Political Discussion

I saw a discussion about a WSJ article about how "workers are less ambitious" and companies having to adjust to the new normal.

First I wanted to say, I'm appalled by the use of the headline "less ambitious". Because if you read further in the article you see that is actually not true at all and sheds a negative light on what is actually going on. What is happening is more and more employees are saying no to working unpaid overtime. Whether it be working after hours or over the weekend to get the work done. They have found that putting in all the extra effort was going unrewarded. It didn't help them get that promotion and they certainly weren't compensated for it by their company. But the WSJ is describing it as the loss of the "go getters" culture. Companies are having to adjust to have more help to get the same amount of work done. Wish is a good trend for employees who have been pushed to "do more with less" for years. But on the other hand, this is not good news for "shareholders" and the WSJ and corporations reflect this reversal as negative.

What got me was the number Baby Boomers in the discussion say that these people are not "hourly", they're "salary" and paid to do the work, and not by the number of hours it takes to completed said work. And of course this is all leading back to the discussion that people need to return to the office to be productive.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Ohio's Supreme Court made a ruling earlier this month that insurance companies do not have to cover ransomware attacks.

www.malwarebytes.com

Software provider denied insurance payout after ransomware attack

The Supreme Court of Ohio issued a ruling days before the New Year that a software and service provider shouldn’t be covered by insurance against...
www.malwarebytes.com www.malwarebytes.com



Essentially, there was no physical damage or physical loss. The company paid up the ransom and the courts have sided with the insurance company that this is not covered because the computer systems or products weren't physical damaged or physically lost.

I don't know what to think about this.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure what to think except that all this push to make everything digital has now led to a new kind of risk for people’s personal information and with this new argument, I wonder how long it will take before courts decide that a data leak of customer information is no longer something that people can be compensated for because “nothing was physically stolen “.
RenegadeMonster said:


Is the advantage moving away from the employee and back towards the employer now?

Disney mandated that employees must be back in person 4 days a week and several other large corporations followed. SnapChat surprises me as there is no reason a tech company like them would need to require people to be back in person in the office. It's necessary for most positions.

We just hear over and over that the corporations "want people to collaborate" and there is "more productivity when people are in the office". But the pandemic has proven that not to be the case.

The CNN video points out that with the economy being uncertain, and companies having layoffs, the power is shifting back to the employer. While hybrid work models aren't likely to go anywhere at the majority of companies, large corporations are likely to return to in person working.
Click to expand...

The problem is that with consolidation of companies, there aren’t a whole lot of places people can work. So while they may be able to leverage one company against another, most of these companies have similar pay and benefits. If I want a significant pay increase, I would have to probably switch industries or at minimum switch jobs to actually make enough money for me to leave my current job. I think that’s the biggest thing.

However, no one is really addressing the elephant in the room that is early deaths and disability of gen-Xers in particular. Long covid has been added to a list of autoimmune disorders because it causes immune disregulation, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently, so that people continue to get sick over and over again. There is also insurance data that shows higher incidence of cancer and dementia in 45-64 year old workers. The truth is that high stress lives and long covid is hacking away at worker numbers so while there are tons of layoffs, we still have record unemployment numbers—as in there is very low unemployment.

It made sense for my parents to be go-getters. Their housing, even after you take the 16% interest they paid for it, was far less expensive. Their health care was inexpensive and comprehensive. They were able to obtain college degrees inexpensively and they got to invest in a stable market, free from private equity hacks and shell corporations. More than anything, they dealt with an economic system with relatively low inequality. My job pays my bills and keeps us fed. I don’t really see a way for me to make much more money than I do now. Sure I could try something different, but I need my same level of pay which isn’t going to happen for someone with no experience in a different field. There is no real way for me to move up an economic rung of the ladder, because wealth inequality makes economic mobility harder and harder. So if I will never be able to move up in the world, why should I kill myself at a job that doesn’t even give me decent health insurance? If I want extra cash, I have to have a side hustle because my raises don’t even equal inflation, so I need the weekend and evening time for that. If you want go-getters they need to be motivated by something worth going and getting. If you slash benefits and don’t give people raises that are at least equal to real inflation, if you make people take out 50 and 100 year mortgages to secure housing, you’re going demotivate a lot of people. And then if you pay CEO’s and other top brass insane pay checks and give them tons of benefits while those people make business decisions that make workers lives worse, you really demotivate people.
 
