patrick.net

Pay MOAR MONEY, bitchez!

bob2356 says

Oh gee union membership went from 35% of workers to less than 10% of workers in the last 50 years. I wonder if the number of apprenticeships went down? You think? So in Texas where less than 5% of construction labor is union you must have a huge apprenticeship program.

Vocational education is where most of the construction people are coming from that I know of. So as someone in the industry what percentage are coming out of paid vocational education and what percentage from traditional union type walk in apprentice programs? Guesstimates don't count.

You don't need a union to have an apprenticeship program. There are many, many apprenticeship programs being run through/in cooperation with community colleges. If you go to work for a plumbing company they will tell you about the program (at the community college), they will explain that as you pass those classes that along with your experience your pay will increase. In many cases they will even offer paying for the courses (only if you pass). I've seen people come in from community colleges and get hired. I've seen alot of people go to work, then while working attend classes at night to complete the apprenticeship program. I'm only aware of a few people who attended a 'pay-for-training' program and then came out and got hired. But that is only my experience of over 20 years in construction and watching and hiring hundreds of people.

bob2356 says

neplusultra57 says

Real Americans Rushing Away From Construction Jobs. Too Lazy.

What a load of bullshit. The construction industry goes through the same boom and bust cycle time after time. The industry crashes and people bail out. Then when the upturn happens there is a shortage of people. That's what the article says.

The exact same thing happens in the oil patch and other cyclical fields.

So what? So what if these are cyclical jobs? The ramp up in demand is two years old so what are REAL AMERICANS waiting for? Wingnuts are always bitching about "others" who complain about low wages. They say if you don't like your wage quit, make yourself more valuable and "go get" a better paying job. Here they are bitching about immigrants instead of doing what they say others should do. Americans say they want....deserve....skilled jobs that pay high wages and require skills but then refuse to make the sacrifices intrinsic to those jobs....and that isn't laziness? What is it then? Entitlement? Victimhood? The reason why immigrants, mostly Mexican, are ALREADY ON THESE JOBSITES is because they are willing to either move their families or migrate to the work site. If REAL Americans aren't willing then you can call it whatever you prefer but I call it laziness.

"We've so demonized working with your hands in this country," he said. "We've got a booming economy, and we can't keep up with the pace of growth."

The oil patch and it's high paying cyclical jobs has gone bust, but next door in Dallas "contractors are fighting over the limited supply of [REAL AMERICAN] workers as three major mixed-use projects are going up right next to each other on the so-called "$5 billion mile" in Frisco, a northern suburb.

Immigrants make do. They leave their families or move their families and do what's best to make it work. If REAL AMERICANS wanted these jobs they'd have filled them by now.

I call bullshit on your bullshit.

Tenpoundbass says

There's no White guys doing construction because most can't afford to raise a family from "The Back" of the truck.

Or a trailer park not in their home town. They should just sit there and bitch until the #orangedouchebag makes the factories come back. Meanwhile they'll vote for right-to-work Republicans. Yup, they "deserve" better than to "go out" and find a better paying job. It's their cultural right, and it's their cultural right to blame the immigrant for being willing to take that job.

I'm sorry you trying to say something I can't make out what you are saying with Obama's hope in your mouth.

Heraclitusstudent says

Illegal immigration undermining wages is not a problem with capitalism, it's a problem of law enforcement.

Incorrect. Let's say there is a magic button that immediate deports all illegal immigrants. You can press it as many times you like each day. You can even have a monkey press it every minute for you.

Legal, non-citizen workers would still undermine wages because capitalists will bribe politicians to make laws that let them import workers from Mexico, keep those workers as non-citizens, and then send them back to Mexico to be replaced with other workers before they get any bargaining power.

Remember, the people using Mexican slave labor are the exact same people who used black slave labor, and when that was outlawed used child slave labor, and when that was outlawed domestically used child sweat shops in third world nations, and when that was outlawed went to non-citizen immigrant workers. They always use whatever people have the least power to demand living wages. There's a pattern here and it's caused by capitalism, plain and simple.

