Watch: Billionaire CEO says unemployment 'has to jump' to put 'arrogant' workers in their placelocked

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 867 points –
Watch: Billionaire CEO says unemployment 'has to jump' to put 'arrogant' workers in their place
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We need to see some pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around... There's been a systemic change where the employees feel that the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around.

So said every vicious aristocrat throughout history.

Whether owner of slaves, serfs or workers - elites always believe it's their right to inflict harm on others.

Eat the rich, put us out of their misery.

As long as you commodify my labor, it has value.

Whose labor generates more value? The worker, who creates the product being sold to generate profit, or the boss who manages them?

Without the boss, there wouldn't be the worker or the company. Let's not pretend that the entire management does nothing.

But in all seriousness, think of strikes and the inherent power of labor.

How come management never strikes?

When workers strike and there are no workers in the building, the day comes to a screeching halt and NOTHING happens.

If there are no managers in the building, business continues as usual. Because it happens all of the fucking time. That's why your manager can go on vacation for weeks at a time and nobody gives a shit, but you're lucky if you get 5 days in a whole calendar year.

Management strikes have happened but it's ridiculously rare

Yes. What ever did humanity do for work before the invention of middle management?

It must have been chaos. Bedlam, even!

Since you're describing a society with no infrastructure whatsoever, yeah, basically.

No hierarchy doesn't mean the same as no infrastructure and never has.

It's a commonly repeated lie to equate them as meaning the same thing.

EDIT: Middle management is also a phenomenon of the Industrial Era. Prior to industrialization, humanity (and jobs) existed for thousands of years.

According to some here, that is impossible.

"Middle management" as a concept is simply "someone gives you directives and you give someone else directives" and that is literally as old as society itself.

The Mayans didn't build highways through a fucking jungle without middle management, and they were most definitely not "industrialized."

Also the whole "middle management bad" meme is pants on head stupid. Almost as stupid as your interest in going back to subsistence farming.

I never implied a necessary return to subsistence farming. I said that hierarchy is not necessary for society to exist, but you continue to equate the two.

Mayans didn't build highways, because the technology and the necessity were not present. But they did build roads. And bridges. And pressurized aqueducts. And they did it without an "Assistant Director of Construction."

Y'know. Infrastructure. With limited hierarchy.

Saying that human civilization and the necessary infrastructure to support it is impossible without traditional corporate hierarchy isn't just wrong, it's fucking propaganda. And it's propaganda designed specifically to depress the value of labor.

Mayans did build highways, made of elevated dirt, to connect their cities. We just discovered them via LiDAR

https://mymodernmet.com/lidar-radar-discovers-mayan-civilization/

It's so adorable that you suggest the fucking Mayans had "limited hierarchy." Maybe the funniest hot take I've read today, and today has been a doozy.

My dude, if you can only imagine one system of social organization as being correct or successful, I don't think it's my intellect you need to concern yourself with.

I exist in the real world, and thus am aware of many types of social organization that currently exist.

All of them with any substantial amount of people are hierarchal.

As an example the Mayans had both "Divine kings" and a well established system of patronage within their city-states.

Frankly, your assumptions about Mayan culture are pretty racist.

Most companies' performance do not have any correlation to upper management's actions

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We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around

Oh and I was sitting here thinking, that employers and employees share a mutually profitable relationship. Employees provide services to employers and employers provide financial gains for their employees.

But no, modern slavery it is. Alright.

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Tim Gurner, the founder and CEO of the Gurner Group

Landlord. He's a landlord.

This is the same guy who said that millennials can't afford houses because avocado toasts?

Is he really the origin of that whole thing?

Sometimes I get real sad that people would destroy their rentals and pour cement down the sink.

But then I wonder if these rentals are owned by this a-hole and well... good.

He actually says they (the rich owners) need to "hurt the economy". Economic terrorist.

We toppled Saddam because he wanted to ditch the dollar. I don't think this fuckstick or Elon Marshmallow man have the same level entourage.

All the Russian oligarchs what is like to have all your assets seized, and just me tell ya, Id suffocate from laughter before I ever gave one fuck about the obscenely rich.

