Your unpopular (non-political, non-offensive) opinions!

[Quackers101]

4 hours ago, rikitikitavi said:

... googled hypervigilance - I guess that's why I can't drive long distances... an hour of heavy traffic driving and I'm done, feeling sick, exhausted, and very angry. Need to meditate I guess.

 

Tunnel vision as a metaphor for the intense focus with no regards to your surroundings...

 

Sure, there is always a catch, but 'keep right and let people pass' is a rule in most places I've been.

If you have high blood pressure or high heart rate, and eye sight to mental or lack of experience, or just some stress (emotions when driving?).

One might need more time per action, which also could include tunneling all your effort towards that action which might disregard other things around you or other actions done. I might have that at times, more so when lacking a lot of visual elements in the car, like not enough FOV and making it harder to get outside info from my body build in a easier and safer way without using a lot of time on those actions creating stress. Also hate cars that has useless rear-view mirrors but needs mirror/camera to look back there.

On 4/13/2022 at 5:01 AM, Donut417 said:

Courtesy doesnt exist on Michigan roads. Most of the roads I take the work are one lane each direction. Every day theirs that one DICK HEAD you has his front bumper 6 inches from my rear bumper. Being late for work is not my problem. In my opinion if you get caught multiple times speeding they should require you to take some kind of driving course or something that teaches the law. Speeding is illegal PERIOD.

 

Also these are the same pecker heads who pass a school bus with their lights on, which is VERY illegal.

Speeding shouldn't be completely illegal, but can understand why one would want to discourage such behavior (and zone specific reason as to why). Tailgating on the other hand, should be illegal. Like why stay right behind me if I need to break?? doesn't do much by having just a could more meters of distance in what it means for time or what it means to safety in control.

 

As speeding might reduce the control one could have, and the risks from it. But from my experience driving with or next to others, nearly everyone wants to drive faster in areas they feel more comfortable using more of the speed in sort of a controlled manner. Also who everyone speeds too much in certain areas, just makes you want to do it too and not be pressured by people behind you that gets annoyed even if you do what the speed limit tells you.

 

To why they want to recommend 70km/h though in a lot of tough areas like smaller main roads, as your organs can't really deal with a speed around 70km/h or above, and for your own safety.

 

School busses in US just seems awfully dangerous. Stopping on highways without a good dedicated bus stop and not great walk paths for humans?

Children crossing high traffic and high speed sections that is also multi-lane roads? like older videos on youtube shows this kind of madness in some US areas. People hit right next to the busses too even on the off-road side. oof.

On 4/13/2022 at 5:01 AM, Donut417 said:

In my opinion we have a fundamental issue in our society where people just dont care. Case in point some guy today was break checking and obstructing traffic over some road rage. He was raging against a dump truck behind him. Why would any one break check a dump truck or Semi truck?

4 hours ago, rikitikitavi said:

That's just sad. Especially the brake checking... foul.

Road rage is just sad, unless you were a victim of it. But all for the insurance fraud, have your webcams ready! (if you live in areas where there is a lot of that).

Some are just stupid in their insurance frauds, so long it was not targeted to be attacked and not go out of your vehicle and engage in that kind of road rage. (weapons, robbers or just attackers).

[HanZie82]

9 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Tipping is the least talked about and most widespread anti-consumer mechanism there is. 

Tipping is stupid as fuck being mandatory.

Its just the employer telling you he dont care anough to give their staf proper wages.
This is NOT the consumers fault for not tipping (only in USA its mandatory-ish).

Its the employers fault for not paying enough.

 

6 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Oh yea it's totally optional if you enjoy getting dirty looks as the waiter/waitress stares at you while you fiddle with the card machine or having your bags thrown onto the ground if you don't tip. But then again is it really optional if a line item called "Gratuity" is automatically added to your bill? So some unlucky soul is going to tip however many % on top of the 15% originally applied.

According to Miriam-Webster:

Quote

gratuity

noun

gra·tu·i·ty | \ grə-ˈtü-ə-tē

, -ˈtyü- \

plural gratuities

Definition of gratuity

: something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service

So if they add it to the bill, its not a gratuity by definition!!!