Eliminate the mechanism of letting owners decide how much workers are paid and instead pay each worker exactly 80% of his wealth production and you'll see high wages. Of course, such a system is, by definition, not capitalism. It is, however, a much better system that promotes productivity and growth.

Dan8267 says

capitalists will bribe politicians to make laws that let them import workers from Mexico

Assuming it happens, this is not capitalism. This is corruption. You can't blame every crime on capitalism.
Further there are laws that clearly require either specific conditions to hire foreign workers. It's not that easy.
H1-Bs may lower a bit wages for engineers but this is in no way a problem as radical as illegals are to other professions.

Tenpoundbass says

I'm sorry you trying to say something I can't make out what you are saying with Obama's hope in your mouth.

I'm saying if you can't deal with the market place you voted for go get on welfare, but be sure to blame the immigrant who can deal because he's making you look like bitch.

Dan8267 says

Eliminate the mechanism of letting owners decide how much workers are paid and instead pay each worker exactly 80% of his wealth production and you'll see high wages.

Nonsense.
- there is no measure of wealth production in an environment where many people work together.
- How do you quantify the cost of everything else?
- who decides?
- if your starting point is that greedy people will corrupt deciders, then how do you know greedy people won't corrupt whoever decides "wealth production" in order to pull the cover to their side?
You don't, therefore you didn't solve any problem.

Heraclitusstudent says

- there is no measure of wealth production in an environment where many people work together.

Sure there is. It's called the dollar. Anyone who cannot measure the productivity of workers, should not be deciding who should be hired and fired and how much they should be paid. There are plenty of people who can and do measure worker productivity in units of U.S. dollars. How do you think all those graphs on worker productivity and GDP are created?

Heraclitusstudent says

How do you quantify the cost of everything else?

The same way it's done now. That's an accounting problem and does not address the issue of who should decide how to split the wealth created and by what criteria.

In fact all such complaints you have about technical difficulties exist in the status quo and do not prevent capitalists from basing their decision on how to distribute the wealth created based on bargaining power. As such, these complaints also have nothing to do with changing the criteria from "bargaining power" to "actual productivity".

Nor have you made any justifications why basing pay on actual productivity would be a bad thing or why basing pay on bargaining power that has little to nothing to do with actual productivity is a good thing.

Heraclitusstudent says

if your starting point is that greedy people will corrupt deciders, then how do you know greedy people won't corrupt whoever decides "wealth production" in order to pull the cover to their side

Computers don't have greed.

This entire problem has already been solved by slime mold. Literally.

www.youtube.com/embed/Nx3Uu1hfl6Q

Slime mold has solved the problem you think is unsolvable. If slime mold can solve this problem without even a brain, why do you think it's impossible for humans with all their geniuses and technology cannot? Hell, we could just copy-n-paste the slime mold solution.

Slime mold typically travel as pulsating goo, but when life conditions are not right, they can form a slug that moves into a different area. If the slug cannot find good conditions (food, water, temperature, acidity, etc.) then the cells in the slug change into a new form, a stalk and a spore. The cells in the stalk simply die and sacrifice themselves so that the spore can travel to a better location, survive, and reproduce.

The problem the slime mold has to solve is which cells, and thus which genes, get to go in the spore. All cells want to go into the spore because they gain nothing being in the stalk, but that creates a problem because there are multiple sets of clones in the slime mold with different genes. How does the slime mold system decide how much to pay each clone set, i.e. how many of each clone set to put in the spore as oppose to the stalk? The answer is called The Law of Equalization of Net Incomes. Basically each clone set benefits proportionally to its contribution to the entire system.

See http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/2010/renner_brad/reproduction.htm for more details of this process.

So I ask you again, are human beings at least as capable as slime mold? I don't think this is such an unrealistic standard.

