this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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You're talking about another recession where they can scoop up assets on the cheap and weather the storm while less fortunate people die. We're talking about dismantling the system that makes that possible.
What does it mean to dismantle the system?
Asking for specifics, unable to grasp obvious concepts or being a sealion?
Several reasons.
First of all, a lot of people argue in bad faith online and it's not worth my time and effort to feed trolls, sealions and shills.
Second, the question without further context implies that only people who know exactly what to replace it with are allowed to advocate the end of a horrendously wrong system.
Second and a halfth, why are you talking me with being more specific when the question was far too vague to even know if that's what they were asking for? Why demand specificity from me and not them?
Third, in this specific case I'm tired and thus have less energy left to spend on what might be another futile back and forth. If they're not serious about discussing it in good faith, I'd much rather spend my remaining energy on something fun like Baldurs Gate 3 or something..
I dunno about him, but I'm asking for specifics.
It is a lot easier to tear down the hard work of others than to build something up yourself.
The UAW is not some benevolent non-profit out to help the poor people of America. They are an organization that represents less than .05% of Americans in one of the best paid low-skill jobs in America, and they say they are willing to try and tank the economy for the benefit of their members at the cost of everyone else.
They are in no way going to dismantle the system that has made them wealthier than their friends and neighbors. They are just holding out for a bigger package with more benefits, and are willing to play Russian Roulette with the economy to get it.
Even if all three CEOs gave up their salaries and benefits packages to benefit the UAW workers they would each only gain about $1 an hour based on my napkin math.
This Fain guy's rhetoric is nothing more than that and it makes him and the union sound like an asshole to a neutral observer. Not that there are any neutral observers in this post.
How about if the three auto companies gave up 5% of their profits instead?
I have no idea what sort of profit margins the auto companies are working on. I do think profit sharing is a pretty decent idea though. I am surprised the UAW isn't asking for something like that. Maybe it is too unstable for wage workers in case of a recession.
No, what matters is how much it would cost to pay their workers more, not what profit margin they're making. And do you honestly think their profits are lower than what they can pay their workers?
True. You said profit and I even responded profit margin, but I was still thinking you said revenue.
From second hand knowledge they did pretty good this year and the first year of covid, but had rough goes in between. I don't know if it makes up the difference or not.
Without workers there is nothing to sell, so you must pay the workers, but there is a real issue that investors will bail out if they aren't seeing returns. That said, I have a hard time believing the federal government would ever let the big three collapse, though they have already had to bail out GM once in the last couple decades. Hopefully, it does not become a repetitive issue.
So we force them to cover bad bets instead of getting to walk away because they have money.
So make those investors cover the loss instead of allowing them to pull out and short the shit out of the company requiring the government to infuse cash to keep them from failing.
This seems to be more getting into the issues with a stock exchange (and its rules), of which I have many. I have heard there are benefits to new companies having easier access to investors, but am not convinced that it is a good trade for the societal costs involved.
Even then, do keep in mind, when an investor divests from a company it isn't just burning their connection to it; someone else is buying it. Usually some middle-class chump who didn't understand the company was dying, and is indeed covering the loss by losing his retirement fund to it.
Edit: phrasing of italicized part.
The problem with the stock market is something we could be debating for hours here (fails to deliver, repacked bonds getting rating upgrades, margin requirements getting waived for big firms, lack of any transparency within the equities swap market, most trades being made off market, 401ks being used for locates in predatory shorting, etc). So I'll just touch on one thing here before it shoots into something completely morphed from the original discussion.
I know which is why I specifically stated we bar those bigger investors from pulling out to con the middle class/poor worker thinking they can make it big off some investment advice from a paid wall street mouth piece like Jim Cramer or countless other 'financial advisors'.
Oops, somehow missed that you were referring to the original bigger investors.
It seems like it should be easy enough to get those financial advisors for market manipulation. If a large firm says a stock will do better than otherwise expected and then sells their clients' stocks as soon as the price rises, how is it anything except simple market manipulation? Not going after them makes the SEC look like a captured organization, though I easily found articles stating that it isn't captured with a web-search.
