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I find many of these claims very hard to believe. Most roofers are hired through an agency?
And from your article:
Contract restrictions, such as noncompete clauses and no-poaching agreements, that prevent workers from quitting their jobs for better ones have grown across the work force. Once reserved for highly paid, highly skilled employees like doctors and engineers, these contracts have filtered down the ladder to nurses, laborers and even retail clerks.
Non-compete clauses for retail clerks and laborers? Unbelievable.
Roofers are not hired through agencies. You just drive down the street and pick up illegals to work.
As far as non-compete clauses, the fact that such a clause exists doesn't mean anything.
There are three States that will not enforce non-compete clauses: North Dakota, Oklahoma and California.
Having said that, California will enforce a non-compete clause under severely limited circumstances. Generally, you must be a salaried employee and have direct knowledge of proprietary formulas, or proprietary manufacturing methods or processes. Merely having access to proprietary information is not sufficient, you have to have direct knowledge, and be able to apply it.
Oddly, in spite of the fact that non-compete agreements are unenforceable in California, California has the largest percentage of employees working under non-compete agreements, by a margin of 19%.
So, if non-compete agreements are unenforceable in California, why do employers still require employees to sign non-compete clauses?
The same two reasons used all over the US: to prey on the employee's ignorance of the law, and to reduce turnover rates.
The vast majority of workers are ignorant and actually believe the agreements are enforceable as written. That reduces the likelihood that the employee will quit and get another job.
If you have high-turnover, then it's because of bad management, poor working conditions, or the job was misrepresented.
The other 47 States fall into one of three groups:
1) Red-Pencil States, like Indiana and others. If even one provision of the clause is unenforceable, then the entire agreement is thrown out, even if the agreement specifically states that each provision is severable.
2) Blue-Pencil States, like Virginia and others. A judge will strike any provision that is unenforceable, but allow the others to stand.
3) Equitable Reform, like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and others. A judge will actually re-write the entire agreement so that it can be enforced.
Before having my own company, I worked as private investigator for another company and had a non-compete agreement. The first attorney I met with told me nothing could be done, but knowing that most attorneys are stupid, I went to another. He told me a judge would never enforce a 3-year ban, and Ohio limits it to 6-12 months. For the geographical area, since my former employer wasn't licensed in Indiana or Kentucky, and since they weren't registered in Indiana or Kentucky as a domestic or foreign business entity, a judge would strike that, and then further reduce the geographical area to just Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont Counties in Ohio, instead of all of Ohio.
And that's pretty much consistent with all States, but like I said, most workers are ignorant and actually believe the non-compete agreement can be enforced, when in reality it can't.
There's also a trend requiring employers to show how they would be harmed or have been harmed, and unless they're able to do that, the non-compete agreements are being tossed out.
It's difficult to conceive how an hourly retail or restaurant employee could cause harm to an employer. In the case of a restaurant, I can understand how the executive chef, or sous chef or pastry chef might run off with proprietary recipes, but the wait-staff isn't privy to that info.
Interestingly, a plain language reading of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act seems to bar non-compete clauses. I've never done any case law research on it, but it would be nice to know if it's every been applied.
Here in ny having to sign a non solicitation agreement is quite common for sales people to have to sign . Usually it is in force for a year .
But any employer can get a court order that gives them alone time for a specified period of time so they can try to retain their customers when top sales people leave . I was on the end being restrained back in 2012 when i left a company and was a top sales producer.
All this stuff is a mine field today as non competes ,non solicitation and non disclosure agreements become more and more popular . My son is a partner in one of the countries largest law firms that specialize in labor law . He can only represent employers .never an employee
I think your experience just shows how uneven the distribution of wealth is in America.
Wealth is not "distributed."
Wealth is acquired. Either you want to acquire Wealth, or you do not. Wealth is totally voluntary.
And contrary to your misguided beliefs, Wealth can be easily acquired all across the US.
You can choose to buy a $250,000 McMansion with 0% down and pay $318,000 in interest, or you can choose to put 20% down and pay only $78,000 in interest, investing the $240,000 you didn't throw away on interest on rental property or as you see fit.
You can also choose to buy a 2-family or 3-family home, instead of McMansion. My nephew bought a 2-family converted into a 1-family and converted it back into a 2-family.