If you don't think my solution could work, that's because you don't understand it. My solution has worked in nature. Now maybe slime mold deserves the credit instead of me, but who cares about credit. The idea is what is important.

And if you are interested in the scientific paper, it's here.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2292884

Why blame the immigrants that would be silly no one voted for Immigrants?

Tenpoundbass says

Why blame the immigrants that would be silly no one voted for Immigrants?

Ahahahaha Hillary was friends with Robert Byrd hahahahaha!

What I personally find repulsive is the higher middle class people sweating good conscience for being accepting of illegal immigrants, while blaming poor Americans for not being able to compete with semi starving immigrants willing to do any job at any rate (too lazy) - even as the hiring corporations take the undue profits in-between.

---------------

I've got mine, fuck you!

errc says

even as the hiring corporations take the undue profits in-between.

But it's a dry heat.

Tenpoundbass says

Why blame the immigrants that would be silly no one voted for Immigrants?

You voted right-to-work for nothing legislation. That's the market you now resent. At least it's "for-nothing" in your mind. You're angry because someone doesn't think it's "for-nothing" and they manage to raise families of 5 or 6 kids on it. You can't compete. The "wall" is your bailout.

errc says

semi starving immigrants willing to do any job at any rate

That's the meme, but it's not true: nobody works and semi-starves like The Grapes of Wrath. Everywhere I look I see Mexican immigrants making do just fine, not starving, raising large families, thriving, if you want to call it that. Thriving on what most REAL AMERICANS find beneath them. Reminds me of a guy I used to work with: dumped his girlfriend because she wasn't good enough for him anymore, but she was still "his girl" in his mind so everyone else was supposed to stay off her. His version of building a wall.

Dan8267 says

There are plenty of people who can and do measure worker productivity in units of U.S. dollars

No there aren't. Productivity is back calculated from GDP. And since you propose to fix salaries, there is absolutely no reference as to what value work has.
Suppose I have an assembly line with 10 workers and 1 operation requires a worker with more experience and more skills. The product also requires an engineering team to design it, a QA team, a marketing team to sell it. How do you value the role of each person? It's just purely arbitrary. (Unless there is a labor market that tells you that. )
Explain how your slime model applies here.

Tenpoundbass says

These Liberals are first class retards. There's no White guys doing construction because most can't afford to raise a family from "The Back" of the truck.

Hahaha!

Tell that to all the Latinos raising families and buying houses while doing that kind of work.

neplusultra57 says

That's the meme, but it's not true: nobody works and semi-starves like The Grapes of Wrath. Everywhere I look I see Mexican immigrants making do just fine, not starving, raising large families, thriving, if you want to call it that.

Yeah they're thriving with their families living in a garage, working 2 jobs and eating MacDonald. With no healthcare or retirement. But poor Americans are "too lazy" to do the same.
And yeah these Americans are racists if they don't like it.
You're an arrogant jerk.

Heraclitusstudent says

It's just purely arbitrary.

If it's purely arbitrary as you claim, then there is no reason to perform one methodology over another including preferring capitalism.

Heraclitusstudent says

Unless there is a labor market that tells you that

Supply and demand do not determine value but rather an equilibrium about what you must pay. Let's say you value a hamburger at $5 and you find a restaurant that will sell you that hamburger at $3. You don't pay the amount you value the burger, $5, do you? Of course not.

A demand-supply equilibrium is not the definition of value.

Dan8267 says

Supply and demand do not determine value but rather an equilibrium about what you must pay. Let's say you value a hamburger at $5 and you find a restaurant that will sell you that hamburger at $3. You don't pay the amount you value the burger, $5, do you? Of course not.

A demand-supply equilibrium is not the definition of value.

The definition of value is that if the prices was lower, some producers wouldn't bother providing it, but if the price was higher, some buyers would not buy it.
This is the only definition there can be. All the rest is arbitrary.

Heraclitusstudent says

neplusultra57 says

That's the meme, but it's not true: nobody works and semi-starves like The Grapes of Wrath. Everywhere I look I see Mexican immigrants making do just fine, not starving, raising large families, thriving, if you want to call it that.

Yeah they're thriving with their families living in a garage, working 2 jobs and eating MacDonald. With no healthcare or retirement. But poor Americans are "too lazy" to do the same.

And yeah these Americans are racists if they don't like it.

You're an arrogant jerk.

Not saying they're racist, I'm saying they can't deal with the market they've voted for and they blame those who can deal with it. That's the arrogance of jerks who think REAL AMERICANS "deserve better" than what Mexican immigrants make do with. And, by the way, every job I ever had required a migrant lifestyle. I NEVER worked in the town of my tax home residence. That makes you an ignorant jerk, so fuck off.

Heraclitusstudent says

Suppose I have an assembly line with 10 workers and 1 operation requires a worker with more experience and more skills. The product also requires an engineering team to design it, a QA team, a marketing team to sell it.

Explain how your slime model applies here.

The finished product is composed of parts. Each contributor to the finished product is, by definition, impacting one or more parts. Measure the value added by each contributor for each part. To do this compare the result of not having that work done. If not having that work done makes the part unusable, then consider that contribution to be equal to the part's value divided by all such contributors for that part. Sum across all parts.

Integration of parts is a part. Use the same algorithm.

You can model this as each contributor getting a share based on his or her contributions. His total income is the profit times his share count divided by the total share count.

The entire point of business administration is, therefore, to accurately assess contributions. If human beings are incapable of doing this, then automate such assessments using scientific methods. If McDonald's can measure the time and effort to build a burger down to each flip of a patty, then we can measure the contributions of all contributors.

When a hiring manager offers a prospective employee a specific salary, he already has the problem of determining the employee's expected productivity. The only difference between the system I am proposing and the status quo is that I do not require the hiring manager to also determine how much he can gouge the prospective employee. The problem that you are claiming is unsolvable, determining the wealth employees produce, is already solved in the status quo. If it weren't solved, employers would routinely pay employees more than they produce and their businesses would go bankrupt!

neplusultra57 says

Not saying they're racist, I'm saying they can't deal with the market they've voted for

BS they didn't vote for unenforced immigration laws. In fact they are clamoring for enforcing them - they are being called racists all the time.

So easy to tell which years are divisible by 4.

Are fucktards spewing rivers of venom at immigrants? If yes, there will be summer Olympics and a presidential election this year.

Even if net wetback flux is negative, the braying whackaloon white-privilege SJW's will be moaning "dey terk er derbs!"

Heraclitusstudent says

neplusultra57 says

Not saying they're racist, I'm saying they can't deal with the market they've voted for

BS they didn't vote for unenforced immigration laws. In fact they are clamoring for enforcing them - they are being called racists all the time.

The market they voted for was non-union right-to-work for nothing free market trickle down Republican dogma. And they are lazy if they won't pack up and "go get a better job" like they say all the "lazy liberals, millennials, and minorities" should. Yeah, sounds like lazy, arrogant, entitled victims of their own stupidity. Personal responsibility need not apply.

Dan8267 says

The entire point of business administration is, therefore, to accurately assess contributions. If human beings are incapable of doing this, then automate such assessments using scientific methods.

Assuming you do that, you will get shortage for some work positions, and too many candidates for other positions. ... unless you do what the labor markets would do automatically to balance the supply and the demand: raise wages where there are shortages and lower it where you have too much supply, until you have equilibrium.

Heraclitusstudent says

The definition of value is that if the prices was lower, some producers wouldn't bother providing it, but if the price was higher, some buyers would not buy it.

No, that is not the definition of value. In fact, by that definition there can be no value to anything. There will always be producers not willing to produce a product or service at a given price. How much would you require to let Clint Howard have anal sex with you? There will also always be some buyers who will not buy a product or service at any price. Would you pay even one cent to have Clint Howard give you a blow job?

