Source for "keeping your workers confused"?
It seems like Uber is making drivers listen to anti-union propaganda.
986 karma · joined October 9, 2013
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It seems like Uber is making drivers listen to anti-union propaganda.
Maybe the company thinks unions are inefficient or doesn't like the collective bargaining power (in extreme cases it resembles a monopoly). Companies and workers are entitled to their opinion. Workers can choose to work at companies that allow unions.
Of course management (multiple people) should be more powerful than an individual worker.
> If living costs raise and the quality of available jobs worsens (e.g. less job security) but your wage stays the same that's objectively a loss.
True, but that hasn't happened.
Tell me a relevant change that affects my case.
Take a look at https://openborders.info for lots of reasons.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-...
I don't think you need >3x the annual median income (that's top 10%) for immigrants to benefit.
Economics research says high wage immigrants benefit while low wage immigrants benefit the natives on net, although it may harm some natives.
In my opinion, even if it may harm some natives, due to the poverty alleviating effects of immigration, we should open immigration to anyone who doesn't have a criminal record. This isn't that crazy, till 1914 in the U.S.:
"Generally, those immigrants who were approved spent from two to five hours at Ellis Island. Arrivals were asked 29 questions including name, occupation, and the amount of money carried. It was important to the American government that the new arrivals could support themselves and have money to get started. The average the government wanted the immigrants to have was between 18 and 25 dollars ($600 in 2015 adjusted for inflation). Those with visible health problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island's hospital facilities for long periods of time. More than three thousand would-be immigrants died on Ellis Island while being held in the hospital facilities. Some unskilled workers were rejected because they were considered "likely to become a public charge." About 2 percent were denied admission to the U.S. and sent back to their countries of origin for reasons such as having a chronic contagious disease, criminal background, or insanity."
(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island#Primary_inspectio... )
What I want is this minus the racism and disqualification for health problems except maybe for contagious diseases.
Corporate profits are good; they mean more return to shareholders.
Let companies decide what workers they want.
I do not want to force something on other people.
What is wrong with that? Allowing them to donate organs gives them more choices. Who owns a person's body?
And donating the organ helps people who needs organs. The person who donates and the person who receives do this voluntarily if they feel they benefit.
I think it's deplorable that people are dying from lack of organ donations while there are people with healthy organs who are poor. Legalizing organ donation would help both groups.
See https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth... .
> but in cases where one party in an exchange has a lot more bargaining power, the other party often will agree to something because of fear of retribution or a threat of force.
You seem to be implying this is bad thing but it makes sense that a company (could be thousands of people) should have more bargaining power than an employee (1 person). What is the threat of force here? That is illegal. What is the retribution here if an employee chooses a different employer because the employee wants to decline testing?
If everyone gains, then it is "good for society" but what if some people gain and some lose, as in most regulations.
Let us assume constant demand for houses.
Suppose a housing shortage is going to happen in 1 year.
Speculators will buy houses thus incentivizing construction and lowering prices in the future. The more adverse the shortage (consider supply and demand) the greater the difference in prices between now and 1 year from now and thus the greater the gains of the speculators.
Speculators are essentially arbitraging over time.
If the speculators incorrectly buy houses when there is excess housing, they will lose money proportional to their mistake.
Yes.
> If there were less or no speculation, what would be the net result?
You would have more housing shortages and more excess housing.
Speculators do add value by making the market more efficient.
For example, if there is going to be a house shortage then speculators will buy it early thus rewarding people for developing houses earlier.
Or, if there are too many houses, speculators can short it and bring prices down and so make housing more affordable earlier.
If you want other infrastructure companies or decentralized internet, you are free to do that yourself via voluntary means.
The CEOs get high pay because their skillset is rare.
Exporting jobs is the opposite of exploitation. How can more choice harm poor workers?
> Also exporting jobs, like IT, to countries to cut the bottom line, when the workers are not skilled enough, and what I feel, don't care enough to learn about stuff beyond what a script tells them, then it's bad.
The quality may be the lower but the price is also lower.
Inflation in India is quite high.
No, they can still build robots inefficiently at low wages. And thanks to the heavy automation their real wage would be decent.
> older person is going to suddenly go back to school to learn a new trade is simply not how people in general work.
What if they have good incentives to go back to school?
Where did you get the idea that real wages are falling? Even that graph seems to contradict what you're saying.
I used BLS data to compute an 8% increase in hourly wages CPI (cost of living)-adjusted from 2007 to 2017.
> Economics is a study of the behavior of people, and people aren't numbers
Yes, but that's useless. Atoms aren't numbers but we model them with numbers. You can't do anything with an abstract notion of "person".
> What we mean is you can't just use the theory and assume the world will happily follow it.
You haven't said why the theory is wrong. You can say the exact same thing about evolution. "You can't just use the theory of evolution and assume the world will happily follow it."
> rather than just assume they fall into place.
I'm not assuming they fall in place; I'm giving reasons why they will benefit in the long-term.
With regards to the original submission, see https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/5uo9p3/bill_g... and https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/5uoowk/beatin... .
CPI (a measure of living cost--note that living standards increase)-adjusted hourly wages have increased 8% in the past decade. That's not that good, but we're looking at one of the richest countries in the world.
But PPP (measure of purchasing power) adjusted GNI per capita in the U.S. has increased by 25% in the past decade.
If you look at India (where huge portion of the world lives), PPP adjusted GNI per capita has doubled from 2003-2013. You'll probably retort "that's just numbers", but I live in India ;)
Similarly PPP adjusted GNI per capita has increased greatly in most poor countries.
> This is the age we live in, profit maximization over everything else.
In which age people don't want more money? Corporations are owned by shareholder who are people who want to make more money like everybody. Obviously, they will profit maximize.
> If the only jobs available are low paying with terrible conditions, then that's not a society you want to live in.
You misunderstood my point; I mean that automation increases real wages thus creating jobs.
> Its convenient to hide behind the economic theories
Haha, the good ol' economist bashing.
Those stupid eCONomists with their statist-tricks who just play around with graphs. /s
Kind of ironical when you hear HNers talk about supporting science w.r.t climate change but when it's economics suddenly many are the opposite. I guess people only support science when it confirms their priors.
Economics is a real science just like physics, mathematics, etc. Papers are published with statistical rigor and empirical testing. Indeed, economics is complex and counter-intuitive because the world isn't simple.