Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay. The bill, over a four-year period, would lowe…
Look at it this way. Let’s say I run a widget factory. I have a worker, Joe, that I pay $1000/week to. Each day, Joe creates me a widget that I can sell for $220. That means at the end of the week, I have 5 widgets I can sell for $1100, yielding me $100 profit.
Now, we move to a 4 day work week. I pay Joe $1000. He creates me 4 widgets, still worth $220 each. I sell them for $880 total. I now lose $120 each week.
Under the current plan, it seems the guidance is that Joe will magically start working faster and produce more than 1 widget per day. If he does not, my other option is to increase the price of widgets or to decrease the amount of money I pay Joe.
So you won’t be able to steal as much of the value Joe creates from him and instead have to pay him a fairer share? Oh darn. You mean you won’t be able to live in luxury while others do the work for you?
I don’t have to “let” Joe sell his own widgets. He’d be free to do that regardless. I guess your guidance is that the business should just die under this new model.
It’s typically my experience that a great number of people are not entrepreneurial. They just want to show up to work, do their job, get paid and go home. I’m not talking about coercion of anyone to be FORCED to work for a business. I am just trying to understand how this new legislation would work. My hunch that is if this was passed, consumer prices would increase 20%. If you believe otherwise I would like to understand more.
The average profit margin in the US is approximately 7%… a 10% margin is considered healthy. Fluctuations in fuel prices DO threaten businesses. That’s why you see fuel/transportation surcharges and price increases.
Edit: you said “but nobody’s explaining the economics to me”, here you go, here’s the basics of corporate financial management with real numbers and a tiny bit of macroeconomics at the end.
Wait, I don’t get it. You’re saying if you pay a worker 1000$ a week and get revenue of 1100$, then you have a profit margin of 10%. But that’s NOT profit margin (at least not the one one would use for analysis). Not to mention that those numbers are unrealistic because you’d be working at a loss for a very long time, almost guarantee.
You can’t just pull numbers like that and say, “unprofitable!”. Of course it isn’t. You made it that way.
Besides, you’re ignoring the rest of the expenses that often outweigh the payroll fund.
Back to what you called “profit margin,” I’d call it “Return on Payroll Fund.” It’s weird, I don’t like it, it ignores all of the other costs that go into creating a product, don’t use it. In financial management, we use RoS, which is EBIT/Revenue. That’s probably what you were thinking of. Another name for it would be “operating profit margin,” likewise net profit margin would account for ALL of the expenses and not just operating ones.
Now, let’s look at real numbers. I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets)
Sales - 29056
Freight, transportation, distribution - (974)
Cost of goods sold - (19608)
EBIT - 8474
EBT - 1952
Taxes - (670)
Net earning - 1282
Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.
Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)
Let’s see what happens to our efficiency once the changes take effect.
All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)
Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit in productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate.
(2858+626)*120%=4180.8
New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2
New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles.
So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20,3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.
Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation.
Awesome, this is the exact point I was trying to make. You can add further arguments that there will be mitigating factors to this, but my reflex was that if this legislation passes, consumers will see price increases.
Look at it this way. Let’s say I run a widget factory. I have a worker, Joe, that I pay $1000/week to. Each day, Joe creates me a widget that I can sell for $220. That means at the end of the week, I have 5 widgets I can sell for $1100, yielding me $100 profit.
Now, we move to a 4 day work week. I pay Joe $1000. He creates me 4 widgets, still worth $220 each. I sell them for $880 total. I now lose $120 each week.
Under the current plan, it seems the guidance is that Joe will magically start working faster and produce more than 1 widget per day. If he does not, my other option is to increase the price of widgets or to decrease the amount of money I pay Joe.
So you won’t be able to steal as much of the value Joe creates from him and instead have to pay him a fairer share? Oh darn. You mean you won’t be able to live in luxury while others do the work for you?
Fuck off lmao
or you can go get a real job, admit that private property is theft, and let joe sell his own widgets.
