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1 edit | reply to Combat Chuck
Re: Well let's face it... said by Combat Chuck:said by Dezbend:Why don't you want to consider 401ks? because 401k's break his stupid little argument about only the elite owning stock. He also neglects to mention what the CEO's do with the money they make (invest and spend, which creates demand for more stuff, which creates more demand for employees to make said stuff, which creates jobs and pushes wages higher because the market for employees shrinks); because that breaks his other argument about how CEO's making lots of money somehow equates to the average employee being screwed. It's a lot easier to complain about what other people make than to go out and try to join them; which is why certain jobs will always remain high paying, and others remain low paying. Theres always a glut of people who would rather sit around and complain than go out and do something about it; which is a shame because there are a lot of highly motivated dumb people running corporations and a lot of really smart complainers that end up at the low end of the scale by default. When someone injects "stupid" into rational discussion of an issue, it's usually due to an inability to atriculate an argument. I think that's the case here. While I don't disagree with the last of your post at all, this is the text of your earlier post that started it:
"It's not that simple. Corporations don't just hold onto money; they work for the shareholders, who are, gasp, you and me."
A corporation working for shareholders is not the same as working for the fund managers that build retirement/investment portfolios. More importantly, nowhere do I state that "only the elite" hold stock.
You'll need to be more precise in which "shareholder" you're talking about. I'm referring to an investor *class*, which are more than likely direct holders of stock, not stock bundled and matched in 401k plans for retirement purposes -- are handled by fund managers. IOW, people whose income is largely derived from capital gains, not labor. That's a huge distinction, and what I mean by *investor class* vs working class.
Also, your explanation of the distribution of profits is over simplified to paint a very rosy picture, and YOU NEVER provide facts to back up any of your assertions.
You want facts? Here are 33 (there are plenty more) with links for you to refute and for others to read for themselves, since you seem more intent on attacking me than my message:
EDIT:links removed -- search by article title (some were dead, others were large PDF, and others were registration only sites. The article citations are left intact)
1 It takes an unemployed worker 20 weeks to find a job, up 50% since the 1970s.
Peter J. Gosselin, If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?, Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2004 (»www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-r···d-nation).
2 Jobs created in the next two years will pay an average of $36,000; jobs lost in the last three years paid $43,000.
U.S. Conference of Mayors, Metro Economies Report: Economy Surges, But With Lower Paying Jobs, November 10, 2003.
3 By 2015, an estimated 3.3 million service jobs will be lost to offshoring or technology.
Forester Research, from Leslie Geary, Vanishing Jobs, CNN/Money, January 9, 2004.
4 A generation ago, CEOs made 40 times more than workers; today they make 400 times more.
Kevin J. Murphy of USC's Marshall School of Business, from Rise of the Corporate Plutocrats, Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2004.
5 If wages rose at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, the average worker would make $75,000 a year, not $27,000; the minimum wage would be $15.76 an hour, not $5.15.
Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy report, Executive Excess 2004: Campaign Contributions, Outsourcing, Unexpensed Stock Options and Rising CEO Pay, August 31, 2004.
6 Over 25% of working families are officially low-income; over 25% of those are officially in poverty.
Annie E. Casey Foundation, Working Hard, Falling Short: America's Working Families and the Pursuit of Economic Security, October 2004.
7 In 1979, 70% of private-sector jobs provided health benefits; now, only 60% do.
Economic Policy Institute; see also Kaiser Family Foundation & Health Research and Educational Trust, Employer Health Benefits 2004 Annual Survey, »www.kff.org/insurance/7148/index.cfm.
8 1 of 3 people under 65 were uninsured for some of last year; over half of those were uninsured for at least 9 months.
Families USA, Health Care: Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago? September 2004.
9 In the last four years, workers' health premiums increased 50%, about $1,000 per family, three times the average increase in income.
Families USA, Health Care: Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago? September 2004.
10 70% of Americans expect to work past 65; almost half expect to work well into their 70s.
Reuters, Workers Planning to Retire Later, Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2003.
11 Nearly 30% of workers over 55 have no pension or IRA; they rely solely on Social Security and personal savings for their retirement.
AARP, Older Workers' Pension Plan and IRA Coverage, October 2003 (»research.aarp.org/econ/dd91_retire.html).
12 Working couples with children put in 10 hours more per week in 2002 than in 1977.
Families and Work Institute, 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, (»www.familiesandwork.org/summary/nscw2002.pdf).
