1. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 00:13
    I suspect that this is old news but many do not seem to get it. ANY system that rewards those at the top for hurting society is fundamentally flawed. I work at PPG Australia and the Americans have decided that they no longer want to share productivity with anyone. The more productive we become the worse of we are. End of story. We keep being told that we need to cut costs ( short for wages) to compete but all that does is force wages down and profits up. the gap between the rich and the poor starts with the capitalist ideas embraced by corporations. The exec only care about themselves ( usually, Some must be good) and the share price because of the rights issues that they give themselves.I have much much more to say but will see if anyone has a comment.
    Jim Mc
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    08 Mar '15 00:39
    Originally posted by jimmac
    I suspect that this is old news but many do not seem to get it. ANY system that rewards those at the top for hurting society is fundamentally flawed. I work at PPG Australia and the Americans have decided that they no longer want to share productivity with anyone. The more productive we become the worse of we are. End of story. We keep being told that we need ...[text shortened]... ve themselves.I have much much more to say but will see if anyone has a comment.
    Jim Mc
    I'm afraid in the global market the supply of labor is so big that the guys on top can always find cheaper labor in other places.

    In the US we are even importing teachers because states would rather import cheaper labor than increase what they pay teachers, at least here in Oklahoma.
  3. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    08 Mar '15 02:16
    Go start your own company and run it how you like. If you want to work for PPG, then abide by their rules.

    A corporation is a tool. It can be used however the people running it choose to use it. Capitalism creates wealth, not poverty, though of course some reigning in of excesses is an important government function and a desirable part of the market.
  4. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 02:27
    Originally posted by Eladar
    I'm afraid in the global market the supply of labor is so big that the guys on top can always find cheaper labor in other places.

    In the US we are even importing teachers because states would rather import cheaper labor than increase what they pay teachers, at least here in Oklahoma.
    This is all done to lower costs but tell that to those that the system has disenfranchised. The unemployed and the lowest paid that are struggling to buy food each week. The people need to fight back at an international level but there is as yet no medium for this. Governments are useless against the corporations and unions are to involved in business to care and socialists would be just as bad. Whatever system that you would use needs to recognize that humanity is basically greedy and not "punish" greed but control it. Taxing high income individuals is important as that is where the tax NEEDS to come from. I say " profit is the unearned, though not necessarily undeserved, portion of a financial transaction." excess Profit may be seen as the portion stolen from the population. The more productive that we become, the less humanity is needed. This creates an imbalance in the apportioning of money.
  5. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 02:39
    Originally posted by sh76
    Go start your own company and run it how you like. If you want to work for PPG, then abide by their rules.

    A corporation is a tool. It can be used however the people running it choose to use it. Capitalism creates wealth, not poverty, though of course some reigning in of excesses is an important government function and a desirable part of the market.
    That is 100% true. They create wealth for the few, but poverty for the majority. Where do you think the wealth come from. Thin air. It comes from productivity. It comes from companies forcing costs down and profits up. This is the biggest driver of "the gap". What do you think causes this ever growing grossly obscene "GAP". And what rules?, there are no rules. If you do not like the way you are being raped then go starve?. They know that there is high unemployment and they can do what they like. You say that a corporation is a tool and yet to what end??. Not for any good at PPG.
  6. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    08 Mar '15 02:47
    Originally posted by jimmac
    That is 100% true. They create wealth for the few, but poverty for the majority. Where do you think the wealth come from. Thin air. It comes from productivity. It comes from companies forcing costs down and profits up. This is the biggest driver of "the gap". What do you think causes this ever growing grossly obscene "GAP". And what rules?, there are no rules ...[text shortened]... they like. You say that a corporation is a tool and yet to what end??. Not for any good at PPG.
    Compared to historical "poverty" there's almost no such thing as poverty in western society today. In the old days, poverty meant not having food to fill your stomach and not having a roof over your head. Today, poverty means being harassed by bill collectors and maybe God forbid having to use a basic cell phone instead of a smart phone.