I'm ready to Make America Great Again, by taxing any and all assets over 10million, annually, at 75%. The squeaky wheel gets it raised to 85% Back in the oft romanticized golden days the upper tax rate was 90%

Maybe I'm alone in this opinion but I don't think someone should be able to have one idea that sells and then never have to work again. Like, if we all worked 4 hrs a week then fine, but nowadays, with modern tax chattle slavery? Naw man. Edison, Tesla, those guys had to keep inventing. Mr Mypillow can go die under an overpass.

Fuck billionaires. We need a special forces team for the IRS, they can jump from helicopters with their calculator's ribbon.

This was gold to read.

I agree. Amassing such volume of wealth that a single individual jas more wealth than many sovereign nations put together is ludicrous.

I'm not against a person making money for their work and ideas but to the point where they can take other companies from business out of spite and mess with the entire economy for sport?

I like to say I don't mind paying taxes. In my country it buys me services and civilization, regardless being far from perfect. If I made a million a year, I could not spend it. I can't imagine what it takes to spend a million.

We toppled Saddam because he wanted to ditch the dollar

Lmao imagine thinking we went to war in Iraq over Saddam wanting to be poor.

I'm unfamiliar with the "tax chattle slavery" concept? What does it mean?

tax chattle slavery

I'm guessing the concept is that we are farmed as cattle because we consume and then the money we earn that pays for our food and shelter all gets funnelled upwards to billionaires and as an added bonus we pay taxes to pay for a government which serves the billionaires' interests not ours.

It is notable that we all talk about being part of national economies now whereas we used to talk about being a part of society.

It is notable that we all talk about being part of national economies now whereas we used to talk about being a part of society.

This ^

louder for those in the back:

THIS^

It doesn't mean anything. It's something white upper middle class kids say when they want to pretend that working for money is at all the same as chattel slavery (he also spelled it wrong), which is how slavery worked in the US.

It's a disgusting turn of phrase that demeans the horrors of actual slavery in the US.

75% on 10M is 7.5M. This is how you get people to end up paying $0, because that rate is far to high. Its like saying for every $1 you earn, you will get $0.25C. Yeah you wouldn't be happy with that.

30% of 10M is better than 0% of 10M. If I had that money and they wanted to charge me 75% tax, I would rather pay a smart accountant 1M and get to keep 9M.

let me introduce you to the progressive tax rates.

Imagine I earn 100k$/year. Let's say the tax rate is 30% at this point (I'm pulling these numbers from a hat), so I pay 30k, I'm left with 70k.

Next year I'm promoted to vice-CEO (I'm pulling these positions from a hat) and earn 500k$/year. Luckily my state says that at 250k$ the tax rate jumps to 50%. This means I pay 30% on all earnings up to 250k (30%250k=75k) and 50% on all above that (50%(500k-250k) = 125k), effectively I'm left with 300k in my pocket, more than 4x what I earned before despite the tax hike.

The next further year I became the final boss of capitalism - the CEO. Earnins jump again to 2mil$/year. Again luckily, my state says that all earnings above 1mil are taxed 75%. So again I pay the 30% on all earnings up to 250k (30%250k=75k), 50% on earnings between 250k and 1mil (50%(1m-250k) = 375k) and 75% on the earnings between 1m and 2m (75%*1m=750k). I'm left with 800k in my pocket, almost triple of what I earned last year despite the tax hike.

anyone richer than lower middle class will fight tooth and nail against progressive tax rates, but the fact is that at these levels of salary even if you're left with like 25% it's still a hideous pile of money.

I know what this is, but he didn't say that. But they said pay 75% on all assets worth 10M. So if you own a house or a yacht, car, etc worth 10M. They suggest you pay 7.5M in tax on that every year.

Ending the yacht and luxury car industry will surely help the poors make money by simply... removing a bunch of their jobs

Next year I’m promoted to vice-CEO

These are the people trying to tell you how to run an economy lol

anyone richer than lower middle class will fight tooth and nail against progressive tax rates

Literally has never been true

The keyword here is over 10M.

You know, not the 10 millions, but anything that exceeds 10M.