Furthermore, there will be multiple buyers and sellers willing to take other price points.

You are confusing equilibriums with value. They are not the same thing. By your definition, neither stock nor anything else can ever be overvalued. Clearly this is empirically false.

More importantly, you have not given any reason why bargaining power, rather than actual productivity, should be the determining factor of wealth distribution. It is obvious that basing the economy on bargaining power does not maximize productivity as it does not reward productivity. In fact, it creates perverse incentives to greatly diminish productivity in order to increase one's own share of the wealth. Many executives have gutted businesses to increase their own personal profits.

Heraclitusstudent says

Assuming you do that, you will get shortage for some work positions, and too many candidates for other positions.

That happens in the status quo. This is not a problem. If people are rewarded based on their actual productivity rather than mere bargaining power, then people will want to be as productive per unit of their time as possible. This is a good thing.

Less productive jobs should not be done. That's wasteful.

neplusultra57 says

The market they voted for was non-union right-to-work for nothing free market trickle down Republican dogma. And they are lazy if they won't pack up and "go get a better job" like they say all the "lazy liberals, millennials, and minorities" should. Yeah, sounds like lazy, arrogant, entitled victims of their own stupidity. Personal responsibility need not apply.

The free market they voted for doesn't include uncontrolled immigration for dirt poor workers. You are confusing the republican elites rhetoric defending their rich donors and the actual people on the ground.

The timing of the oil patch bust in Texas coincided exactly with the upswing in demand for construction workers in Dallas.....if you bother to read the linked article. These are high paying jobs anybody with spit in their mouths could have transitioned right over to. Anyone who sits on their ass and bitches about immigrants taking the jobs they deserve is a fucking failure of a man. The immigrants are already on these high paying jobsites right fucking now. The whining crackers will be the LAST demographic to show up, and sure as the world it will be just in time for a housing bust and some more blamegame crying and another round of pouting about the brown horde.

Not saying they're racist, I'm saying they can't deal with the market they've voted for and they blame those who can

------------

That's rich, you really could use some time in the real world. Your lack of perspective is blinding

Heraclitusstudent says

The free market they voted for doesn't include uncontrolled immigration for dirt poor workers.

That's the only free market they've been able to vote for, and they believed it hook line and sinker, until lo and behold....it doesn't work! Lordy, lordy that means it's the immigrant's fault? Yeah, right! If there's so many of the brown horde why are labor wages rising in the Dallas construction market? There's an endless supply from the horde, right? Wrong. The nature and stigma of the work doesn't suit the pouters. See TPB: no REAL AMERICAN should stoop to living out the back of a truck and eating from a taco truck on every corner, no matter what it pays, that's scut work.

Dan8267 says

No, that is not the definition of value. In fact, by that definition there can be no value to anything. There will always be producers not willing to produce a product or service at a given price. How much would you require to let Clint Howard have anal sex with you? There will also always be some buyers who will not buy a product or service at any price. Would you pay even one cent to have Clint Howard give you a blow job?

There is no market place for sex with Clint Eastwood. So it doesn't follow.

Dan8267 says

there will be multiple buyers and sellers willing to take other price points.

Sure and what matters is the aggregate equilibrium avoiding excesses and shortages.

Dan8267 says

It is obvious that basing the economy on bargaining power does not maximize productivity as it does not reward productivity.

People take the job that provides them with the best income. This means the most productive job.

Dan8267 says

You are confusing equilibriums with value. They are not the same thing. By your definition, neither stock nor anything else can ever be overvalued. Clearly this is empirically false.

