JillyB @ JillyB @beehaw.org

Posts

3

Comments

330

Joined

2 yr. ago

It's already being spread everywhere by news and whatnot. Might as well have it shared with a different context to reframe people's associations with the guy.

That motive narrows down the killer to...every American.

I am Spartacus!

Financing is one of the major hurdles of employee owned businesses trying to compete against investor owned businesses, so you're right to identify that. I have 4 main solutions to this problem:

1. Investment isn't the only way to raise capital. There's also loans. In a fully co-op economy, the financial infrastructure for loans would likely be more robust. This is already how a lot of businesses get off the ground.
2. A company doesn't have to be 100% employee owned for the employees to have a controlling stake. An employee-owned company could decide to sell off 49% of its value to raise capital. They could do this at any time, including during startup.
3. The average worker would have more money to do as they please. In 2023, American companies earned a profit of $22k per worker. In a co-op economy, that's an average of $22k each worker has control over that they currently don't. Your average worker would be more capable of making the type of investment that you described.
4. Companies don't necessarily have to start as employee owned. A normal path for an entrepreneur is to start a business, grow it until it's sustainable and later sell it to somebody. Instead of selling it to an investor, they could sell it to their employees. In a co-op economy, this would probably be required in some way or another.

Unless the tax rate is similar to income tax rates, it still won't change the growth > dividends incentive. And it would still be very unpopular because it would lower retirement incomes or make existing retirement accounts last for shorter lengths. Any proposal to change how capital gains works would have to also address retirees' legitimate concerns in order to be politically viable.

Completely agree. My wildest fantasy would be a phase in of co-ops/employee owned companies. This could be done over a 10 year period with each year requiring 5 more percent of the company value be owned equally by the employees (judged by the employee with the lowest stake). By the end of that decade, employees would own a controlling stake in their employers and would have plenty of time to organize a method of governance.

There's one critical metric that I think would determine how easily a company could make this transition: (total company value)/(2 x total company payroll). A $1M company with a $500k payroll would require each employee to pay an entire year's salary for them to have a controlling stake. That's very achievable over a 10 year period without really even having to give the ownership to the employees. The owners could just sell it off to them.

With this metric in mind, the companies that would transition the best would be ones that pay their employees very well relative to company value. Something like a small welding shop with a high number of skilled employees might be able to do this easily. A tech company with huge valuation relative to the number of employees would be forced to offer aggressive stock buying programs for employees (for every share you buy, the company matches 10 shares for example). This would force companies that don't pay well to either buy back stock, issue new stock, or drastically increase their payroll to make the transition.

This is how incentives are currently structured to play out. If a company makes some money, it can either re-invest it to grow the business or pay it out as dividends. Dividends are taxed as income while capital gains are taxed much lower. This discrepancy in tax rates is explicitly to promote growth.

This is one area I think the left has missed the forest for the trees with the "tax the rich" slogan. The uber-wealthy aren't uber-wealthy due to high incomes. Steve Jobs famously had a salary of 1$. A higher tax bracket or 2 would barely affect them. You need to tax capital gains as income to actually make a dent. This would also impact a lot of middle-class retirement accounts though so nobody wants to do that. I think a proposal that bolstered social security to make up the difference for retirees should be combined with a proposal to tax all capital gains as income. I haven't done the numbers, but I bet that the extra tax revenue would more than pay for the extra social security spending.

Solid Edge has a "Relationship Assistant" tool that I want to use IRL

I've recently made this decision with my lifelong closest friend. I've known about his changing views for a while but its really hard to let go of a friend I've had for 15 years. I justified it to myself because I wanted to make sure he had my perspective around and I thought he was starting to mellow out. Turns out he was just learning to avoid politics around his friends.

It came to a head when I moved to a new city and he stayed with me for 2 weeks. After hanging with my local friends for a year, I realized I was always avoiding the elephant in the room with him. When I introduced him to my friends, I realized I was really hoping he wouldn't say anything crazy. I was really hoping my trans friend wouldn't show up in case he decided to make that a focal point. He's been "getting more religious" (dominionist, christo-fascist). And I can tell he's still disguising himself even when we talk openly about politics and religion.

More recently, two other friends stayed with me for a week. They're also long-time friends with the first guy. We all collectively realized that we were much more comfortable around each other than we were around him. I was excited to introduce them to my local friends. I never had to pick my words or hold my tongue. So I'm going low contact with him. It sucks but I can't call someone a friend that has such fundamentally opposed values to my own. If it were just a difference in how much taxation is the right amount or how healthcare should be administered, I could look past it. But he's gone pretty authoritarian and believes some of my other friends shouldn't exist. I can't reconcile that.

You're a good Joe

When people refer to metal balls as ball bearings. A ball bearing is an assembly of outer ring, inner ring, balls, and a cage/retainer. I worked in bearing manufacture for years and they're just referred to as balls. To be more specific, it would be a bearing ball, not a ball bearing.

Let's go Justin!

I could be wrong, but aren't a lot of injuries caused by being rear-ended while waiting at a red? I'm pretty sure that's the case for motorcycles so I imagine it's similar for bikes. I normally wait at reds but I'll run it if there's no traffic. It feels more like jay-walking than running a red light. Most people are perfectly fine with jay-walking.

Yep. Thought that was weird since he dropped out.

"here" is beehaw, which is a bit more sane. You're probably thinking of lemmy.ml

Not a chance. The B2 is a manned platform. It's also quite an old one which would require a huge program to create an autonomous capability. The B2's successor (the B21) is coming soonish so such a program would have no support. Right now, autonomous military aircraft are mostly being considered for support roles like tankers with future projects of "loyal wingman" fighters to fly alongside a manned fighter. A deep, precision strike from an untested technology would never fly.

You just equated blocking c/politics with being broadly pro status quo. You can be politically engaged and active and not like the discussions on c/politics.

Amen! I went to a restaurant that had this layout. Each stall was like it's own little room with a full sized door and a shared sink area. It's more efficient use of space and you get a better stall. The only thing that I think would make it better would be a small side area with a couple urinals.

Eating during a long bike ride is pretty normal. Having a tupperware and utensils is interesting. Maybe he mentioned to his team that he was having some stomach issues from the normal energy gels.

Makes me feel better about going to a few of their games this year. At least I got to see history in the making