Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture by kpo

http://mshades.deviantart.com/art/Firefly-Inara-Fat-Children-547390762

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quotes from that article:

The average Swiss worker earned the equivalent of $91,574 a year in 2013, while the average American worker earned only $55,708. But the real story is that the average American had to work 219 hours more per year for this lesser salary.

Compared with taxes in the United States, Swiss taxes are easy on the average worker. For example, a worker earning the average wage of $91,574 would pay only about 5 percent of that in Swiss federal income tax.

The average adult in Switzerland has a net worth worth of $513,000 according to the 2013 Credit Suisse Wealth Report. Average net worth among adults in the US is half that.

When I gave birth in Switzerland, I was encouraged to stay five days in the hospital. So I did. The $3,000 bill for the birth and hospital stay was paid in full by my Swiss insurance. The average price for a vaginal birth in the US is $30,000 and includes an average of less than a two-day hospital stay.

Returning to the United States made me realize who I've become: someone who can't believe companies aren't required to pay into a pension fund beyond Social Security. Someone who is offended that most women in America don't have the maternity benefits she had. And someone who is mad that she must own a car for lack of efficient public transportation.
www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance

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Saturday, July 25, 2015 9:59 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

That's part of the benefit of not having to support a military-industrial complex which smothers the globe and sucks up half of all taxes. The Swiss are prepared to defend ... themselves.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, July 25, 2015 5:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Why it's good to live in Switzerland: work-life balance, wages, taxes, healthcare, public transport, etc etc

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance

Does it help if you thieve and steal gazillions of wealth from everybody in the world, pretending that your Nazi thug clients are credible owners of all the loot?
How many nations COULDN'T make a go of it by stealing from every honest person on the planet, or conspiring with the Nazis?

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Saturday, July 25, 2015 6:44 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

That was 70 years ago, too long ago to account for Swiss wealth today. Roughly 20% stolen wealth was returned from Switzerland as of 2005. But "At least $115-$175 billion (2005 prices) remains unreturned despite numerous clear and explicit international agreements ..." However, Swiss GDP in 2005 was $400 billion. And the Swiss have been accumulating wealth at that comparative rate for many decades. A single, relatively insignificant, one time infusion of stolen wealth 70 years ago can't account for the magnitude of Swiss wealth today. Or, to calculate it out, if the stolen wealth represented at most 1/2 of Swiss GDP in 1945, the Swiss accumulated GDP since then is 140 TIMES that amount. Stolen wealth represents much less than 1% of Swiss wealth.

And too, the AVERAGE Swiss citizen never did then, and certainly doesn't now, have access to any of that wealth.

You'll have to account for their superior standard of living some other way.

I would suggest that being bankers to the world is a high-profit business, that, if adequately taxed and redistributed to the people, would contribute significantly to a high standard of living. So, the first conclusion to be drawn is an economy needs a high profit GLOBAL business, second, that wealth needs to be taxed, and third, that military spending is dead weight on an economy.

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=n
y_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:CHE:NOR:SWE&hl=en&dl=en
http://jcpa.org/article/restitution-of-holocaust-era-assets-promises-a
nd-reality/

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, July 26, 2015 8:40 AM

rezident owtsidr

It duznt jibe with the American cattle ranch manajment style.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Sunday, July 26, 2015 9:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Does it help if {the Swiss} thieve and steal gazillions of wealth from everybody in the world, pretending that your Nazi thug clients are credible owners of all the loot?

How many nations COULDN'T make a go of it by stealing from every honest person on the planet, or conspiring with the Nazis?

To be really blunt, if the Swiss are rich today partly because of Nazis stealing Jewish wealth, then Americans should be fabulously more wealthy than the Swiss because of Europeans stealing the wealth of Native Americans.

And slavery should still be giving an extra wealth boost to the US states that were once part of the Confederacy. The Swiss did have something that looked much like slavery, so there is that. www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/opinion/slaverys-shadow-on-switzerland.html
www.swissinfo.ch/eng/a-dark-chapter-in-history_recognising-switzerland
-s--slave-children-/35429120

And the Swiss were in the African slave trade. Like all western countries, Switzerland must answer questions over the source of its wealth.
www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-played-key-role-in-the-slave-trade/34
72130

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, July 26, 2015 11:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

OK, I know this is going to sound a little conspiratorial (yanno, like almost everything else I post

) but I recall seeing a show that tried to find the treasure of the Knights Templar, who - in addition to providing protection for Christians making pilgrimage to the Holy Land- also started the first international banking system. Instead of taking cash money to the Holy Land, where it might get robbed from you, the Knights Templar handed out letters of credit that could only be used by that person, based on the wealth you had "at home".

