Student. Dreamer. Layabout. Bad influence on those wishing to maintain a sense of decorum and maturity. Please be aware: this is a NSFW blog. Really.
The only people that can afford to take an unpaid job are those that are already well-off enough to survive without pay. That means that there are careers where the only way to effectively break in to the industry is to be well-off in the first place.
This is a major problem in many industries, including film, advertising, fashion, music, and others. If your parents can pay for an apartment in Manhattan, congratulations, you can get your foot in the door. If not, tough luck, go find another job more suited to your lower-class life.
—HDSFGIDSHFJKDSHFJDSHFKJSDFNJKDSFJKDSF (via pizzawolves)
(via airyairyquitecontrary)
Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.” Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands. Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.
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How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart - New York Times (via alexdarke)
THIS IS NOT ALTRUISTIC. THIS IS GOOD BUSINESS. Holy shit, when the fuck will that sink through every fucking person’s head. You pay a worker a living wage, HOLY SHIT THEY WILL SPEND MONEY ON THINGS AND KEEP THE ECONOMIC WHEEL TURNING. You keep a worker healthy, HOLY SHIT THEY WON’T LOSE PRODUCTIVITY. You treat a worker well, HOLY SHIT THEY FUNCTION BETTER AT THEIR JOB.
(via feignedwisdom)
It’s true. There’s a whole book called “Sabotage” about the things employees do when they’re angry with their employer. I’ve committed acts of sabotage on the job myself.
Also, a good reminder that Costco is a fantastic company and a business worth supporting. They’re one of like five huge US brands that doesn’t donate to Republicans.
But yeah — the problem is that the prevailing school of economic thought in the United States doesn’t believe in any of those things you mentioned, Twig. Our economic system is totally Ferengi in nature.
(via cleoselene)
(via notalickofsense)
It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one.
If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
This idea is an article of faith for Republicans and seldom challenged by Democrats and has shaped much of today’s economic landscape.
But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It’s not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.
In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are “job creators” and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.
I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.
—Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist whose TED talk about inequality was deemed “too political controversial” to publish. (via theatlantic)
(via wilwheaton)
Suicide by economic crisis
“Financial crisis puts the lives of ordinary people at risk, but much more dangerous is when there are radical cuts to social protection,” said David Stuckler, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge, who led a The Lancet that found a sharp rise in suicides across Europe, particularly in seriously affected countries like Greece and Ireland from 2007 to 2009, years that coincided with the downturn.
“Austerity can turn a crisis into an epidemic,” Mr. Stuckler added.
Economy in Star Trek
This is for geeksaurusrex, who asked about economy in Star Trek. Since I wrote an chapter on it in my dissertation, I figured I might as well just post it.
Firstly, though , I need preface this post by saying that the purpose of my research was to discern the differences between moving (Enterprise) and stationary (Deep Space Nine) space when it comes to politics.
Other notes:
IPE stands for International Political Economy.
(via deeply-spaced)
Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy
Because: Growing up in the U.S., I had some friends who worked under the table at pizzerias, summer camps, what have you, but it was rare. Coming to Argentina and navigating the world of employment I learned how big a black market can be. In Argentina it is called working en negro, negro meaning black, like the black market, and a large percentage of the population works as such. Estimations as to the number of people working en negro hover around 4.5 million, and the city posts advertisements persuading people to make sure they and their bosses are on the books.
A quote in the article from the study’s author, Robert Neuwirth:
There’s a French word for someone who’s self-reliant or ingenious: débrouillard. This got sort of mutated in the postcolonial areas of Africa and the Caribbean to refer to the street economy, which is called l’économie de la débrouillardise—the self-reliance economy, or the DIY economy, if you will. I decided to use this term myself—shortening it to System D—because it’s a less pejorative way of referring to what has traditionally been called the informal economy or black market or even underground economy. I’m basically using the term to refer to all the economic activity that flies under the radar of government. So, unregistered, unregulated, untaxed, but not outright criminal—I don’t include gun-running, drugs, human trafficking, or things like that.
I was relieved to read the author was mindful to avoid condescension, or as he said “pejorative” terms and phrasing, and just looked at the objective research and facts.
This is a valuable study and I am glad to see an intelligent publication like Wired covered it. I hope more do the same. As Neuwirth shares in the interview, if this informal economy were a country its GDP would be around $10 trillion a year—which is a low estimation—or, the second-largest in the world following the U.S. We should know more about it.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY