New formulation (late rewrite). I guess we’ll have to make a deal to let management just promise never to do it again — otherwise we will have to lock up half the business owners in the country. 🙂
* * * * * * * * * *
States could conceivably pass legislation to set up prosecution under the federal RICO statute against anti-union “consultants” who conspire with managements to deny employees their federally prescribed right to vote on union certification by firing union promoters. Currently this violates only administrative law imposed by the National Labor Relations Board, and employers found guilty pay a (usually small) compensation for lost wages (not a penalty).
If a state makes this criminal under penalty of at least one year in prison, then, federal RICO prosecution could be applied. No one would question the criminality of a union mobster conspiring with an employer to fire employees who object to a sweetheart contract — thereby stealing workers pay and benefits that could have been won under fair bargaining. The ultimate sweetheart contract is no contract. http://ricoact.com/
In various posts people seem to agree that predicted when a recession will occur is nearly impossible but that it will occur is certain. Why?
There have been three recessions in 30 years. When we look at each of them we can say how they could have been prevented (mostly by recognizing/preventing the economy wide speculative bubbles that preceeded them). This does not seem at all consistant with the business cycle description of recessions. Most sectors are simply not large enough that even disruptive changes within them should be large enough to create a recession.
So, why should we not expect population growth and productivity advances to remain within bounds do not vary so much that we end up going negative? Are we really unable to learn that excessive speculation is bad?
People, please help out an inquiring mind that needs to know. I added this to a brief comment yesterday, but thought I might get more answers if the questions are posted separately.
“Answer me this. Does wealth creation occur independent of wealth transfer? If so, how so? Or, is wealth like matter? It cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be rearranged or transformed. When the wealth “creators” do their thing where is the wealth coming from? Are they creating or are they simply transferring what was the wealth of others?”
See more at: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2015/01/open-thread-jan-20-2014.html#comments
Jack,
Just to add an “anti-matter” dimension to your question …
… economists have estimated that the steel that went into East German Skoda autos was worth more than the finished product — they were destroying perfectly good steel to make the cars.
That may be, but weren’t they still only transferring the wealth inherent on each side of the exchange, though a complex exchange it was as is any major manufacturing process. The example may be an example of matter being destroyed, but that is not certain. The rusting remains of those Skodas may have ended up as raw material for newly manufactured objects.
The question remains. Is wealth ever created? Is there a finite amount of wealth in our economic universe. Yes, I know that wealth can be siphoned off of one part of the universe and become the wealth of another part of that universe. But was any new wealth actually created? In case it isn’t obvious, my point is that capital is only a means for the transfer of wealth. So if wealth can be transferred in any case then it is reasonable to transfer wealth in all cases. In fact all economic activity whether it be manufacturing, investment or taxation is little more than the transfer of wealth from one to another, whether as individuals or as groups.
Graphs, football and cheating. Who could ask for anything more?
“On Wednesday, I investigated whether the New England Patriots outperform expectations in bad weather and found that, yes, they do. Then I remembered this remarkable fact: The 2014 Patriots were just the third team in the last 25 years to never have lost a fumble at home! The biggest difference between the Patriots and the other two teams that did it was that New England ran between 150 and 200 more plays this year than those teams, making the Patriots stand alone in this unique statistic. Based on the desire to incorporate full-season data (not just home games, as a team theoretically would bring “doctored footballs” with it on the road) I performed the following analysis……
One can clearly see the Patriots, visually, are off the chart. There is no other team even close to being near to their rate of 187 offensive plays per fumble lost. The league average is 105 plays per fumble lost. Most teams are within 21 plays of that number.
I spoke with a data scientist whom I know from work on NFLproject.com and sent him the data. He said:
Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances.
Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. [In] other words, it’s very unlikely that it’s a coincidence.”
“The engineering going in to the fraudulent design of the F-35 costs more than the worth of the F-35 given its failing.” Ilsm
Maybe so, but that does not get at the question posed regarding the creation of wealth vs. transfer. Certainly it helps with the acceleration of wealth transference. In the example provided by Ilsm I don’t suppose any of our friends in the Congress, both sides of the aisle included, have any problem with wealth transfers of this type or of such accelerated character. If in the F35 example someone can describe a wealth creation scenario I would be most pleased to hear it.