Quote:
By 1150, the Order's original mission of guarding pilgrims had changed into a mission of guarding their valuables through an innovative way of issuing letters of credit, an early precursor of modern banking. Pilgrims would visit a Templar house in their home country, depositing their deeds and valuables. The Templars would then give them a letter which would describe their holdings. Modern scholars have stated that the letters were encrypted with a cipher alphabet based on a Maltese Cross; however there is some disagreement on this, and it is possible that the code system was introduced later, and not something used by the medieval Templars themselves.While traveling, the pilgrims could present the letter to other Templars along the way, to "withdraw" funds from their accounts. This kept the pilgrims safe since they were not carrying valuables, and further increased the power of the Templars. The Knights' involvement in banking grew over time into a new basis for money, as Templars became increasingly involved in banking activities. One indication of their powerful political connections is that the Templars' involvement in usury did not lead to more controversy within the Order and the church at large. Officially the idea of lending money in return for interest was forbidden by the church, but the Order sidestepped this with clever loopholes, such as a stipulation that the Templars retained the rights to the production of mortgaged property. Or as one Templar researcher put it, "Since they weren't allowed to charge interest, they charged rent instead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Knights_Templar

The Knights became fabulously wealthy from their banking activity, and by soliciting money and the sons of the nobility "at home" with the idea that this would help protect the Holy Land and gain an entrance in heaven.

Because the Knights Templar owned large tracts of land, were fabulously wealthy, "international" (not bound by fealty to any specific king, by papal decree), had expressed a desire to have their own "state", AND were headquarterd in France, King Phillip of France decided to destroy them first.

Quote:
At dawn on Friday, October 13, 1307, scores of French Templars were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured in locations such as the tower at Chinon, into admitting heresy and other sacrilegious offenses in the Order. Then they were put to death.

In the end, the Pope disbanded the Knights Templar and ordered all of their assets transferred to other knight orders.

Aside from their land holdings (which were transfered) the Templars had portable wealth- jewels and gold.

All of that is to suggest that one place where the Knights may have taken refuge is Switzerland, which up until then was a land of primitive goat-herders, but became shortly afterwards a region known for its military acumen. In other words, Swiss banking may have even had its start in the 1300s with a remnant of the Knights Templar and treasure preserved from their former banking empire.

----------------

As far as Swiss banking and the Swiss economy is concerned, Switzerland does not have the highest percentage of bankers. Switzerland's manufacturing economy is slightly higher than that of Europe as a whole (although its agricultural sector is, not surprisingly, lower).

http://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/european-union.switzerland/
economy

While there aren't statistics for "banking" per se, there are stats for "financial services". Switzerland is second (after Singapore), the United States is THIRD, and the UK is fourth.

Switzerland's GDP is 10% from financial transactions, it does represent a large portion of the economy, but Ireland (which is dirt poor) is second on that list, so clearly that list isn't reflective of "wealth".

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/by-the-numbers_is-switzerland-really-the-c
ountry-of-bankers-/40473658

All of that is to say that "banking" isn't a good enough explanation for Switzerland's lifestyle. Maybe part of the explanation is income equality. The GINI index is a measure of income inequality (higher GINI = higher inequality). The GINI of Switzerland is 34. By comparison, the GINI of Norway is 26, and the United States is 41.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015 5:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
That was 70 years ago, too long ago to account for Swiss wealth today. Roughly 20% stolen wealth was returned from Switzerland as of 2005. But "At least $115-$175 billion (2005 prices) remains unreturned despite numerous clear and explicit international agreements ..." However, Swiss GDP in 2005 was $400 billion. And the Swiss have been accumulating wealth at that comparative rate for many decades. A single, relatively insignificant, one time infusion of stolen wealth 70 years ago can't account for the magnitude of Swiss wealth today. Or, to calculate it out, if the stolen wealth represented at most 1/2 of Swiss GDP in 1945, the Swiss accumulated GDP since then is 140 TIMES that amount. Stolen wealth represents much less than 1% of Swiss wealth.

And too, the AVERAGE Swiss citizen never did then, and certainly doesn't now, have access to any of that wealth.

You'll have to account for their superior standard of living some other way.

I would suggest that being bankers to the world is a high-profit business, that, if adequately taxed and redistributed to the people, would contribute significantly to a high standard of living. So, the first conclusion to be drawn is an economy needs a high profit GLOBAL business, second, that wealth needs to be taxed, and third, that military spending is dead weight on an economy.

70 years worth of interest and return from stolen goods has no effect?
I had no idea you were THAT bad at math.
And funding the national treasury with the income and taxation of that stolen loot in comparison to other nations having that stolen treasure missing from their reserves and revenues makes no difference? I can't tell if you are proclaiming that you are really stupid or you only profess to be naive.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015 7:36 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

AHEM! I had no idea YOU were that bad at math!

Shall we agree that interest does NOT keep up with inflation? And that inflation affects wealth and GDP equally over the decades? And that since I used the maximum outstanding wealth as the basis of my calculation, and used inflation rather than interest, that I calculated the MAXIMUM wealth over the decades?

Now - my calculation involved FRACTIONS of Swiss GDP, not absolute amounts. I did that to specifically avoid inflation calculations. So it doesn't matter if the wealth was 20 million in 1945, or 150 million in 1996, it remained the same FRACTION of the GDP since they were both affected equally by inflation.

And by ratioing out the wealth FRACTION of the GDP, and adding up the naturally accruing GDP FRACTIONS over the decades, I calculated out the FRACTION that one time wealth was of the entire accumulated GDP over the decades.

No interest calculations required.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2015 8:03 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

70 years worth of interest and return from stolen goods has no effect?
I had no idea you were THAT bad at math.
And funding the national treasury with the income and taxation of that stolen loot in comparison to other nations having that stolen treasure missing from their reserves and revenues makes no difference? I can't tell if you are proclaiming that you are really stupid or you only profess to be naive.

