Capitalism: A Love Story

[StrangeSox]

How much business you do think the bakery at a Wal-mart does?

 

They're not insuring the bakery but the employer. How much of that value does that specific low-wage, low-skills worker add, enough to justify a $1M policy?

[BigSqwert]

How much business you do think the bakery at a Wal-mart does?

At least in the tens of trillions. It would be difficult to find someone off the street to write "Happy Birthday Timmy" on a cake. I can see the big risk they have if somehow the local cake decorator were to die.

[StrangeSox]

At least in the tens of trillions. It would be difficult to find someone off the street to write "Happy Birthday Timmy" on a cake. I can see the big risk they have if somehow the local cake decorator were to die.

 

It seems ethically bizarre, but who is really hurt by that policy?

[southsider2k5]

They're not insuring the bakery but the employer. How much of that value does that specific low-wage, low-skills worker add, enough to justify a $1M policy?

 

You are insuring the employee to protect against the lose of revenue from their work. In that sense you are protecting the revenue streams of the bakery.

[BigSqwert]

It seems ethically bizarre, but who is really hurt by that policy?

There just doesn't seem to be a point to it other than to profit off someone's death. There would be no loss of revenue streams if a cake decorator were to die since they can hire anyone off the street to fill in the very next day and not miss a beat.

[southsider2k5]

There just doesn't seem to be a point to it other than to profit off someone's death. There would be no loss of revenue streams if a cake decorator were to die since they can hire anyone off the street to fill in the very next day and not miss a beat.

 

So you are telling me that anywhere in the country, that in any Wal-Mart you could fill a position for someone to be decorating cakes, guarenteed, in one day?

[BigSqwert]

So you are telling me that anywhere in the country, that in any Wal-Mart you could fill a position for someone to be decorating cakes, guarenteed, in one day?

LOL

 

You're really making the position of cake decorator out to be way more important than it really is.

[Controlled Chaos]

LOL

 

You're really making the position of cake decorator out to be way more important than it really is.

I think you are making it out to be less than it is.

[BigSqwert]

I think you are making it out to be less than it is.

We're talking about the bakery at Walmart not a designer yuppie bakery charging $600 per cake.

[StrangeSox]

You are insuring the employee to protect against the lose of revenue from their work. In that sense you are protecting the revenue streams of the bakery.

 

But you're protecting against the loss of a low-wage worker who can be quickly and easily replaced with minimal or no training necessary. Revenue would not be disrupted.

[StrangeSox]

There just doesn't seem to be a point to it other than to profit off someone's death. There would be no loss of revenue streams if a cake decorator were to die since they can hire anyone off the street to fill in the very next day and not miss a beat.

 

I agree. That's why I said its questionable ethically. But, it doesn't appear anyone is actually hurt by this. As long as Walmart isn't then trying to knock their employees off, what's the harm?

[StrangeSox]

So you are telling me that anywhere in the country, that in any Wal-Mart you could fill a position for someone to be decorating cakes, guarenteed, in one day?

 

Is Walmart generating a million dollars a day on a cake decorator?

[southsider2k5]

LOL

 

You're really making the position of cake decorator out to be way more important than it really is.

 

You are really missing the big picture here.

 

Insurance is there to protect against unseen events causing worst-case scenarios. What are the odds of you dying tomorrow? What will be your families exact financial loss if you were to die? Why would your wife be allowed to take out an insurance policy for multiple times what the direct financial impact of your loss would be? Theoretically, she could go out and replace your income in a day, just like Wal-Mart could hire someone to decorate cakes in a day. In the grand scheme of things, from a strictly financial perspective, your loss wouldn't be very important either. Should your family not be allowed to take out a life insurance policy against you either?

[southsider2k5]

But you're protecting against the loss of a low-wage worker who can be quickly and easily replaced with minimal or no training necessary. Revenue would not be disrupted.

 

Can you guarantee that?

