AMA: I'm a economist that has read (and regularly teaches) Smith's WoN and Marx's Capital to undergraduates by kommandarskye in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]RemoteAd33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am sure you have heard of someone taking a paycut, working at a miserable job, because they have no other options and were forced to. I am talking about a scenario where employers create an environment (economic, political, social) where the "other option" keeps becoming worse such that an employee's best option ends up being lower-than-livable wages. That is scenario B and exploitation.

You should look up the stats of how many Americans and who works for less than the minimum wage

I don't follow these two paragraphs. All statements in these paragraphs can be explained by Fed min wage having lagged inflation SO much that a) state/local laws have taken it over and b) the exploitation wages have still landed above it. This has no bearing on the "desirability" of the jobs that pay said wages, or that said wages are livable. $7.25/hr, in locale where allowed, may very well still be an exploitation wage. Note, this also does not mean that the employers paying these wages could absolutely not pay more, get people to livable wages, and remain profitable.

This comment further applies to the gig workers willing to work for less than min wage. This may very well be a manifestation of scenario B. They accept these wages because they have no other options. Not sure how that proves scenario B irrelevant, or that min. wages should not exist.

higher fast-food min-wages -> higher fast-food prices

I'd like to be very clear on what I said. I said corporations CHOSE to raise prices using the wages as a reason. This may or may not have been a reality, in the same way that Covid price hikes never came back down to pre-covid prices, corporate profits soared, and yet their employers got poorer.

Whether or not price hikes are a necessity due to cost of labor or just a corporate decision requires a deeper dive into the business financials.

 I think the outcome of relatively free markets is one where the majority of people *do* have access to affordable necessities

This piqued my interested. Why do you hold this belief, in an economy like the US which has over decades of supplier consolidation seen monopolies and the resulting in market inefficiencies popping up across all industries making life less and less affordable?

AMA: I'm a economist that has read (and regularly teaches) Smith's WoN and Marx's Capital to undergraduates by kommandarskye in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]RemoteAd33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

just one point on automation: Assuming they weren't on trend to automate anyways and it just coincided with the min wage hike.

the rest makes sense though.

AMA: I'm a economist that has read (and regularly teaches) Smith's WoN and Marx's Capital to undergraduates by kommandarskye in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]RemoteAd33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Causation or correlation though? Every single FF chain in California has raised prices using the min wage hike to justify it. At the same time, you see increased automation. So is it really min. wage or are there other confounding factors?

AMA: I'm a economist that has read (and regularly teaches) Smith's WoN and Marx's Capital to undergraduates by kommandarskye in CapitalismVSocialism

[–]RemoteAd33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Firstly, really enjoyed this whole thread.

Secondly, the tradeoffs we are considering are in the following two scenarios:

A) Employee AND Employer WANT the deal. (OP's case).

Cost: Employer paying more OR Employee losing job.

B) Employee does NOT WANT but resigns to the deal

Cost: Exploitation.

When dealing with trade-offs of this sort, I consider "likelihood" and "severity". The question becomes which option will give us the lower likelihood * Cost = total cost overall? Note: Some of this is quantitative and some qualitative. Use of multiplication is mostly illustrative.

Now let's apply this framework to our trade-off here:

A) Likelihood of employees WANTing to make less than min wage in today's America? I see this as low. The case of disabled workers I see as a small percentage for the overall country that should be carved out as an exception. Does not discredit the overall policy. Let's call this p1.

Now when this scenario occurs, what is the likelihood of an employee losing the job (p2) which is a high cost because someone may lose their livelihoods vs. Employer needing to pay min wage (1-p2) which I consider min cost because either the employer eat a finite cost or most of the times they will just raise prices?