If JewelStaiteFan is right then Switzerland must have surpassed the USA immediately after WWII in the Nazi Loot Theory. Except the Swiss did not surpass Americans for 40 years. Something else beside this Nazi Loot Theory was actually happening in Switzerland.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/countries/1W-CH-US?
display=graph
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&type=meta
data&series=NY.GDP.PCAP.CD#
During Bush 41, the Swiss passed the USA in GDP per person, and the Swiss never looked back. It has more to do with Republicans being less competent than Swiss having more Nazi Gold to invest.

JewelStaiteFan could be the next William F. Buckley contemptuously explaining about how the American rich cannot help the poor because there is not enough money to go around. If only America had Nazi gold, as Switzerland does, only then could America afford to raise the minimum wage, per Buckley, the richest commentator in America.

Watch Buckley sneer at and deride the poor in this video from 48 years ago. Buckley knew the poor never would rise up and kick his ass, so why should he treat them respectfully? Buckley drips contempt for lesser people. And he always has another rationalization for why the way things are is the way things must be. Again with the not enough money to change anything because America doesn't have the Swiss's Nazi gold:

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 6:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
That was 70 years ago, too long ago to account for Swiss wealth today. Roughly 20% stolen wealth was returned from Switzerland as of 2005. But "At least $115-$175 billion (2005 prices) remains unreturned despite numerous clear and explicit international agreements ..." However, Swiss GDP in 2005 was $400 billion. And the Swiss have been accumulating wealth at that comparative rate for many decades. A single, relatively insignificant, one time infusion of stolen wealth 70 years ago can't account for the magnitude of Swiss wealth today. Or, to calculate it out, if the stolen wealth represented at most 1/2 of Swiss GDP in 1945, the Swiss accumulated GDP since then is 140 TIMES that amount. Stolen wealth represents much less than 1% of Swiss wealth.

And too, the AVERAGE Swiss citizen never did then, and certainly doesn't now, have access to any of that wealth.

You'll have to account for their superior standard of living some other way.

I would suggest that being bankers to the world is a high-profit business, that, if adequately taxed and redistributed to the people, would contribute significantly to a high standard of living. So, the first conclusion to be drawn is an economy needs a high profit GLOBAL business, second, that wealth needs to be taxed, and third, that military spending is dead weight on an economy.

70 years worth of interest and return from stolen goods has no effect?
I had no idea you were THAT bad at math.
And funding the national treasury with the income and taxation of that stolen loot in comparison to other nations having that stolen treasure missing from their reserves and revenues makes no difference? I can't tell if you are proclaiming that you are really stupid or you only profess to be naive.

For those without reference: keep in mind that many people generate retirement income, merely trickling in for only about 35 years to become a few million for retirement

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 7:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
AHEM! I had no idea YOU were that bad at math!

Shall we agree that interest does NOT keep up with inflation?

No. This sometimes occurs, but normally interest and return rates do not fall behind inflation.

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 8:11 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

K- Shall we agree that interest does NOT keep up with inflation?
J- No. This sometimes occurs, but normally interest and return rates do not fall behind inflation.

Normally they do.

The interest the bank charges on a loan is inevitably greater than the interest it returns on investment or savings. That's true of any business. They receive more money than they return in value. It's the only way to make a profit. What people are charged is a measure of inflation which is greater. What an investment returns in interest is the rate of return which is lesser.

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 8:14 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

For those without reference: keep in mind that many people generate retirement income, merely trickling in for only about 35 years to become a few million for retirement.

You're obviously not understanding the concept of a ratio. I won't be able to explain that to you here. Also it's not true that one can put in only a few dollars a week and end up a millionaire, even over 3 or 4 decades.

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 10:01 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Swiss have got more money than the USA per person, but prices are higher for the Swiss, making their purchasing power a little less than US. A Swiss and an American have about the same purchasing power today. The real trend is how much things have improved in both countries since 1950.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=RGDPCHCHA625NUPN,RGDPC
HUSA625NUPN,

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, July 29, 2015 11:26 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Second, I know you're making a point about historical wealth - sources and growth.

But I just wanted to add that there's a problem with per capita figures - they're averages. A few REALLY wealthy people can raise the average of the miserable many. While the averages may be similar between the two countries, the life experiences of the people aren't.

Also, Signy, yes I forgot about the Swiss high-tech economy. Just a couple of weeks ago I was talking with one of the service reps I know, who used to work for Dionex (US) (acquired by Thermo, of course), and now she works for Metrohm AG (Swiss). But speaking of average standard of living and total wealth - taxes aren't the only means of redistributing wealth. She says Metrohm is light years ahead of Dionex/ Thermo in how they treat employees. So, there's that, too. A different business ethic has evolved over the years when you compare one country to the next.

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Thursday, July 30, 2015 7:48 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Second, I know you're making a point about historical wealth - sources and growth.

But I just wanted to add that there's a problem with per capita figures - they're averages. A few REALLY wealthy people can raise the average of the miserable many. While the averages may be similar between the two countries, the life experiences of the people aren't.

