for truth

Machines are doing a lot of that. In one factory where I worked, in about the year 2000, the production line would produce $100 worth of product in a minute. That's $6,000 in an hour or $12,000,000 in a year of full time work. Of course a) the machines ran around the clock, and b) there were over a dozen people per production line, and c) that represents the gross value and not the net profit, there are other costs in production besides labor.

My current employer, a city parks department, operates at a loss, although we do charge fees for many services too. So you cannot really say that they are making profits off of my labor or getting excess value from my work.

If you were to break it down, probably many workers are not producing $140,000 a year - like me, they are not even close to that. Plus, I only work part time. That average includes a whole bunch of really productive machines and perhaps high value producers. (Do professional baseball players really produce all that much value? Well, enough of we the people are paying them all kinds of money to do what they do. Although it seems to me that if you could clap your hands and make all of that disappear (and the memory of it as well) that our society would not be any worse off at all for its loss.

Also, I might note that pay is not the only thing an employee gets. My w-2 shows that my employer did not just pay me $14,090.84 in wages, they also paid $3,504.99 in insurance (and so did I, although it does not show as taxable income) and also contributed $1,085.11 to my retirement fund and another $1,077.97 for their portion of FICA. So wages were $14,090.84 and non-wage compensation was about $9,000.

You or someone else runs the machines, other people build and maintain them.

Furthermore, the OP also makes note of other costs involved, even at half GDP per worker, salaries would be at $70,000.

so 80% could be less and 20% more, or any combination of percentages.

was an average.

All by myself.
Using machines that were 4 years out of date.
I made almost $140 a night doing it, while working 12-hour shifts.

But then, that was back in 1999.

That's the underground economy.

You produced the marginal value of packaging those products.

Capital ;i](i.e., the machine, the mainlne, meaning a steam engine in Smith's time), is subject to wear and tear, but can run many years before it needs to be replaced. The laborer, on the other hand, needs his wages to sustain him and the next generation of laborers.

Now, don'r you feel more powerful and significant than you did when you wrote that post? Good, becuae I'll bet you're worth every penny and more.

I don't credit my hammer, wrenches, welding machine, torch, etc with creating the stuff I build. You shouldn't credit the tool for the stuff you built.

the lines I was working on, did.

Most of the work involved in operating the line was relatively unskilled - feed it with cardboard, glue and plastic, perform hourly quality checks, clear out jams and re-start it.

There were certain factors. Since down-time costs $100 per minute, any reduction of downtime produces an extra $100 per minute. So reducing down time by 2 minutes on a 12 hour shift would more than pay my salary.

Usain Bolt is a fast runner. Some Kenyans and Ethiopians have run marathons in under 125 minutes. Would you credit me with incredible speed because I did the highly skilled activity of boarding a jet plane? The passenger is not producing the distance - the plane is.

And make $13 per hour.
At onetime I operated a machine made in 1907.

When I ran drill presses, I could produce, let's say 1,600 in one 8 hour night. It took 16 of them to make a dish, so that was material for 100 dishes. Yet what I did was only one part of the process, a process which involved - rolling, checking, drilling, welding, mesh, paint, and packaging. With seven steps, say my part was 1/4 of the total So my 100 becomes 25. If they retail for $500 that would be $12,500 a day.

I would not say that I did that by myself though, because there is a production process that involves more than one person.

So what exactly do you do to create such value?

I used to design sewer pumps. Part of the value that this machine delivers over its useful life is attributable to my labor - the homes, healthy families, improved environment, businesses located in that sewer system - all impossible without effective waste treatment, one part of which, I designed.

Those machines in your factory? Similar thing: the value they produce is attributable to the people who built it. The "product" you produced, same thing; the value it produces is partly to your credit.

I find it easy to believe that I produce that. In fact, the year I spent building my house added that much to the economy.

if not value.

If I could get a Clinton to speak at my event, that means that a) it will sell more tickets and b) I can get a better price for my tickets. Thus it helps me more than if I got a lower priced speaker.

Although I look at the "Bruce Springsteen not playing concerts in North Carolina" and I wonder if North Carolina really loses that way. I mean, by him playing a concert there that means that thousands of North Carolinians would be shelling out $70 or something for tickets and maybe more for t-shirts or whatever. So by not playing a concert, none of that money goes away, it just means they will spend it on other things. Seems to me that Bruce loses more than the state of North Carolina does.

