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We do. We just enjoy it when wages are driven down, because as investors and owners, we are the beneficiaries of that.

The way to increase one's pay is to increase one's productivity.

If your productivity is producing $100 in value for $10 in pay, other businesses will line up to offer you more money.

If your productivity is $9, expect to get laid off.

The Law of Supply and Demand is in effect, as always.


Once again nonsense, productivity has been increasing in America over the last 20 years but real wages have not.

As always, don’t confuse textbook theory with real life!


Comparing with real wages is erroneous. One has to look at total employee compensation, instead. This includes:

1. worker pay

2. so-called employer's social security contribution

3. stock purchase plans

4. 401k company benefits

5. employer provided health care

6. retirement plan contributions

7. paid time off

8. other employee benefits

This adds usually around 40-60% of wages.

Another factor is the increasing share of the productivity is extracted through government taxation and deficit spending. Big government is expensive.


It's a situation where we want everyone else's wages to be driven down. But not our own of course.

> annual household earnings decline by $4,230. Is this a huge effect?

Yes. Median household income is something around $70K, and rural households are not making anywhere near median household income. If we don't think it's a big effect, then we shouldn't mind sending them $4.5K checks every year to make up for it.

It's an effect large enough to drive 3/100 people affected into poverty.



> The article made waves because it didn't surprise anyone

So the reason it made waves is because it confirmed everyone's previous biases. Which is why people defend it even when that "confirmation" was based on an error of simple arithmetic.

Reminds me of a bunch of studies that were taken out by Excel errors, like that economics failure about national debt going higher than GDP being some sort of trigger for societal failure. The people who boosted that study were the people who were saying the same thing, with no study, for no other reason than that the numbers are of a similar magnitude. After it was shown that the study showed no such thing, its supporters insisted that it was still true because of course it was true.

https://stanfordreview.org/clarifying-the-implications-of-th...


> my maximum daily exposure to ingested flame retardants should be zero

What does this even mean? You refuse to eat anything that could possibly put out of a fire, or if included within anything else, could slow down the progress of fire when that thing burns?

I don't understand taking pride in irrationality. If you have some evidence (or even some reasonable suspicion) that the specific chemical could be harmful in the amount that you consume it, avoid it. It's weird for me to brag that I'd avoid something despite any evidence, because somebody mentioned it once and I refuse to let it go. What if what you replace it with causes cancer, but has no effect on fires?


It's not irrational to avoid exposure to unknown or poorly studied chemicals. Avoiding something for which one has no evidence in either direction is a good risk avoidance strategy. In general, when it comes to my body, I prefer a whitelist vs a blacklist approach.

It is rational (you have a cogent reason for doing do) but the reasoning is specious, because you are singling out one specific thing to avoid. If you listed all such substances fitting the criteria "unknown or poorly studied" then you would have to live in a bubble to avoid them all.

The point is to single out and avoid whatever is realistically possible, for you. Like you said, you would have to live in a bubble to avoid them all!

The goal should be to single out and avoid the most damaging ones, not an effectively random bunch because they were in the news.

> What does this even mean? You refuse to eat anything that could possibly put out of a fire, or if included within anything else, could slow down the progress of fire when that thing burns?

Brominated flame retardants. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers were called out in the study.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybrominated_diphenyl_ethers


How much of the limit would you eat?

Is 99% okay, or 80%, or 10%?

Especially when the intake could easily be avoided by not using recycled electronic‘s enclosures.

How much risk are you willing to take for a company‘s profit?


They obviously meant halogenated, dangerous flame retardants, which are approved for use in consumer electronics but not utensils, not water...

If there was a thread on the respiratory hazards of airborne micron-sized particles, I guarantee that someone in the comments section would say "I can't believe these unscientific yokels are afraid of clouds."


"Dangerous" depends on dose, and zero is impossible.

If someone has a plan to inhale no micron-sized particles, their plan will not work.


When people say "zero" they mean "negligible," because a negligible deviation for zero is negligible. :-)

Well if that's the plan, distinguishing actual zero from negligible, step one is figuring out whether the leeching from the existing products is negligible or not. No assuming that non-zero presence means much.

