highergametheory.com Open in urlscan Pro
173.236.141.133 Public Scan

Back to summary

URL:
https://highergametheory.com/
Submission: On June 30 via api (June 30th 2024, 3:30:47 am UTC) from BE — Scanned from DE

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

GET https://highergametheory.com/

<form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="https://highergametheory.com/">
  <label>
    <span class="screen-reader-text">Search for:</span>
    <input type="search" class="search-field" placeholder="Search …" value="" name="s">
  </label>
  <input type="submit" class="search-submit" value="Search">
</form>

Text Content

Making the Choice to bet on Oneself

H.G.T.

#MEMESNOTDREAMS

A well intentioned friend of mine posted this on his facebook recently, and my
response to him grew and grew to the point I felt compelled to immortalize it in
this, my museum of bloviation.

Needless to say, and yet said, I disagree with the meme or I wouldn’t be
posting, because it’s a silly person indeed that posts just to agree, that’s
what the “wow” reaction is for.

First off: since the wage at the beginning of this example is 1.23 and then it
is raised to 18.45 (which the poster did to make his weird income tax math work
out well, but more on that later), this meme is discussing an *18x* or 1800%
hike in minimum wage. Which, you know, no one is asking for.

This is propaganda that makes a figure superficially similar to the dollar
amount the min wage movement is asking for look less reasonable than it its. It
makes a a figure in the teens (the real figure being asked for) by comparing it
to a wage level from the 1800s or so. Now, that ask may still be too high – the
fight for fifteen movement wants a figure that is about a doubling, or a one
hundred percent increase, most places. But that’s sort of understood to be an
opening price in a bargaining legislative process – ask to move from 7.25 to
15.00 and maybe you’ll actually get 10, or 11.

So let’s recast the meme in real terms:

you make 58.00 a day (7.25 * 8), and after withholding (we’ll go ahead and use
the meme’s figure of .23, it’s closer to .17 at minimum wage, but one fight at a
time) you are left with 45.
Milk costs 45$ (for some reason milk costs a day’s wages in thesememelandia but
whatever).

Now, what is that 45 dollars, really? Obviously, the dairy is not a non profit.
So of that price, part is profit and part is wholesale cost. Usually, the
wholesale cost of a food product is 50-70 percent. This is determined by supply
and demand combined with competition and a static business need to make at least
enough money to pay for the next batch of milk.

So the retailer’s cost is probably 30 dollars, ballpark.

Now of that cost, a full fifty percent again is probably cost from a wholesaler
(the actual farmer, in this case)

So the milkman‘s initial investment in the milk is 15 dollars spent.

He then adds a bottle for 4, and buys an ad in the paper for 4, and then invests
about thirty-five minutes of labor in filling the bottle, labeling it, and
delivering it, and fillingt his truck up with gas, etc. Ad some change for the
label and gas and we’ve got the other 15.

So out of his whole cost to put the milk on your porch, 15 is wholesale cost,
and about 11 is misc. production overhead, only (35 minutes * min wage) is
labor. (about 4 dollars)

Then he’s back to the approx. cost to market we had above of 30. He marks it up
to 45 and keeps 15.

That means of the retail cost of the milk, *Only 9 percent is stuck costs for
labor* and *only 3 percent* is markup on that labor.

So they pass a higher minimum wage, and the dairy examines their business model,
and decides the market can tolerate more cost, so they elect to simply mark the
milk up more to cover their labor (not run on a smaller margin or forge new
volume deals with their shipper or bundle milk with a loss leader like the
McDouble, but whatever. We’ll also assume they don’t choke or glut the market
and don’t elect to make a massive price hike and use propaganda to lay it all at
the feet of labor). That’s not a simple decision, but one fight at a time.

So if you double the dairy’s wage cost, his employee now makes 14.50 an hour and
the milk now costs 45 + 4 + 15%(4) more an hour. That’s assuming every employee
in the 35 minutes of labor was actually making minimum wage already, but, say it
with me now, *one fight at a time.*

So now instead of making 45 dollars a day and spending 45 of it on milk, the
milkman *makes 90 and pays 49.60* We’ll even say since the farmer and the guy at
the gas station had to pay the same raise, it goes up to to, say, 55.00

90-55 still leaves way more money than 45-45.

Now two people, the farm worker and the dairy worker, can actually afford to
drink the milk they carry to other people’s houses all day. Their kids have
strong bones, and they are less prone to bolshevik revolution!

