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The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

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Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

FreshFish said:
I'm still waiting for the first person who complains about "rich" people getting "richer" to demonstrate by their actions how they won't stand for it.

Who'll be the first to give up their smart phone and iPad, since they made Steve Jobs and his successors rich?

Who'll be the first to stop using Windows, since it made Bill Gates rich?

Who'll be the first to abandon air conditioning, since it made Willis Carrier and his heirs rich?

Who'll be the first to stop using elevators, since they made Elisha Otis and his heirs rich?

Who'll be the first to stop using steel, since it made Andrew Carnegie and his heirs rich?


These people became "rich" because their inventions made life so much better for EVERYONE. Would you rather we do without these inventions instead, because they led to such immense personal wealth for their inventors?
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I know there is no place for reason here, but I dont think that is what anyone is saying. How about instead of not buying iPad we'd rather see Apple products made in the USA, by americans being paid a decent wage. It would be alot more beneficial to the country to have a whole lot of people making $100k/year and a CEO making $5M/year than it is to have a whole bunch of people making $50k/yr and a CEO making $30M. If Wal-Mart made a similar cut to CEO pay, and took their dividend payout and instead used that money to increase employee pay it would give every employee something like an extra $3k/yr. The CEO is still rich, everyone else will immediately pump that $3k back in to the economy. I'm sure there are some who think that no one should be rich, but the vast majority just think the disparity has gone way too far and some sort of correction needs to happen.

To Bob's point that disparity has gotten worse under Obama, look no further than the stock market for why that is. 10% of the population own 85% of stocks, and the market has doubled. The completely ***** economy under Obama seems to have done pretty well for those who are fotunate enough to own stocks. Maybe instead of profits and dividends, employees should get a little more consideration.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

Since this is a Supreme Court thread, I have a question about the economy.

When the current administration took over, it inherited an economy that had been driven off a cliff and was in a free fall without a parachute. We were mired in two wars, the worst of which was costing about 7-8 bil a month and our own VP, when he was secdef, predicted would turn into a quagmire.

What do Obama's harshest critics think the economy should be doing now, given where it was 6 years ago? What would _________have done to make that happen?

Oh, and when will UND win another banner?
 
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Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

burd said:
Oh, and when will UND win another banner?
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Even the harshest critics of Obama can agree that he has done an exceptional job of keeping that atrocity at bay.


Although, the same could be said of Bush Jr.....
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

WisconsinWildcard said:
Even the harshest critics of Obama can agree that he has done an exceptional job of keeping that atrocity at bay.


Although, the same could be said of Bush Jr.....
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Must reluctantly spread . . .

Just received Mistakes Were Made, btw, and looking forward to the read.

You didn't say there were no pictures. It'll take a while.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

burd said:
Must reluctantly spread . . .

Just received Mistakes Were Made, btw, and looking forward to the read.

You didn't say there were no pictures. It'll take a while.
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Glad you picked it up! With any luck, you may give up your sinning ways and become a badger fan.

If you want one with pictures try this. http://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Really-Good-Pain/dp/1616143975 Judging by typical posts, I think most of the posters here have already read excerpts.

Those two serve as exhibit A and exhibit B on why I am no longer invited to parties. ;)

That and my totally healthy and natural hatred for Jenny McCarthy
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

ScoobyDoo said:
No. As is pretty easy to figure out by the math, employees get nothing, shareholders get it all.
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That's a load of bullshit. The company I work for has paid out hefty dividends longer than the Cubs' Series drought and the general happiness of the employees is high according to numerous internal surveys (and general feeling at work) as well as the stockholders. Or so I would hope given that you could set your watch to its growth. It's difficult to strike that kind of a balance but it's certainly possible.

I found utopia and it's located right off I-94.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

jerphisch said:
It would be alot more beneficial to the country to have a whole lot of people making $100k/year and a CEO making $5M/year than it is to have a whole bunch of people making $50k/yr and a CEO making $30M. If Wal-Mart made a similar cut to CEO pay, and took their dividend payout and instead used that money to increase employee pay it would give every employee something like an extra $3k/yr. The CEO is still rich, everyone else will immediately pump that $3k back in to the economy. I'm sure there are some who think that no one should be rich, but the vast majority just think the disparity has gone way too far and some sort of correction needs to happen.
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Funny enough, CEO compensation started to skyrocket compared to other employees after CEO cash earnings were capped at $1MM in 1994(? - might be a little later, like '98); that figure gets indexed to either CPI or a stated fixed rate of increase each year - I forget. The companies immediately started to reduce cash payments to the CEOs, but then in lieu of cash the CEOs then received stock options that had little or no impact to the enforced limits because it wasn't cash coming out of the companies' bank accounts. Once the CEO exercises his/her options, that's when the real money starts to come into play. In theory, it might dilute the value of each share of stock, that that's going to depend upon when they're issuing the options on treasury stock or not.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

dxmnkd316 said:
That's a load of bullshit. The company I work for has paid out hefty dividends longer than the Cubs' Series drought and the general happiness of the employees is high according to numerous internal surveys (and general feeling at work) as well as the stockholders. Or so I would hope given that you could set your watch to its growth. It's difficult to strike that kind of a balance but it's certainly possible.