Poverty rates are a forceful way to compare two countries without being distracted by trivia about the lives of the super-rich in each country. But there is always other distractions: definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations. The USA poverty line is at www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm#thresholds

Switzerland’s poverty line is 2,200 Swiss francs (1,800 euros, $2,466) per month for a single person and 4,050 francs for a couple with two children.

While many Americans would dream of such sums, Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries in the continent, with sky-high rents and compulsory private health insurance eating into household budgets.

Poverty in the USA is around 15%. Figures from the Swiss federal statistics office showed that 7.7 percent of the nation of eight million people lived below the poverty line in 2012. http://business.inquirer.net/174776/poverty-rate-stubborn-in-rich-swit
zerland

These country to country comparisons of poverty never do settle anything because there is always some wiseguy who claims that USA poverty is really a low 4.5%, which is just a clever way to mislead and destroy all discussions. www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/15/the-true-us-poverty-rate-i
s-4-5-not-14-5/

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Friday, July 31, 2015 10:37 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Poverty rates are a forceful way to compare two countries without being distracted by trivia about the lives of the super-rich in each country.

That's an interesting idea.

We've also debated things like infant mortality, low and high birth-weight, lifespan, overall and male v female literacy rates, and other figures that show how the overall population is faring, Here average numbers are hard to throw with exceptional extremes - there's only so long even a very wealthy person can live, for example.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 12:29 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Interesting, Switzerland is a European country that I really struggle to admire.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 6:32 AM

rezident owtsidr

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
To be really blunt, if the Swiss are rich today partly because of Nazis stealing Jewish wealth, then Americans should be fabulously more wealthy than the Swiss because of Europeans stealing the wealth of Native Americans.

The US iz fabulously more wealthy than Switzerland. Yes, badly ditributed, and not all directly derived from stealing the Injunz land, but still, your point haz problemz.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Monday, August 3, 2015 7:13 AM

rezident owtsidr

More WF Buckley:

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Monday, August 3, 2015 8:13 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Look at the CEO at Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit card processing firm. Dan Price is raising the minimum wage at Gravity in stages over three years to $70,000 per year. Price knows he would be wealthier and his life easier if he did not. Reading through the story and it is clear that Price came from a different culture than the typical American CEO. Switzerland has a different culture, too. www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-agai
nst-the-raise-that-roared.html

America's Top 1% hope Dan Price's business fails. That hope is all you need to understand. The 1% say they are not hoping for failure, but that is not true.

As for other business leaders in Mr. Price’s social circle, they were split on whether he was a brilliant strategist or simply nuts. As much as they respected him, they were also disturbed. “I worry how that’s going to impact other businesses,” said Steve Duffield, the chief executive of the DACO Corporation, who met Mr. Price through the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in Seattle. “We can’t afford to do that. For most businesses, employees are the biggest expense and they need to manage those costs in order to survive.”

Mr. Canlis, a co-owner of his family-named restaurant, told Mr. Price the pay raise at Gravity “makes it harder for the rest of us.”

Roger Reynolds, a co-owner of a wealth management company, said his discussion of the pay plan with Mr. Price got heated. “My wife and I got so frustrated with him at a cocktail party, we literally left,” said Mr. Reynolds, who complained that Mr. Price unfairly accused him of measuring his self-worth solely in terms of money and trying to hold somebody else down.

Imagine American business being more like Swiss business. There would be more stories like this one:

Mario Zahariev, who runs Pop’s Pizza & Pasta, switched to Gravity after seeing Mr. Price on the news. When he learned his monthly processing fees would drop to $900 from $1,700, Mr. Zahariev decided, “I was not going to keep the difference for myself.” He used the savings to raise the salaries of his eight employees.

Pop’s Pizza aside, Mr. Price’s plan is not easily replicated, said Nick Hanauer, a Seattle venture capitalist and an early promoter of the city’s $15 minimum wage law. Still, he noted, “These individual acts can create a new kind of perception of what’s possible and what’s righteous.” After all, he said, two years ago, no one would ever have guessed higher minimum wage laws would be catching fire in cities around the country. “Who can tell what that last thing is that catalyzes big change?”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 3, 2015 3:53 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I hear you on that one!

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Interesting, Switzerland is a European country that I really struggle to admire.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 6:28 PM

rezident owtsidr

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Look at the CEO at Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit card processing firm.

Its really amazing that a company that haz no actual product and only a 2nd hand connection to customerz uv the money shuffling industry can pay its employeez so much.

And you never hear rite wingerz saying 'cant afford to pay executivez so much', its alwayz 'you hav to pay that kind uv money to attract good talent'.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Wednesday, August 5, 2015 7:47 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Look at the CEO at Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit card processing firm.

Its really amazing that a company that haz no actual product and only a 2nd hand connection to customerz uv the money shuffling industry can pay its employeez so much.

And you never hear rite wingerz saying 'cant afford to pay executivez so much', its alwayz 'you hav to pay that kind uv money to attract good talent'.

239 Years Ago, Adam Smith Predicted Fury of Seattle Business at CEO Who Pays Workers Well
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/03/239-years-ago-adam-smith
-predicted-anger-seattle-business-ceo-pays-workers-well/

Dan Price, the CEO of a small Seattle credit card processing company called Gravity Payments, announced several months ago that over the next three years he’ll gradually raise the minimum salary there to $70,000.

