Today I got told that I am the...

[Solomwi]

And penis size.

BASE ONLY!

[SlowwHand]

3 working 80 is cheaper than hiring 5 similarly skilled working 48, true. That's basically my point about elasticities. There are only so many people with the right mix of knowledge, motivation and intelligence to do some jobs...

The other thing is that a lot of people develop incredibly focused expertise, and it might take a generalist twice as long to do what they do. 48 hours a week does not an expert make. Not in research-level physics, not in finance.

Not in manufacturing either. What I constantly have to stress to Salesmen and Program Managers is that 40 hours is 5 days, not almost two days. I base my quotes on 8 hour days. I know, you may jump out and say the comparison isn't relative, but it is. Engineering support and others aren't as readily available on off-shifts. Lot od things. Setting up the lines kills time. You may have had to been there.

[Heraclitus]

I'm quite sociable and ethical. As far as "greedy", I'm happy to call myself that.

[curtis290]

Oh, he's hardly dull, and he doesn't seem at all unhappy. Having not met him in person, I can't say if he's unsociable, unethical, or greedy. You get full marks for "egotistical," though.

I wasn't referring to him but to the tendencies of bankers in general. As for him, he's the most egotistical person I've ever met on the internet. I can't comment on whether or not he's ethical, and he did admit to being greedy. I have a hunch that someone with his character is only ethical for pragmatic reasons. As for unsociable, he clearly is, there is no way anyone (outside of the office) could put up with this guy. His post-count confirms this.

Curtis is unintentionally hilarious.

Sweetheart, you have yet to have a single interesting thought as far as I'm concerned. You manage to be ignorant, stupid AND boring. A rare trifecta.

First, stop making passes at me. Second, what have you contributed that's interesting? People seem pretty entertained by what I've been writing. Granted that's because they completely disagree with my political and cultural views, but at least I bring a unique viewpoint to the table. Unlike yourself, who is an ordinary, run-of-the-mill monetarist who thinks his ideas are brilliant and original. Your views have been very mainstream within the discipline of economics over the past few decades. You're NOT unique.

You're the one though that's the most unintentionally hilarious: you started a thread on an internet forum bragging about being called a 'rockstar' by your boss. Then you proceed to brag about your income and your IQ being in the top 0.01% of the population (highly unlikely). What a lonely life you must lead...

Why not hire 5 people with 48 hour work weeks instead of 3 with 80 hour ones? It would be the same amount of hours but with much higher productivity, since the employees would be able to more effectively focus for shorter periods of time, not to mention it employs more people (which would be for the good of the country).

Broken window fallacy AND ignoring the elasticity of supply as it relates to highly skilled and specialized labor...

Plus, I only average ~60 hours a week. Only IBD averages 80+, especially at analyst and 1st year associate. Notably, those are also the people with the least quantifiable skills, and analysts are cheap as ****...

I call BS. To your first point, I never made the claim that Wall Street employing more people (with fewer hours) would be better for the economy in terms of creating more wealth--I said it would be better for the people as it would mean more jobs and more people sharing in the wealth of finance. I do think that there is some validity to the argument you attributed to me however...it's kind of similar to the whole trickle-down economics debate (the idea of whether or not the wealthy generate the most economic activity by having their income increase, ie Reagan and Bush style tax cuts to the wealthy). By spreading out the same amount of wealth to a larger number of lower-paid employees, more is spent on consumer goods, since they're buying more food, booze, cars, gas, houses, etc. But if you concentrate the wealth in the hands of a smaller amount of employees who are better paid, less money will go to consumer goods, and probably more will go into assets (I'm assuming wealthy people are more likely to invest the money they don't need, at least more of it than people with smaller incomes), I'm guessing money markets.

Now in a poorly regulated financial sector such as ours, investing money in the financial sector will probably lead to more 'wealth creation' than spending it on basic consumer goods. But the questions we have to ask are: are these gains sustainable and do they produce real economic improvement? Could they disappear overnight? And who profits from seeing money invested in money markets as opposed to consumer goods? I believe the former means wealthy making money for the wealthy, in other words, more money for those who already earn too much as well as simply a rise in (unsustainable) asset prices, while the latter would generate real economic activity and generate more lower-paying jobs in the real economy related to consumer goods. I'd take the latter.

As for your comments on the elasticity of the supply of 'highly skilled and specialized labor,' again I call BS. There are plenty of overqualified people without jobs right now, so you can't claim that there's a shortage of people capable and willing to work Wall Street. Even before the crisis I'm sure there were many more people capable of working in the financial sector than those who actually made it...that's how it works in any well-paying profession in an era characterized by a glut of education, and as everyone close to the financial sector knows, "it's all about connections." There are plenty of capable people that can't get jobs because they aren't good enough at networking, or because they happened to not go to the right school. Lastly, there are TONS of people in the financial sector who majored in English or Philosophy or something else at an elite liberal arts school and learned everything they needed to know on the job. The notion that you need to have studied some specialized type of business as an undergrad to be qualified to work in the financial sector is absurd.

3 working 80 is cheaper than hiring 5 similarly skilled working 48, true. That's basically my point about elasticities. There are only so many people with the right mix of knowledge, motivation and intelligence to do some jobs...

The other thing is that a lot of people develop incredibly focused expertise, and it might take a generalist twice as long to do what they do. 48 hours a week does not an expert make. Not in research-level physics, not in finance.

First, my comparison of 5 working 80 vs. 3 working 48 was obviously not supposed to be exact. Clearly, hiring more people is more expensive since you have pensions and office space to worry about. It was merely an analogy and I was trying to make the point that financial firms could be more productive by hiring more people for fewer hours (no one can be productive with the 80 hour work week). As for the rest of your post, see the paragraph above. And just look to Europe: their financial sector employs many more people, just with fewer hours and more vacation days. I think this is a better system because it provides more jobs, keeps people from being overworked, and probably makes the system as a whole a little less greedy and exclusive.

[MikeH]

He's only so egotistical because of the massive compulsory cocaine habit he's been forced to employ now he's a city boy.

Here's a picture of KH, just before he starts posting at Poly.

[Aeson]

I'd just hire 500 third worlder's and have them type random equations into the computer all day long. Then I'd pay them 40 cents (total) and take all the pay I'd have paid 3 guys like KH and retire.

[MikeH]

If you add up their IQs the 500 third world workers would kick KH's arse. Much more intelligent than him.

[MOBIUS]

Except, as far as I can tell and I'm willing to be proved wrong here, they don't operate as a hive mind.

[MikeH]

Neither does KH!

[MOBIUS]

That's why KH would still beat 500 third world workers in a mental fist fight...

[MikeH]

They could post 500 incoherent arguments faster than he could post "what is that idiot saying? They are on my ignore list?" and as any one who posts here knows, the more you write the more intelligent you are.

[DanS]

I think it's great that KH was called the rock star of his group. I'm happy for him, as I know what that means, given his cohort.

[DaShi]

:asskiss:

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Rock Star effect

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/1...-that-I-am-the...

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/1...-that-I-am-the...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I think it's great that KH was called the rock star of his group. I'm happy for him, as I know what that means, given his cohort.

Agreed. Cohort (odd choice of wording) not Wharton grad by any chance?