Bill and Melinda Gates announce one of the biggest charitable donations in history

[SpookyFrank]

Say government set the minimum wage to £30.00. That might scare some employers out of creating more jobs and might cause some to cut back. It would also change the balance between hiring workers or buying automatic machines for the same job.

Despite what many capitalists would have you believe, hiring staff is not an act of charity but rather something you actually have to do to make any kind of money. I can't see a mining company for example sending their senior management staff down a hole with a pickaxe to look for uranium, they'd hire people to do it for them. And if 30 quid an hour was what they had to pay, that's what they'd pay.

 

[weltweit]

Despite what many capitalists would have you believe, hiring staff is not an act of charity but rather something you actually have to do to make any kind of money. I can't see a mining company for example sending their senior management staff down a hole with a pickaxe to look for uranium, they'd hire people to do it for them. And if 30 quid an hour was what they had to pay, that's what they'd pay.

While I don't disagree, for many enterprises people are essential and without them nothing happens, but there is a dynamic between workers and automation. Machines to do a job cost X, workers to do the same cost Y. If Y starts to exceed X then machines have it.

 

[weltweit]

I'd argue that the minimum wage as it currently exists does not reduce the excesses of the market at all. The minimum wage is lower than a living wage for starters, to the point where the government ends up subsidising employers who pay this poverty wage via the benefits system. Add to that the nice folk at the DWP who will force people to take minimum wage jobs or deny them access to benefits and it really doesn't look like the minimum wage is being used for our benefit.

It could be of course, if it was raised significantly, enforced properly with actual penalties for employers who fail to pay it, and loopholes with apprenticeships and so on were removed so that you couldn't just give someone a job stacking shelves for 2.50 an hour and call them an apprentice.

The government might intervene to prevent the excesses of the market from actually killing people, but all this serves to do is to sustain the very same market that was trying to kill them in the first place. They're not trying to protect us from market forces, they're only trying to protect the market from itself, the better to screw us all over again tomorrow.

Interesting, ok, so the living wage is higher than the minimum, that does not seem to make sense I agree.

I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the benefits system, if people on min wage still claim benefits then yes government is subsidising employers and that seems somewhat wrongfooted.

Could a country specialise in higher paying work and get more of its workers into such positions? Often people don't mourn the loss of manufacturing jobs to China et al because truthfully they were not the best jobs anyhow. But could a nation specialise in higher paying work significantly enough to lift the average wage significantly? What would a government need to do to make such a thing happen?

 

[elbows]

I see Gates became ranked the richest man in the world again. Just can't give away his wealth quick enough Whats $10 billion on health stuff when you can make $15.8 billion in a year due to share price increases.

Obscene numbers do not impress me, no matter which way they are directed.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Could a country specialise in higher paying work and get more of its workers into such positions? Often people don't mourn the loss of manufacturing jobs to China et al because truthfully they were not the best jobs anyhow. But could a nation specialise in higher paying work significantly enough to lift the average wage significantly? What would a government need to do to make such a thing happen?

We wouldn't need to change anything except the minimum wage IMO. Employers would piss and moan like it was the end of the world and the whole country was doomed but what they'd actually do is continue to employ the same number of people. It's not like companies are employing more people than they need at the moment.

The argument of course is that if the minimum wage is too high companies will move overseas, to which I would say if they don't want to pay their staff a wage they can live on then good fucking riddance. If you're paying poverty wages then you are a burden on this country and its finances, not an asset. Same with billionaires who might move to Switzerland if we politely suggest that they pay some tax once in a while, if they're not willing to pay then they can fuck off. And when they've all fucked off maybe they'll stop fucking up the property market.

 

[weltweit]

We wouldn't need to change anything except the minimum wage IMO. Employers would piss and moan like it was the end of the world and the whole country was doomed but what they'd actually do is continue to employ the same number of people. It's not like companies are employing more people than they need at the moment.

I take your point and I see logic in it, except that you have side stepped my point about automation.
A company I worked in installed a new production line for some electronics products, it was almost wholly automated with just some positions at the end of the line for workers to do the final packaging. In times gone by such a production line might have employed perhaps 30 people but the balance had changed. First automation had become cheaper and secondly the costs of employing people had risen a bit (not a lot it has to be said in real terms, but a bit).