So, taking some simple measures to reduce the amount of scientifically proven harmful synthetic chemicals a person puts in their mouth...is unscientific because you want to quibble about the statistical precision of the wording of a conversational comment. The American FDA says "it's not enough to worry about, trust us" while Americans now ingest up to a shopping bag worth of plastic each month, companies like Dow and DuPont spend literal millions per year lobbying, and the multi-trillion-dollar healthcare industry controls a double-digit percentage of the American economy and labor force. This must be the kind of thinking which results from excessive consumption of flame retardants and Brawndo.

I didn't say that, thanks for asking.

I just think that going for "zero" is usually a flawed plan. Things are tradeoffs and decisions should recognize that. Everything is toxic in different ways. Some options are clearly better than others, but the analysis needs more effort than looking at a single number.


Actually I think going for zero would be an admirable goal here, if pursued in a healthy balance stopping short of obsessive phobia-driven mania. But that aside, nobody is denying that there are other sources of various harmful substances besides kitchen utensils. In no way, shape, or form does that invalidate the perfectly logical sentiment of "I wish I could have zero synthetic plastics and flame retardants entering my body so I at least stopped putting plastic utensils in my mouth and food." You do not need more studies, measurements, thresholds, comparison of relative contribution of various sources, or a feasibility analysis of sealing yourself in a giant glass terrarium to justify every word of that basic sentiment including "zero."

Stopping a single source is not going to stop you from ingesting synthetic plastics and flame retardants. And you need to replace the utensils with something else, the cost of which might be worse in not only money but possibly health too, if you make a snap decision based on a single factor instead of the entire picture.

And sometimes the exposure already is effectively zero, making any action at all a waste of time.

I don't know if this case is safe or not, but acting based on a single variable is a bad idea, especially without keeping reasonable expectations at the forefront.


I already addressed your first sentence in my previous comment. Nobody suggested that replacing your utensils would reduce your intake to zero. That does not invalidate wishing for zero and doing what you can to move in that direction.

If you can't afford wooden sauce spoons, a material which the human body evolved in close contact with, naturally disinfects itself for years or decades after the tree is felled, and is extremely affordable to the point that you can find endless amounts of it for free on craigslist, then you sure as heck can't afford the cancer treatments you're risking with the synthetic stuff.

The exposure is effectively zero...when? Wasn't your whole original argument the exact opposite? That exposure is never precisely zero? Dividing the numbers in the study by ten does not make any of them zero.

Acting on limited data is often much more advantageous than not acting on available data.


> Nobody suggested that replacing your utensils would reduce your intake to zero. That does not invalidate wishing for zero and doing what you can to move in that direction.

What I'm saying is, you should make sure you're actually moving a meaningful amount.

And you can't assume wooden is better when it's still coming from a big factory.

> The exposure is effectively zero...when?

It depends on what chemical you're looking for and where you're looking. It's a pretty generic statement, it's not just about utensils.

> Wasn't your whole original argument the exact opposite? That exposure is never precisely zero? Dividing the numbers in the study by ten does not make any of them zero.

There is a point where the effect is zero, but you're never going to reach actual zero.

Your goal should be the former, not the latter.

And sometimes you don't need to do anything to reach the former. In that situation, replacing products just hurts you by wasting time and money (and less time and money will increase stress which is bad for your health).

So no, my argument has not changed.

> Acting on limited data is often much more advantageous than not acting on available data.

Sure, I agree. But have a realistic idea of the impacts and risks before acting.


Pretty sure that's what it means to everyone and that's what they meant to say.

> streaming services, which have produced a world-historic surplus of high-quality scripted series.

No, they're almost all terrible and as far as I can tell most people can't find anything new to watch, or if they're lucky they can find one or two things to almost get into. The trick is that there's no way to find out how many people are watching things any more, and that keeping your subscription going is binary. You can accumulate a huge amount of personal dissatisfaction before actually cancelling.

The main thing I'm hearing about these grossly padded, awful series, is that after people get interested by the pilot, they increasingly start fast forwarding through more and more of the episodes until they're consuming them so quickly they might as well be watching a digest of the "previously on...", until they get so disgusted by the repeated slights to their intelligence that even this they can't even stomach. Giving up a subscription also means giving up the archive of the "vibrant film and television" from "the era immediately preceding streaming," that even though they may have seen it before, is pleasant to leave playing in the background.

