Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it

Re:Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to ... by Nutmog on Saturday March 26, 2016 @07:42AM (#11365298)

Recently a large national retail chain in Australia (Dick Smith's) went into receivership and left its owners (shareholders) out of pocket. They were no doubt paying Fred $200/hr even though he was only creating $100/hr in value. I think workers in industries with a liquid labor market like retail probably are being paid about what they're worth, as evidenced by the fact that sometimes their owners lose out. It's easy to say the greedy capitalist is being greedy when he wins, but what about when he loses? That often happens and the risk of that is probably why most of us aren't capitalists ourselves - it's dangerous!

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Re:Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to ... by chongli on Saturday March 26, 2016 @11:10AM (#11365902)

It's easy to say the greedy capitalist is being greedy when he wins, but what about when he loses? That often happens and the risk of that is probably why most of us aren't capitalists ourselves - it's dangerous!

Often when the greedy capitalist loses, everybody who works for him also lose. People talk about the risks capitalists take and try to compare them to workers using sheer dollar values. That valuation completely sidesteps the diminishing marginal utility of cash.

If a capitalist goes out of business and his $10 million factory ends up getting sold off for a net of $3 million after paying his debts, we can say he lost at least $7 million. His workers, on the other hand, don't lose anything but their jobs. However, those workers might have been living from paycheck to paycheck, leaving them far worse off than the capitalist who still has $3 million in his pocket.

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Re:Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to ... by ownagefool on Saturday March 26, 2016 @09:16AM (#11365552)

The problem is, unless you know what Fred does, it's really hard to gauge whether you have the $200 Fred or the $10 Fred. Worst still, Fred the dev usually doesn't know either, he just likes playing with technology and rewriting the same wheel with new shiney abstractions.

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Re:Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to ... by tamana on Saturday March 26, 2016 @01:26PM (#11366506)

But did the founding owners or managers take massive $1000/hr wages while this was happening? Likely so.

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Re:Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to ... by WalterBright on Saturday March 26, 2016 @07:21PM (#11367965)

You're suggesting the owners wrote themselves checks out of the business to the point that the business went bankrupt, thus destroying their source of income.

Why would an owner do that?

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