[SK in CV]

[quote=livinincali] You worry that McDonald’s might make too much money but you have no consideration for how much harder you just made it for Joe the Pizza guy to start his 2nd restaurant.[/quote]

Why should we care whether it’s hard for Joe the Pizza guy to start his 2nd restaurant? Is there a shortage of pizza joints? Is it a good thing if he only has to sell 20 pizzas a day employing people at the current minimum wage? Is there some reason public policy should support that?

[SK in CV]

No SDR, I wasn’t the least bit confused about anything in this thread. You were the one that said employees aren’t entitled to their pay. You were the first to bring up the issue of pay relating to taking care of a family. You are now the one that is arguing that the terms of a contract should not be set by the needs of an employee, when neither I nor anyone else in this thread ever claimed it was an issue.

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]Nobody is entitled to anything. Payment for services is set by the marketplace. At least for the most part in free markets. Consumers shop the marketplace for the goods and services. They make the purchase based on the quality/price of the product, it is a sliding scale. Similarly employees are free to shop the marketplace to find employment. The salary they receive is set by the employer. The salary is not arbitrary. It is determined by the skills needed for the job, the cost of that labor to the employer, and other factors that the employer takes into account.

The salary has NOTHING to do with the employee being able to provide for his family. The employee is not ENTITLED to receive a salary that can support his family. He is ENTITLED to search for a job that can do that.

It should not be an encumbrance upon the employer.

*******************************************************

In fact, the standard listing agreement for the state of California states that the brokerage is under the employ of the principle. The rate of payment is negotiable. It has nothing to do with whether that will be enough to support my family.

My gosh….[/quote]

Nice straw man argument. I never made any argument that pay should be enough to support a family. Only that employees are entitled to their agreed upon pay. Exactly the same as you are entitled to your agreed upon pay. And under the law, both are entitlements.

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]No I am not entitled to anything. Commissions are negotiable in the state of California. People employ me at the rate I promise to them. They are free to choose whoever they want to work with.

Funny how that works isn’t it? Just like someone is free to work for McDonalds or not.

Sorry about your snarky comment not working out.[/quote]

It worked out fine. You say you’re not entitled, but then want to get paid based on an agreed upon commission. I think you’re entitled to that. Exactly the same as McDonald’s employees are entitled to get the pay they’re promised.

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]
Employees are not entitled to anything. They don’t like the pay, they can quit and look for another job.[/quote]

Are you entitled to a commission when you sell a house?

[SK in CV]

[quote=dumbrenter]Maybe if their employer paid 25% more, they’d buy more Tequila or bling or send some via western union back home. What makes you think they will move out to say 8/farmhouse just because the wages went up?[/quote]

Because I think they’re probably just like you and me. If they’re married with children, they want a home with their spouse and kids, not a farmhouse with 8 other people they didn’t know from adam’s cat when they moved in. If they’re single and over 25, they probably don’t want to live with more than a single roommate or two. If they’re immigrants, I doubt they moved here to live in similar conditions as where they came from, but better. Would you buy bling and tequila with your 25% raise? That would never be on my radar. Why would you even consider that an option for these workers?

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
SK, if you are a meat-eater, would you be willing to pay $35-$40 (as opposed to $20-$28) for your steak dinner out in order to subsidize better wages for US meat processing/packing-industry employees?[/quote]

If it lowered their total costs, why would prices rise by 40 to 75%? Beyond that, there is no chance that raising wages by even $5 an hour should raise retail prices that much, even if all other costs remained the same. Low level meet handlers process hundreds of lbs of meat per hour.

And I don’t think I’ve had a $28 steak dinner in a restaurant in my life. Probably been a decade since I’ve had a steak dinner at any price in a restaurant. I make it a lot better at home for a lot cheaper.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
For every highly-leveraged micro-market and/or subdivision in SD County, there are MORE (very established) residential areas which have a low overall pattern and incidence of current encumbrance. WHY? Because CA’s most desirable coastal and urban areas were built up long ago and a large percentage of their pre-April 1978 owners or their heirs (whether first, second or subsequent owners of the property) are still the owners of record today. This is true of ALL CA counties, coastal and otherwise, although, except for agricultural acreage, the highest desirability and thus value generally lies in the properties in areas which lie within five miles of the coast, with the overall value fanning out from there, highest to lowest.

[/quote]

The bolded part….kind depends on what you mean by a “large percentage”. Is 10 percent large? 20 percent? I can’t find any recent numbers, but 17 years ago, around 1/3 of LA homeowners still had property tax valuations dating back to 1978, and that percentage had been declining by about 2% a year. I doubt it’s 15% of homes that have valuations that originated in the 70’s. You’ve made this assertion a handful of times BG. I think it’s based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence, and isn’t close to accurate.

[SK in CV]

[quote=no_such_reality]
Yes, that’s my point. Are they that short sighted? That incompetent? Oblivious, like the person driving around ten minutes trying to save a couple cents a gallon on gas? Or are they that cynical and jaded and they’ve actually run the numbers?

I really don’t think they’ve run the numbers. Other than the most basic, if we increase wages $1/hr across 3000 employees, that’s $6 million a year.

Not stopping to think they’re spending $10+ million on new hire training a year. They’re spending how much on hiring bonuses? They’re spending how many millions on compliance? etc.