On top of that, in the real world, 7.25 an hour puts a person on welfare in many
cases and 14.50 does not.

So it is VERY fitting that the cost to house and feed that employee be born by
the shoppers at their employer, and not by the public at large as when the
minimum wage lags behind prices and inflation, as it has now for 20 some years.

“But what about the tax thing?” I hear you asking.

Well, US taxes don’t work like that.

If my income is 100 and my tax bracket is 10% on income 0-100, I pay 10$ tax.

Now if I were to make 120 dollars and put myself in the 20 percent tax bracket,
the ordinary person, who understandably hates math, if quizzed on the street,
would say I owe 24 dollars.

But I *absolutely do not*

If the next tax bracket is 20% and I make 120$ the next year, I do NOT pay 24
dollars.

I pay 10% for the first hundred, which is 10 dollars.

I pay 20% on the 20 that “sticks into” the second bracket, which is 4 dollars.
So my total tax bill is 14.

Now, in the US, if you do a 1040 EZ, this is all built into the tax table, you
don’t do it by hand, so a LOT of people don’t understand it, but:

They NEVER claw anything back out of the lower brackets. You only pay tax at the
bracket rate for the part of your income that is in THAT bracket.

Think of your income like an iceburg. 10k is at the bottom, in the dark, 8 k is
in the sunlit water, and 4k sticks out. You pay the bottom bracket rate for the
part in the dark, the middle bracket rate for the part in the light, and the top
bracket rate on what sticks out.

You almost literally *Never, ever* lose money “going to a higher tax bracket”
except the day you go over the IRS poverty line and start having to pay taxes at
all (Which in the US is about 8.9k a year – that’s 8.9, not 98. we make people
who make less than one thousand dollars a month pay an income tax that cripples
them, because people like Mitt Romney and Donald trump want to avoid single
percentage point tax rate raises).

Of course, the employers involved do pay more payroll tax (the real cost to
employ someone is stated pay rate plus taxation and benefits).I could have
accounted for that and it would have made the change a little higher.
Conversely, though, some of the labor involved is already not making minimum
wage (management, accounting, trucking, etc aren’t min. wage jobs in real life).
I could have accounted for that and then the actual price change at retail would
have been even lower, so given that the post that already has too much math in
it to ever go viral in our bamboozeled world, I decided those two factors could
just wash each other.

November 14, 2016 by johnnycache Leave a note

OK, ENOUGH OF THIS ARGUMENT

Every time I see this, it’s tired. Let’s ignore for the time being the “It
happens every time” fish story frosting (i’ve had fast food employees get my
orders right THOUSANDS of times, wrong probably less than a percent of that),
and look at what this person is actually saying, which is that wages are about
what you “deserve.”
That’s funny, because I always see this kind of meme put out by right wing folks
who tend to believe in capitalism as a first principle. Anyone can tell you that
capitalism isn’t about “Deserve” – it’s about supply and demand, and to a lesser
degree, the transparency of informatics that allows you to evaluate them.
A perceived moral entitlement for the type of work you do? That’s a socialist
value. A pure capitalist would expect to be paid based on the market and nothing
else. That should cause these people some cognitive dissonance, but doesn’t.

But that’s fodder for another discussion.

Moving on:

Look, it’s not a special law for fast food workers! She would get the 15 as
well. At least. Since she’s 3.75 over minimum now, the worst deal she would get
from the legislation would be a 40% raise…and most likely her wage would
continue to float above minimum wage.
If you are struggling to live on 11 an hour, would you rather have a) a 40
percent raise, and likely more or b) The bullshit “fake pay” of getting to tell
yourself you make more than a guy at mcdonalds? You can’t spend ego. You can
spend money. So I would think a capitalist would stand in solidarity.
She’s literally so invested in a negative narrative of how wronged she is that
she’ll turn down money for position in a hierarchy.
I mean, think about that. Really think about that. It is literally more
important to this person to be perceived as better and to pull down on other
workers than it is to actually make more money and have a better life. She
doesn’t want 15 an hour if someone else gets it, too?! Her status as “above
minimum wage” is more important too her than money that she can fold up and use?
And honestly, the problem with our medical infrastructure is we let CNAs, EMTs,
etc be exploited for having a calling. They don’t make enough money, but it
would be easier to change that if they weren’t all deeply anti-union and
anti-wage protection because of red state politics that see them vote for the
interests of their bosses over themselves.
It’s very simple: If a company can’t afford to pay a full time employee a rate
conversant with food and rent, than they can’t really afford to have an
employee.
I know the last time I rode in an ambulance, they charged me PLENTY – I can’t
really fathom that that 1200 dollar, half hour ambulance ride would need to cost
much more if the two guys operating it made $7.5 each for that time instead of
5.50, but I know the extra few hundred a week would be huge for them at home. Of
all the money I paid for that ambulance ride, I’d be THRILLED to have just
handed the EMTs 20 out of my pocket, on the spot, hell, if they got the whole
1200, I’d feel better about paying it.

