Comments by "" (@jmitterii2) on "Tom Nicholas"
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All companies seem to do it. Businesses to day have contempt for the customer and the employee.
So this makes for horrible decisions being made. That end up destroying the company or at least harming it big time... problem it becomes a feedback loop. That bad decision leads to yet another and so on. I see it in regular day job businesses past and prior companies I have worked for... example: they're okay to increase their monthly costs to $2 million more a month, to save $500 thousand a year on labor costs. Because it's labor... it's dogma that labor cost is the only thing in their control, and thus lowering that cost is the Key Performance Indicator. So they spend $2 million a month or 24 million a year, to save $500K a year. Very brilliant, they just added 23.5 millionaire to costs to the company while making persisting employees life worse off with a skeleton crew.
Another example at a bottling plant, they're concerned about keeping labor costs cheap they're not even able to keep employees so night shifts are too few that production doesn't happen, or when it does, it causes $50K of bad product to be produced that must then be destroyed. Because they didn't seek to keep the existing employees, and the new employees are so underpaid they last for a few months at best, and the ones they do keep for a while longer are unreliable at best.
And of courses, cutting further corners into the areas of legality of quality of product becomes frustrating for long term hanger ons like myself.
Microsoft example of charging so much that they're really just wanting to lease/rent out their MS Office... so I just don't use it anymore. I use Open Source which is literally free... and it can convert all spreadsheet and document files to various all types of Microsoft or Apple or other file types... so you don't need MS Office at all. And the layout is better; and doesn't change every, now, month or so; forcing you to have to google how to get the setup you had prior back.
I can donate directly to them on their website to keep them going similar to how I've done to AdBlock... to keep them afloat and continuing their good programming. And their recent Windows 11 requirements for various motherboard setups.... they really screwed up big.
Also, it wouldn't surprise me some of these outfits start treating their development team so bad, that there is some purposeful sabotaging. Disgruntled workers that linger on, or are about to leave, give a final gift. Ethically, I'm not for that type of protest. But that does happen. And it it appears in some instances, that some of these "updates" are so bad and not even close to logical in that it would make more money or be better in any way... that it has to be a form of sabotage.
But I think a lot of these companies are going down hill are due to bad key performance indicators. They're dumb. They look at one statistics and that's what they themselves are rewarded for, despite it causing sometimes major problems elsewhere.
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But Thatcher was your iron lady, right?
Don't worry, her idol and who she copycatted, our Gipper, we're living through that misery too in the Corporate States of America.
Funny fact though, most utilities in the states particularly sewer and water is more city owned and operated than private. Power it's a mixed bag... some cities in Idaho for instance is city owned and operated like in Idaho Falls. While rest of Idaho, electricity is private Idaho Power company. Either way, all utilities public and private are regulated monopolies that require any price changes up or down via the PUC or Public Utility Commission. And many of our utilities sewer, water, electricity, natural gas piping, etc. are heavily subsidized both state and even more Federal tax dollars.
So even the private utilities are held together in operating expenses and capital expenses via our tax dollars. Which is irony as the Gipper and his puppet masters would say privatizing monopolies means lower taxes and cheaper rates... when it's really the opposite.
Which should be obvious. I mean the profit is simply overcharging, and shortfalls in operating expenses on upkeep and the inability to develop grow where services are needed thus rates and taxes must go up... the idea that oh the private companies will raise their own capital for capital expenses via the stonck market... no... that's not been an on ramping of free money to grow infrastructure, but a way to offramp subsidies and rate hikes into the pockets of the owners of these monopolies.
All that being said, these Gipper lovers and in your country Thatcher lovers, are delusional, Stockholm syndrome only double down. It's like a dogma of witches and magical stuff and going full tilt not just having an inquisition burning an innocent person of supposed witchcraft every week, but how about every 1 hour.. no half hour no every minute and half a minute for year! Only then will we see goodies come raining on us all. Trickle down will truly trickle on us all!
And that's the spooky part. The people have been rendered zombies. Believing in this garbage to the point they're denying the reality was it was all bullshit and requires a complete opposite direction. In this case, stop monopolies including discontinuing private monopolies. And these private monopolies, were not even built on the obviously stupid idea that this would promote competition (I mean you're purposefully giving a monopoly meaning NO competition LOL!), but that a private monopoly would have access to finance like the stonck market and big banks and junkbond market to raise cash instead of raising rates and taxes... whic again that LOL! Didn't happen. Instead the private monopolies made out like bandits and discontinued their proper upkeep going barebones and took on more and more subsidies (tax dollars), and used stocks as a way to cash out on the cash cow that is a monopoly. In the end, raising taxes, rates on the using of the service, and having shittier service to boot due to the skeleton cheap skating of using even the subsidies for operating and capital costs... and oh those junk bonds... even higher taxes and rates because those junk bonds don't come cheap... would have been cheaper to use municiple bonds which come at a lower interest rate.