Lol, some people. Making arguments in favor of business cutting benefits with points like:
  • Healthcare is expensive
  • Businesses spend more per employing on healthcare today then they did a generation ago.
And because of this, the businesses offerings are actually quite generous and arguing against it shows "entitlement". And that the idea that business should provide "inexpensive comprehensive" health insurance is unrealistic and out of alignment with reality.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Lol, some people. Making arguments in favor of business cutting benefits with points like:
  • Healthcare is expensive
  • Businesses spend more per employing on healthcare today then they did a generation ago.
And because of this, the businesses offerings are actually quite generous and arguing against it shows "entitlement". And that the idea that business should provide "inexpensive comprehensive" health insurance is unrealistic and out of alignment with reality.
Click to expand...
What if people just stopped working and told capitalism to go f itself?

People aren’t slaves and these businesses need us as workers and consumers more than we actually need them.
 
Last edited:
Talked to my mother and found out more about the consolidation / layoffs at her company today.

Sounds a lot like what my holding company did last month.

In my case, the holding company consolidated the healthcare business from multiple agencies into one business unit.

In my mother's case, they took the 7 consumer goods brands, and consolidated them into 3 business units. Each business unit works on multiple brands now and they cut the redundancies. For example, they don't need a manager for the sales team for each brand, they only need one sales manager per business unit type of thing. Also, what is surprising, is my mother said sales people got hit the hardest. They don't care about having sales reps and supporting small businesses anymore. Each business unit has one sales rep for all the brands per store. Walmart, Target, Amazon and what not. While the 13% of their global workforce doesn't sound all that scary, the cuts were primarily from office workers. Almost 3/4ths of the workers from my mother's office got let go today. And her office / brand has been the primary employer of people in town for the last 40 years. So that means, many people from the same town got laid off today. And it's big news in the area.
 
Anyone ever listen to a certain podcast by those on the dirtbag left? One of that crowd just bought a $200 album off me on discogs for their first ever purchase. I really wanted to put a note that said it didn't seem very lefty to spend that much on a record.
 
Hemotep said:
Anyone ever listen to a certain podcast by those on the dirtbag left? One of that crowd just bought a $200 album off me on discogs for their first ever purchase. I really wanted to put a note that said it didn't seem very lefty to spend that much on a record.
Click to expand...

This reminds me of the t shirt for sale for $50 on the Fela website that said “Expensive Shit” I wanted it, but the irony was just too much.
 
Hemotep said:
Anyone ever listen to a certain podcast by those on the dirtbag left? One of that crowd just bought a $200 album off me on discogs for their first ever purchase. I really wanted to put a note that said it didn't seem very lefty to spend that much on a record.
Click to expand...
Dirtbag left?
 
Hemotep said:
That's what they call themselves. Chapo Trap House and related entities. They said they wanted to reclaim vulgarity for the left. I think a few of them are actual dirtbags and shitty people, but I've read some stuff a few others of them have written that I can in part agree with.
Click to expand...
I’ve never heard of these people and probably don’t need to know about them. Good look on the sale though.
 
Hemotep said:
That's what they call themselves. Chapo Trap House and related entities. They said they wanted to reclaim vulgarity for the left. I think a few of them are actual dirtbags and shitty people, but I've read some stuff a few others of them have written that I can in part agree with.
Click to expand...

What’s the album? And why is it “worth” 200$ ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top