Production values are very high. Dialog is sometimes very good. Series are high-concept, but empty, endless and awful, and I even feel sorry for the writers that have to keep generating scenes with one character walking up to another character who is busy working on something and says: "how are you holding up?" There are going to be five of those in this episode, and maybe one thing that advances the plot.

Apple TV has all the money in the world, and just generates clumsy high-priced disasters. I have no idea how bad the corporate culture can be in these places to actively repel any story that is any good. I think the problem is that they're not making enough cheapo series where talent could accidentally sneak in because no one was paying attention.


I'll put a list of the top series of 2023 up against 2005 cheerfully.

These are all black American words, not "queer lingo." Other than "folks" which is Southern, but comes to upper-middle class white people through Obama's act of pretending he had ever met black Americans before college at UCLA.

They come from the long tradition of gay men copying black American female mannerisms, not anything "queer."

> I suspect the real "villains" here to you are the folk who pull that jargon out and try to make it widespread.

Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture, they're not villains.


Go watch Paris is Burning. They absolutely are Black queer lingo for decades prior to them becoming known outside Black communities. Which then became queer lingo. Which then became popular lingo.

> Gay men have contributed a lot to world culture, they're not villains

Absolutely, I never insinuated otherwise. I also don't believe it's villainous to share one's culture and lingo. But the op who objected to folx appears to think that it is bad. Take it up with them!


Since when is "folks" limited to black Americans? It was being heard in households across America for 50 years from Loony Tunes and the news.

They are referring to "shade" and "tea". Eg in "That's the tea. All tea, no shade."

Meaning "that's the truth, the straight truth, no disrespect intended".

These terms rose in popularity in the ballroom scene in New York. (Note: not ballroom dancing, but rather "drag ball" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_culture). The culture of that scene was predominantly Black and Latino.


> language changes over time

But this language has not been changing over time. This was a dictate from HR departments, made up from whole cloth. If anything has changed over time, it's that "gals" has been an anachronism for a long while, outside of a few isolated corners of the Southern and Western US where it can still manage to sound cute in some contexts. We don't really need a special diminutive for groups of women.

That being said, it's not formal language, it's chummy. If you're a 16 year old host at a restaurant speaking to a group of women older than you, you probably shouldn't be chummy.


I'd hardly call Red Lobster formal. "Red Lobster Hospitality, LLC is an American casual dining restaurant chain," according to Wikipedia.

Any interaction a 16 year old employee has with a group of strange women who are customers and are older than him should be respectful.

I maintain that the sentence shows no disrespect to my Midwestern sensibilities. It's considered common courtesy to ask someone how their day is going, and I don't consider "you guys" to be a sign of disrespect. In fact, it seems quite clear to me that the parent was attempting to be warm and welcoming.

Warm and welcoming sure but too casual, you guys IMO implies familiarity, I wouldn't use it with strangers, could be regional or generational but that's my rural Illinoian take. Y'all is more flexible.

I agree with the other poster. Missourian and "y'all" is ridiculously less formal than "you guys". To me, "y'all" is specifically informal and is used in exactly that manner, even in corporate emails. It denotes a more conversational tone that's open to feedback. "You guys" does not exist within formal/informal for me, it's either, neither, or both, just depending on what you say around it.

"How are you guys doing today" spoken at a red lobster is absolutely fine, completely normal language, whether spoken by the president or by a child. It's the single most ubiquitous and wholly normal greeting that i know. Corporate really over does it sometimes


Fascinating - I'm from Michigan, and I would say "y'all" sounds more casual to my ears than "you guys." Formal speaking (in contrast to casual speaking) often eschews contractions.

That manner of social formality set sail a good 25 years ago my friend. On one hand I find it a shame, it was useful, on the other, it was also often misused (still exists in Korea where I now live, and it's abused like crazy here).

You spend too much time on a computer. Please stay out of the Midwest. Thank you.

Kowloon Walled City was very neat. If you want to get a feel for what it was like, there's a German language documentary from 1988 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9PZ05NLDww) that was filmed inside of it. This essay, however is pompous word salad of the worst type.

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