I found utopia and it's located right off I-94.
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You're the exception, not the rule.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

jerphisch said:
It would be alot more beneficial to the country to have a whole lot of people making $100k/year and a CEO making $5M/year than it is to have a whole bunch of people making $50k/yr and a CEO making $30M.
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By "whole bunch," you apparently mean 500, since that would be how many $50K raises you could give out of the $25M pay cut you're proposing to the CEO. If you can show me a 501-person company where the CEO is taking home $30M, I'll eat my hat. Your math doesn't work.

If Wal-Mart made a similar cut to CEO pay, and took their dividend payout and instead used that money to increase employee pay it would give every employee something like an extra $3k/yr.
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Now you're mixing dividend payouts with CEO pay - completely separate issues. But in any case, Walmart paid out ~$2 in dividends on 3.2B shares of stock = $6.4B. Divided among 2.2M employees, that does work out to $2900 per employee. But Walmart is an income stock (P/E of around 14). If they announced tomorrow that there were no more dividends, their share price would plummet so far so fast that the company, for all practical purposes, would be bankrupt and all 2.2M employees would be at risk of losing their jobs. Walmart is only able to provide those 2.2M jobs because of the capital investments made by their shareholders; without them, Walmart would be just another regional chain - at the time they went public in 1970, there were fewer than 50 stores. Or do you really have a business plan where you don't have to pay off your investors? If so, perhaps you, Messrs. Bialystock and Bloom, and I could use it to market the perpetual motion machine I just invented.

$3000 per employee is just one big number divided by another smaller number. Do you realize that if we divided the 7.5x10^18 grains of sand in the world among the 500M housecats, that would be 1.4 trillion grains per cat??? I mean, can you imagine???
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

LynahFan said:
By "whole bunch," you apparently mean 500, since that would be how many $50K raises you could give out of the $25M pay cut you're proposing to the CEO. If you can show me a 501-person company where the CEO is taking home $30M, I'll eat my hat. Your math doesn't work.

Now you're mixing dividend payouts with CEO pay - completely separate issues. But in any case, Walmart paid out ~$2 in dividends on 3.2B shares of stock = $6.4B. Divided among 2.2M employees, that does work out to $2900 per employee. But Walmart is an income stock (P/E of around 14). If they announced tomorrow that there were no more dividends, their share price would plummet so far so fast that the company, for all practical purposes, would be bankrupt and all 2.2M employees would be at risk of losing their jobs. Walmart is only able to provide those 2.2M jobs because of the capital investments made by their shareholders; without them, Walmart would be just another regional chain - at the time they went public in 1970, there were fewer than 50 stores. Or do you really have a business plan where you don't have to pay off your investors? If so, perhaps you, Messrs. Bialystock and Bloom, and I could use it to market the perpetual motion machine I just invented.

$3000 per employee is just one big number divided by another smaller number. Do you realize that if we divided the 7.5x10^18 grains of sand in the world among the 500M housecats, that would be 1.4 trillion grains per cat??? I mean, can you imagine???
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Knee jerk much? Similar to issues like the defict and debt, wage disparity is an issue that has been building for decades, and I wasnt really saying that we should fix it tomorrow. Long term problems take long term solutions. But I guess since we can't fix it tomorrow we shouldn't even try.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

jerphisch said:
Knee jerk much? Similar to issues like the defict and debt, wage disparity is an issue that has been building for decades, and I wasnt really saying that we should fix it tomorrow. Long term problems take long term solutions. But I guess since we can't fix it tomorrow we shouldn't even try.
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I don't see a whole lot of knee jerk reaction in his post. You said you wanted to bring reason to the discussion, which is fine and dandy but don't get upset when someone disputes your "reason". You weren't not saying we should fix it tomorrow either... you made no reference to long-term solutions in your original post. Obviously, taking 25M from the CEO and giving it to 500 other employees isn't an overnight type of thing. He responded directly to your comment with a sensible reply and even threw in a cat reference for everyone, because you know, the internet.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

jerphisch said:
Knee jerk much? Similar to issues like the defict and debt, wage disparity is an issue that has been building for decades, and I wasnt really saying that we should fix it tomorrow. Long term problems take long term solutions. But I guess since we can't fix it tomorrow we shouldn't even try.
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Well, it depends if you define wage disparity to be a problem in-and-of itself. While it is a bit biased way to ask the question this way, it is still somewhat instructive to ask "would you rather that we were all unequally rich or equally poor?" To me, the issue isn't whether we have some obnoxiously wealthy people in the US (we do), it's whether our society is 1) taking care of everyone's basic material needs, and 2) adequately rewarding the efforts of those who choose to put in the effort to better their economic station, as an incentive for growing the economy. While there is always room for improvement, I think we're doing pretty okay on both measures.
 
Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

unofan said:
Ah Daily Kos, the left wing's slightly less derpy answer to WND.
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Kos is the left wing equivalent of the WSJ editorial page -- it's strategy written by and for partisan activists. It's fun to see activists with their hair down (before Cato got the memo from Koch to go full frontal loony-tunes, they were a great source of people saying, "we'll debate the merits another day; here's how to win.")

I'm sure there's a left equivalent of WND, but I haven't seen it yet. ("Sarah Palin is actually a space alien; now the truth can be told")

Anyway, try to get past the byline and read the hypos in the article. Some of them are pretty interesting thought experiments in hoisting the Roberts majority by its own petard.
 
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Re: The Power of SCOTUS V: The Final Frontier

As products come with warnings, Supreme Court decisions come with slippery slopes. They've just done so longer.
 
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