How did his counterparts at other businesses react? Let’s get a prediction from Adam Smith, who wrote this 239 years ago in the most famous book about economics ever published, The Wealth of Nations:

“Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals.”

Was Adam Smith right? As a recent New York Times story demonstrates, he called it precisely.

One of the most peculiar aspects of U.S. politics is that Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations are vociferously celebrated by conservatives. Here’s what one loyal Reaganite said at a memorial after Reagan’s death in 2004:

Ever since Ronald Reagan studied classical economics at Eureka College, Adam Smith was his hero.

But if Smith were alive today he’d be considered a crazy radical. In addition to his claim about employers, here are some other things he wrote in The Wealth of Nations:

• “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” Book III, Chapter III

• “Men of inferior wealth combine to defend those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs. … Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” Book V, Chapter I

• “High profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. … Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” Book I, Chapter IX

• “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from [business], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public …” Book I, Chapter XI

• “The rate of profit … is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.” Book I, Chapter XI

• “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Book I, Chapter X

I’m not sure how exactly the U.S. Right came to love Adam Smith so much. I guess they just never read him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, August 6, 2015 3:12 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"I’m not sure how exactly the U.S. Right came to love Adam Smith so much. I guess they just never read him."

The same way they came to love social Darwinism without ever having read Darwin's proposals about evolution?

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Sunday, October 25, 2015 8:31 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The $70,000 minimum wage is paying off for that Seattle company
Revenue is rising at twice the rate it was before CEO Dan Price decided to raise pay

Oct 25, 2015 5:38 p.m. ET By Silvia Ascarelli
www.marketwatch.com/story/the-70000-minimum-wage-is-paying-off-for-tha
t-seattle-company-2015-10-25

Gravity Payments, that Seattle credit-card-payments processing company that said all its employees would earn at least $70,000 in three years, is defying the doomsayers.

Revenue is growing at twice the rate it was before Chief Executive Dan Price made his announcement this spring, according to a report on Inc.com. Profits have doubled. Customer retention is up, despite some who left because they disagreed with the decision or feared service would suffer. (Price said he’d make up the extra cost by cutting his own $1.1 million pay.)

Barely any employees have left — although some outsiders, including some commenting on a MarketWatch article about the decision earlier this year, warned that employees could start putting in less effort because everyone is being paid the same regardless.

Perhaps not surprisingly, plenty of people want to work for Gravity. One who now works there is a former Yahoo executive who says she took an 80%-to-85% pay cut to take the job, according to Inc.

The company has hired an extra 10 people to handle the anticipated new business, Gravity’s vice president of operations, Maria Haley, told Inc.

Price, meanwhile, has invested another $3 million in the company after selling all his stocks, emptying his retirement accounts and taking out mortgages on two homes, according to Inc. (He told the New York Times three months ago that he was “renting out my house right now to try to make ends meet.)

“Having to depend on modest pay is not a bad thing,” he told the magazine, speaking about himself. “It will help me stay focused.”

Still hanging over him is a lawsuit filed by his brother, a Gravity co-founder and minority shareholder, that alleges Dan Price had previously paid himself “excessive compensation.” Lucas Price’s lawsuit isn’t related to the pay increases, Inc. said, citing Lucas Price’s lawyer.

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Monday, October 26, 2015 4:07 AM

SHINYGOODGUY

I just thought this may be useful info:

https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-there-any-homeless-people-in-Switzerla
nd-Or-no-one-is-begging-on-streets

See, even Switzerland has homeless........?

SGG

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Sunday, August 14, 2016 8:16 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Gravity Payments' $70K minimum salary: CEO Dan Price shares result. Aug. 11, 2016
www.today.com/money/gravity-payments-70k-minimum-salary-ceo-dan-price-
shares-results-t101678

It's been nearly a year and a half since CEO Dan Price announced plans to slash his roughly $1 million salary to $70,000, also making that the minimum salary for all the employees at his credit card processing company, Gravity Payments. The move shocked the business world and thrust the 32-year-old into the spotlight.

Since then, a lot has changed. After the initial flurry of praise — and then resumes, of course — there was the inevitable criticism: Was this all really a clever publicity stunt?

Looking back, Price insists it wasn't. But he also knows the experiment was, at least in part, a deliberate business move.

"It's not like I'm throwing money into a charity and having no hope of return," he told Today recently by phone. "I view this as a long-term investment."

A 'Happier' Workplace

Since the initial pay hike, there's been a baby boom at the office, and Gravity Payments, based in Seattle, has seen increased retention and happiness rates (the latter is measured by an online-survey service employees use) among workers. Their overall commute time is shorter, since some employees used the additional money to move closer to work.

Price himself made some cutbacks to adjust to the lower salary, although more out of sensibility than necessity. He now rents his house on Airbnb during the summer to make extra cash, and sleeps in the guest room at a friend's house.

"You might call it a sacrifice," he said, speaking from the borrowed room. "But to me, it's fun. It feels good."

A Temporary Pay Cut

Price is quick to state the obvious: that any life adjustments he's made as a result of earning less after earning so much more are hardly "putting me in some horrible, awful position."

Of course, even as he's emerged as a champion for income equality, he won't be making $70,000 forever, and that was never the plan.