So yeah, Thatcher, Gipper, the Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman... all those puppets of the oligarch in the 1970's thru 1990's really F'd us all so super hard.
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Rehashing of the old with a different arbitrary name; robber baron plutocracy with gig economy Neoliberalism.... the plutocrats and/or their toadies hate that neolibral word so much it's yet to make it into spell checker. They know defining the problem in a concise way leads to resolving the problem... a problem they don't want resolved, their return to robber baron plutocracy. While it's not concisely defined, in the confusion, they themselves can tap dance feigning various solutions such as a oligarchs bill of how soft and gentle they will be declaration, or donating to a charity or other tiny give-away to pretend things are great otherwise the peanuts handed out to assist in building a park wouldn't have happened... despite the fact nobody wanted that extra park, we have plenty of parks, we need more housing thus making it more affordable, instead land availability is reduced raising prices making it even less affordable to build needed housing... congrats.
They pretend markets on their own are wonderful, and anyone else other than themselves is a gross manipulation of markets... again all while they manipulate the fuck out of markets. The hypocrisy is palpable to the point it's difficult to understand how anyone could honestly subscribe to their insanity.
As a teen I took a job unknowingly as an independent contractor at an hourly rate. Fortunately, I saved most of what I made, and could pay my double social security tax as well as Federal and state taxes that weren't being withheld at all.
I then thought, shit, at some point these fucking employers will do just that, just as they've outsourced to the most dictatorial and/or impoverished nations on earth for abundant serfs... I mean labor.
The gig economy is aptly named. It's a giggle at the workers, as the supple siders at least for the short and mid run laugh in their faces.
Of course, like robber baron oligarchy, this same thing rehashed into a new name, will leave nobody laughing. And everyone is in misery until it is actually once again fixed. And in that fixing, there maybe some rehashing of some seriously bad methods as worse as robber baron economics.
That's why it's better we fix this return to a doomed system sooner than later. We wait until it crashes mostly or completely while everyone is in desperate straights and in utter chaos, an increased chance we get some very bad systems.
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You were talking about taxes in the late 1800's in the US or Henry George in 1881 saying there were all these income taxes and payroll taxes.
There was only property tax in most states during that time.
1873-1893 and 1895-1912 there was no income tax. And the few times prior that it was invoked, was initially during the civil war and slightly after it ending 1873.
So the entire property tax argument wasn't new. States were already charging property tax. And thus even today property tax is not something of the Federal level.
Payroll social security didn't start until 1937 at 1% matching employer and employee gross income as it is today. Medicare not until the 1960's after LBJ.
US government was mostly tiny and oligarchs fantasy action land. Yet the roads and ports were largely crap. Housing was shit in the dense populated areas and in the west, often shacks. People would call cabins. But really they were dirt floor sheet wood slapped together shacks.
Income taxes didn't become a thing in 1913.
And most regulatory bodies didn't happen until 1934 and onward.
Property taxes has been something the states have collected in taxes either based on the value of the property, sometimes value of goods on the property as many still do, and some only on the income... now all just have property tax appraisals and tax based on those values in all states.
Sales tax was a thing most states charged at some point or another or on special goods. But some states never had a general sales tax too.
The only federal sales tax were excised on certain goods. For instance gasoline sales tax. And all states do the same. So on gal of gas in the US baked in the price is Fed tax and state tax. Ironically, general sales tax on other goods the prices posted don't include the taxes on the store. Which is annoying, particularly staying at hotels, the tax is often 15% to 30% the sticker price; special city and state tax. It's to reduce the speculative nature of hospitality dooming housing to go toward daily hotel, and not more affordable longer term housing.
Unfortunately Arbnb and others of that stupidity broke laws, which many states and cities are now enforcing; it's illegal to have a hotel or motel or daily or short term hotel/motel/inn on residential zoned properties... this takes long term housing off the market making rents and house prices higher. Texas actually just recently started enforcing it, along with Nevada in Vegas.
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