I simply pointing to the fact that there is no measure of value outside equilibrium. All other measures result in either oversupply or shortage.
The stock market is a never achieved equilibrium. Like the ocean always has waves, a stock market is always fluctuating and pushed by irrational factors. Nonetheless there is no other mechanism to value stocks that worked better. The inventor of such a method would indeed be very rich.

errc says

Not saying they're racist, I'm saying they can't deal with the market they've voted for and they blame those who can

------------

That's rich, you really could use some time in the real world. Your lack of perspective is blinding

Splain. The real world I grew up in was nothing but labor and my competition was almost entirely Hispanic workers, most of them illegals.

neplusultra57 says

most of them illegals.

Truth be told, I admired them. Tough motherfuckers, abused by their bosses, who (their bosses) really did eventually wreck the market for labor.

Heraclitusstudent says

There is no market place for sex with Clint Eastwood. So it doesn't follow.

There most certainly is a market place for sex and that market place includes the specifics of the prostitute. So it does follow.

Heraclitusstudent says

Sure and what matters is the aggregate equilibrium avoiding excesses and shortages.

Equilibriums of supply and demand do nothing to avoid excesses or shortages and most certainly do not maximize national or global GDP. Nor is there any reason remotely to believe that paying labor the bare minimum to get the job done is the way to maximize the wealth of a society. In fact, this assumption is empirically false.

Slavery is the prime reason that the American South never became wealthy. Sure, a few individuals became wealthy, but slavery, or for that matter any cheap labor, actually diminishes wealth because it wastes the potential productivity of human capital. The existence of slaves causes free men to earn less, buy less, and thus society produces less wealth. It's a vicious cycle.

If your beliefs were true, there would be no negative economic side to slavery (ignore the ethics for sake of argument) as it would only shift the supply curve of labor to the left. Slavery would only have positive economic consequences. Clearly, this is not true.

Heraclitusstudent says

People take the job that provides them with the best income. This means the most productive job.

Ah, but that demonstrates why you are wrong. The most productive job would be the highest paying one if wages were based on productivity rather than bargaining power. But because bargaining power alone determines wages, less productive jobs often pay more than more productive jobs. That's exactly why I'm proposing that pay should determined by actual productivity rather than bargaining power.

Heraclitusstudent says

I simply pointing to the fact that there is no measure of value outside equilibrium. All other measures result in either oversupply or shortage.

You do realize that these two statements directly contradict each other? If there is no other measure than all other measures cannot exist.

Furthermore, your second statement is a baseless assertion. Finally, the current system of letting owners determine wages based on bargaining power does indeed create oversupplies and shortages. We have an oversupply of realtors and an undersupply of scientists and doctors. And that's under the status quo.

In our current economic system we waste vast resources on zero-sum financial games, marketing, and lobbying. To say that the current system efficiently allocates resources including human capital is ridiculous.

Heraclitusstudent says

Nonetheless there is no other mechanism to value stocks that worked better.

The argument that a better alternative has not already been implemented, therefore a better one cannot be, is clearly a bad argument. The entire rise of the digital age screams bloody murder at that position.

Heraclitusstudent says

The inventor of such a method would indeed be very rich.

Unfortunately, not under capitalism. Edgar Codd, inventor of the relational database system, made no money off his invention while fat-ass Larry Ellison, who could not even understand the basic math of it nonetheless implement a RDMS, made billions off of the hard labor of others who did actually implement it.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web (HTML and HTTP), made nothing from his invention even though it create trillions of dollars of wealth every year for the past 20 years. Meanwhile billionaires rose on the backs of productive IT workers while producing little to nothing themselves.

The fundamental flaw of capitalism is that it does not reward wealth creation, but rather wealth control. Why create wealth when it goes only to those who control wealth?

Everything great about our economy and our country was created by STEM, not capitalism. Capitalism is holding back our economy. It is a Bronze Age technology with a few Industrial Age refinements. It is archaic. Unfortunately, it is treated as a religion rather than being subject to the scientific method and accountability. People refuse to even consider alternatives.