The argument of course is that if the minimum wage is too high companies will move overseas, to which I would say if they don't want to pay their staff a wage they can live on then good fucking riddance. If you're paying poverty wages then you are a burden on this country and its finances, not an asset. Same with billionaires who might move to Switzerland if we politely suggest that they pay some tax once in a while, if they're not willing to pay then they can fuck off. And when they've all fucked off maybe they'll stop fucking up the property market.

Not much to disagree with there

 

[SpookyFrank]

I take your point and I see logic in it, except that you have side stepped my point about automation.
A company I worked in installed a new production line for some electronics products, it was almost wholly automated with just some positions at the end of the line for workers to do the final packaging. In times gone by such a production line might have employed perhaps 30 people but the balance had changed. First automation had become cheaper and secondly the costs of employing people had risen a bit (not a lot it has to be said in real terms, but a bit).

George Orwell wrote in the Road to Wigan Pier that in fifty years everything would be automated and mankind's only remaining problem would be how to occupy the endless hours of leisure time. Being a commie at heart he actually thought this would be a bad thing, as without someone telling them what to do all day he feared humans would simply cease to do anything and would end up as brains floating in jars, their bodies long since atrophied from idleness.

Of course he said that in the days before the demand for products became a manufactured product in its own right. Automation hasn't freed anyone from anything, we've just scaled everything up accordingly.

Instead of work being seen as a means to provide products and services, now products are simply a means to create work. Work itself (and its side effect of exhaustion, obedience and apathy) being the ultimate product. The human race does far more work than we actually need to, we produce more than we need, we charge each other for services that we only need because we spend all our time working.

Automation of the kind you describe should be seen as a good thing, as it allows people to do less work. Sadly capitalist society means that you have to work in order to survive, regardless of whether there's any work that needs doing or even any work that doesn't need doing but which you can still get paid for anyway. Instead of working towards a future where people have less menial tasks to perform and more time to do stuff they actually care about we've been fooled into working just as hard, if not harder, with only the promise of maybe getting some more stuff with which to distract ourselves from the fundamental crappiness of our lives.

 

[DownwardDog]

Despite what many capitalists would have you believe, hiring staff is not an act of charity but rather something you actually have to do to make any kind of money. I can't see a mining company for example sending their senior management staff down a hole with a pickaxe to look for uranium, they'd hire people to do it for them. And if 30 quid an hour was what they had to pay, that's what they'd pay.

Unless the lease payments on a hypothetical Uranium digging machine were less then 5000 quid a month.

 

[weltweit]

I haven't read that Orwell book yet, but it is on my to read list!!

Yes, we have invented all these labour saving devices, washing machines, hoovers, dish washers, cars, kettles, instant coffee, the ready meal, etc etc - each has apparently freed up minutes or hours in which we should be able to do other things. Why do we not have any leisure time now, work seems to have soaked it all up - it is a mystery!

 

[weltweit]

Unless the lease payments on a hypothetical Uranium digging machine were less then 5000 quid a month.

Yes, mining is increasingly massively automated, machines do a lot that people used to do in times gone by. And some of the machines are mahoosive!!

 

[SpookyFrank]

Unless the lease payments on a hypothetical Uranium digging machine were less then 5000 quid a month.

People are always cheaper than fancy machines, and easier to replace. That's why wars aren't being fought by robots.

 

[weltweit]

People are always cheaper than fancy machines, and easier to replace. That's why wars aren't being fought by robots.

Keep up SpookyFrank, Boston Dynamics's (now owned by Google) robot dog which can run faster than a human and carry piles of ammo and weapons, next step they will be able to shoot the weapons as well. Drones that strike while the pilot is safe back home, drone tanks which can operate on a battle field without much human interaction at all, and bipedal robots are coming which may replace or add to the foot soldier. Then there was that fullsized US warplane that recently flew without any crew on board. Robots are definitely coming to the battlefield!!

A Terminator style future is becoming an option!

 

[SpookyFrank]

I haven't read that Orwell book yet, but it is on my to read list!!

The book itself is excellent as an account of working class life, it's just some of his conclusions at the end are a bit dodgy. He was only young when he wrote it though, IIRC.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Keep up SpookyFrank, Boston Dynamics's (now owned by Google) robot dog which can run faster than a human and carry piles of ammo and weapons, next step they will be able to shoot the weapons as well. Drones that strike while the pilot is safe back home, drone tanks which can operate on a battle field without much human interaction at all, and bipedal robots are coming which may replace or add to the foot soldier. Then there was that fullsized US warplane that recently flew without any crew on board. Robots are definitely coming to the battlefield!!

A Terminator style future is becoming an option!