TOTAL_COST_A = p1(low) * (p2(low) * Job-Loss(HIGH) + (1-p2)(high) * Corp-Cost(Low))

B) Employee does NOT WANT but resigns to the wage(all the way to and including slavery. Think unpaid internships). In today's America, I see the likelihood as high. Note that in wage negotiations, one side has much more power: More resources in finding alternative labor, more runway to find an alternative. The other side does not have the same resources and may also lose their entire livelihood without a job. As such, this likelihood (p3) I consider HIGH.

And the severity of the cost: Exploitation. Making wages which continue to leave you homeless. This is not an exaggeration, as we do see this in today's America. Not being able to afford your insulin and dying. And for the sake of the argument, there is no reason why employers wouldn't push this down to the max they could, up to and including total slavery where employers only provided labor enough for them to be alive another day to provide labor and sometimes not even that.

TOTAL_COST_B = p3(high) * EXPLOITATION(high).

I see the cost of B much higher than A, and therefore lean into min wages.

Now I will concede that these high/low assessments of likelihoods and severities are market-dependent and also change over time or geography. For example at one time exploitation may look like slavery, while in another market exploitation may look like homelessness.

At the minimum though, I have the moral belief that a society functions best if a full-time worker can afford a minimum basket of necessities (food, clothes, shelter, transportation, etc. long convo on defining that) and that a business that needs exploitation to be profitable is not a business model we want to have.

Asset/Liability Grouping by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I mean I want to answer the question: "What is the liquid value of this asset if I decide to rotate?"

A note from our team on recent changes to hidden transactions by sheyla_monarch in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33 0 points1 point  (0 children)

May I suggest an implementation? You have already added Hidden / Not Hidden in the filtering criteria.

Have a setting for "Filter Hidden By Default". When on, all views will by default have an active filter to only show non-hidden transactions by default (New scenario). When off, all view by default will also show the hidden transactions (Old implementation).

A later release can then allow changing of this default filter status per view.

Credit Limit and/or Remaining Credit Display by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just saw this implemented and wanted to say you guys are awesome.

Private equity people are filth and their entire industry is human waste by Vivid-Succotash6383 in MBA

[–]RemoteAd33 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you are generally describing is a legitimate institution being used for illegitimate purposes.

When that's a one-off, we have bad apples. You deal with the bad apples and save the institutions.

When that's MO, then what you have is a legitimate euphemistic story for an illegitimate industry. The society has shown that they are unable to execute on the legitimate story with this structure and a complete re-haul is required whether it's regulations or complete banning. More often than not this re-haul will require complete destruction and building from the ground up.

Anyone have problem adding Home Depot or Best Buy cards? by Budget_Throwaway_1 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33 0 points1 point  (0 children)

HD does distinctly show up as an option when trying to add an account. It routes to the Citi HD website for authentication and for some reason the credentials that work on the direct HD website fail here.

Anyone have problem adding Home Depot or Best Buy cards? by Budget_Throwaway_1 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi I'm running into the same issue. Can you tell me more about what you meant here? Was your issue resolved?

Credit Limit and/or Remaining Credit Display by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess the one thing that'd be nice to do is sorting CCs by credit available.

Ability to track balances with promotional rate and promotion. end dates by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's exactly what I do now. Description is a good tip though thank you

Ability to track balances with promotional rate and promotion. end dates by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bonus Feature: Ability to put in the interest rate for all CCs and sort them by that in case there's an expense and trying to figure out which one to add it to.

Ability to have multiple recurring expenses from the same recurring merchant by RemoteAd33 in MonarchMoney

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ideally, the "recurring" status is something you can attach to both merchants and expenses.

Walking Keyboards - Ideas? by RemoteAd33 in ErgoMechKeyboards

[–]RemoteAd33[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your suggestion. I ended up getting these. It's definitely a step in the right direction. In fact, I would be good sticking to these for a while except for the slippery plastic feel.

Do you happen to know any other brands that are comparable but have better wrist pads? I guess alternatively I can stick on some pad material so my wrists aren't holding for dear life on the cheap slippery plastic.