You do realize, flu, that workers who do all the productive work in society, and who are taxed at far higher rates, have a much harder time “accumulating wealth” than the capitalist parasites who do nothing productive for society, right? Which should we incentivize more: productive work, or speculation?[/quote]
Look CAR… I didn’t take this personal, and if you take it that way, that’s you’re problem. I don’t mind if you add me to your ignore list.
And i didn’t respond to you until now…You made this statement about how unions benefited people blah blah blah… Oh please… Let’s be even more ridiculous along your line of reasoning…
You benefit from my ancestors who came her from china to lay railroads so that the U.S. could become an industrial nation, basically as slaves and indentured servants… So show some respect and buy some goods made in china. Because if it wasn’t for my relatives, we wouldn’t have had railroads in this country….
Also, please return some of the land back to some of the japanese-americans that was illegally confiscated during WW2…If it wasn’t for them forcefully surrending land all over California, you wouldn’t be enjoying that nice SFH of yours in San Diego…Please pay up principal + interest that has been compounded for the past 50+years.
Thank you.
If you want to turn back the clock and tell about how one faction or society has contributed to America, then please do so without being selectively partial. You keep dwelling about past contributions of unions. That’s nice.. But please, look at where we are now…Because past contributions doesn’t give a license to egregious behavior in present day. You seem to think it does.
Also, there has come a point in time in which one group/faction has helped build this nation…..and even wall street and bankers that you seem to be so hell bent railing against.
BTW: your pension is a wall street financial product…..Go ahead and “punish” wall street…Let’s see what happens to your nest egg.[/quote]
But you did try to make it personal (even though your assertions are totally wrong), on a couple of occasions. You and I both know what I’m talking about. And I don’t have to put anyone on my “ignore” list because I’m not the least bit intimidated by what others have to say. I can back up everything I post with plenty of data…can you?
I’m not talking about what unions have done in the past; I’m talking about what they’re doing today to protect workers and their families from the powerful onslaught brought about by those who hold all the power and wealth in this country (and world), and who still want ever more power and wealth.
If labor were to suddenly disappear tomorrow, the entire system would crash, and it would never recover until that labor was replaced. If Wall Street speculators were to suddenly disappear tomorrow, things would certainly contract for awhile, but labor could fend for itself, and we would be able to rebuild again in a far more productive and egalitarian way (until new capitalists entered the picture and tried to take control of everything created by labor, again).
Believe me, I’d much rather return to the days when public pension funds were run by in-house employees who only invested in a very limited number of extremely safe bonds. I hate what Wall Street/speculation has done to this country, not once, but twice in less than a century (more, if you count the lesser bubbles in between the Great Depression and “Great Recession”).
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Capital vs. labor: where do you stand?
The made-in-China model, on the other hand, has carried no such social benefits, either in Apple’s home country or in the People’s Republic. Last year, Apple built up cash reserves of $100bn – more than the US government. Indeed, it was so much money that the company was stumped how to dispose of it. Tim Cook, who is now CEO of Apple, announced a few weeks ago that he would begin buying back shares and paying dividends to investors. Among other people who benefited from this arrangement was Cook himself, who was awarded $376.3m in Apple stock when he took over last year. That pile of shares is now valued at around $634m. The people who win from the made-in-China model are big investors and top executives.
In the case of Apple, outsourcing manufacturing is not about keeping costs to customers down – they are still paying huge prices for the latest handset or tablet computer. Nor is it about the company’s survival: it would still do tremendously well were it to bring those factories back home. No, in the case of Apple, moving jobs offshore has become a way of directing ever more money to those at the top of American society.
Yes, CAR, you did take it personal by responding to me directly… For some reason you took it personal by taking the union versus non-union thing personally. I wasn’t even referring to you frankly…
Just like you took it personally last time when I mentioned people in general are hypocrites because they will tell other people they need to pay taxes while simultaneously trying to skirt paying taxes themselves. I went on to say examples of this were small business owners that shutoff their registers half day and other people that play games in various other ways which I don’t need to reiterate here. Because I’ve seen plenty of people do that…Just like personally I’ve seen people take food stamps and try to cash those in and said friend’s convenience stores (which BTW FINALLY the government is starting to crack down on after decades of small biz owners reporting the fraud in)….As well as most recent examples of people shirting unemployment benefits/etc. So it is a fact…there are plenty of people that don’t pay their fair share
….And then you jumped on for whatever reason all defensive saying what you did there was nothing wrong.. Did I say you turn off your cash register half-day….. or the likes? Why did you get all defensive again? Guilty conscience, maybe?
Regarding unions. I can not only provide data, and I can provide first hand experiences…
There was a reason why I put on the “fat_lazy_union_worker” handle before. It was my experience when I was an intern at then wonderful tech company with a “M “in Schaumburg, Illinois…. We had two move two desktop computers and a few equipement down two offices to finish a project deadline for china…
We couldn’t…. Because apparently “moving heavy items” was not something that non-union people could do. We had to schedule an appointment with the moving people, and when we did the most urgent date was two weeks…I shit you not….Me and co-worker went down to the group, and there were a bunch of people yapping away and stuffing their faces with doughnuts and telling us we can’t move stuff, that would be a violation, we can’t do this. It would be a violation..And they just didn’t give a shit whether you had a project deadline or not…That….And plenty of other ridiculous rules that really prevented people from trying to get their job done…Part of the business went to Lucent, if I recall….Saving jobs? Really? With internal B.S. like that, did you really expect M’s heyday to continue… Tell me CAR, justify this is “efficient” and how some union BS crap actually cost a deal and how the people directly responsible didn’t even care about it? I don’t know which world you are from but there are plenty of examples like this…
BTW: futures are way off this morning.
Down down another 100 points… Eventually it will hit your pension. And if you’re in cash, eventually it will eat away at your cash too once we have inflation….
We’re down close 500 points in just 1 week….
So you’re idea of just sitting there and not actively manage your money ain’t gonna work…
Anyway, I’m done responding to you directly….If you don’t like what others say, then ignore it..And as a reminder, pay your fair share in income and property taxes.