    Certainly, if there's a way to reduce the wealth gap without disincentivizing wealth creation, a government is entitled to try it, but a wealth gap is only inherently bad to the extent that the people at the lower end of the gap are not faring well.

    I have no idea whether PPG's behavior is proper or improper (nor do I know what it's behavior is), but refusing to pay you more than the market requires them to is hardly "raping" you. Go peddle your considerable talents to a company that is willing to pay you more if you don't like your company.
  7. Standard membersh76
    Civis Americanus Sum
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    08 Mar '15 02:51
    Originally posted by jimmac
    This is all done to lower costs but tell that to those that the system has disenfranchised. The unemployed and the lowest paid that are struggling to buy food each week. The people need to fight back at an international level but there is as yet no medium for this. Governments are useless against the corporations and unions are to involved in business to care ...[text shortened]... we become, the less humanity is needed. This creates an imbalance in the apportioning of money.
    What does taxing high income individuals have to do with PPG? If the corporate higherups could pay you whatever they like and they were taxed more, they'd probably cut wages even more. the point is that you don't want to quit your job but you don't like what you're getting paid, so you want the government to step in and redistribute wealth to you. Not a very healthy attitude, IMO.

    I have no problem with SOME wealth redistribution as is necessary to maintain a reasonable standard of living for all, but just to redistribute wealth because you don't like that some people make a lot of money is poisonous economic policy. Communism did fail for a reason.
  8. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 03:12
    Originally posted by sh76
    [b]What does taxing high income individuals have to do with PPG?
    I am one of the last of the well paid workers at PPG. The new starts are paid 40=50% less. This was "forced" on us after a futile 10 week strike. I pay approx $400.00 + tax per week. I have been there 33+ years. The new starts probably pay less than $150.00 tax per week. the lower the wages that individuals pay and the more taxes that corporations avoid the more higher income earners( such as myself) need to contribute. My leaving PPG would mean less for Aussie workers and Aussie welfare and more for PPG. there would be less money going round here and more there.
  9. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 03:241 edit
    I have no problem with SOME wealth redistribution as is necessary to maintain a reasonable standard of living for all, but just to redistribute wealth because you don't like that some people make a lot of money is poisonous economic policy. Communism did fail for a reason.[/b]
    I am very happy for some people to make a lot of money. I encourage it. It is a necessary thing to encourage entrepreneurs. They are the drivers of society. Without them we suffer. My point is the enterprises need to have a common good ethos which, as it happens, many do, though many dont. The good ones are still FORCED to pay low wages( sometimes) to compete. A director from PPG stood in front of the empoyees and boasted how slow they paid their bills and how fast they collected there money.that is simply bullying. No more no less. PPG share price has gone from less than $30.00 to over $230.00 in less than 8 years. tehy are a manufacturing site. They are not a tech company or a research or a bio but a manufacturing company. this is all done by creating poverty.
  10. Standard memberfinnegan
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    08 Mar '15 11:18
    Originally posted by sh76
    Compared to historical "poverty" there's almost no such thing as poverty in western society today. In the old days, poverty meant not having food to fill your stomach and not having a roof over your head. Today, poverty means being harassed by bill collectors and maybe God forbid having to use a basic cell phone instead of a smart phone.

    Certainly, if there' ...[text shortened]... onsiderable talents to a company that is willing to pay you more if you don't like your company.
    What is deemed ‘necessary’ is a matter of social convention and the classical economists had the same opinion.

    Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations: “By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.” Marx, in Wage-Labour and Capital: “Our needs and enjoyments spring from society: we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects of their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.”

    Classical studies of poverty such as those by Joseph Rowntree have in fact adopted a measure for the lowest possible sum to permit subsistence. He turned to the British Medical Association to establish the most frugal possible diet consistent with health and then assumed it could always be purchased at the best possible price. However, this approach continually falls into methodological traps because it is always demonstrably arbitrary and unrealistic on many measures.