[BigSqwert]

I agree. That's why I said its questionable ethically. But, it doesn't appear anyone is actually hurt by this. As long as Walmart isn't then trying to knock their employees off, what's the harm?

I'm just waiting to hear about a case where a low wage/skill worker dies because their crappy insurance offered by their work won't cover a life-saving procedure with the company then making a windfall on that person's death.

[lostfan]

2K5's question seems irrelevant but it was spot on and exactly to the point. It's not as much about the employee as it is about the continuity. As long as Wal-Mart isn't capping their employees in the back of the head or putting them in ridiculously unsafe working conditions and crossing their fingers hoping they die I don't see where there's a problem.

[Balta1701]

I think this thread is an excellent example of Moore's biggest mistake in this movie.

 

We have a gigantic economic crisis brought about by obnoxious deals involving banks, investment houses, ratings agencies, the government, the regulators, etc. The only thing that keeps the whole thing from going down is the government pumping in trillions in cash and taking on most of the mistakes without getting anything back in return. Everyone celebrates and the banks go right back to doing what they were doing beforehand, except with an implicit government guarantee. The only constant is that the well connected bankers walk away with billions at every step.

 

But that's complicated. Making the case for what went wrong is complicated. Understanding how things like executive pay, stock prices, clawbacks, the relationship between the regulators and the banks they're regulating, the ratings agencies and their implicit government support, etc., all link in to that mess and how to fix it...that's all complicated.

 

So instead, we go after the thing that sounds the worst, but didn't really impact the crash at all; these employee life insurance contracts. Yes, they sound scummy, yes there's some logic behind them, yes they probably should be more regulated than they are, but they're so far from the root of the problem that if you came out and banned them entirely tomorrow, absolutely nothing would change, and we'd still be well on the road to the next bursting bubble.

[StrangeSox]

Can you guarantee that?

 

Yeah, pretty much. Can you really argue that low-wage, low-skill workers, especially in this economy, are hard enough to come by that Walmart is going to incur significant losses if that person died?

 

The fact that they are low-wage workers, and thus likely to leave quickly if a better position were available, seems to indicate that no, they're not at risk of losing significant revenue. Otherwise the skill would be more highly-valued and the employee would be paid more.

[BigSqwert]

You are really missing the big picture here.

 

You're missing my point. The company could care less about their employee's health, in many cases providing subpar health insurance, if any at all, but they are profiting off their employees deaths.

[StrangeSox]

2K5's question seems irrelevant but it was spot on and exactly to the point. It's not as much about the employee as it is about the continuity. As long as Wal-Mart isn't capping their employees in the back of the head or putting them in ridiculously unsafe working conditions and crossing their fingers hoping they die I don't see where there's a problem.

 

Well, you end up with incentives to offer your employees little or no health care, so there's some ethically questionable benefits there.

[BigSqwert]

Good point Balta.

[StrangeSox]

What Balta said is absolutely correct. However, we all love arguing over minutia so I don't predict this thread dying any time soon.

[lostfan]

Well, you end up with incentives to offer your employees little or no health care, so there's some ethically questionable benefits there.

True, but that's another issue that happens to be related to this.

[southsider2k5]

Yeah, pretty much. Can you really argue that low-wage, low-skill workers, especially in this economy, are hard enough to come by that Walmart is going to incur significant losses if that person died?

 

The fact that they are low-wage workers, and thus likely to leave quickly if a better position were available, seems to indicate that no, they're not at risk of losing significant revenue. Otherwise the skill would be more highly-valued and the employee would be paid more.

 

You can make a similar argument for husbands and wives as well. Should we stop life insurance?

[southsider2k5]

You're missing my point. The company could care less about their employee's health, in many cases providing subpar health insurance, if any at all, but they are profiting off their employees deaths.

 

In reality they probably aren't profiting off of these policies, otherwise the insurance companies wouldn't be offering them, because they, by definition, would be losing money on them.