So if you have 11M, you'd pay 750.000.

IMO it's the only way to not bring back kings with unlimited power over normal people.

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He does not know that he is asking for a general strike.

But that is what he is asking for here.

This is an economy that lost billions in minutes because someone had access to a fake blue check-mark.

Humans like him are not to be feared.

Brave statement from a man who is only alive because the poors would rather not get arrested

See, Republican voters THIS is who you should be hating, not teachers teaching history.

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We all thought @MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee is obviously a parody account that is too cartoonishly evil to be believable, but then we find out that this guy exists.

This guy makes a great point! My employees have been significantly more uppity since the unemployment rate has been down, but at least they don’t have a union, I’ve heard horror stories from some of the other business owners at the country club.

If this is an attempt at comedy, it's a poor one. Sarcasm is over valued.

It's not sarcasm, it's satire.

Did you not read the previous comment that summoned him here??

“We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around,”

Whelp I guess if you work for him in any capacity you should show Mr. DumbFuck who actually needs who to survive.

I have the urge to write a wall of text but I literally can’t. This shit is a no brainer, imagine being yet another know it all trust fund baby who gets their way by hurting people into manipulation.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Does he not know that they are selling their labour to him? He is the client that needs them, they don't need him. They can take their product elsewhere.

"We need to see unemployment rise," he argued. "Unemployment has to jump 40 to 50 percent, in my view.

this actually made me laugh and feel way better; he's just a complete fucking moron and around as cruel as average

He's just saying what the Bourgeoisie has been thinking and doing since the beginning of capitalism, nothing new to see here.

Elites have been saying this well before capitalism. Capitalism sucks, but heirarchy is the problem.

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Janet Yellen wrote a memo in 1996 about this.

https://theintercept.com/2023/01/24/unemployment-inflation-janet-yellen/

The rich want workers to have weak bargaining power. It's class warfare, plain and simple.

Correct. This is why I have a problem with people (ironically, mostly poor) who call non-working people lazy. It's not laziness to insist on making somewhere near the value you produce. If a company makes $250,000/yr off an employee, it's unethical to nickel and dime then of making $30,000 to $40,000 or judge them for not working for $30,000.

It’s not laziness to insist on making somewhere near the value you produce

This is not why most non-working people don't work. Mostly it is childcare costs or disabilities.

If a company makes $250,000/yr off an employee, it’s unethical to nickel and dime then of making $30,000 to $40,000

People are paid based on the market value of their skills, not the value they provide the company. You sell your skills. If you don't have skills that cannot be found elsewhere (e.g. you do manual labor), your bargaining power is diluted because literally anyone can do your job.

This is the reason unions were invented.

This is not why most non-working people don’t work. Mostly it is childcare costs or disabilities.

Fair point, but for most it still amounts to making less than your work is worth.

People are paid based on the market value of their skills, not the value they provide the company.

Which is a breach of the EMH, and evidence the whole process fails. The more the Efficient Market Hypothesis is false, the more employees not having more leverage is a failure of capitalism. If goods are not traded somewhere near "real value", then supply and demand go from being the effective tool capitalists claim to being downright wasteful at best, and Police-Theft at worst.

And for the record, many people ARE paid based on the market value of their skills. Just ask fishermen. It's just still a minority payment structure because companies have no problem manipulating the labor pool, taking short-term losses to keep wages down. If you go back less than 100 years, they were doing it as blatantly as having towns where all goods in and out had to go through them and employees were paid in credit for those goods.

This is the reason unions were invented.

Unions are, and always will be, the small band-aid for big problems. I support them (though I've seen a few shifty ones who used non-voting workers as leverage for benefits for voting ones), but they will never solve the problem. A well-governed economy is one where the unions sit back and go "well shit, we got nothing to ask for because we already have it, and if we ask for more it'll bankrupt the employer". I'd like to point reference again to many classes of fishermen, paid in shares. You got 18 year old kids making $200,000/yr "unskilled" (scallopers, for reference), NOT because there's nobody else willing to do the job for less, but because they're paid by tradition based upon the value they create.

