amount or property inherent in all objects, (2) that the quest to determine this elusive quantity of value is and should be within the hands of 'very educated economists, (3) that these economists know better than ordinary people and thus folks should abdicate the responsibility of understanding economics because others more intelligent and wiser than we are at the helm.
#1 is patently false
#2 is again false
#3 is scarey. Why? well, because YOU are making statements and (I can only assume) taking actions based on false premises. You vote. Your thoughts happen to reflect a majority of other folks opinions in this country. and they vote. I (as with everyone else) have to deal with the results of your voting due to the tyrannical nature inherent in a democratic system. This means that you blindly follow others advice without any true knowledge on the subject of economics, and by majority, force me to abide by regulations/policies/laws which might sound very well-intentioned, but have effects that impact extremely negatively upon me. When you hear on the news that the orange growers are lobbying government for an orange tariff against brazillian oranges because the brazillians can harvest, transport, and sell their oranges for much less than florida orange growers which would cause hundreds (thousands?) of american growers to go out of business. and thus cause a great loss of jobs, hardship, pain. So you vote in favor of the tariffs or vote for the representative which happens to favor such tariffs. And so the tariff is enacted. and so everyone in the US is forced to continue paying higher prices for their orange products than without the tariff. which means less money is spent on other products and services. which means less jobs for our country. which means higher overall unemployment: hardship, pain. So the question is (at least the utilitarian question): Which solution (tariff or no tariff) causes less negatives than the other choice? It is a FACT that the 'no tariff' solution is indeed the best for the greater good (ug, hate that term) because of a few basic economic reasons. First, the tarif itself requires money and labor to be spent in enforcing it. The customs agents need to be paid, the bureaucrats that oversee and track these things need compensation, etc. The second reason is because a subsidized industry is inherently less efficient, less productive, and apt to cater to its customers desires. Yes, your statement scares me - just as giving a scalpel to a car mechanic and encouraging them to perform brain surgery scares me. You make comment on subjects which you apparently have little knowledge of YET you (through our voting process) will end up forcing me to deal with the consequences of your uninformed choices. I guess my metaphor would be better stated like so: You are giving the scalpel to a car mechanic and forcing me to undergo surgery at his hand.

I apologize for the tone in this post, but I hope you can see where it is coming from - I do not mean to insult you as a person in any way, but can you see how I am defending myslef against force which you and others wield against me? If you want to pay more for your oranges for whatever reason, I say more power to you - but you also want me to pay more and are willing to use government force to do so - SCAREY!

terrified of the 'do-gooders',
michael

[aaron_823]

Hello to all,

As with any time a libertarian gets into a discussion about government, things seem to take the same track. The libertarian says that the government has no business telling folks what to do and the liberal says "What about the (children; poor people; old people; handicapped; lower class; middle class)?" The standard libertarian response is, "If it weren't for the government these people would be better off." Obviously this is a grossly oversimplified statement, but it looks pretty accurate to me. Libertarians fail to convince people of the veracity of their statement. People would rather deal with the devil they know. Feel free to point out the error of my thinking here.


It has been pointed out that if you don't like where you are working, you can work somewhere else. If you can't find another job, well, working for a company you don't like is better than not working at all. If you wish to keep your job, you can go to your employer and tell them that. If you have enough value to the company that it is in their best interest to keep you, they will make an offer. If not, it is up to you, the individual, to increase your own value.

There is another thread going on around here about Wal-Mart and their business practices.

http://www.volconvo.com/forums/index.php?s...1306&hl=walmart

The argument is divided by those who think that Wal-Mart is exploiting its workers and those that think that Wal-Mart is the epitome of the free market enterprise. Wal-Mart is staunchly anti-union. Does that take advantage of workers or does it enable them to provide lower cost goods to the consumer? Either way, I don’t think that makes them bad, I think that makes them smart. Stocking shelves is not a skilled labor position, why should one be paid highly to do it? By paying someone more than they are worth, this drives up the cost of living for everyone. There will always be jobs in the world that pay significantly less than others. To quote Judge Smails, “The world needs ditch diggers, too.” Should a ditch digger make as much as a doctor? I worked at UPS when I was in college and there you could make an extra dollar an hour just for memorizing a list of zip codes and their related colors. Not everyone was able to do this and therefore, not everyone earned the extra dollar. That isn’t just fair, it is right.

Well, I should probably try and do some work or else I will be availing myself of the government teat.

A