Drones may have replaced some combat pilots, but combat pilots come from the officer class. Replacing the far cheaper and more numerous grunts on the actual battlefield seems much less likely.

 

[DownwardDog]

People are always cheaper than fancy machines, and easier to replace. That's why wars aren't being fought by robots.

People, quite obviously, aren't always cheaper otherwise a BMW 5 Series would be welded together by hand. A higher MW or anything else that increases the cost of labour is likely to make investment in automation, where such an alternative exists, more attractive.

 

[weltweit]

Drones may have replaced some combat pilots, but combat pilots come from the officer class. Replacing the far cheaper and more numerous grunts on the actual battlefield seems much less likely.

Oh sure footsoldiers are very versatile but machines are coming I am pretty sure about it.

If we had no ethics there might be a middle ground of cloned ideal superfit supertough soldiers - but I think it will be easier to move directly toward killing machines.

 

[weltweit]

There could be a future in which machines produce everything we need and work becomes an option not a necessity for life. Machines would be intelligent, think 100,000 times more so than Watson, exist to Asimov's rules, and make machines of their own to produce things needed for life. There would be no money, or ownership in the terms we think of today, everyone could have what they needed and lifespans would be vastly enhanced due to much better medicine. Of course all this is possible in the science fiction fantasy I am reading. People sometimes think sci-fi can be predictive, I wonder how much these ideas may be!

 

[Dr Jon]

There could be a future in which machines produce everything we need and work becomes an option not a necessity for life

That was the commonly predicted future which inspired me to study microelectronics & computing - I wanted to be a liberator of the people. I was later dismayed to find myself working 50-60 hour weeks on a regular basis. Something horrible had happened to the future - crapitalism.

 

[butchersapron]

Here's an interesting read from the Research Unit for Political Economy in Mumbai.

 

[The Octagon]

Here's an interesting read from the Research Unit for Political Economy in Mumbai.

Interesting read (so far).

Side note: It bugs me that they didn't add another E word at the end of their acronym, it would have been almost too perfect

 

[yield]

Meet the Hedge Funders and Billionaires who pillage under the shield of philanthropy
For every dollar they give, they take 44 from the rest of us.
July 29, 2015

America’s parasitical oligarchs are masters of public relations. One of their favorite tactics is to masquerade as defenders of the common folk while neatly arranging things behind the scenes so that they can continue to plunder unimpeded. Perhaps nowhere is this sleight of hand displayed so artfully as it is at a particular high-profile charity with the nerve to bill itself as itself as “New York's largest poverty-fighting organization.”

British novelist Anthony Trollope once wrote, “I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.”

Meet the benevolent patrons of the Robin Hood Foundation.

 

[yield]

It’s surprisingly hard to give away billions of dollars
Dec 11, 2018

David Callahan caused a stir with a piece last week at Inside Philanthropy, which pointed out that the wealthiest people in the world are sitting on $4 trillion, and accumulating money much faster than they give it away.

“[Bill] Gates was worth $54 billion in 2010, the year the Giving Pledge debuted; he’s worth $97 billion today. [Warren] Buffett’s wealth has also nearly doubled, to $90 billion, despite annual transfers of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and the four foundations controlled by his three children,” Callahan wrote.

With some billionaires, there’s a simple explanation for why they don’t give away more money: They don’t really feel like it.

But that doesn’t seem like a fully satisfying explanation when it comes to Gates, Buffett, or other billionaires who’ve pledged to give away their wealth before they die. I want to speak up in their partial defense here: It’s actually shockingly challenging to effectively give away vast sums of money, especially at the rates billionaires would need to give to keep up with their recent gains on the stock market.

Edit: See also Toxic Philanthropy? The Spirit of Giving While Taking
Dec 10, 2018
America’s new “philanthrocapitalists” are enabling social problems rather than solving them

A new breed of wealthy do-gooders armed with apps and PowerPoints claim they want to change the world. But with their market-oriented values and often-shortsighted prescriptions, are really they going to change it for the better?

Or change it at all?

Anand Giridharadas, who has traveled first-class in the rarefied realm of 21st-century “philanthrocapitalists,” harbors serious doubts. In his acclaimed book, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” the business reporter and former McKinsey consultant exposes the willful blindness of bright-eyed social entrepreneurs and TED-talking executives who, having drunk their own late-stage capitalist Kool-Aid, are now ready to serve us all. Compliments of the house.