I don’t have to “let” Joe sell his own widgets. He’d be free to do that regardless. I guess your guidance is that the business should just die under this new model.
my guidance is that you don’t need to be profiting off of the labor of other people.
It’s typically my experience that a great number of people are not entrepreneurial. They just want to show up to work, do their job, get paid and go home. I’m not talking about coercion of anyone to be FORCED to work for a business. I am just trying to understand how this new legislation would work. My hunch that is if this was passed, consumer prices would increase 20%. If you believe otherwise I would like to understand more.
I think if widget factories could have that tight of margins, the issues would be totally different.
No competent business owner would employ someone whose value could become non-viable with a fluctuation in fuel cost.
The average profit margin in the US is approximately 7%… a 10% margin is considered healthy. Fluctuations in fuel prices DO threaten businesses. That’s why you see fuel/transportation surcharges and price increases.
Edit: you said “but nobody’s explaining the economics to me”, here you go, here’s the basics of corporate financial management with real numbers and a tiny bit of macroeconomics at the end.
Wait, I don’t get it. You’re saying if you pay a worker 1000$ a week and get revenue of 1100$, then you have a profit margin of 10%. But that’s NOT profit margin (at least not the one one would use for analysis). Not to mention that those numbers are unrealistic because you’d be working at a loss for a very long time, almost guarantee.
You can’t just pull numbers like that and say, “unprofitable!”. Of course it isn’t. You made it that way.
Besides, you’re ignoring the rest of the expenses that often outweigh the payroll fund.
Back to what you called “profit margin,” I’d call it “Return on Payroll Fund.” It’s weird, I don’t like it, it ignores all of the other costs that go into creating a product, don’t use it. In financial management, we use RoS, which is EBIT/Revenue. That’s probably what you were thinking of. Another name for it would be “operating profit margin,” likewise net profit margin would account for ALL of the expenses and not just operating ones.
Now, let’s look at real numbers. I’ll take Nutrien’s 2023 audited financial statement as an example. (Numbers in brackets are what’s deducted to get what’s not in brackets) Sales - 29056 Freight, transportation, distribution - (974) Cost of goods sold - (19608) EBIT - 8474 EBT - 1952 Taxes - (670) Net earning - 1282
Out of cost of goods sold (2858) is cost of labour, let’s also add (626) from general administrative expenses, and just say it’s all wages.
Effective tax rate - 670/1952*100% = 34,3% (wow, that’s a lot for where I live, also ignoring mining tax for simplicity)
Let’s see what happens to our efficiency once the changes take effect.
All of costs can be divided into Fixed and Variable ones. Labour, in this case, is Variable because we can manipulate it by employing more staff to compensate for reduction in working hours and keep the sales at the same rate. (Contract workers are usually Fixed Cost, but it’s all relative, as no Fixed Cost is ever truly fixed.)
Going from 40 => 32, we have a 20% reduction in working hours. Mind you, this doesn’t mean there will be a 20% hit in productivity. It may be more, it may be less (most likely less), for simplicity let’s say it’s 20%. So, we need 20% more workers to compensate. (2858+626)*120%=4180.8
New EBT = 1952 + 2858 + 626 - 4180.8 = 1255.2 New net profit = 1255.2*(1-34.3%) = 824.7. Mind you, the effective tax rate will probably be lower if employment affects deductibles.
So, our net profit margin went from 1282/29056 = 4.4% to 2.8%. Looks bad at first glance, but it’s also a bad year. A year prior net profit margin was at whopping 20,3%, so a decrease from 4.4% to 2.8% would be nothing in comparison.
Will it result in increased prices? Yes, but it will also lead to economic growth, because more free time = people spend more money = companies earn more = companies grow faster, but so does inflation.
Awesome, this is the exact point I was trying to make. You can add further arguments that there will be mitigating factors to this, but my reflex was that if this legislation passes, consumers will see price increases.
The real question isn’t if it will or not, but by how much. If I were to guess, not a whole lot.
You could probably find some research done on this topic already.