They lost a 1/3rd of their staff on the raid. New management’s response was a massive media campaign, newspaper campaign, billboard compaign, pound the pavement town visit campaign, refugee hiring campaign, hiring bonuses, rework the operations to support multiple languages to replace ~600 workers and then expand another 1000.

All that instead of saying “hey, let’s try $2/hr more, it’s only $6 million and maybe it’ll slow down our $12 million new hire training expenses due to attrition”.[/quote]

Yes, I think they are that short-sighted. Compare the business models of Costco and Walmart.

Costco (and Price Club before them) employees are well paid, well above the average for retail. They offer benefits that even some much higher end employers don’t offer, and their employees love working for them and stick around a long time. They’re loyal. As are their customers, because we know we will almost always be treated well when we walk into one of their stores.

Compare that to Walmart, where employees are paid at the bottom of the retail scale, are horribly unhappy as a whole, they have high turnover, they cut hours leaving their shelves unstocked. And who would be the biggest beneficiary of jacking up the minimum wage across the country? Walmart. And who vociferously objects to raising the minimum wage? That would be the biggest welfare recipient in the country, Walmart.

I read somewhere over the last couple days that 10 cents of every retail dollar spent in this country is spent at Walmart. That number seems really high to me, but if it’s true, it can only mean that an extra $2 or $3 an hour in low paid workers pockets will end up as Walmart revenue, because it’s not the people making $100K a year spending all their money at Walmart.

Have they run the numbers? I’m sure they have. But it doesn’t fit into their budgets. The recruiting costs are off-budget. The lost revenue from empty shelves is off-budget. Employee turnover is off-budget. But direct employee costs are on budget, and management can be held accountable when that goes up. So they ignore the effects to the bottom line, and maintain a staff that qualifies for public assistance, living at poverty levels. And tell them to take a 2nd job to make ends meet.

They really are that short-sighted.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
I understand everything you’re saying here, NSR. I’m not even sure Americans would take these jobs if they paid $15 or $18 hr. These employees can rent old farmhouses cheaply and easily get 12 people in there for <<$400 mo. Americans don't want those either because they are all situated out on Weld County Roads (WCR-#), most of them dirt or gravel and within smelling distance of the plant. With 1-3 workers per hsld and their assorted other relatives and children living with them and getting EBT, Medicaid and indigent health coverage, and other social services, these families are making out okay. Really .... they ARE! My friend in Eaton works for a social service agency in Greeley that serves a good portion of this population. They even have "free" dental care available at their clinic. I personally toured the clinic and was amazed at the (very expensive and state-of-the-art) medical and dental equipment they had - all paid for by well-heeled longtime locals' donations. The Weld and Morgan County school districts have been serving this particular population for more than 50 years. The wheel has been invented. It's all good ... I guess :=][/quote] BG, do you think maybe the possibility exists that living in an old farmhouse with 11 other people isn't their first choice in how to live? Maybe, if their employer paid them 25% more, there would be much less turnover, they'd save recruiting and training costs, and their employees wouldn't have to live 12 people to a house. They might even have enough income so that don't need SNAP or Medicaid. And the employer would probably decrease their costs. The short-sightedness of some business operators is truly mind-numbing.

[SK in CV]

[quote=paramount]Did Dianna’s so-called “accident” pass the sniff test?[/quote]

I give up. Who is Dianna?

[SK in CV]

I’ve only seen the national news on this and haven’t seen anything about anyone intimidating people into not discussing the case. Is there some theory floating around underground that turns the story into something different? Which part doesn’t pass the sniff test?

[SK in CV]

[quote=moneymaker]Why limit a computer to the level of human thought? Why not create them to be perfect! That might answer the question of who made god. Perhaps created by an imperfect race to be perfect. Is it possible? i believe so[/quote]

Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

[SK in CV]

[quote=paramount]Well, at least New York is friendly compared to So Cal…[/quote]

Of course it is. And if you dare to suggest otherwise, they’ll be the first to tell you to blow it out your ass.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=SK in CV]…In many cases (particularly in the instances you describe), those income figures were provided by someone other than the borrower.[/quote]

SK, those “income figures” had to be listed on the application somewhere. Then the applicants SIGNED the application, in essence, stating that they were declaring that the number represented on that document as their income was, in fact, true.

[/quote]

You’ve bought property before BG. I’ll get back to that.

You’re a smart woman. Not because of what you know, but because you’re curious. You always want to know what you don’t know. Contrary to what some might think, I know you don’t come here to impart what you know on everyone else, you read here to learn what you don’t know. Everyone isn’t like us. Some, maybe even most people are perfectly content not knowing shit, and they rely on others. People paid me a lot of money because they didn’t want to know that I know, they relied on me to either know or figure out what they needed.

I’m not giving anyone a pass for signing their names on documents and not knowing what they’re signing. But you’ve been through the process. That endless stack of paper that home buyers sign the day before escrow closes. It’s intimidating. And an awful lot of people rely on professionals to tell them what to do. And I’m telling you that a whole lot of people signed loan documents having no idea what they were signing, and in some cases didn’t have the capacity to understand what it was they were signing. In many cases they, they signed documents that were in languages they couldn’t even understand. If it makes you feel better thinking that every buyer knew exactly what they were doing, hold on to that. I’m telling you it’s not necessarily true.

[Author]

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