He now rents out the 2-family while he lives in his McMansion, and he put 15% down so he didn't throw away money on interest payments.
And you want to take his Wealth that he built and give it to others who were too damn lazy to do it themselves.
Here in ny having to sign a non solicitation agreement is quite common for sales people to have to sign . Usually it is in force for a year .
But any employer can get a court order that gives them alone time for a specified period of time so they can try to retain their customers when top sales people leave . I was on the end being restrained back in 2012 when i left a company and was a top sales producer.
All this stuff is a mine field today as non competes ,non solicitation and non disclosure agreements become more and more popular . My son is a partner in one of the countries largest law firms that specialize in labor law . He can only represent employers .never an employee
There are valid reasons for some non compete agreements, but a non compete in fast food or in any low paying job is done to keep employees from leaving and going to work for a competitor for more money. Mircea described how those employers get away with it and it's almost always because those employees don't usually question the legality of the agreement (which might be a good reason to spend a few weeks teaching basic contract law in high school)
In 1960, 50% of the population lived in urban areas, while 50% lived in rural areas.
Today, 82% live in urban areas. That means 32% of the population migrated to urban areas, and in doing so, created excess demand for housing, which drove up the price of housing.
You can't wave a magic wand and increase the supply of housing.
The rate at which new single-family and multi-family units are built is always less than the rate of increase of demand for housing, and for that reason, many areas of the US will experience constantly rising housing prices until no more housing can be built.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
It hasn't, but rent has gone up in some areas by 40-60% in the past few years. A friend of mine rents an apartment in Fair Oaks, her rent was $800 when she move in 3 years ago, in September her rent will be $1200.
And in Cincinnati, $800 will get you a 2-bedroom apartment with a swimming pool, tennis courts, covered parking and a club-house to hose parties and events.
If you don't want that, you can pay $495/month for a 2-bedroom.
That only proves demand is greater in the area she is.
If you don't like it, then start your own construction company, acquire land, and start building single-family and multi-family units to match demand and halt or reduce prices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2sleepy
I think my point was pretty clear income has not kept up with the cost of living. If you want to turn this into a 2000 word essay with algebraic formulas and graphs feel free, but with all due respect...I don't want to play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyewackette
It is clear from the original post that COL keeps going up but wages have been flat relative to COL.
Cite the law, corollary or theory of Economics that says wages should keep pace with the Cost-of-Living.
The purpose of Demand-pull Inflation is stop the depletion, overuse or over-consumption of resources, goods and services.
Why would you want to accelerate the depletion, overuse or over-consumption of resources, goods and services?
Well, a hedonist certainly would, but rational people wouldn't.
Demand-pull Inflation forces people to alter their Standard of Living and Life-Style.
If you don't like it, then stop consuming or start a company to increase supply to match or exceed demand.
The only thing stopping you, is you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948
The economy is strong the real wage rate is horrid
And why should real wages increase?
Your wages shouldn't be this high anyway, and the only reason they are is because the US barred the development of dozens and dozens of countries, and a confluence of global events that thrust the US into a position of primacy.
You can't maintain that position forever for any number of reasons.
When the end is known, and it will be known within a century or two, your wages will be the same as everyone else on Earth. That's how the laws of Economics work.
Cite the law, corollary or theory of Economics that says wages should keep pace with the Cost-of-Living.
Thanks for asking!
Quote:
The dearth of wage increases is a serious problem for the global economy. Economists have proffered all sorts of complex explanations for the glacial pace of recovery from the Great Recession, including insufficient fiscal spending and excessive government regulation. Some have even argued that the world has slipped into a long-term cycle of meager growth. But one often overlooked factor is the plight of the wage earner. Employees working 9 to 5 have simply not benefited as they should have from improvements in economic performance or corporate profitability. Without fatter paychecks, the average household can’t spend more, and that’s bad for growth. Yes, it’s really that simple. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...aren-t-growing
COL up 40% in 2 years with fixed income, retirees in a losing battle. Rich are getting richer, average Joe struggling.
Then move. There are 1,358 separately functioning economies to choose from, and more than 3,000 varying Costs-of-Living.