"When I made the announcement, I said I would just put my salary back where it was once the company's profits had gone back to where they were," Price said. "I expected us to take a big step backwards."

But that's not what happened. Instead, sales skyrocketed after the announcement, and Gravity Payments continues to take on new clients at a rate it never had before. It reports nearly doubling profits in a year, from $3.5 million in 2014 to $6.5 million in 2015. So Price is re-evaluating the metrics, and still trying to decide what his income should look like.

Brotherly Divide: 'I love him and I believe he loves me'

The million-dollar-plus salary Price once earned, and presumably will again, has often been scrutinized, even amid praise for his wage hike, which he refers to as "the program." It was also at least partly to blame for his legal troubles with his brother, Lucas Price, with whom he co-founded Gravity Payments in 2004. Price recently won a court battle against Lucas, who'd claimed in a lawsuit that Price overpaid himself and abused a corporate spending account, according to reports.

Despite his victory, Price appears genuinely hurt by the rift with his brother.

"I feel bad that we have a hard time coexisting and maybe being good brothers to each other," he said. "It's something we need to improve on… but I love him and I believe he loves me."

In a Facebook post after the ruling, Price said that he's grateful to have the lawsuit behind him and "excited to once again get back to investing all of my time and energy into supporting our clients, communities and our team's mission to change the way we think about the purpose of business."

As for what impact his salary program, which is still being rolled out, has had on employees, Price repeatedly stresses that it's not only about the money.

"I think it's easy to focus on the money because it's easy to understand and to write about, but what we really have is a sense of autonomy and freedom, and the increase in money provides that," he said.

'I don't have any daily worries about money anymore'

Of course, for some employees, it is exactly about the money.

Take Alyssa O'Neal, perhaps one of Gravity's best-known success stories. Before the salary increase, the 22-year-old single mom, a support representative, was making $35,000 a year. O'Neal told Today she's now earning about $60,000, but her salary will increase to at least $70,000 once the program takes full effect at the end of 2017.

With the additional income, O'Neal was able to move closer to work, into a better neighborhood, and recently took her son to Disneyland for his fifth birthday, she said.

"I don't have any daily worries about money anymore — checking the savings account, seeing where I can penny-pinch," she said. "I'm able to live a bit more freely now. Not necessarily spending money left and right, but just doing a little bit more for myself."

There is more at www.today.com/money/gravity-payments-70k-minimum-salary-ceo-dan-price-
shares-results-t101678

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 7:15 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Gravity Payments' $70K minimum salary: CEO Dan Price shares result.

Aug. 11, 2016

Five Years Later: The boss who put everyone on $70,000 minimum salary

28 February 2020

In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff - and personally took a pay cut of $1,000,000. Five years later he's still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off.

Dan Price was hiking with his friend Valerie in the Cascade mountains that loom majestically over Seattle, when he had an uncomfortable revelation.

As they walked, she told him that her life was in chaos, that her landlord had put her monthly rent up by $200 and she was struggling to pay her bills.

It made Price angry. Valerie, who he had once dated, had served for 11 years in the military, doing two tours in Iraq, and was now working 50 hours a week in two jobs to make ends meet.

"She is somebody for whom service, honour and hard work just defines who she is as a person," he says.

Even though she was earning around $40,000 a year, in Seattle that wasn't enough to afford a decent home. He was angry that the world had become such an unequal place. And suddenly it struck him that he was part of the problem.

At 31, Dan Price was a millionaire. His company, Gravity Payments, which he set up in his teens, had about 2,000 customers and an estimated worth of millions of dollars. Though he was earning $1.1m a year, a lot of his staff must be struggling - and he decided to change that.

Raised in deeply Christian, rural Idaho, Dan Price is upbeat and positive, generous in his praise of others and impeccably polite, but he has become a crusader against inequality in the US. "People are starving or being laid off or being taken advantage of, so that somebody can have a penthouse at the top of a tower in New York with gold chairs. We're glorifying greed all the time as a society, in our culture."

The right-wing radio pundit, Rush Limbaugh, whom Price had listened to every day in his childhood, called him a communist. "I hope this company is a case study in MBA programmes on how socialism does not work, because it's going to fail," he said.

Since then, Gravity has transformed. The employee headcount has doubled and the value of payments that the company processes has gone from $3.8bn a year to $10.2bn.

Five years later, Price is still on Gravity's minimum salary. He says he's more fulfilled than he ever was when he was earning millions.

"There's tests every day," he says. "I'm the same age as Mark Zuckerberg and I have dark moments where I think, 'I want to be just as rich as Mark Zuckerberg and I want to compete with him to be on the Forbes list. And I want to be on the cover of Time magazine, making lots of money.' All these greedy things are tempting."

"It's not like it's easy to just turn down. But my life is so much better."

More at www.bbc.com/news/stories-51332811

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 9:38 AM

Good. So when are you hiring back all the people you fired for wrong think, upping all of your employees salaries at the cow-fart-bottling plant to $70k per year and cutting your own pay down to $70k per year?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 12:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Good. So when are you hiring back all the people you fired for wrong think, upping all of your employees salaries at the cow-fart-bottling plant to $70k per year and cutting your own pay down to $70k per year?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, you are the guy who was opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour or $30,000 per year. You also misunderstood the very real point of the article which is that American business-owners keep wages low because they are greedy, then they deny it is greed and instead say that business would have to fire people if the minimum wage was raised.

