Because those countries don't believe in capitalism.
Just to remind everyone, capitalism requires two things. One is labour the worker, the other thing required is capital.
Those welfare states of Europe, they don't give a hoot about capital.
Goodwill Closing
- Thread starter SkyRider
- Start date
Just to remind everyone, capitalism requires two things. One is labour the worker, the other thing required is capital.
Those welfare states of Europe, they don't give a hoot about capital.
It's good your school had basic finance courses. I don't know how widespread they are across the country, but when I was in high school, we had economics, accounting and such, but no home finance type courses.
It holds true in unions too. You have blue collar union workers (automotive, factories, mechanics, technicians etc...) and you have white collar unions (police, teachers, pilots, nurses etc...)
All unions work similar in that they band together and try to make as much earnings and benefits as possible, while trying cap hours and workload as much as possible, even at the expense of the business.
However, if you look at the historic trend of how each kind of union battles management, blue collar can be loud, picket waving, car hitting (scabs), angry mobs. White collar are more subdued. They might band together and have mobs of sign holders, or hold out and not work, but it's typically quieter and less aggressive. And they dress better too. So despite the goals of both types of unions being similar, their demeanor are can be very different.
No matter what side of the political spectrum people are on, this was an interesting perspective on capital and labour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century.
I took a skim of the wiki and got the jist of his opinion. I have no idea if he's right or wrong, but for sake of argument I'll say he is right in that the gap is widening between rich and poor in the big countries.
However, my opinion is that even if he is right, having billionaires has not hindered rich countries at all in terms of progress, standard of living and wages. Even though there may be more billionaires, there's also sizable and nice high standard of living in North America and Europe.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Even the people considered poor in the US, UK or Canada would be considered rich in poor countries who are not as capitalistic. So it shows that even though there may be poor people who can't keep up, the greater good is living decent, as opposed to the image of millionaires on one end, and all other people are dirt poor on the other as if this is medieval England with royalty on one side and almost everyone else a serf. Not true in present day.
I'm making up an example here, but if citizens in Romania have a more balanced out gap of wealth, who cares. The standard of living there is worse than a wide gap country like let's say the UK.
My concern is that widening inequality will destabilize society, unless it turns into a police state.
The rising tide analogy is silly. A small increase on near nothing is still near nothing. Sure, our poor are richer than other countries poor, but we're doing our best to level that playing field by moving jobs out of the country. I think our measure of success should be more than whether our poor are starving to death.
Someone made an astute observation that while freedom of capital and companies to move countries easily is a good idea, freedom of people to move countries to seek better opportunity seems to be a terrible idea.
If starvation death levels are a measure of success, then the typical western country that has a high standard of living will have excellent ratings. Very few people die from starvation. The majority of deaths are from old age, disease and out of the blue stuff like car accidents or crime.
For me, I see society in western countries (the book focuses on the rich countries) very stable. If anything, the destabilizing comes from outside factors like perhaps all the refugees coming in and the governments not ready to handle 500,000 people suddenly crossing their borders, commodity pricing that gets out of whack, second tier countries have wild swings in GDP and infaltion that may cause a ripple effect richer countries, mortgage crisis because people with lower incomes got caught up not understanding their shady mortgage terms etc....
Despite what the media says, crime is at record lows compared to decades ago. It just looks worse because everyone has the internet, twitter and Youtube to show everything at every minute. So even though there's more rich people than ever, crime is getting better. Intuitively, if there were so many poor people with little, they would be rioting and causing issues (big uproar), but that's not happening. So even if it's true there's more super rich billionaires now (coming from high level execs cashing in stocks and entrepreneurs making big with Google and Facebook), it shows that the avg person is still rising with the tide and doing well enough with a standard of living that is decent. They aren't in the millionaire or billionaire class, but a middle class that is happy enough to be part of..... as and I mentioned still much better than the avg person in poor countries.
It just looks skewed in rich countries because that $12/hr doesn't get far with prices where they are. But pay someone $12/hr in a poor African nation, and it surely gets you probably 5x farther. A loaf of bread might be $3. Over there, the equivalent currency price might be $0.25.
It's never a good thing when companies go out of business putting hundreds of people out of work. But when I hear workers say the reason they went out of business is due to the CEO making 230K a year, I have to shake my head. Their payroll is what, 10 million plus a year? She could have been working for free and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference.
The question remains, was it simply a result of declining sales, high rent/overhead/union wages/increased competition or bad management on the part of the of the CEO? That said, I heard all employees are to be paid up until and including their last day. They've also mailed out ROE slips to all employees so they can apply for EI.
Life goes on...
The question remains, was it simply a result of declining sales, high rent/overhead/union wages/increased competition or bad management on the part of the of the CEO? That said, I heard all employees are to be paid up until and including their last day. They've also mailed out ROE slips to all employees so they can apply for EI.
Life goes on...
Also, the union winning the dispute against Goodwill to prevent Goodwill from cutting back on labor in the winter probably did not help. Think there is plenty of blame to go around. Sad for the people who lost their jobs. Losing a job can be as painful as losing a loved one.
From the Toronto Sun
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/21/goodwill-board-close-of-shop-and-run
"Junket attended by Keiko, Joan and Dennis Green in Miami in June 2012: Social Enterprise in Action. Junket activities available to attendees included everglades and airboat ride, South Beach overview, Miami Night beach party, tour of Vizcaya Mansions, full-day excursion to Key West, golf at the Miami Beach Golf Club."