It's not my fault you're smart enough to take advantage of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peasy973
We may already be there now. There's no indication that wages will be on the rise in the future even alot of companies are sitting on large cash reserves.
You mean publicly-traded corporations, which are 3% of all US businesses and employ 5.8% of the work-force.
Any corporation that doesn't maintain 1/3 of its assets as cash-reserves is stupid.
You probably don't understand why.
Zenith and its union workers couldn't compete globally with South Korean Life's Good and its union workers.
Life's Good -- LG Corporation...you probably have one of their TVs or appliances in your home -- started using its profits to buy up stock in Zenith.
Zenith was powerless to stop them, because Zenith didn't have cash-reserves, because it couldn't make a profit.
Within a few years, South Korean LG Corporation owned 58% of Zenith's stock, and was the majority share-holder. LG then ran Zenith into the ground and bought Zenith after it filed for bankruptcy, and shut down all US manufacturing facilities, leaving union workers working at McDonald's and Wal-Mart.
Same thing happened to Toys-R-Us, who no longer exist.
When KKR attempted to take over Kroger's, Kroger's took its large cash reserves -- which you think are stupid -- and used them to buy back their own stock, driving up the stock prices and barring KKR from taking over Kroger's, which saved a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs.
That's why corporations are sitting on piles of cash.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
This is the crux of the debate. Productivity has increased for "the same old job", has it not?
It has not. The only correct measure of productivity is labor hours per unit volume. Labor hours per revenues are not the correct measure. This demonstrates why:
200,000 labor-hours; 1 Million widgets produced; unit price is $10; gross revenues $10 Million
190,000 labor-hours; 950,000 widgets produced; unit price is $12; gross revenues $11.4 Million
Did Productivity increase?
No, it did not, but the EPI and many others would falsely claim it did in order to propagandize.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
The problem with CEO compensation in the U.S. is not the the amount they are paid, but the lack of taxes on said compensation.
And why should it be taxed?
Yes, it's true that one year the CEO of Anthem Blue Cross-Blue Shield was paid $23 Million, but he only received $7 Million in cash. The other $16 Million was stock options.
Federal law requires reporting total compensation, and that's how it's reported and no attempt to distinguish between cash and non-cash benefits is made. You can read the corporation's financial reports to make that distinction, but few propagandists do.
Wealth is acquired. Either you want to acquire Wealth, or you do not. Wealth is totally voluntary.
And contrary to your misguided beliefs, Wealth can be easily acquired all across the US.
You can choose to buy a $250,000 McMansion with 0% down and pay $318,000 in interest, or you can choose to put 20% down and pay only $78,000 in interest, investing the $240,000 you didn't throw away on interest on rental property or as you see fit.
You can also choose to buy a 2-family or 3-family home, instead of McMansion. My nephew bought a 2-family converted into a 1-family and converted it back into a 2-family.
He now rents out the 2-family while he lives in his McMansion, and he put 15% down so he didn't throw away money on interest payments.
And you want to take his Wealth that he built and give it to others who were too damn lazy to do it themselves.
Not cool.
Some wealth is in essence distributed via central payments, subsidies, grants, awards and welfare. The money itself is not wealth, but can of course can be exchanged for real stuff or invested to yield more money.
The original purpose of insurance was to pool catastrophic risk, not to pay a middle man to see a doctor for a cold.
That's exactly right.
It wasn't until the late 1950s that States began mandating insurers cover pregnancy/maternity. By the early 1960s, all States had mandated it.
Over the next several decades, as new medical conditions were discovered, and new medical treatments and procedures were developed, along with new forms of medical diagnostics and new pharmaceutical drugs, States began mandating more and more coverage.
Each new mandate increases the cost of health plan coverage.
In the 1990s, States began mandating coverage for doctor office visits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by westender
Both political parties must come together to figure out how to reduce the cost of the medical-industrial complex in the US. It's gotten way out-of-hand.
Both healthcare and health insurance are intra-State commerce, not interstate commerce, so Congress is powerless to do anything.
It's totally unconscionable that you do not understand that, and an ethical person would refrain from voting in elections.
Only the States can act.
What would help immensely is if States barred "Out-of-Network" which is a policy created by the American Hospital Association in the mid-1930s to drive those hospitals that were members of the American Medical Association out of business.