    The concept of utter, absolute poverty is not an empty one and of course sh76 invites us to search for our base line of poverty not only in foreign lands but also in that most foreign of all countries, history. Perhaps he suggests our poor might go back into the past and live there, which is not far from what a lot of people want to offer as a philosophy of life. But if we cared, then we would wish to examine the reasons for the distribution of wealth and poverty on an international scale, with reference to the forces of international capital and the historical importance of imperialism. This is not what he has in mind however. He is just using a rhetorical trick.

    However, it is reasonable also to consider poverty within our own respective societies, and in that context the poverty of outer Mongolian nomads is only relevant if you are discussing Mongolian economics. Within our own national economy the measure of poverty has to be related to the minimal expectations for decent life in our own country. Anything else is casuistry. "Casuistry‥destroys by Distinctions and Exceptions, all Morality, and effaces the essential Difference between Right and Wrong" (O.E.D.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry
  11. Standard memberfinnegan
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    08 Mar '15 11:27
    Originally posted by sh76
    What does taxing high income individuals have to do with PPG? If the corporate higherups could pay you whatever they like and they were taxed more, they'd probably cut wages even more. the point is that you don't want to quit your job but you don't like what you're getting paid, so you want the government to step in and redistribute wealth to you. Not a very he ...[text shortened]... t some people make a lot of money is poisonous economic policy. Communism did fail for a reason.
    Communism did fail for a reason
    and that reason was not excessive economic equality or the lack of incentives for those on top. Indeed, any detailed history will reveal that it was the failure to deliver economic benefits for the mass of ordinary people, who felt betrayed by an arrogant and distant leadership.

    America's economy prospered in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties for a reason - which is that economic benefits were widely distributed and excessive wealth was heavily taxed. America's economy has entered into several decades of dangerous volatility and wasteful crashes in various sectors of its economy, at a time of historically low taxes on the wealthy, escalating inequality, the replacement of merit with inherited wealth and all the bling of a plutocracy.
  12. Standard memberfinnegan
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    08 Mar '15 11:34
    Originally posted by sh76
    Go start your own company and run it how you like. If you want to work for PPG, then abide by their rules.

    A corporation is a tool. It can be used however the people running it choose to use it. Capitalism creates wealth, not poverty, though of course some reigning in of excesses is an important government function and a desirable part of the market.
    Durkheim said: “What is needed if social order is to reign is that the mass of people be content with their lot. But what is needed for them to be content, is not that they have more or less but that they be convinced they have no right to more.”
  13. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 12:342 edits
    Originally posted by jimmac
    I suspect that this is old news but many do not seem to get it. ANY system that rewards those at the top for hurting society is fundamentally flawed. I work at PPG Australia and the Americans have decided that they no longer want to share productivity with anyone. The more productive we become the worse of we are. End of story. We keep being told that we need ...[text shortened]... ve themselves.I have much much more to say but will see if anyone has a comment.
    Jim Mc
    This is because human nature is fundamentally flawed.

    If socialism has taught us anything, it is that government can't run big business, let alone most of anything else. Government is the type of institution that can't get a web site up and running for a takeover of health care, and then passes regulations taking over the internet, all in one breath.

    Even the communist Chinese have come to this conclusion. As much as it pains the most ardent collectivist, they must surrender at least some control back to private industry. Hell, even Hitler realized as much, which is why he joined socialism with allowing private industry. Hitler once said, "Why nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people?" Collectivists like Hitler realized that there is no need to own business in name when you can pull the strings from afar.

    Hitler showed the modern day collectivist the way to go. Allow massive corporate monopolies, which are really just mini governments themselves, to control and manipulate the economy for you. Then all that is needed is coercing and making deals with those who run those corporations.