Yes, the machine is attributable to the people who built it - but that was not me. I was just the guy running it, or running part of it for a time. You have designed things - I have only assembled them.

I do not know your situation. For myself, I think I provide a quality service and work harder than most of my co-workers, but there is no way that is worth $70,000 for my part time work.

Including folks who work a few hours a week is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. See BLS data for FT median income currently at over 800 per week.

Weekly

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm


To forestall "that's 80 hours and three extra PT jobs!" hourly:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000

The Conceptual Guerilla said as much in his piece: "Defeat the Right in Three Minutes"
When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just "dime-store economics" - intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don't really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don't. It all gets down to two simple words.
"Cheap labor". That's their whole philosophy in a nutshell - which gives you a short and pithy "catch phrase" that describes them perfectly. You've heard of "big-government liberals". Well they're "cheap-labor conservatives".

"Cheap-labor conservative" is a moniker they will never shake, and never live down. Because it's exactly what they are. You see, cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America - whose fortunes depend on labor. The larger the labor supply, the cheaper it is. The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you'll work, and the more power those "corporate lords" have over you. If you are a wealthy elite - or a "wannabe" like most dittoheads - your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool, forced to work cheap.

Don't believe me. Well, let's apply this principle, and see how many right-wing positions become instantly understandable.

Cheap-labor conservatives don't like social spending or our "safety net". Why. Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like - which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".

Cheap-labor conservatives don't like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you "over a barrel".

Cheap-labor conservatives like "free trade", NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are "over a barrel", and will work cheap.

Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman's right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women "over a barrel", forcing them to work cheap.

Cheap-labor conservatives don't like unions. Why. Because when labor "sticks together", wages go up. That's why workers unionize. Seems workers don't like being "over a barrel".

Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about "morality", "virtue", "respect for authority", "hard work" and other "values". Why. So they can blame your being "over a barrel" on your own "immorality", lack of "values" and "poor choices".

Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why? Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners"

For those of you who missed it, here's the full article:http://sideshow.me.uk/annex/defeattherightin3minutes.htm

and on and on...

to tell us why this is all just swell

I can wait!

and 'win' the race to the bottom.

Start here and work your way through this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1760436

We don't need pro-Trump trolls here.

Interesting.

Mexicans - none of them "have a duty to accept low wages" so that some other group of people will benefit.

When I was working we allocated $220,000.00 per new engineer in our budgets as cost. Expected output for a junior engineer was a bit over $1,000,000.00 a year after a year of training. Of course the difference wasn't pure profit. It was just our division and there were other divisions to produce a product and reduce the profit. Profits swing from loosing a lot to making a lot. Also making a lot to you and I may not be enough for a corporation to even mess with. My little division operated for 10 years and the least we made was $120 mil up to $260 mil and the parent company did not think we were profitable enough to keep around and sold us to a company in India even though we already had another 5 year contract in hand.

Capitalism is DEAD. It's as done as Comunism is DEAD! The idea of continuously producing goods, cheaper and faster, to sell to people en masse, is to assume we have infinite numbers of resources and that our planet can sustain continued consumerism that is required to operate a capitalistic society. It's DEAD!

Now, how we organized ourselves amongst the 99% of society to face a new age where technology is doing most of the factory labor work, transportation of people, goods and services is "driverless", and the world is essentially globally connected to one another? Will we accept squalor like conditions for half of the people, have a marginal amount of middle class types, and then the super wealthy that operate countries and an oligarchy with "trade" laws like the TPP?

Or will we have to embrace the idea of intrinsic human value, decide what constitutes a decent life for human necessity and ability to be the best they were born to be, coupled with the least impact on the world's environment... And that all people around the world begin with these same basics of life needs.

Can we embrace a society that establishes the basics of clean air, clean water, nutritional food, good education, health care, shelter, and useable mobility, and still satisfy the need of competition, ingenuity, and technological advance? Some countries are trying out programs where they pay people basic living monies to have a foot hold in society. Some are trying out worker owned co-ops. And some countries are better set up to channel a new means of what is "valuable" because they already have better established social contracts with their citizens through housing subsidies, health care as a right, and free or cheap higher education. It's the Inited States that is really quite draconian in the way it treats its citizens.

