
OKC-based company wants to keep employees’ $1,200 stimulus payments - fastball
https://www.thelostogle.com/2020/03/29/imagenet-consulating-stimulus-payment/
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cameronbrown
> The company would also take half of the $500 stipend allotted for dependents
> under the bill.

Oh wow. If I put morals aside, I almost see how execs rationalise keeping
their employees wages, "keeping the business stable", etc.. How in the world
can you justify taking the kids payments as well?

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badrabbit
Generally speaking, you have to keep in mind that in the US many employers see
employees as subjects (much like slaves),especially when it comes to
bluecollar work. There is no national legislation that draws a clear line.

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Lutzb
No coincidence here that the term human resources was invented for labour.
They are resources that can be exploited until they can't be further
exploited.

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badrabbit
It weirded me out big time when I first heard people talking corporate-speak
saying "we need a resource for ...". Took a while to proccess , apparently
they meant a person, I was thinking "hmm.. Wouldn't it be better to hirr
someone, what resource can do this? ML? SaaS service?"

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ponsin
This is exactly what the problem with UBI is. Companies will know that you
have an extra $X so they may be able to offer less salary (unless we are
talking about a huge UBI where people won't have to work if they don't want
to). However, the risk is much more realistic with landlords. Since renting is
basically a bidding war, the only difference with everyone have $X extra is
that the final "sale" will be $X more

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boublepop
So your saying that tax reductions and lowering the interest also have no
economic effects because every last penny will be simultaneously be deducted
from salary and go fully to increased rent/housing sales?

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ponsin
That is most certainly not what I am saying

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fastball
GP has a point though – why doesn't the same logic apply? If I am an employer,
I know your pay grade. Therefore, I know how tax cuts affect you. So if there
is a cut in tax rates, why not just deduct the equivalent value you would've
kept as extra due to the cut from your paycheck?

If rentals are being priced purely based on "what can renters afford", then
your problem is with the housing market itself, not with UBI or anything else.
Obviously UBI won't ameliorate a situation where housing is priced like that –
in that case you would also need to ensure there is a larger supply of housing
to make the market actually competitive, but it isn't a _problem_ with UBI,
it's a problem with housing.

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netwanderer3
How is this legal? They are essentially robbing their employees no? They have
effectively converted government actions of bailing out the citizens into
bailing out just me and myself only. The authorities should hit them with a
big fine.

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downerending
Employment in the US is generally at-will. Unless there are contracts
otherwise, employers can raise or lower pay as they like, subject to few
limitations.

That said, they're quite foolish to link this to the stimulus checks. And I
suspect a lot of their employees (especially the better ones) will leave.

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animalnewbie
>looks at captcha

Oh look Google has competition in free slave labor.

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jiveturkey
Let me see if I have this right.

When a company cuts employees' salary by a significant amount (let's call it
25% of 75k = $18k == $1500 over 1 month, for argument's sake, but which we
know will become 3 months) without knowing how employees will make it up, it's
understandable and even acceptable -- just poor luck. But when another company
cuts employee's salary by a fixed amount defined by what they are getting from
another, guaranteed source -- thus making them whole -- they are monstrous?

ok, got it.

i, for one, would much rather face this than furlough or layoffs.

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colejohnson66
They’re both bad.

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jiveturkey
They're not. Corporations are not places where friends socialize, or where
families support each other. They are workplaces and corporations have to look
out for themselves. Doing what they need to do, not prioritizing individuals,
is what they do and should be doing and employees should _never_ mistake them
as some kind of social support system.

They are both amoral corporate acts, neither bad nor good.

The difference, though, one form of an equivalent act raises pitchforks. And
you wonder why executives care about "optics"? This wasn't a bad move by Image
Consulting, but it was a dumb one.

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unlinked_dll
To be willfully ignorant of the human cost of business decisions is
intellectually dishonest and perpetuates the immoral and downright evil
corporate cultures.

Business decisions cannot be amoral unless you pretend they don't impact other
human beings. That in and of itself is immoral.

And regardless of what you think the purpose of a company is, they are places
where friends socialize and families look out for each other. They're social
collectives, and people will do social things where those form. Profit motive
or not. They are also a social support system, that's what your salary and
health insurance are.

And to that point, "doing what they need to do" is synonymous with hurting
people for the benefit of others. Removing pay benefits across the board is
not prioritizing individuals, but actively harming the people who can tolerate
it the least as a group.

The reason this is bad optics is because rational and moral people look at
these decisions and see them not as amoral acts like you pretend, but evil
ones.

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jiveturkey
> And regardless of what you think the purpose of a company is, they are
> places where friends socialize and families look out for each other

You are mistaken about how companies actually work, and how they should work.
The only rational way to treat a company is in an amoral, unfriendly (wouldn't
go so far as to say adversarial) way. Because when push comes to shove, that's
how they are going to treat you.

Your personal relationships with coworkers are completely different thing than
your relationship with the company. I may have misspoke when I said
"corporations are not places where ...". Of course those things happen at
corporations; after all you are spending the majority of your waking hours
there. All of my best friends come from previous jobs. But the corporation
itself is not there to facilitate that and support that, not even as a "side
purpose".

ISTM that you do not understand capitalism.

> The reason this is bad optics is because rational and moral people look at
> these decisions and see them not as amoral acts like you pretend, but evil
> ones.

Really? It's _evil_ to cut pay by the exact amount the government is giving
out, thereby maintaining worker's salary, at a time when it's clear there's
not really work for them to do, rather than cutting by an arbitrarily large
amount? Or furloughing workers entirely?

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unlinked_dll
All respect friend, but I feel you're the one who are gravely mistaken about
what a company is or how it should work.

We're not talking about capitalism, but corporatism, and corporations are
social organizations and to understand them is not to understand supply and
demand but humans and how we gather.

The decision to cut pay or lay off employees is never amoral. It's an example
of the trolley problem. It is wholly irrational to think a business decision
that impacts other human beings and their livelihood as amoral. If it were
amoral, managers wouldn't lose sleep at night when they look at the org chart
and make hard decisions when push comes to shove.

I don't think that this particular decision was evil. I think the attitude you
express about how companies "should" or "do" operate is both wrong and at the
heart of evil and immoral companies.

It's fine if you think I don't understand capitalism, because what I'm talking
about is empathy.

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exabrial
The premise is true, but I flagged because low quality journalism. If rather
see a rational discussion about the topic and less sensationalism.