"Total revenues in 2014: $28 million, * Total expenditures: $29.2 million (includes $17.3 million in salaries and $8.1 million in rent)."
Goodwill can breakeven if they can lower the salary expense by 6%. Would the unionized employees be willing to a salary reduction of 6% (less than $1 an hour) to revive the company?
P.S. This sounds bad but I doubt these employees have much if any employment prospects anywhere else.
Good for you for not collecting EI, though you do seem somewhat bitter about never having collected it, like it's some lost right or something with you. I've never collected it either (knock on wood) and don't want to. That's the way it should be.
I completely agree with you as to teaching kids finance in school. (They kind of did in Grade 12 if I recall as they did teach us such things as the sum of a geometric series and how mortgages and annuities were calculated, etc. There was also high school accounting, and business courses.)
But I completely disagree with you with respect to the teaching of math. You are so beyond wrong in my opinion. Everything in this world is based on math. Absolutely everything. In Grade 9, there is no way to tell which kids are going to go on to having a career that requires math skills and which ones will not. But our society is 100 percent dependent on those who can do math. (And quadratic equations are pretty simple, you want fun, try partial differential equations with non homogenous boundary conditions, or Laplace transforms, or Quantum Mechanics. Then we'll talk.) Besides, when I was in High School, they had 3 different math levels. Math for those intending on using it (maybe) in University, those who aimed for Community college, and those who needed it to figure out a tip on a restaurant bill (which many of my teacher friends shockingly cannot do).
There are lots of useless courses in High School (like Yoga, or religion, or various artsie fartsie course which should be dropped like a hot potato. Math is not one of them. If anything, it should be tougher.
Did someone say Latin? Why did they put me with the other bright eyes in a Latin class?
I saw on CP24 earlier today a quick report where a reporter chatted with a bunch of Goodwill guys. Put it this way..... no wonder these guys can't get anything better than a low paying retail job.
It's a vicious cycle because many of the low wage retail lifers don't exactly do the greatest job. When I walk around retail shopping, I see the best, fasted and most effort coming from the younger crowd. The ones you see who are probably needing a job to pay for college.... the shoppers drug mart student..... the young guys hauling boxes at Loblaws and such. The older crowd are no doubt slower.
And there is always a stark difference in professionalism and demeanor between the front line workers and the store manager. You don't even need to see the person has a different uniform or that store manager badge. It's pretty obvious just from the way a person acts.
The drawback is the those good workers are doing it part time and will be quitting soon as they get a higher paying better job when they graduate, or soon after. So the 45 year old whose been there 22 years is still around taking her time. All while the clerk half her age will check out customers faster. Go figure.
Reminds me of when I had grungy general labour jobs during the summer. I'd be making more product, tidying up my area and doing my log book entry better and faster than the unionized guys there...... all while being paid minimum wage. The union guys were probably paid double or triple. Lazy asses. How the heck should a university student whose been on the job 3 weeks somehow be able to be more productive than a 10 year vet? Who knows.
for the most part you post drivel, but you are an expert in articulating stereotypes...anything else , meh..
Nothing wrong with fancy math courses if someone uses it. But most people don't. So forcing kids to do these kinds of courses when they have no interest in it (from a career standpoint) is a waste. I don't know what the course curriclums are now, but when I was in HS, grade 9 -11 math was mandatory. Calculus, Finite, and Algebra were specialized math courses which were optional at I think grade 11 and up.... or maybe grade 12 minimum. There may have been a grade 12 general math too.... I forget.
The problem is that home finance/business type courses (assuming they are widespread now, since they were not around when I was in HS), seem taught at higher grades. That doesn't make sense since not only should dollars and cents be easier to understand for students, but budgeting is something everyone does in life..... well, unless they live at home forever and their parents pay for everything.... lol. Even more important now since kids love to spend cash on cellphones, expensive clothes and college/university fees are much higher than 20 years ago.
As for EI? Bitter? Perhaps a bit. The gripe isn't about not getting a few hundred bucks. I couldn't care less about that..... heck, everyone on this board that hobbies plunks out about $300 for one hour of fun.
The issue is that the people employed are the ones footing the bill. And people like me who did get laid off, still contribute back to the EI pot almost immediately. Yet, there are lots of lazy asses who who are regularly unemployed since they aren't smartening up and getting a better job or being better at that job to keep it. I can understand someone who has a physical or mental issue where having a hit and miss job is expected. But let's face it, there's lots of normal able bodied people who seem to not give a shit and try to get by. But once something happens, it comes to people who pay higher taxes and pay slip deductions to cover them.
It's like the unemployed guy who has a choice of trying to get social assistance for $xxxxx per year, or get a minimum wage job that might end up paying around the same. Some people will prefer to take option 1, where they prefer to sit on their ass and milk as many government cheques as possible.
idiot, bad management caused the failure of Goodwill, not workers salaries that are barely over minimum wage
They could breakeven too if they increased the price of their stuff a tiny amount.
Would people shopping there complain so much or customers leave in droves if the books they sold there for $2 each were increased to $2.25 or $2.50? (that alone is about a 10-25% increase).