 

 

 

Having worked as a waiter and as an employer this really kicks me in the balls.
Tips are voluntary, any other way just makes it awful and by definition not a tip or gratuity anymore!!!

 

 

ps, i live in a country where tipping is only done sparingly, but wages are proper.

 

[HanZie82]

Youtube shorts are absolutely and undeniably fucking shite awful.

 

Made for mobile, but seen on desktop.
The latter being the only one where a rotation of the screen would be really really hard.

 

Fuck portrait video, and slap anyone in the face with huge black bars doing it.
Thank you a PC user.

[IPD]

9 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Tipping is the least talked about and most widespread anti-consumer mechanism there is. 

True

9 hours ago, poochyena said:

how is it anti-consumer? Its totally optional

See below.

7 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Oh yea it's totally optional if you enjoy getting dirty looks as the waiter/waitress stares at you while you fiddle with the card machine or having your bags thrown onto the ground if you don't tip. But then again is it really optional if a line item called "Gratuity" is automatically added to your bill? So some unlucky soul is going to tip however many % on top of the 15% originally applied.

 

6 hours ago, poochyena said:

Someone who gets upset about not being tipped doesn't deserve a tip in the first place. Not sure what you mean by "Gratuity" is automatically added to your bill. I never noticed that before, but I don't eat out very often.

 

It's because the USA has allowed employers to factor in tips into the wages they pay.  Thus, "doesn't deserve a tip in the first place" sounds good in theory--but without any tip, their wage can easily be below minimum.

 

Frankly, the entire construct needs to be binned.  Wage standards need to be the same across the board--and tipping (while not outlawed) becomes relegated to the house--and equally divided to all staff.  The days of individual employees working hard and making themselves stand out for exemplary service--are virtually behind us.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, HanZie82 said:

Youtube shorts are absolutely and undeniably fucking shite awful.

 

Made for mobile, but seen on desktop.
The latter being the only one where a rotation of the screen would be really really hard.

 

Fuck portrait video, and slap anyone in the face with huge black bars doing it.
Thank you a PC user.

They’re not even any good on phones.  It seems to be an example of people not knowing what makes something watchable

[poochyena]

3 hours ago, IPD said:

It's because the USA has allowed employers to factor in tips into the wages they pay.  Thus, "doesn't deserve a tip in the first place" sounds good in theory--but without any tip, their wage can easily be below minimum.

No one is legally being paid under minimum wage, it's the minimum wage, It means they can't be paid below that.

[IPD]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

No one is legally being paid under minimum wage, it's the minimum wage, It means they can't be paid below that.

And of course, everyone is 100% legal at all times.

 

p.s.

We could just do the far simpler thing, and abolish minimum wage entirely and replace it with a 50x rule.  But there are way too many troglodytes impeding progress--for that ever to happen.

[Bitter]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

No one is legally being paid under minimum wage, it's the minimum wage, It means they can't be paid below that.

Tipped wages are a lower legal minimum federally and in some states too. Seriously. You could clock 40 hours in a week, get 0 tips, and make below minimum wage the whole time. 

 

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

[Quackers101]

43 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Tipped wages are a lower legal minimum federally and in some states too. Seriously. You could clock 40 hours in a week, get 0 tips, and make below minimum wage the whole time.

Would assume it depends on how its driven, to bad contracts/pay that goes around the minimum llimit like with game studios not paying their staff or outside work.

[poochyena]

41 minutes ago, IPD said:

We could just do the far simpler thing, and abolish minimum wage entirely

yes

41 minutes ago, IPD said:

and replace it with a 50x rule

no. That doesn't work for many businesses and just encourages businesses to contract out, rather than hire, people for lower skilled work like janitors, and encourages CEOs to be paid in stock options rather than salaries, much more than they are now.

39 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Tipped wages are a lower legal minimum federally and in some states too. Seriously. You could clock 40 hours in a week, get 0 tips, and make below minimum wage the whole time. 

Literally nowhere in the link you posted said employees can be paid less than minimum wage. The min wage, from your source, is $7.25 or higher depending on the state. If you are working and being paid less than that, you can report your boss to to DOL.