If only one State would do that, the rest would follow suit.
Then, if States redefined catastrophic care, and mandated that only, allowing people to choose a la carte their other coverage in the form of riders, it would make health plan coverage affordable for all.
It's manifestly unfair to force the elderly to purchase pregnancy/maternity and birth control coverage, when they have no use for it and don't want it.
People who want doctor office visits covered can purchase a rider, and pay extra for that privilege.
If States started taxing employers, they could drive people out from under the umbrella of their employer into State-wide pools.
If you think 27 Million businesses creates a competitive environment, what do you think 250 Million people will do?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sand&Salt
Just priced a colonoscopy here: $350. It was $1,500 in 2008 last time I checked in the U.S. In 2010 I had no insurance and they wanted to charge me $40,000 for a kidney stone. C'mon!
That's because you have have hospitals.
Euro-States don't use hospitals, as the former German Minister of Health makes perfectly clear here:
Polyclinics—clusters of general practitioners who work together to form more specialized primary care centers—were used extensively and quite successfully in the former German Democratic Republic.
However, many politicians in West Germany initially disliked the idea of polyclinics because they associated them with communist ideology. It took a while for many people to understand that polyclinics offer significant advantages with regard to communication, coordination, and cooperation. Source: How Germany is reining in health care costs: An interview with Franz Knieps pp 30-31.
Britain, Sweden and Portugal have refused to abandon hospitals, but the rest of Europe has.
Hospitals are the least effective, least efficient and most costly means of healthcare delivery.
Sad that communist countries adopted the corollaries of Capitalist Property Theory: Diversification & Specialization, while the US has not.
Unless you make your healthcare system like Europe, then you will never realize the cost-savings that Euro-States gain.
Over-laying UHC onto a broken system is not going to reduce costs, but adopting the policies Euro-States have will reduce costs.
Why does open-heart surgery only cost $13,000 at a cardio-pulmonary clinic, while it costs $26,000 to $42,000 at a hospital?
Because hospitals operate as monopolies and monopolistic cartels to illegally collude to illegally fix prices above market rates.
And, because hospitals are grotesquely inefficient.
Does a cardio-pulmonary clinic have an $8 Million 12-story parking garage? Nope. So the clinic doesn't have to charge you for that, but the hospital does.
Does the clinic have lighting at sufficient candle-foot rating in the parking garage to avoid civil liability? Nope. A clinic doesn't have a parking garage, so it doesn't have to worry about liability or pay for the electricity, but a hospital does.
Does the clinic have security guards patrolling the garage to reduce the possibility that a patient will be raped or robbed in the parking garage? Nope. But hospitals do, and those security guards don't work for free, and you pay for that.
Does the clinic have video monitoring in the parking garage to further limit their legal liability and reduce the possibility of rapes or robberies? Nope. But hospitals do, and you pay for the installation, maintenance and upkeep of the video system.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
A cardio-pulmonary clinic doesn't have a psych ward, or an orthopedics, pediatrics, gerontology, internal medicine, neurology or any other departments, and because they don't, their operating costs are far less than a hospital's ever could be.
That's why Euro-States have gotten rid of hospitals.
Yes, you'll find hospitals in rural areas in Germany. Yes, Germany has rural areas, mostly in the north, but in the south, too.
There are a few big cities in the north. Hamburg, Bremen, Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven. Those are all port cities on the North Sea, or the River Weser. The area in-between is all farmland. Very rural. Villages with a few hundred here and there, and small towns with a few thousand here and there. County hospitals with consolidated facilities make sense.
If women in the US went to a maternity clinic, instead of a hospital, they'd only be billed a couple $1,000 instead of $12,000 to $20,000.
That's why there are private kidney dialysis clinics. To receive dialysis in a hospital was extremely costly, so some very smart people got investors together, purchased their own dialysis machines, and rented a suitable facility to provide the treatment. It costs a helluva lot less than in a hospital.
Then move. There are 1,358 separately functioning economies to choose from, and more than 3,000 varying Costs-of-Living..
Right Mircea, seniors should just pack up, leave their friends and families and move to Mississippi. You have the best ideas
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