Which is a breach of the EMH, and evidence the whole process fails

No it isn't, because,

If goods are not traded somewhere near “real value”, then supply and demand go from being the effective tool capitalists claim to being downright wasteful at best, and Police-Theft at worst.

This just shows your misunderstanding of the concept of value.

A well-governed economy is one where the unions sit back and go “well shit, we got nothing to ask for because we already have it, and if we ask for more it’ll bankrupt the employer”

Here we largely agree. Unions are kind of like the LGBTQ or deaf communities, in that ideally they would have no reason to exist.

As a side note you may want to consider that fishermen are paid well because it's not a job many people want to do or can do (as it is often dangerous and always tied to a specific locality) and thus competition for the role is not as broad, meaning wages go up exponentially. Same reason linemen, which is also about the same skill level, make so much money.

Just because you don't agree (or didn't understand) with what I was saying about the concept of value doesn't mean I am misunderstanding it. You don't have a monopoly on how value works.

Have a great day. I don't intend to reply again.

I don’t intend to reply again.

Always cracks me up when people say this. Peace out bro, thanks for not sharing more misinformation. Have a great day yourself.

I would say that he's an aristocrat complaining about the uppity bourgeois. Many of the tech worker he's talking about are upper middle class.

The modern usage of the term Bourgeoisie typically does not reference "the middle class" but "the owning class". The wealth distribution of capitalism has changed since the 1780s.

Remember, in France there was a time where being a successful business owner had a ceiling because you couldn't easily buy power with money, so you were "middle-class".

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This the people that work for his company need to learn the definition of Secessio plebis and execute it.

As global demographics begin their decline the value of labour can only come up. Plus the more specialised the workers the more power they possess. This guy is a delusional moron who’s fighting inevitable changes. In order to get 40% unemployment they have to assume massive losses, and we know they do anything to prevent small losses, so threat is more empty than his brain.

Just read the article, and holy shit is this guy delusional. 50 percent unemployment would cause massive unrest, if not total collapse of many branches of the economy. The fact he wasn't laughed out of the room speaks volumes about these billionare circlejerk events.

Not to mention he seems to be confused as to why business owners don't already just layoff a ton of people to send some sort of message and put them in their place.

Hmmm... I wonder why that hasn't happened... its almost as if there was some reason business owners would actually need good workers... That can't be tho, must be something else... 🤔

Businesses don't need the working class silly, they take on the burden of employing them out of the goodness of their hearts.

😂

It was like someone here on Lemmy who was talking about how it was the taxpayers who made 'meaningful contributions' to society. I was like, "what about the people who make your food and clean your hotel room when you go on that luxury vacation?"

There's this weird balance with businesses. While narcissists and sociopaths make the wealthiest business owners, many successful business owners are merely "unpleasant".

Look at Musk. If he were competent (and the Twitter thing wasn't originally just an attempt to manipulate stock prices), the whole "buy and gut" attitude can be quite effective at making money. Dump compliance folks. Dump critical personnel and let them "figure it the fuck out", etc. I've seen businesses run by sociopaths do things like that all the time.

And hell, let's look at Musk a bit more. Everyone talks about how much money Twitter is losing. Nobody is talking about how much money Musk is losing (or not losing). First, a full 1/3 of the purchase price are loans in Twitter's name (!!!). That puts Musk on the hook for only $30B directly... which he paid in equity of other companies (making the purchase tax-sheltered).

Burned utterly to the ground (the product and the staff), 2023 might be their first profitable year since 2019 (albeit as a MUCH smaller company), and I'm guessing Musk is collecting a fair chunk of change in salary and bonuses. Ironically, I'm guessing he's still going to amortize the "losses" as he builds his own ROI.

Yes, a better leader would have created a successful Twitter. And YES, Musk never really wanted to spend that much on it. But I firmly believe he's taking it to the bank anyway.

And as horrific as most CEO's are, a lot of them don't have this type of behavior in them. Which is the other side of the "reason business owners need good workers". Not every CEO is willing to embrace "profit-focused mass-layoffs"

I was in disbelief when I read that too, but on second pass the quote was the rate should increase by 40-50%. So to 6% from 4% or whatever the current rate is in Australia.