I will not be rehiring the Republican who stole diesel, or the Republican who embezzled, or the one who was selling my power tools. That is mostly because they now are convicted felons. My lawyers and private investigators made airtight cases because the Republican District Attorney did not care to spend his budget punishing Republicans. His advice had been to fire the thieves, give their future employers good references, and let them become somebody else's problem. He was advising reducing my expenses and also sabotaging my competitors with bad employees I fire. Pretty typical for a Republican. Being against raising wages is also pretty typical along with lying about the reason for not raising wages: pure greed.

My lowest paid? Per Year? $58,791. But Texas isn't as expensive as Seattle. And that employee is buying a new house. I promised her in December $50,000 for the down payment, but she doesn't get the money until she closes on a deal. She is still looking at houses. That $50K is above and beyond salary.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 1:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Good. So when are you hiring back all the people you fired for wrong think, upping all of your employees salaries at the cow-fart-bottling plant to $70k per year and cutting your own pay down to $70k per year?

Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ix, you are the guy who was opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour or $30,000 per year. You also misunderstood the very real point of the article which is that American business-owners keep wages low because they are greedy, then they deny it is greed and instead say that business would have to fire people if the minimum wage was raised.

I will not be rehiring the Republican who stole diesel, or the Republican who embezzled, or the one who was selling my power tools. That is mostly because they now are convicted felons. My lawyers and private investigators made airtight cases because the Republican District Attorney did not care to spend his budget punishing Republicans. His advice had been to fire the thieves, give their future employers good references, and let them become somebody else's problem. He was advising reducing my expenses and also sabotaging my competitors with bad employees I fire. Pretty typical for a Republican. Being against raising wages is also pretty typical along with lying about the reason for not raising wages: pure greed.

My lowest paid? Per Year? $58,791. But Texas isn't as expensive as Seattle. And that employee is buying a new house. I promised her in December $50,000 for the down payment, but she doesn't get the money until she closes on a deal. She is still looking at houses. That $50K is above and beyond salary.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

This isn't about me. This is about you.

Don't go parading articles around about other people and how great they are and then not doing the same thing yourself.

I don't give a shit what your lowest employee makes. You've made millions of dollars in the last three years in tax breaks alone, let alone your income.

Put your money where your mouth is and live like the rest of us like this dude you look up to so much.

Either that, or go fuck right off about it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 4:41 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

This isn't about me. This is about you.

This thread started with a comparison between Switzerland and America's work culture. The biggest difference is that in America your average Republican businessman refuses to pay a $15 per hour minimum wage. $15 enrages a Republican. All the Republicans I know are stingy to their employees, if the employee has to take the job.

Keeping wages low is how Republican employers gets richer faster and faster. That is why slavery was very popular at one time in Texas. It was a perfectly legal way to set wages at zero to maximize the businessman's wealth growth. Paying a slave to pick cotton was as ridiculous as paying a horse to plow.

With Support of Just 3 Republicans, House Democrats Pass 'Historic' Raise the Wage Act to Guarantee Workers $15 Minimum Wage
www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/18/support-just-3-republicans-house-
democrats-pass-historic-raise-wage-act-guarantee
"We just voted to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade and Republicans are on the floor wailing, 'socialism.' How pathetic." Republicans claimed the passage of the bill was akin to sacrificing "the wages, families, and livelihoods of American workers...upon the altar of socialist ideology."

That bill died in the GOP controlled Senate.
www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/582/text

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 6:23 PM

Cut your pay. That's what the article you've been tracking for five years was all about.

It's got a happy ending. Time to give up those millions.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 7:04 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Cut your pay. That's what the article you've been tracking for five years was all about.

It's got a happy ending. Time to give up those millions.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The article was about raising pay to $70,000 per year. All Republicans were enraged at the idea of $40 per hour minimum wage for 1,750 hours of work per year. In the original article the Republicans called it Communism. All the Republicans said the business would fail. It did not fail. A Republican owned business could raise its minimum to $40/hour, but it won't because that cuts into the wealth of the business owner.

Republicans claimed the passage of a minimum wage bill was akin to sacrificing "the wages, families, and livelihoods of American workers...upon the altar of socialist ideology." That bill died in the GOP controlled Senate.
www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/18/support-just-3-republicans-house-
democrats-pass-historic-raise-wage-act-guarantee

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 9:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Cut your pay. That's what the article you've been tracking for five years was all about.

It's got a happy ending. Time to give up those millions.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
The article was about raising pay to $70,000 per year.

No. It wasn't.

It was about raising pay to $70,000 per year AND cutting his own pay to only $70,000 per year.

Time to give up those Millions, Brewster.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 9:49 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

6ix, working in America is lousy compared to Switzerland since Republican Congressmen don't want to raise the minimum wage to $15 because that would be socialism. Raising the minimum to $40/hr ( or $70,000/year of 1,750 hours work ) is worse than socialism. Republicans call it Communism.

Healthcare like Switzerland has is called Communism by Republicans.