When a McDonald’s employee is on WIC and living in subsidized housing, I am
paying their wages FOR mcdonalds, in order to maintain the illusion of a cheaper
hamburger. Screw that. McDonalds can raise their prices and the people who eat
there, the customer, can pay for the employee.

That’s not even socialism! That’s GETTING RID of socialism. That’s telling a
capitalist to pay his own way.

That’s putting the cost where it should be.

It’s time to drop this model of both insisting people “need” to work to be
virtuous, and insisting the bottom tier of work exist as a social cattleprod and
punishment. If work is virtuous, than work should be virtuous and not a shameful
punishment.
April 23, 2016 by johnnycache Leave a note

YES, VIRGINIA, THE WALL IS BULLSHIT.

Isn’t it weird that if walls are a good idea, literally no country for 2000ish
years has ever walled their whole border?

That sort of sends up a red flag to me.
Trump says the wall will cost 8 billion.
The GAO’s actual accounting for the cost to build the existing fence is about
2.9 million a mile. The 670 miles of existing fence are in areas serviced by
roads. The un-serviced outliers trump wants to wall could cost as much as 5
times that a mile. For fencing.
Now, as an east coast contractor, thriving in private industry and all, maybe
Donald feels that underbidding and running over is SOP but I think just on the
numbers, the wall stinks like boondoggle.

the washington post talked to an estimator who put it at more like 25 billion to
build, not counting the cost to design, to acquire or condemn private land
(which any real conservative would be fighting), and then surveil, maintain, arm
and staff it upon completion.
Here, an engineer goes into detail about the practicalities of walling the
border:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/an-engineer-explains-why-trumps-wall-is-so-implausible/
Trump himself compared it favorably to the Great Wall, seemingly ignorant of the
schoolboy history that the great wall took 4 centuries of slave labor in a
monarchy with near total taxation.
It was literally more practical for the Chinese to wait for the mongol empire to
crumble on its own than to count on a complete great wall, which ultimately
failed totally at its purpose of protecting china’s western border, *in a time
before airplanes, explosives, and heavy equipment*

This issue – this conversation – is actually 100 percent not about civil
engineering or economics for trump and his supporters. It is nothing more or
less than a method of signalling virtue and searching for it in others:

“Will you believe dumb things even if impractical?”
“Yes, I will!”
“Great, take a pamphlet. Follow me on twitter”

April 17, 2016 by johnnycache Leave a note

LIVE FROM THE KINGDOM OF FEAR

This is an interesting piece from 538

I’ve actually always hated the “jobs” buzzword. People don’t want a job, they
want a lifestyle. They would prefer it be through engaging work of choice, but
they often settle. When I was growing up, this difference was framed as “Job” vs
“career” and if you sought a mere “job” you were a settler yourself.

As productivity increases (generally speaking a good thing) less employment is
required to meet demand. There are just less manufacturing jobs, per dollar of
global GDP, than there once were.

But the same automation and productivity gains are present in the service
industry, or soon will be, and pretending otherwise is a 20 year punt.

We need to start doing big thinking about what a post scarcity, developed
country “should” look like, and even the nordic model still sort of positions
the developed world as the “front office” of a company of nations in a way that
is an odd new imperialism.

It can’t be all service, entertainment, and IT for automation. When neal
stephenson said the only things america still excelled at in his dark future
were “Music, Movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery” it was satire and
presented as a state to be avoided

March 20, 2016 by johnnycache Leave a note

PORK AND THE NEW GENTLEMAN

At some point, I realized my weight was effecting my life.