[Bitter]

49 minutes ago, poochyena said:

yes

no. That doesn't work for many businesses and just encourages businesses to contract out, rather than hire, people for lower skilled work like janitors, and encourages CEOs to be paid in stock options rather than salaries, much more than they are now.

Literally nowhere in the link you posted said employees can be paid less than minimum wage. The min wage, from your source, is $7.25 or higher depending on the state. If you are working and being paid less than that, you can report your boss to to DOL.

Look at tipped wages.

 

 

2.13 is the minimum if you're on tipped wages which is if you get 30 or more in tips PER MONTH. Unless I'm understanding this wrong, which is pretty possible since I'm just a dumb wrench monkey.

[poochyena]

5 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Look at tipped wages.

 

2.13 is the minimum if you're on tipped wages which is if you get 30 or more in tips PER MONTH. Unless I'm understanding this wrong, which is pretty possible since I'm just a dumb wrench monkey.

You are indeed understanding it wrong, and I'm glad you realize that as a possibility. Did you not question what the middle column was? Its the credit, which is the maximum amount of money the employer can deduct from the wage paid for by the business.

The tipped wage isn't $2.13, its $7.25 minus what the employee gets in tips, up to $5.12. The employee gets $7.25 whether he or she is given any tips or not. The difference is how much of that $7.25 the business is paying. If you go to a restaurant, are there for 1 hour and no one else shows up, and you leave a $5.12 tip, then the waiter didn't make any extra money, but the business owner had to pay less money to the employee.

[IPD]

2 hours ago, poochyena said:

no. That doesn't work for many businesses and just encourages businesses to contract out, rather than hire, people for lower skilled work like janitors, and encourages CEOs to be paid in stock options rather than salaries, much more than they are now.

You just proved my point again; people keep stonewalling the idea--rather than actually exploring how it affects the market.

 

-Contracting out is perfectly fine.  The contracted company still has to abide by the 50x rule.  The company that company that contracted out is not responsible for the wages of the contracted employees--but they do have to abide by the 50x rule for the employees in their own company.  Meaning that if you wanted to make $1,000,000 salary annually (total gross salary, including all options, bonuses, etc)--you would have to pay the lowest-compensated employee in your company at least $20,000.

 

-Stock options aren't immune from this.  The going-rate of face-value of stocks at the moment they are allocated to the executive--is the net value they are assessed to have and factored into that exec's annual salary for that year.

 

-CEO's who want to earn more money need to compete to be CEO's for higher-skilled companies with better-compensated employees.  The CEO of Boeing (for example) should be able to earn more paycheck than the CEO of McDonalds.  In order to raise one's own bottom-line as an executive, one has to raise the bottom line for the guys on the bottom of the pile also.  Which also means that the 50x rule doesn't need to be revisited for inflation or cost of living...as it will keep pace on its own without legislative intervention.

 

---

I have yet to hear someone explain how this solution will fail to address the problem.  It also provides about 0 net impact to small businesses (as their CEO/owner/operators will undoubtedly never breach this threshold).  And before you start thinking that "well this will just create super-contractors who exist in hyper-salaried companies and farm everything out to a myriad of contractors"--keep in mind that with 0 actual tooling, labor force, etc--there is nothing to keep such an entity intact.  The "subcontractor" performing all the main-line operations can and will easily simply rip the business out from under it--and start anew; they have all the power.

 

So no, I'm not buying you poo-pooing this.

 

 

[poochyena]

16 minutes ago, IPD said:

-Contracting out is perfectly fine.  The contracted company still has to abide by the 50x rule.

which wouldn't be a big deal for them as there is less diversity in the workforce. They all do the same job, so having to pay them all around the same wage isn't much issue. Instead of paying a janitor $50k/yr, you just hire the contractor for $20k/yr. So the janitor isn't getting a pay raise and the billionaire CEO isn't getting a pay cut, you're just moving some things around. Whats most important is the fact that the janitor contracting company could just be a spin off of the main company with a puppet CEO of the CEO of the main company. This is already a very common business practice.