Four to five weeks paid vacation in Switzerland? Communism per the GOP.

www.swissinfo.ch/eng/jetting-off_swiss-enjoy-more-and-more-paid-annual
-leave/44221002

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 1, 2020 11:14 PM

That's not what your article was about.

It was about a business owner who gave his employees $70,000 per year and also cut his own pay to $70,000 per year.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, March 2, 2020 7:37 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's not what your article was about.

It was about a business owner who gave his employees $70,000 per year and also cut his own pay to $70,000 per year.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

You are trolling me, 6ix. Dan Price raised the minimum wage to $70,000 because he didn't want to be seen as a rich greedy bastard like, and it is in the article, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. And he lowered his own salary because he didn't want to be seen as a greedy bastard like every Republican businessman. But what he did NOT do is give away his corporate shares to his employees. In that way he is following Mark Zuckerberg, who kept all his shares but lowered his salary to $1 per year. $1 is symbolic for Zuckerberg. $70,000 is symbolic for Dan Price. Zuckerberg and Dan Price are making symbolic statements to their employees. If I were to make a symbolic statement it would be to lower my salary to $137,700 -- Social Security's 2020 maximum amount of taxable earnings.
"13 top executives who earn a $1 salary"
www.businessinsider.com/ceos-who-take-1-dollar-salary-or-less-2015-8

"Dan Price had hoped that Gravity's example would lead to far-reaching changes in US business. He's deeply disappointed and sad that this hasn't happened."
www.bbc.com/news/stories-51332811

Dan Price should have known that all those good things that happen in Switzerland cannot happen in America because the Swiss are Communists. You can ask any Republican in Congress or business, but don't tell them the Swiss are already doing it for employees, and the Republican will say that what the Swiss are doing is pure Communism. The Republicans will never allow America to change into Switzerland, one of the most Capitalistic countries on Earth.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, March 2, 2020 8:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If I were to make a symbolic statement it would be to lower my salary to $137,700 -- Social Security's 2020 maximum amount of taxable earnings.

Then do it.

In this fantasy world where you run a multi-million dollar business, you'd have a harder time living off of $137,700 per year than I do off of $7,000.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, March 2, 2020 8:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If I were to make a symbolic statement it would be to lower my salary to $137,700 -- Social Security's 2020 maximum amount of taxable earnings.

Then do it.

In this fantasy world where you run a multi-million dollar business, you'd have a harder time living off of $137,700 per year than I do off of $7,000.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

You have not stop trolling me, 6ix. You have not stopped to acknowledge that American workers are at a serious disadvantage compared to Swiss workers because Switzerland has no GOP crying about Socialism and Communism overpaying Swiss workers.

The right to strike was enshrined in the Swiss constitution in 1999. Could you imagine how upset the GOP would be if there was talk of adding that right to the US constitution?
www.thelocal.ch/20181019/why-are-strikes-rare-in-switzerland

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 20, 2021 10:34 AM

How COVID-19 thrust 325,000 children into or near poverty in NY
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/10/19/how-covid-19-t
hrust-325-000-children-into-near-poverty-ny/3668453001/

Back in 2020 old news story, California governor says 60,000 homeless could be infected by novel coronavirus
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/california-governor-60000-homeless
-could-get-virus

California still trails many states in COVID-19 vaccinations. When will that change?
https://news.yahoo.com/california-still-lags-many-states-173454484.htm
l

Some Q-anon channel

Philadelphia at Night - Kensington Avenue
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6VfoodccExqo/

How much coronavirus relief is coming? Here’s what the Senate just passed.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/03/06/how-much-coronavirus-r
elief-is-coming-heres-what-the-senate-just-passed/

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Friday, March 18, 2022 12:27 PM

Oligarchs and other wealthy Russians have stashed up to $214 billion in secretive Swiss bank accounts, leading trade group reveals

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-oligarchs-wealthy-stash-billio
ns-dollars-secretive-swiss-bank-accounts-2022-3

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Wednesday, March 1, 2023 8:09 AM

Banker people with chocolate and watches

Quote:
Specifically, what’s frustrating me is America’s seeming inability to build the things it needs to build in order to prosper and flourish in the 21st century. From housing to transit to solar power to transmission lines to semiconductor fabs, the U.S. has little trouble marshalling the financial and physical capital to create what it needs, but ends up stymied by entrenched local interests who exploit a thicket of veto points to preserve the built environment of the 1970s.

Ever day, new examples of this stasis pile up. In Berkeley, a plan to build student housing was just blocked by a court, which demanded that the university study whether students themselves constitute an environmental hazard. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not.

The Build-Nothing Country

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-build-nothing-country

Stasis has become America's spoils system, and it can't go on.

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Tuesday, May 2, 2023 9:44 AM

Would Swiss even care if Hollyweird collapsed?

More on Unions, Workers, Guilds and Strikers

Hollywood Writers Go on Strike, Late Night Comedy Shows Including Jimmy Kimmel Hit Hardest

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/05/01/hollywood-writers-g
o-on-strike-late-night-comedy-shows-including-jimmy-kimmel-hit-hardest/

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Tuesday, May 28, 2024 8:43 AM

Switzerland - A Haven for Russian Money?

https://www.dw.com/en/switzerland-a-haven-for-russian-money/a-68783551

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Monday, June 17, 2024 8:20 AM