Article discreditng the thesis that Mao "killed millions of people" in The Great Leap
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(01-04-2017, 06:17 PM)Occhidiangela Wrote: I've stayed out of this conversation and will note that I've remained puzzled at how low the prime has stayed. It's almost as though someone at the Fed is afraid of even a 1/8 or 1/4 % change in funds cost will trigger a caustic ripple effect.
I believe the extremely low rates have hurt (in discouraging savings) more than have helped (by encouraging borrowing/spending). The average person is unable to earn (or save for retirement either) an interest rate in CDs, Money Market or Savings accounts, and mostly being without the necessary investment knowledge is unable to leverage "free/cheap money" in the ways of those with financial wherewithal. Ergo, the accelerating gap between the fraction of "haves", and the "have nots".

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Jester Wrote:That's what I would have figured, but then, I'm a bourgeois pigdog.
Are not we all?
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Jester Wrote:The exercise here is trying to think through what FIT is saying on its own terms, to see if any or all of the following are true:

1) I am confused about what FIT is actually saying.
2) I am confused about the Labour Theory of Value.
3) FIT is confused about the Labout Theory of Value.
4) The Labour Theory of Value is inherently muddled, and there is no sense to be made out of it, despite the centuries of trying.
I'm going to go out on the limb and say ... 5) All of the above.

What I do know (from my work in the 80's on the systems for large machine industrial manufacturing) is that when assessing the cost of manufacture, we commonly break down "widgets" into
  • Materials,
  • Direct Labor,
  • and Overhead
If possible, in determining Overhead, it helps to use elements of "Activity Based Costing" to distribute costs associated with Widgets directly to the widgets where possible. Some areas, like upper management, accounting, or IT are just butter-knifed across all widgets equally. Some, like plant, plant operations, etc. can be attributed for the processes that occur in that plant. But, some non-direct labor processes (like engineering design projects, taking orders (order processing), pick/pack, shipping, or inter-plant transfers are best if those costs are assign according to "fair" cost drivers. Many items in the process are purchases from suppliers, and have a materials cost, but also labor for pick/pack and managing inventory. If the Widget is something complex, like an automobile, you roll up all the cost buckets for sub-assemblies in a huge tree like web until you ultimately find the total material, labor, and overhead costs. Overhead, especially when butter-knifed, benefits from more units sold per month.

Ultimately, it informs the price at which a profit can be earned. Otherwise, as we found in some cases, we were losing money on every machine we built. Because, the market would not support the cost to make the Widget. We stopped making them, or examined the process for ways to reduce the cost to make it. Never did we find that the costs of "Direct Labor" was an issue. They intentionally paid workers at 1.5x union wages. A high cost machine was always due to things like sending a sub-assembly to another plant for some process available at that plant (painting, spin mold, casting, welding, plating, etc...). And, whenever possible, overhead was trimmed. I left that industrial systems position due to being wooed away after 5 years by a higher salary offer at the end of a long recession, due in large part to the companies flattened wage raises during the recession years.
”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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RE: Article discreditng the thesis that Mao "killed millions of people" in T... - by kandrathe - 01-04-2017, 08:12 PM

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