Another of these

The following was sent to Paul Krugman, the most widely-followed blogger about economics. I think it is important to distinguish between the idea that the rich have failed in something where you can still think of them as better than other people (spending all of their money, or finding ways to productively give it away, since there is no reason to think anyone else would do better) where you (and OWS) can still say that the rich are "responsible" for problems, and the egregious way of 'failing' described below where the rich as a group are defined as being worse than other people in that stupid people think they are mean and are unwilling to help them.

In other words, the standard for achievement here is "not letting stupid people think you're mean". At least a critical mass of stupid people... who have enough confidence to cause things to happen.

As they say, when something is found it is always in the last placed looked at. (usually)

The single business person who replied to me before, has not responded since I contacted them several days ago. Another business person has not replied to me at all, though (>.>) the pattern of their Twitter activity suggests they think the idea is important. This was checked before writing the most recent post: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/09/rich-does-not-mean-competent.html

I'm not bothering with trying to write a 'guest post' because, well, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/who-to-listen-to/

I mean because I'm lazy. I think this is a case where [writing to the correct] audience is very important.

The idea of "pay people a higher rate when they work less, and a nonzero but lower rate for extra work" is important, it seems, for ensuring there are people willing and able to work more without having to be paid overtime rates (in case of an emergency where someone else works less) for lower-income people, but using that specific concept is necessary to convince higher-income people to work less only so they don't feel "selfish" for doing so. So higher-income people might not be using it themselves, but the knowledge that lower-income people who avoid buying iPhones can also choose to work less without being fired allows higher-income people to do so without feeling like they are supporting an inaccurate standard of achievement.

So it's a necessary condition for high-income people working less, yet not a sufficient one due to the "lack of wealth" and "income = skill" ideas, and to a lesser extent the "money will flow to the right places" idea...

Unfortunately still no fancy mathematics, just the tiny bit of arithmetic for the 'bargaining power' argument.

If I had a chart (other than the 'ipod effect' http://s122.photobucket.com/albums/o245/Taemojitsu/?action=view&current=theiPodeffect.jpg which is a term that has been used for many things >.>) it would be of the shape of the wage compensation curve, and how (given general preferences for time worked, most people don't want to work 80 hours/week) company and individual preferences "push" the amount of time worked in certain directions at various points on the graph. [Edit: so it would be time on bottom, total compensation on the side.]

Then there is a sort of momentum where people look for a good place to stop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_%28game_theory%29).

So with standard overtime, the company naturally pushes people to keep working... up until 40 hours, where it pushes people down who are working more than that.

UNLESS, of course, wages are too low and the graph too flat, in which case it will keep pushing people upwards ("uphilll" to the right, or trying to push people lower-right with time worked on the bottom axis) until they begin to resist as time continues to increase.

Meanwhile, with people generally trying to push their location "upwards" (...this time in an absolute location sense, not uphill) and slightly to the left, they will keep going until they hit 40 hours and the downward pressure stops them. It makes more sense to think of them as being on top of the line in this case, so despite wanting to go uphill they can't overcome the company's pressure.

Then with the new wage system, it's more unstable. People generally want to work more than where the inflection point is from high wage rate to lower, but for many people it is also somewhat of a local maximum... the company helped them up the steep initial climb and wants to keep pushing them to the right once they're past it, but their resistance gradually increases even if the wage rate stays constant after that (which it doesn't need to, but that's the simplest way to describe it).


With this image, maybe it's easier to see how the normal overtime system allows people to be "lazy" in deciding how much to work... similar to how in computer UI design, the edges and corners of a screen are very fast to reach because the cursor is bounded at those points. With the new wage system, there is no natural delimiter and people have to think about how much they want to work, and if they really want to work another 5 hours (by registering that preference with their employer, in case of changes in demand or the total number of employees) to get the new iPhone 5 with 40% of the sale going to gross profits and Apple's $100b cash pile.

(Which itself wouldn't be a problem if people would let the government spend more money when rich people are collecting money... which they don't let it do since rich people still accept higher prices leading to inflation. Which wouldn't be a problem if enough people were sensitive to prices to alter the demand curve and make lower prices more profitable despite the "rich idiots". Or as Hobbes said, http://worldofcalvinandhobbes.blogspot.com/2008/01/calvin-fooled.html)

Summary:
"lack of wealth" is the general agreement.
Low-income people don't want to appear lazy, and when they think of "people working less" they think of people they know, and not higher-income people whose motivations they are unfamiliar with. If higher-income people want to work less, they would sign it, they assume.

Higher-income people feel like they contribute more to national income, but also are competing for promotions (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/the-having-it-all-crisis-isnt-about-women-its-about-the-1/258894/). Since CEOs work hard, those under them just follow the example.


Higher-income people would generally be fine with lower-income people working less, even if they unconsciously would still classify anyone who did as "lazy" or "unmotivated". The standards would change over time but for most lower-income people the short-term costs of discrimination do not justify the gain in free time in the current system. Lower-income people do not understand why higher-income people would feel the need to emulate CEOs, since to lower-income people money is about buying things, not about status, and earning too much money is "selfish". Lower-income people do not understand the idea of money, or very high compensation, as socially desirable because they use a completely different social standard (http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/05/occupy-movement-is-wrong-about-rich.html). This is what allows them to think they are "above average" in most performance categories because they do not feel like income generalizes to skill.

As a result, lower-income people misjudge why higher-income people have not supported the idea of working less, and getting them to accept the true reason would require rejecting moral values about "offering low prices".

The required change in worldview, and admission of error in the construction of that worldview, is too great. Lower-income people will not admit that "income = skill" is valid, which is necessary for rejecting the standard by proposing that people with demonstrated skill in the old system transfer to the new one ("working less"), because it would cause them—lower-income people—to be redefined as low-skill, and they have no way to quickly fix this by earning more money (lack of jobs or access to overtime). This was actually mentioned in, um... http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/07/hidden-gardens.html

However, if higher-income people accept the idea of working less as a way to fix the economy and a new standard of achievement, they generally can immediately "win" in the new standard by working less.


I don't expect higher-income people to understand why lower-income people haven't supported the idea. The idea that high-income people are selfish prevents lower-income people from recognizing the "income = skill" idea; attempts to convince OWS that this was not true were a failure (http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-doesnt-have-a-plan-for-jobs/ ; http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-occupy-movement-is-wrong-about-the-rich/ as mentioned before; and the more specific description of http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-inflation-scam/ etc.. as well as the "blame the middle class" posts).

However, just as obviously, high-income people are not motivated to understand the reason for problems either, especially when everyone says that raising taxes on the middle class is bad and it's either tax the rich or no one at all. This is what contributes to middle-class people spending their money on iPhones.

And it looks like if I contact any rich people (usually not practical, either they can't be contacted or they haven't expressed interest in economic problems, or maybe they could be contacted but only by someone with credentials who can get through mail sorters) they don't have the confidence to support the idea either, because they are not the #1 wealthiest person in the world. And aren't friends with anyone who is. Or at least don't feel comfortable passing along an uncredentialled message.

So this situation would otherwise be expected to probably continue until taxes go up on the middle class due to revolt of the lower classes, or welfare keeps people pacified while nothing really happens; or rather changes, since things are always happening.

Anyway can you like publish something about the idea of working less on your blog, or even link to the blogspot site, as a like favour or something. Thanks