22 minutes ago, IPD said:

-Stock options aren't immune from this.  The going-rate of face-value of stocks at the moment they are allocated to the executive--is the net value they are assessed to have and factored into that exec's annual salary for that year.

uhh, stocks aren't salary. If I have $10k in shares one year, and $10k in shares the next year, I don't have $20k, I still just have $10k. Do you not realize how easily they could bankrupt a company? That easily would have killed gamestop if they had to give a massive wage boost right after their shares went up 1,500%. And then of course you have the opposite, like facebook, whose shared dropped nearly in half. The biggest reason people choose to be employees rather than self-employed is due to consistent income. You take that away, and you'll upset a lot of people.

33 minutes ago, IPD said:

-CEO's who want to earn more money need to compete to be CEO's for higher-skilled companies with better-compensated employees.  The CEO of Boeing (for example) should be able to earn more paycheck than the CEO of McDonalds. 

If you are a business major, why would you choose to work for or start a company that deals with low skill work if it means you'll be paid less because of it? The best of the best will always go to the companies that hire high skill workers, which will just hurt businesses than higher low skill workers, which in turn hurts low skill workers. Literally the best case scenario is that the CEOs of some companies get paid slightly less money.. which benefits who exactly?

41 minutes ago, IPD said:

I have yet to hear someone explain how this solution will fail to address the problem. 

You never even actually explained what the problem even was.

[Donut417]

12 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

School busses in US just seems awfully dangerous. Stopping on highways without a good dedicated bus stop and not great walk paths for humans?

Children crossing high traffic and high speed sections that is also multi-lane roads? like older videos on youtube shows this kind of madness in some US areas. People hit right next to the busses too even on the off-road side. oof.

Under Michigan law, when the bus activates its red lights all cars BOTH ways are to stop PERIOD. The only time this doesn't apply is a divided highway as in there is a grass section between each direction of the road. Failure to follow the rules can end up with a ticket, if you actually hit a kid you can get arrested if you're lucky or be shot or beaten to death if the parent happens to be at the scene. 

 

We dont have dedicated bus stops because the bus stops can change every year. Bus stops only exist where there are kids getting on. For example when I was in K-12 the bus stop was in front of my house. Now that no kids really live on the street, that bus stop is no longer used. Hell many communities are even lucky if they have school busses as when school went back to in person many of the bus drivers refused to come back. Some districts only run the bus for special ed and the rest of the kids have to find a way to get to school. 

[Quackers101]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

We dont have dedicated bus stops because the bus stops can change every year. Bus stops only exist where there are kids getting on. For example when I was in K-12 the bus stop was in front of my house. Now that no kids really live on the street, that bus stop is no longer used. Hell many communities are even lucky if they have school busses as when school went back to in person many of the bus drivers refused to come back. Some districts only run the bus for special ed and the rest of the kids have to find a way to get to school. 

sounds like hell in a "car-topia" world. But I guess it makes sense in some of the city or housing layouts. Wasting time and money, in a layout that drains and has to pay taxes for it. To the gas prices rising.

[Donut417]

15 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

sounds like hell in a "car-topia" world. But I guess it makes sense in some of the city or housing layouts. Wasting time and money, in a layout that drains and has to pay taxes for it. To the gas prices rising.

Lets be real here. The suburbs are not public transit friendly. Also the other issue is kids now days are Ass holes. Thats why they are having issues getting bus drivers. Because I think you need a CDL to drive a bus, of course most districts have outsourced their busses to private corporations, who pay shitty wages. Why drive a bus dealing with bad kids when you can get a different CDL and drive a big rig and potentially make bank? 

 

Between the shortage of bus drivers and the shortage of teachers, I have a feeling in the future school might become a full online thing. That or class sizes will just become mega stupid compared to the mega stupid they are now and kids wont learn a darn thing. Either way America is screwed. 