There’s a huge denial cortex in the brain of every fat person.
“I’m healthy so it doesn’t matter”
“I’m happy now so it doesn’t matter”
“Who has time”

The list goes on and on. It’s bullshit.

Being fat sucks. Being a little fat sucks less than being a lot fat, but it
still sucks.

It’s a literal, actual first world problem. It seems trivial but isn’t.

About a year ago and half ago, I realized that it was really, really something I
wanted to change, and change for life.

I started slow, with learning, and with measurement of my current state with the
best tools I had to hand.

A year later, I have lost and kept off 40 some pounds. Which still leaves me
fat, by the standards of any reasonable person.

I am full of thought on this. Full. And it FOR SURE changes the main focuses of
this blog. It challenges my work, my cards, my comedy, my writing. It will
impact how much I get to enjoy things which, subconsciously, I have chosen as
pursuits because they can be late life second careers…second careers aren’t much
good if you’re fucking dead. Fact.

So this is, in part, going to become my space for that.

June 3, 2015 by johnnycache Leave a note

LET’S BLOW THIS JOINT

Vegas stays the same because Vegas always changes.
That’s kind of zen for such a loud, fucked-up place.

I’ll miss the old but love the new

Sounds like Penn kind of feels the same.

June 1, 2015 by johnnycache Leave a note

TARTUFFE NATION

I try to only “get political” about twice a year, but Dan Savage made a great
point the other day: The far right has made being christian about gay rights,
because it’s easy grace if you’re straight. Not stealing, not being greedy, not
hurting people you love – those require ACTUAL good behavior from american
Christians. being against gays costs them nothing, so it’s the perfect
spirituality for a materialistic world. We’re tearing ourselves apart and
ignoring matters that are truly the within the scope of what government should
address for a cheap, faux-christian lifehack from neo-conservatives like
Falwell, who live in mansions Christ would have given to beggars.

That’s why they’re comfortable pushing for laws against gay marriage but not,
say, letting your neighbor starve or adultery… or worshiping graven idols, of
which surely the bull and bear of wall street, the things to and for whom most
Americans, this one included, spend most of our days worshiping and toiling,
surely are two of the greatest.

April 16, 2015 by johnnycache Leave a note

MY LATE VALENTINE’S DAY POST

I’m going to take a risk here and point out a pattern:

Step one: Break up with an SO
Step two: Become EXTREMELY defensive and hostile
Step three: Hook up with whoever around you pushes through the defense
step four: Fling yourself deeply into this relationship; define your identity
through it.
Step five: Be shocked when that person turns out to be a jerk
Step six: go back to step one

Date gamely. Date like a gambler. Bet what you can lose, and win and lose “like
a man.” (whatever your gender) Don’t go bridge-torching ape-shit when things
end. Be grateful you weren’t stuck with the wrong person for a longer time.
Don’t blame the next person for the last person. The wheel has no memory,

February 21, 2015 by johnnycache Leave a note

ON THE ROAD

It’s been a month of constant travel and work – Denver, to Dallas, to Wichita,
to Wyoming, to Utah!

Now I’m droning away in the Beehive state, looking for an apartment.

Thinking about upgrading the ole’ Subaru legacy – SLC is a drivers’ town in a
much realer sense than say, LA, which is actually a parker’s town. The highways
here are a bit crowded, but only a bit, and they’re wide, with high speed
limits. Treating myself to something with slightly longer legs would be nice.
Ideally, since I love my legacy, the GT trim of the same car would be perfect.

Looks like the only poker I will have logged in the month of Jan will be the
couple hours I donked away at the Hard Rock Tulsa, which is a nice little card
room…only downside is the the slots in the casino are unusually fucking
obnoxious, sounding like an old 50s phone.

Reminded me of this

In terms of resistances overcome, fears met, etc., I’m pretty sure this month
will go down in personal history as I gritted my teeth and did standup for the
first time.

We’ll see where that leads in the future.

January 25, 2015 by johnnycache Leave a note

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Looks like the move to SLC is a go – will be in a new city with a new income
soon…some people knock it but I can’t wait to catch that party bus to wendover

December 30, 2014 by johnnycache Leave a note

POST NAVIGATION

← Older posts
Search for:

highergametheory.com Open in urlscan Pro 173.236.141.133 Public Scan

Form analysis 1 forms found in the DOM

GET https://highergametheory.com/

Text Content

highergametheory.com Open in urlscan Pro
173.236.141.133 Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM