It doesnt matter. Workers are still producing more than ever and aren’t seeing wage increases.
You’re talking to someone who doesn’t seem to know how worker productivity is measured.
And from a guy who said the above. But i guess it doesnt count if you use machines to produce more. Real men use their bare hands for everything.
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And on a meta level of funny, it’s not like the argument that inventors should be the ones making bank is valid either. Most of the time, the corporations the scientists and the engineers work for are the ones that pocket all the profit from those inventors’ labor.
Next argument: “Well of course the owners of capital should make all the profit! If it wasn’t for their capital, no one would have jobs!” 
So predictable. The notion that business is a one way street is too common in right wing economics. Wealth has accumulated so disproportionately, workers dont even have leverage anymore. And yet, people continue to vote against their interests.
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[quote=“ImRightYoureWrong, post:38, topic:172391”]
Your graph does not show that. You’ve given us no data to show that their income level is below $100k.
But let’s assume most of them are underpaid. They are still a tiny minority of wage-earners. All the rest are NOT being underpaid, because their value has not increased as a result of the higher productivity. It’s only the scientists and engineers and technologists whose value has increased, because of the higher productivity they caused with the improvements they made to the technology operated by the workers. The ones who produced the new technology/machines are responsible for the improved production, not the operators of the machines or other mainline factory workers.
Nothing in your graphs or data shows any of what you’re claiming.
But even if your claims are correct, that doesn’t show that the “workers” have any higher value. The vast majority do not, because they did not produce the improvements in technology, and it’s this improved technology which has resulted in the greater production, not any improvement in the machine operators. They just operate the better machines provided to them by the scientists and engineers and technologists, just as they operated the earlier machines. No change by them, and so no increase in their value.
The only “workers” whose value has increased are the scientists, engineers, and technologists, who are a tiny minority of workers. Your complaint is appropriate to only those particular “workers” or specialists, not all the lower-level workers who are the majority, such as the operators of the machines, whose value has remained stagnant. And it’s because of their stagnant value that their wages have stagnated.
The law of supply-and-demand says that those who are more in demand and in lower supply have the higher value.
The scientists and engineers and technologists are in much greater demand than the machine operators and other low-level workers. The latter did not provide the new technology. They are easily expendable and replaceable, whereas the scientists and engineers and technologists are much less replaceable, and much more needed in the process to improve the production. They are the only workers whose value is higher as a result of the improved productivity.
If you can’t figure this out, there’s no data or graphs which can show it to you.
Explain to us why you think the machine operators deserve credit for the improved production as a result of the better machines provided to them. Or why their value is higher as a result of the better machines someone else produced and without which their “productivity” could not have increased.
The higher-value workers do have much leverage, but they’re a minority. Their higher value is reflected in their higher leverage. While those workers who have little or no leverage are the same ones who have very low value.
There’s nothing in economics which says that everyone is entitled to have equal leverage with everyone else. To demand that everyone must have equal leverage is the same as demanding that everyone must have equal incomes and wealth.
I didnt say everyone should have equal leverage
They deserve better / non-flat wages because they run the machines and have been outputting more with the machines. The inventors deserve credit for inventing the machine. You seem to forgetting the subject. Worker production. Exactly how much? I dont know. But not 0%. If a company’s profits increase 1000% because of a new machine, the corporate execs take 500%, shareholders take 450%, engineers take 50%, and the workers running the machine 60 hours a week, get 0% and instead get loans from the people above who put their money in banks, thats a problem and why our economy is unsustainable.
Thats your opinion. There is no inherent, objective value. We assign them and markets are created by those decisions. I believe that wages should be indexed to productivity. If a roofer can do a roof in a day rather than 3 days because of a new power tool, the roofer should get a wage increase. Not 300%, but SOMETHING.
There is supply-and-demand, which gives the only objective measure of value, which is real, but cannot be precisely measured as an empirical object. If you throw out supply-and-demand, then “value” has no meaning and there is no “economics” or any basis for claims about the economy, or any economic decisions.
No, they should be “indexed” to supply-and-demand. If the worker improves, the demand for him increases, and his supply decreases as there are fewer other workers who could replace him.
But not to “productivity,” because this can greatly increase due to improvements in the system/technology which the worker had nothing to do with. The worker should be paid only for his own value, not the value of others who made improvements, like giving him a better tool to work with.
In some cases he does, out of sympathy by the employer, who might sense a “family” kind of connection to the worker and might want to reward him for previous value. But only the employer knows if that worker has some other value needing to be rewarded. No outsider can judge that the wage is too low because it didn’t increase along with the output increase. The actual market does reward the worker when he deserves the credit. When it does not increase his pay, it’s because he doesn’t deserve it.
You’re demanding that employers show PITY toward the workers, paying them out of sympathy rather than according to their value. That’s moralistic subjectivity, not economics.
No. I’m “demanding” (not demanding anything) that worker wages are indexed to their productivity
Supply and demand just explains how each affects pricing decisions. It doesn’t assert objective value, as the Y axis is determined by each individual or aggregate opinion of worth.
That’s your opinion. Thats what markets are. Opinions. I think workers deserve more. You dont. I think big employers have too much leverage. You dont. Theres no objectuve truth to “worth”. Supply and demamd curves dont grow on trees.
Just dropped in to see if the philosophy of lunacy was still prevalent.
It appears to be…
The reason we don’t sub out ALL manufacturing is for domestic production in times of emergency.
There must be balance and some semblance of common sense. Reminds me of the German’s manufacturing Luftwaffe planes by using prison labor. Needless to say the quality tended to suffer.
Freedom does not mean free to give away manufacturing.
You realize that we have a higher manufacturing capacity than ever, right?
Preparing for WW3? The lunacy is on display here.
Security and common sense is not equal to preparing for WW3.
Industry and production are components of a healthy culture.
THAT is the crazy that sane people avoid…least it spread.
Now it’s about a “healthy culture”. What nonsense is this?
Can we be real here? It’s about votes. It’s always been about votes. Manufacturing has been a big industry in swing states. It has nothing to do with national security or “culture”. It has everything to do with using government to prop up jobs in swing states.
There’s more to it than that, but that’s the base of the issue.
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Hi there! I’m a mechanical engineer and I recently transitioned back to a pure manufacturing environment after 13 years in oil and gas in the service side. I work with an AI driven machine learning on demand platform that is state of the art, and aside from the education and years of training I’ve had I had been going to school on my own dime to get my CAD and CAM skills current. While I love oil and gas, I just can’t take the cyclical nature of the industry any longer.
The machinists that can run a modern CNC turning center have a massive increase in value over someone who can only run manual machines. A machinist who can program both CAD and CAm and run both lathe and milling operations can pretty mich name their price and have a job anywhere, anytime he wants.
In an environment where 5 axis milling is old hat and 7 axis is becoming the standard, it takes a lot of education and training to run them. Apparently your understanding of manufacturing is the machinists are jut button pushers and it’s all the machine that leads to productivity increases. Simeon still has to program, run, maintain, and debug them, and those are the machinists who you don’t seem to think are worth very much.