13 American workers logged 1,815 hours in 2002, 500 more than some European workers, 100 more than Australian, Canadian, Japanese, or Mexican workers.
International Labor Organization, from Catharine Bell, Wedded to the Job, Chicago Tribune, October 8, 2003.
14 23% of employers offer paid family leave, down 4% from 2001; 55% offer flexible work hours, down 9% from 2001.
Society for Human Resource Management, from Stephanie Armour, Some moms quit as offices scrap family-friendliness, USA Today, May 4, 2004.
15 White men are twice as likely to get management jobs as equally qualified black men; three times as likely as black women.
Ryan A. Smith & James Elliott, "Race, Gender and Workplace Power," American Sociological Review, June 2004.
16 Employers win all but 2% of disability discrimination cases against them in federal court.
ABA's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability, 2003 Employment Decisions Under the ADA Title I-Survey Update, June 2004.
17 Although half of managers and professional specialists are women, only 16% of officers in Fortune 500 companies and 5% of top earners are women.
Catalyst, Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership: Same Workplace, Different Realities?, 2004
18 Every year, 6,000 workers are killed on the job, 50,000 die from a work-related illness, and 6 million get sick or injured at work.
AFL-CIO, Safety and Health at Work.
19 Ergonomic hazards cause 2 million injuries and disabilities each year.
AFL-CIO, Safety and Health at Work.
20 Over the last two decades, OSHA sought criminal prosecution in only 7% of the 1,200+ cases where they investigated a worker's death due to willful safety violations by an employer.
David Barstow, U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges For Deaths in Workplace, New York Times, December 22, 2003.
21 3 of 4 companies monitor their employees in some way: 63% track Internet use; 47% store and review e-mail messages; 15% use video surveillance; 12% record phone conversations; 8% review voice-mail messages.
American Management Association, from Eric Sinrod, Electronic surveillance in the workplace, USA Today, October 18, 2001.
22 63% of companies require employees to undergo medical tests; 62% of those require drug tests.
American Management Association, 2004 Medical Testing Survey.
23 8 of 10 HR professionals conduct criminal background checks on potential employees, up 26% since 1996.
Society for Human Resource Management, cited in Job-seekers beware of background checks, October 15, 2004.
24 1 of 3 workers makes less than double the minimum wage, but 2 of 3 undocumented workers do.
Urban Institute, Undocumented Immigrants: Facts and Figures, January 12, 2004.
25 The overall rate of occupational fatalities decreased in 1999 and 2000, but deaths among Hispanic workers increased 12% even though that workforce grew only 6%.
Centers for Disease Control, Protecting the Safety and Health of Immigrant Workers.
26 Of workers fired because their Social Security number couldn't be verified, 25% say they were fired for complaining about unsafe working conditions, 21% say they were fired for union activity.
Center for Urban Economic Development, Social Security Administration's No-Match Letter Program: Implications for Immigration Enforcement and Workers' Rights, November 2003.
27 40 million workers would join a union if they could.
Richard Freeman and Joel Rogers, What Workers Want, ILR Press, 1999.
28 Union workers earn 27% more than non-union workers.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment and Earnings, U.S. Department of Labor, January 2004.
29 20,000 workers a year are illegally fired or discriminated against for trying to form a union.
Kenneth Roth, Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards, Human Rights Watch. Testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Page 3. June 20, 2002.
30 Three-fourths of the 80 million workers in the private-sector are employed "at will" and can be fired for almost any reason, or for no reason at all.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited in National Workrights Institute, Wrongful Discharge Legislative Brief
31 2 million "at-will" employees are fired every year.
The Natl Task Force on Civil Liberties in the Workplace, American Civil Liberties Union
32 Compared to other people who file lawsuits, those with employment discrimination cases have fewer cases settled before trial, win fewer cases, and face more appeals and reversals.
Kevin M. Clermont and Stewart J. Schwab, How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare in Federal Court, Cornell Law School, July 2004.
33 44% of discrimination cases won by workers are reversed on appeal, but only 6% of cases won by employers are reversed.
Theodore Eisenberg and Stewart J. Schwab, Double Standard on Appeal: An Empirical Analysis of Employment Discrimination Cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
That should keep you busy. I guess they're all "stupid" arguments, huh? |