    Now you are correct that large corporations don't do much for the economy. In fact, in the US small business hires up to 2/3 of the work force and not corporations. The reason people continue to suffer economically in the US is because small business continues to die. Here of late the federal government bailed out corporations via US tax payer money, and simply watched small business around the US die. Those in government realize that their bread in butter comes from corporate America, not small business, so they will make sure that corporations continue to reign and rule over us, even if it means stealing trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money to do it by bailing them out, cause everyone knows they are "too big to fail". LOL

    After all, those in government don't produce anything for society, nor do they know how. All they do is sit back and micromanage anything that comes into view. Never forget, the very greed that drives corporations like the one you are apart of, also drives those in government. I think you will find that the more powerful and wealthy people become, the worse they become in terms of greed and corruption.

    Knowing what we know about human nature, be very afraid of those in government promising the "fix" things. Ask yourself, who is funding them? In politics, you must sell your soul to the collectivist corporate model or you don't go anywhere in politics. Here in the states the game is played like this, Obama comes along and says he wants to raise tax rates on corporate America while corporations like GE who funded him don't pay any federal income taxes, let alone higher ones.

    The game is, if you fund me and my quest for political power, you won't have to pay high taxes, if any. That way those that don't play the game get squeezed out, so you better fund a horse in the race politically.

    And the ignorant masses just love this sort of talk of taxing the "rich" and will come out in droves to vote for them. Meanwhile, the middle class continues to tank and things continue as they always have. Here in the state they blame these sorts of things on the Tea Party, even though none of them have had any political power of significance, and people just continue to believe anything that the corporate media feeds them.

    It's a sick game really, but it helps to know how things work.
  14. Standard memberbill718
    Enigma
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    08 Mar '15 13:004 edits
    Originally posted by jimmac
    I suspect that this is old news but many do not seem to get it. ANY system that rewards those at the top for hurting society is fundamentally flawed. I work at PPG Australia and the Americans have decided that they no longer want to share productivity with anyone. The more productive we become the worse of we are. End of story. We keep being told that we need ...[text shortened]... ve themselves.I have much much more to say but will see if anyone has a comment.
    Jim Mc
    When I was a business student in college (all those years ago) the # 1 thing they drilled into our heads was: "The function of any business is to maximize profit, and minimize loss" I must have heard this 100 times! This has always been the case, and will always be so. Contrary to what many here think (since I'm a Liberal), economy's based on free enterprise are the best, and most efficent, however....business's don't operate for the benefit of the public, they operate for the benefit of themselves. This is why we need regulations and laws that govern free enterprise, so business's headlong pursuit of profits, profits, and profits don't operate to the detriment of society. When I hear people like George W Bush and the GOP here in the USA saying things like "deregulation" and "get the government off their backs" it sets off alarms with me. What would happen if we did this with the general public? Deregulation = no laws or rules. Business need to be governed, just like people do. It seems your lawmakers in Australia have some work to do, since some business's in your area are operating to the dertiment of many, for benefit of the few. (Sadly, conservatives here in America think this is the way things are supposed to work!)
  15. Joined
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    08 Mar '15 13:14
    Originally posted by bill718
    When I was a business student in college (all those years ago) the # 1 thing they drilled into our heads was: "The function of any business is to maximize profit, and minimize loss" I must have heard this 100 times! This has always been the case, and will always be so. Contrary to what many here think (since I'm a Liberal), economy's based on free enterprise ...[text shortened]... fit of the few. (Sadly, many here in America think this is the way things are supposed to work!)
    This is a must see Bill

    YouTube

    The history of the British East Indies Company and the British government is helpful in understanding how the real world has worked for a very long time.

    Essentially, England conquered India through their corporation. Corporations are nothing more than a tool of war for various countries.

    In fact, the Boston Tea Party did not take place over higher taxes, the taxes actually came down. The fight was to not allow the East Indies Company a monopoly on Tea.
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