New formulation (late rewrite). I guess we’ll have to make a deal to let management just promise never to do it again — otherwise we will have to lock up half the business owners in the country. 🙂
* * * * * * * * * *
States could conceivably pass legislation to set up prosecution under the federal RICO statute against anti-union “consultants” who conspire with managements to deny employees their federally prescribed right to vote on union certification by firing union promoters. Currently this violates only administrative law imposed by the National Labor Relations Board, and employers found guilty pay a (usually small) compensation for lost wages (not a penalty).
If a state makes this criminal under penalty of at least one year in prison, then, federal RICO prosecution could be applied. No one would question the criminality of a union mobster conspiring with an employer to fire employees who object to a sweetheart contract — thereby stealing workers pay and benefits that could have been won under fair bargaining. The ultimate sweetheart contract is no contract.
http://ricoact.com/
In various posts people seem to agree that predicted when a recession will occur is nearly impossible but that it will occur is certain. Why?
There have been three recessions in 30 years. When we look at each of them we can say how they could have been prevented (mostly by recognizing/preventing the economy wide speculative bubbles that preceeded them). This does not seem at all consistant with the business cycle description of recessions. Most sectors are simply not large enough that even disruptive changes within them should be large enough to create a recession.
So, why should we not expect population growth and productivity advances to remain within bounds do not vary so much that we end up going negative? Are we really unable to learn that excessive speculation is bad?
People, please help out an inquiring mind that needs to know. I added this to a brief comment yesterday, but thought I might get more answers if the questions are posted separately.
“Answer me this. Does wealth creation occur independent of wealth transfer? If so, how so? Or, is wealth like matter? It cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be rearranged or transformed. When the wealth “creators” do their thing where is the wealth coming from? Are they creating or are they simply transferring what was the wealth of others?”
See more at: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2015/01/open-thread-jan-20-2014.html#comments
Jack,
Just to add an “anti-matter” dimension to your question …
… economists have estimated that the steel that went into East German Skoda autos was worth more than the finished product — they were destroying perfectly good steel to make the cars.
That may be, but weren’t they still only transferring the wealth inherent on each side of the exchange, though a complex exchange it was as is any major manufacturing process. The example may be an example of matter being destroyed, but that is not certain. The rusting remains of those Skodas may have ended up as raw material for newly manufactured objects.
The question remains. Is wealth ever created? Is there a finite amount of wealth in our economic universe. Yes, I know that wealth can be siphoned off of one part of the universe and become the wealth of another part of that universe. But was any new wealth actually created? In case it isn’t obvious, my point is that capital is only a means for the transfer of wealth. So if wealth can be transferred in any case then it is reasonable to transfer wealth in all cases. In fact all economic activity whether it be manufacturing, investment or taxation is little more than the transfer of wealth from one to another, whether as individuals or as groups.
Jack,
The engineering going in to the fraudulent design of the F-35 costs more than the worth of the F-35 given its failing.
Cost and value are differing concepts, and the E German Skoda is the model for trillions in US pentagon “systems”.
Given some of the stuff US enter WW II with I think the pentagon model pre dates the Skoda.
Graphs, football and cheating. Who could ask for anything more?
“On Wednesday, I investigated whether the New England Patriots outperform expectations in bad weather and found that, yes, they do. Then I remembered this remarkable fact: The 2014 Patriots were just the third team in the last 25 years to never have lost a fumble at home! The biggest difference between the Patriots and the other two teams that did it was that New England ran between 150 and 200 more plays this year than those teams, making the Patriots stand alone in this unique statistic. Based on the desire to incorporate full-season data (not just home games, as a team theoretically would bring “doctored footballs” with it on the road) I performed the following analysis……
One can clearly see the Patriots, visually, are off the chart. There is no other team even close to being near to their rate of 187 offensive plays per fumble lost. The league average is 105 plays per fumble lost. Most teams are within 21 plays of that number.
I spoke with a data scientist whom I know from work on NFLproject.com and sent him the data. He said:
Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances.
Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. [In] other words, it’s very unlikely that it’s a coincidence.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/01/ballghazi_the_new_england_patriots_lose_an_insanely_low_number_of_fumbles.html
“The engineering going in to the fraudulent design of the F-35 costs more than the worth of the F-35 given its failing.” Ilsm
Maybe so, but that does not get at the question posed regarding the creation of wealth vs. transfer. Certainly it helps with the acceleration of wealth transference. In the example provided by Ilsm I don’t suppose any of our friends in the Congress, both sides of the aisle included, have any problem with wealth transfers of this type or of such accelerated character. If in the F35 example someone can describe a wealth creation scenario I would be most pleased to hear it.