[IPD]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

which wouldn't be a big deal for them as there is less diversity in the workforce. They all do the same job, so having to pay them all around the same wage isn't much issue. Instead of paying a janitor $50k/yr, you just hire the contractor for $20k/yr. So the janitor isn't getting a pay raise and the billionaire CEO isn't getting a pay cut, you're just moving some things around. Whats most important is the fact that the janitor contracting company could just be a spin off of the main company with a puppet CEO of the CEO of the main company. This is already a very common business practice.

uhh, stocks aren't salary. If I have $10k in shares one year, and $10k in shares the next year, I don't have $20k, I still just have $10k. Do you not realize how easily they could bankrupt a company? That easily would have killed gamestop if they had to give a massive wage boost right after their shares went up 1,500%. And then of course you have the opposite, like facebook, whose shared dropped nearly in half. The biggest reason people choose to be employees rather than self-employed is due to consistent income. You take that away, and you'll upset a lot of people.

If you are a business major, why would you choose to work for or start a company that deals with low skill work if it means you'll be paid less because of it? The best of the best will always go to the companies that hire high skill workers, which will just hurt businesses than higher low skill workers, which in turn hurts low skill workers. Literally the best case scenario is that the CEOs of some companies get paid slightly less money.. which benefits who exactly?

You never even actually explained what the problem even was.

You can't have puppet CEO's.  Distinct companies, distinct leadership.  The moment you remove autonomy from the equation--even if it is a "contracted company"--it has to abide by the same rules that apply to 1st party employees.

 

Why would you have 20k in shares?  We're talking about annual compensation--calculated as of when it happened.  If you got 10k in stocks this year, that's 10k towards this year's income.  If those same stocks go up by 1500% next year, that doesn't matter; the stock value was calculated based on when it arrived in your hands (this year) and the going share price when it happened.  And it will be pretty easy to trace where people try to artificially price-control stocks in order to take a minimal hit to their compensation.  If your stocks go up in subsequent years after you got them--that's no different than you holding stocks outside of the company.

 

Starting a company is virtually always going to put you well below the 50x mark.  I mentioned that in my previous post.  There is no disincentive to entrepreneurship in that.  Nor does the idea that an MBA would choose to not work for a random company because of "getting paid less".  Unless you are at the VERY TOP of the pecking order--your compensation would easily fall within 50x, and be a virtual non-factor--regardless of who your employer is.  You could easily be pulling down $350,000-500,000 annually--with an employee making $10/hr. in the same company.  It's a non-sequitor.

 

What is the problem?  Well in the 1960's, 50x was the median for top vs. bottom wage.  It has ballooned over time to a median of over 350x.  In some cases, it is over 1600x.  Likewise, the minimum wage has primarily hurt small businesses the most (most major corporations are on board with raising it again--since they know it will merely be "catching up" to existing inflation).  And the minimum wage constantly needs tweaking to keep up with inflation (it was $4/hr. when I started working).  By tying minimum compensation to maximum compensation--the system will self-correct.  It also brings pay for leadership back down to earth from the stratosphere.

 

I mean, hell.  Look at the compensation a 4-star general makes.  Look at the span of control and responsibility that position come with.  Why should an organization employing roughly the same number of personnel as a service branch--have a CEO that is paid over 10 times (or 100 times) as much as the service branch's chief of staff?  They both have the same number of people in their organization.  And the military is arguably of an order of magnitude more important.  So why should some idiot like Bob Nardelli be able to bilk Home Depot out of HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in 6 years as CEO--when you have people making $10/hr.?  He added no value to the company; took it from 2nd to 25th in customer service in the industry; share prices tanked.  So there goes the argument that "you have to pay to play".   IMHO, the only people making that argument about CEO compensation are people either clueless about what leadership entails--or people who directly benefit from how skewed it is.

 

Again, this isn't "eat the rich".  This is letting a system auto-balance itself.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Bitter said:

2.13 is the minimum if you're on tipped wages which is if you get 30 or more in tips PER MONTH. Unless I'm understanding this wrong, which is pretty possible since I'm just a dumb wrench monkey.

Basically how I understand it is this. They can pay you $2.13 a hr as long as between that wage and the tips that are received you equal out to $7.25 an hour. Basically if your tips dont get you to that magic number then legally they have to pay you the difference. Of course a lot of small business dont follow federal and state laws. I can count the laws that were violated when I worked at Burger King for instance. 