Our world economy based on capitalism, betting on Wall St and other various stock markets around the world, and having so few have more power and "wealth" than the rest of the world is dangerous and quite stupid. And believe me, these people are not going to hand over their power or pay back society in any way at all if they can help it... They will do all they can to manipulate govts and use propaganda to steal people lives away from them.

On another level, what would it look like or feel like for most people to work say 20hrs a week for someone other than themselves, and the rest of the week's time can be spent doing what one wants to do with their time? Learn a new trade or study a new subject or play with their children or indulge in sleep? Or have time to work out and maintain a healthier lifestyle. What if we all had the chance to slow down, stop and smell the roses? Focus on education: philosophy, math, science, art, music, gardening... Making it really quite well rounded and genuine (like private schools for the wealthy). What would it look like if we had established daycare center's (like we have for pre-k and up to 12th grade)? If our young children could go to these daycare establishments and have acces to highly educated early childhood development specialists? What would it look like if we were teaching these children who are being imprinted with what we choose to imprint on them, 2 or 3 different languages at the same time? If we encouraged creativity over productivity? OR if we had the option for the first couple of years to have a parent or both be able to stay at home with the children, bond to their children and then send them 2 and up to pre-k/ daycare center's. What if your "job" didn't define your life?

These are questions we need to ask ourselves now, formulate theories, economic models, test in various towns and cities as prototypes and then proceed to lobby for as a worldwide effort. And it needs to happen now. We are facing a possible 70% extinction on this planet. We are in a crisis regarding our planet. We don't have time for incremental changes! We don't really have time for extremist societies to "catch up" on social equalities and human freedoms... It needs to happen.

We certainly cannot allow our youth of tomorrow to languish about with "dead end jobs" and little prospect of being able to use their minds, creativity, and ability to participate in society, to the side. Many of them are easily able to multi-task, have been plugged into and develope some of the newest technologies, and have the energy and spirit of youth to tackle what needs to be done.

Capitalism is dead! What's happening now is the decay of society because our politicians are bought and are NOT leaders! We have many older people who remember better times clinging to the past, anxious, and with good reason, who embrace the notion of making it better again. We can go the wrong way here. But we don't have to if we decide what type of world we want to live in and what we want to pass on behind us.

it is a significant factor why the 80's 'fixes' to social security aren't working....no one could have foreseen low wage growth like this, and it is resulting is a slight shortfall that cheap labor conservatives are using to sound the alarm about SS insolvency...helps make their case to privatize the trillions of dollars in the SS trust fund.

Year 7 of President Obama's administration and it still hasn't trickled down.

Thank you for an outstanding OP and thread, Uncle Joe. The American public has been reduced to the level of "human resources" to be extracted, consumed and discarded. Meanwhile the so-and-sos get to hide their TRILLIONS offshore.

"Min. wage means we would pay you less but it's against the law."

"Ask for what you want when applying for a job, remembering that when you start low, you stay low."

K&R

What event(s) caused Compensation to diverge from Productivity in the mid 70's?

Last nights "60 Minutes" a 'hacker' pointed out we have more technology in our pocket (smartphone) than they had to put a man on the moon!

As the global economy has settled out, we have been the beneficiaries from the lower-wage workers of the world who gave us great cars, computers, hi-def big screen TVs, Apple products, mobile phones, cell phones, smartphones, laptops, pads, tablets - on and on.

While our wages have been stagnant, our lives have been impacted in ways we never imagined.

Yes, yes - the rich still get richer, but poor ain't what it used to be.

you can get the phone for under $20, and pay for minutes depending on what you want - phone, text, internet.

Found in all your favorite lower-class retail establishments!

http://www.tracfone.com/

i'll stick to the landline

that way, only the nsa is listening

something called an H1B visa and discover why post graduate work is almost slave wages, most new professorships go to foreign nationals and most basic research positions as well.

Then look at US student applications to US universities in hard-science graduate schools. What positions?

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Sending this enlightening article to my winger brother.

Thanks, Uncle Joe.

Good luck with him.

as a worker, you should expend the least amt of energy you can get away with

Peace to you, yonder.

We are the worker bees...