One would think until you see the actual suits brought against these entities where, just like fox they argue its purely for entertainment purposes and any rational person would understand this and not treat it as truth (i.e think when cramer called bear sterns a great investment about a week before tanking, or the fact we have an etf which does the opposite of cramer that makes like a 20% yield ytd). It's fucked to say the least in that regard.
the world of venture capital and algorithmic trading has entered the room
Yeah it's not done that simply. The basic game plan is as follows:
You never tell your clients directly what is great or not you point them to journals which can pump out articles like MontleyFool or yahoo finance who love their little disclaimer of this is not financial advise. Once you have primed the clients to want to invest for this upcoming ipo the next steps can follow: See YOU don't have to sell the stock when your funds are managed by a trading algorithm like Aladin used by all your big firms from Blackrock to Citadel, because now you get to say it was an automatic sale based on risk assessment made by your algorithm with zero human interaction. So, you had your buddies in the VC world give inflated investment offers to the budding company in question, allow a couple rounds of investments with some nice articles about put out from those financial jourals along this journey, which serves a dual purpose one allow other firms to persuade investment from clients and two that when the company decides to go public their growth goals become untenable and the initial IPO crashes. You as a VC want to hedge your bet right? So you make some equity swap deals with some unsuspecting banks under a couple of different shell corporations. These swaps allow you to essentially open a net short position, but thanks to some great CFTC regulations that came out barring reporting requirements on these swaps it's been even harder to see what's inside them. As an addition, since these are equity swaps, the bank does not need to report their position to the SEC nor does the entity in question who created this swap with the bank in the first place as they technically don't own the assets on hand (this is how archegos blew up and took creddit suise along with it). Now when the IPO hits your buddies down at the hedge fund's algorithms are going to see the risk in the reported financial data from the IPO and the over valued IPO share price. Place in some articles from something like the MontleyFool about how all of a sudden this IPO doesn't look so great and those VCs are going be screwed. Now you have the ammo, tools, and contracts set up to profit from the downside of this IPO. Then as a bonus by utilizing derivatives, you can short more than a hundred percent of a companies shares allowing you to profit in your equity swaps that have been going unreported obscenely. Now your coffer is full again you can pick up the next chump who is claiming to be the next 'Steve jobs' or at least pickup their assets for penny on the dollar when the company proceeds to bankruptcy. Then by the beauty of delisted stocks and warehoused FTDs on stocks who have been delisted no one ever has to know you shorted the fuck out of a company nor do you ever need to by back the 'shares' remember the scheme takes advantage of derivatives which bet on the price of a stock and allow you to buy/sell the shares at the price the contract was for.
There is a lot more nuance here in practice and some aspects were simplified for brevity sake, even if it already seems like a wall of text. The simple answer is its not simple to prosecute and yes the SEC is a mainly captured organization. Gary Gensler has been making strides in some regards but your previous heads, people like Hester Pierce and the constant revolving door from regulator to head executive at trading firms shows another issue with the system. Read the comments on SEC proposals. Another decent starting point if you haven't had any exposure to these issues is taking a look into the problem with Jon Stewart and his episode on the stock market. It's not perfect but can give you some insights into how rife with conflict of interest wall street and the SEC truly are.
Just watched the Jon Steward Stock Market video. I actually got to watch that Robnhood mess unfold live on reddit. It was quite the shock. Before then, I was under the impression that they were just doing batch trades, not all the backroom fuckery.
Still the video was definitely worth the watch. Are you aware of any other similar schemes with such interesting explanations?
This was indeed a fairly decent wall of text, but still well worth the read. I didn't realize these multi-layer scams went to this depth.
Also, it always seemed to me like listening to public trading advice and buying into a company at the same time as everyone else was a questionable proposition at best. Only so many would get the stock at a "good" price and everyone else was just buying in late anyways.
I pulled up the video and will check it later. I look forward to hearing more about these issues.
Ahhh ok, so you really are talking out of your ass.
The workers are not asking for much. Just their fair share
Fuck right off with the 'low-skill' shit.
Am I wrong? I was using it as a comparison to jobs that require a similar amount of education and training.
I tried to check and it seemed to be categorized as "unskilled". Didn't really seem like a completely fair assessment so I used "low-skill" instead.
What would you call jobs in this category?
We're done here, bootlicker.