[poochyena]

3 minutes ago, IPD said:

If you got 10k in stocks this year, that's 10k towards this year's income.  If those same stocks go up by 1500% next year, that doesn't matter

That would make hiring a new CEO insanely expensive, if not out-right impossible, as many boards require the ceo to own a large share of shares. You generally want the CEO to own a large number of shares as he'd have more financial incentive to keep the stock doing well. It would make kicking out a bad CEO even harder as there would be required a large finacial burden with hiring the new ceo as it comes with a large amount of shares.

8 minutes ago, IPD said:

Starting a company is virtually always going to put you well below the 50x mark.  I mentioned that in my previous post.  There is no disincentive to entrepreneurship in that.

STARTING, and after that? No one is starting a company because of starting pay, they do it because of the future investment. Its only logical to invest in starting a company with a larger return than one with a smaller return.

11 minutes ago, IPD said:

What is the problem?  Well in the 1960's, 50x was the median for top vs. bottom wage.  It has ballooned over time to a median of over 350x.  In some cases, it is over 1600x.  Likewise, the minimum wage has primarily hurt small businesses the most (most major corporations are on board with raising it again--since they know it will merely be "catching up" to existing inflation).  And the minimum wage constantly needs tweaking to keep up with inflation (it was $4/hr. when I started working).  By tying minimum compensation to maximum compensation--the system will self-correct.  It also brings pay for leadership back down to earth from the stratosphere.

You don't describe a situation, but not an actual problem here. How is that a problem?

11 minutes ago, IPD said:

Why should an organization employing roughly the same number of personnel as a service branch--have a CEO that is paid over 10 times (or 100 times) as much as the service branch's chief of staff? 

Why not?

12 minutes ago, IPD said:

So why should some idiot like Bob Nardelli be able to bilk Home Depot out of HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in 6 years as CEO--when you have people making $10/hr.? 

again, why not?

 

14 minutes ago, IPD said:

He added no value to the company

And thus, looking into it, he was kicked out by the board, so i'm not sure the issue you have here. Unless you are advocating we place laws that allow people to take back money from people if, years later, we decided their work wasn't good and didn't deserve the money. It would be the same story whether he was paid $1 or $1b.

[IPD]

Good.  I don't want hired-gun CEO's floating around.  If this cuts down on that--all the better.

 

Look, the problem is there whether you want to admit it or not.  Eliminating minimum wage altogether is never going to happen; it's a non-starter--even though it shouldn't be.  Putting a 50x rule out there is simply a way of addressing the problem and improving the situation across the board.

[poochyena]

13 hours ago, IPD said:

Good.  I don't want hired-gun CEO's floating around.  If this cuts down on that--all the better.

 

Look, the problem is there whether you want to admit it or not.  Eliminating minimum wage altogether is never going to happen; it's a non-starter--even though it shouldn't be.  Putting a 50x rule out there is simply a way of addressing the problem and improving the situation across the board.

Eliminate what problem?? You havent explain the actual issue

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

Eliminate what problem?? You havent explain the actual issue

Minimum wage real buying power has been going down since the seventies.  The problem I feel is the thing isn’t pegged to inflation but is a set number.  So it gets raised back up to a bit less than the last time it was raised, and then drops again.  The number that is still less than the last time it was raised is $15/hr.   Waitrons generally make fairly near that with tips.  It scan be lower or higher and tends to vary by time.  This does not include the lack of subsidation of schooling which has been dropping even more precipitously over the same period.  It used to be one could get by paying for school and living at a minimum level on a single part-time job.  That hasn’t been true in a very long time.

[Quackers101]

Disney movies from the 90s and the start of the 2000. while some might not be as culturely accurate, their charm and culture shown was quite nice with some classics. To movies that is not as "big" or sort of big, like lilo & stich, robin hood, a goofy movie (not really done by disney), Emperor's New Groove, Meet the Robinsons (disney/pixar), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (some might not hold, but good adventure and art).

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

Disney movies from the 90s and the start of the 2000. while some might not be as culturely accurate, their sharm and culture shown was quite nice with some classics. To movies that is not as "big" or sort of big, like lilo & stich, robin hood, a goofy movie (not really done by disney), Emperor's New Groove, Meet the Robinsons (disney/pixar), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (some might not hold, but good adventure and art).

I don’t know what sharm is