 

[yield]

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
29/01/19

Last week, as world leaders and business elites arrived in Davos for the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates tweeted an infographic to his 46 million followers showing that the world has been getting better and better. “This is one of my favourite infographics,” he wrote. “A lot of people underestimate just how much life has improved over the past two centuries.”

Of the six graphs – developed by Max Roser of Our World in Data – the first has attracted the most attention by far. It shows that the proportion of people living in poverty has declined from 94% in 1820 to only 10% today. The claim is simple and compelling. And it’s not just Gates who’s grabbed on to it. These figures have been trotted out in the past year by everyone from Steven Pinker to Nick Kristof and much of the rest of the Davos set to argue that the global extension of free-market capitalism has been great for everyone. Pinker and Gates have gone even further, saying we shouldn’t complain about rising inequality when the very forces that deliver such immense wealth to the richest are also eradicating poverty before our very eyes.

It’s a powerful narrative. And it’s completely wrong.

 

[butchersapron]

Book: Lisa Mcgoey - No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

 

[NoXion]

Bill Gates says poverty is decreasing. He couldn’t be more wrong
29/01/19

Bill Gates is certainly wrong, but I take issue with the article's implicit portrayal of pre-colonial/pre-enclosure life as some kind of Arcadian wonderland. Famine and hardship stalked across both the Old and New worlds back in those days, that's why those "robust systems of sharing and reciprocity" existed in the first place, despite the presence of "abundant" (lol) commons.

 

[yield]

Bill Gates is certainly wrong, but I take issue with the article's implicit portrayal of pre-colonial/pre-enclosure life as some kind of Arcadian wonderland. Famine and hardship stalked across both the Old and New worlds back in those days, that's why those "robust systems of sharing and reciprocity" existed in the first place, despite the presence of "abundant" (lol) commons.

Agree with that. The post war Green Revolution massively reduced famine and hardship.

Even though urbanisation and industrialisation have contributed to the destruction of the commons. Doubt many people would prefer to go back to subsistence farming.

 

[yield]

Is philanthropy broken? - Spear's Wealth Management Survey
1st April 2019

The Facebook founder is one of many in this ‘new gilded age’ who are guilty of what Giridharadas, a former McKinsey consultant and New York Times columnist, calls philanthropic ‘fake change’. It’s also expressed by the likes of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire who announced a $2 billion fund to support homelessness and education while presiding over a company where workers reportedly live in fear of ‘losing their jobs just because they needed the loo’.

‘The modest good that philanthropy does do is in certain cases part of abetting the active commission of harm that is actually causing these problems in the first place,’ the author tells Spear’s over a coffee in central London. ‘The people who won from this age of extraordinary innovation, built, maintained and operated, wittingly and unwittingly, systems that actually deprive most people of progress.’

The paradox, as he sees it, is that ‘we encourage people to become really successful and have money to give away by being slash-and-burn capitalists on the way up’.

Giridharadas characterises this as: ‘Pay people as little as you can, evade and lobby against regulation as much as you can, be as monopolistic as you can, asphyxiate competition as much as you can – and pay as little taxes as you can.’ As a result, he argues that philanthropy is an ‘after the fact way of being kind to people’, when in fact ‘the most important ways to be kind to people are what you do in your day job’. It’s a symptom of the faults in contemporary capitalism. For all of Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic pledges, Giridharadas would rather he not ‘urinate on our democracies’ with his company.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Bill Gates on the proposed super wealth tax...


“I'm all for super-progressive tax systems," he said. "I've paid over $10 billion in taxes. I've paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20 billion, it's fine.
"But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I'm starting to do a little math about what I have left over," he added. "You really want the incentive system to be there without threatening that."
Mr Gates is the second-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $106.2bn.

Only six billion, two hundred million left. Fuck, how could he cope? (Not that anyone is proposing taking $100bn off the greedy cunt).

 

[Proper Tidy]

What if you don't want the incentive system to work bill, what then, what then bill

 

[binka]

Bill Gates on the proposed super wealth tax...


“I'm all for super-progressive tax systems," he said. "I've paid over $10 billion in taxes. I've paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20 billion, it's fine.
"But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I'm starting to do a little math about what I have left over," he added. "You really want the incentive system to be there without threatening that."
Mr Gates is the second-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $106.2bn.

Only six billion, two hundred million left. Fuck, how could he cope? (Not that anyone is proposing taking $100bn off the greedy cunt).

Quite right. If you'd told him in 1975 that in 2019 he'd only be worth six billion dollars there's no way he'd have even bothered starting Microsoft