I don't understand the logic behind lower wages, but more production. Who are you producing for if everyone is poor? The whole focus on these minor short-term gains is ludicrous to me. I mean I don't have access to any real numbers, but I'm gonna make a wild guess that when people have more money in their pockets they are more likely to spend it...
FOR FUCKING RICH PEOPLE, DUH Let's say you make widgets for a living. You're on an hourly. You get $10 regardless of how many widgets you make. Let's say your boss is a capitalist who wants to make money. The more widgets you make, the more widgets he can sell and the richer he can get. Let's say he discovers that a judicious application of methamphetamine and corporal punishment increases your widget output by 200%. He now has twice as many widgets to sell as he did - because your productivity went up. And let's be honest; meth is cheap and he'd whip you for fun so it's a win-win. For him anyway. You? You're still making $10 an hour only now you've got welts on your back and meth bugs on your wrists. YAY PRODUCTIVITY! This is why capitalists want to talk about productivity, rather than job satisfaction.
But if I can make more money in the long term, and really solidify my business for the foreseeable future why would I trade that for short term gains? I mean you are talking about destructive amounts of greed, it isn't sustainable. I get that they just don't care I guess it just surprises me that people can think like that.
Exactly this. So long as I add value to the shareholders I'm an f'n genius. War: 2900 layoffs, R&D department shuttered at Amgen Amgen to close Onyx Pharmaceuticals Amgen, bowing to hedge fund pressure, to cut 1100 more jobs Looks kind of like a stock in trouble, right? But check out this morning's Seeking Alpha: Amgen: Solid value with buyout potential Yay! You laid off 4500 people, shuttered your R&D campus and are struggling to stay alive but you're a "solid value!" Sustainable? Who gives a fuck about sustainable? P/E, baby, P/E! EBIDTA EBIDTA EBIDTA!
Not at all. Even Adam Smith thought the market needed to be regulated. Any time you see a concentration of wealth you will see negative effects for those without concentrated wealth. Unfortunately, the entire study of economics is one long riff of "don't hate the playa hate the game." And the whole discussion here is that productivity is a really poor metric to judge quality of life by. Those on the side of the worker are going to rally behind this and try and get more of the proletariat to vote. Those on the side of the owner are going to shovel money into campaigning so that the proletariat gets kept in its place. And that, my friend, is politics.
Campaigns so successful that they've got the proletariat funneling money into deluding itself.Those on the side of the owner are going to shovel money into campaigning so that the proletariat gets kept in its place.
Well, I know the political side of things pretty well. The only thing is long-term sustainability is more of a concern when referring to states. Business practices in no way translates well to state practices, but sadly political systems are rapidly morphing into businesses...
Amazon and Bezos are being punished by the stock market due to Bezos investing into the long term growth of the company rather than paying out dividends. article I love Amazon. They are one of few tech companies trying to fight back against the Quarterly report or fail mentality. They are also one of the few that are looking 5, 10 years down the road and building something. I think Google is doing that, as is Tesla.
Buy low, sell high, no past, no future. Let's say Amgen is 170 bucks a share. You buy 100 shares. Your investment is $17,000. Let's say Seeking Alpha publishes that "buy Amgen" article. Amgen is now $178 a share. (go check! Ticker is AMGN). Your investment is now worth $17,800. If you bought Amgen last night and sold it right now, at $8 per trade on eTrade, you just made $792. So that's one way. Let's also say that Amgen, as a company, is defunct. Amgen, as a slu of patents, is a valuable portfolio. Whoever buys the company will get their patents and "trim the fat" (IE, everyone who works at amgen). The owner of those patents gets all the profit and none of the overhead. So if you hold Amgen stock and Amgen is bought by a corporate raider intent on dismantling it, everyone is going to want some of that Amgen stock so that they get bought out. So that's another. Now - if you work at Amgen you get upside on the first and all downside on the second. But who gives a fuck about the people who actually make things? The market is all about the people who buy and sell the companies that make things.