Still, wishing to fucking double the unemployment because the proles have the audacity to want to be treated as human beings is fucking disgusting.

According to this ambulatory pile of turds the workers should approach their employers like Oliver Twist wanting a second helping of gruel - "May I have my wages, sir, please?" The owner class has gotten way too comfortable saying the quiet part out loud.

Oh I’m not arguing how insane it is. These people are literally delusional, and the fact they’re constructing these fictions means they’re beyond reach. Hes talking about 250,00 people losing they’re jobs.

(Also double is 100% increase)

Also double is 100% increase

Man, I really cannot math today

If you read the article, he says a 40% increase in unemployment. That would like (for simple math) increasing the rate from 5% to 7%.

The current unemployment rate in the US is 3.8% and Aus it's 3.5%. So he wants them at 5.3% and 4.9%, respectively.

Sounds like someone’s previous policies led to a brain drain in their business and now he’s hoping other employers will blindly follow this rhetoric (and shoot themselves in the foot) so he can poach their employees for his company gain.

I’m fine with billionaires eating each other so we don’t have to.

We should seize all his shit

Says the lazy and CLEARLY arrogant billionaire...

Property developer...

It's funny how the mind makes odd connections but for some reason William Burroughs's 'Words of Advice for Young People' springs to mind:

We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here

We're trying to improve our public image

Build up a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image

"Interdependence" is the keyword, "enlightened interdependence"

Life in all its rich variety, take a little, leave a little

However, by the inexorable logistics of the vampiric process

They always take more than they leave...

Billionaires need to touch grass

I’d prefer if they tried to touch the bottom of the sea in an OceanGate submersible.

Yeah, touch grass as their corpse falls into the grave.

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Counterpoint, corporate bankruptcies have to jump to put arrogant Billionaire CEOs in their place.

There's always more work that needs doing, but there are only so many CEO positions out there. Hell, the gig economy has shown that the minimal number of people in a "company" is literally 1, so we don't even need CEOs at all. Seems to me that CEOs should be careful about throwing stones because their house is looking awfully glass-like.

Righto wish version of Nigel Thornberry, you keep attacking us poor arrogant workers and we'll keep prepping to eat the rich, which as you make us poorer and poorer and raise prices of everything, is starting to become less of a mantra and more of a survival tactic.

I would like mine served with a side of mashed potatoes and garnished with thyme, please.

it's stupid that you aren't even allowed to say like 'i wish a TOS violation would happen'

No I honestly wish it harm and ill health. If it's acting sub-human it's getting treated that way. ( :

This post was locked for multiple violations of instance rules. Please don’t incite violence in this community.

We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around... There's been a systemic change where the employees feel that the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."

Gurner then predicted that enacting massive layoffs would lead to "less arrogance in the employment market."

I'm a fairly unapologetic capitalist and think overall it's a pretty good model. But that might be the most staggering out of touch arrogant opinion I've ever read and that's REALLY saying something. Not everyone wants their own business (I sure don't). And businesses need employees to do their thing. It's a symbiotic relationship. How can he not see that?

Seems like you’re the one who is more out of touch to be honest…

Billionaires REALLY understand how things work. They have class consciousness. They know it’s us against them.

Lemmy is such a confusing place. People yell at you and downvote for expressing just about any opinion, any direction. Guess I'll go fuck myself then.

He's not wrong about that, but I think the root of the problem is with management. There's a problem with lazy and terrible management, not workers. At the company I work for, there are teams and teams of lazy good for nothing people everywhere. Most of them maybe do an hour or two of real work every week. When I talk to them, they are bored, aimless, and feel as though their work doesn't really matter. I strongly believe it's due to lack of leadership. Not management. Leadership. The department has no real goals. There are no projects solving real problems. Everything is just maintaining some janky tech debt or building some manual process because management likes their spreadsheets a certain way.

When there's a liquidation of management and a culling down to actual leaders, the workers will want to work. They'll find things to do because that's what people do in a good environment under a good leader.

The arrogance is primarily a management problem. There are too many in power that are at our above their level of incompetence. It's the Peter Principle on steroids.