If it makes you feel better, we can always call the new system capitalism. It won't be, but if you just like the word capitalism we can keep it as a historic misnomer. In fact, if we do ever switch to a new system, it most certainly will still be called capitalism no matter how different it is.

Dan8267 says

Heraclitusstudent says

People take the job that provides them with the best income. This means the most productive job.

Ah, but that demonstrates why you are wrong. The most productive job would be the highest paying one if wages were based on productivity rather than bargaining power. But because bargaining power alone determines wages, less productive jobs often pay more than more productive jobs. That's exactly why I'm proposing that pay should determined by actual productivity rather than bargaining power.

If a job is very productive in terms of value produced for the employer, it should be in high demand as the employers seek to maximize their own incomes. Therefore the bargaining power in such job is higher.

On the other hand, if it is a commodity job that every one can do, producing a commodity product (like a hamburger), the high availability of such products ensure they have low value, and so these jobs cannot be called very productive, and will be paid less.

Therefore the bargaining powers (and wages) follow the productivity of the job - assuming of course employers and governments do not conspire to negatively affect the equilibrium by adding illegal immigrant workers.

Dan8267 says

Unfortunately, not under capitalism. Edgar Codd, inventor of the relational database system, made no money off his invention while fat-ass Larry Ellison, who could not even understand the basic math of it nonetheless implement a RDMS, made billions off of the hard labor of others who did actually implement it.

There is a chain of value that goes from having a concept, to implementing it, to marketing it, to maintaining it, to protecting the intellectual property, etc....
If you don't have the complete chain, you can't claim the value.
If you relinquish your part to a fat ass, then you gave up your share.
A piece of code in a directory is not a product and is worth nothing.

Heraclitusstudent says

If a job is very productive in terms of value produced for the employer, it should be in high demand as the employers seek to maximize their own incomes. Therefore the bargaining power in such job is higher.

This is a faulty assumption and is empirically false.

You state yourself that the wages for a job should be determined by supply and demand of labor and NOT by the productivity of the job. If wages are determined by the supply and demand of labor than a high potential supply means low wages REGARDLESS of how productive the job is. Migrant farm laborers could literally produce millions of dollars of wealth per laborer and still get paid only $10,000/yr if there are enough of them to drive down wages. And since any potential labor over 100% cause an immediate and dramatic drop in bargaining power, this will always happen.

So what you want to be true, that the productivity of a job determines its value and thus wages, is in direct contradiction with what capitalism does, setting wages to the lowest level possible under the supply and demand curve or bargaining power.

Heraclitusstudent says

On the other hand, if it is a commodity job that every one can do, producing a commodity product (like a hamburger), the high availability of such products ensure they have low value, and so these jobs cannot be called very productive, and will be paid less.

Wrong. The value of a job is not determined by the number of people who can do the job but rather by the value of the end result. A hamburger is worth what it is regardless of how many people can make it. Value is determine by consumption not by production costs.

When machines made the price of manufacturing clothes go to less than a dollar per shirt, that didn't cause the mall to lower the price of that $100 Tommy Bahama shirt. The value of the shirt is over a hundred times greater than the cost of production.

If a company makes donuts by hand and they cost $1 to make and sell for $2, does the value of those donuts go down when the company buys a machine that makes the donuts for 10 cents a pop? No, and neither does the price. The company's owner simply pocket the difference.

Heraclitusstudent says

Therefore the bargaining powers (and wages) follow the productivity of the job

No, this is empirically false. Look at the graph below. It clearly contradicts your statement.

Source: Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay
Why It Matters and Why It’s Real

How can you explain this chart if "the bargaining powers (and wages) follow the productivity of the job"?
Heraclitusstudent says

assuming of course employers and governments do not conspire to negatively affect the equilibrium by adding illegal immigrant workers

The legality of the workers is irrelevant. With a stroke of the pen, the government could make all the immigrant workers legal citizens, fully documented. It's trivial to do.

The reason the immigrant workers drive down wages is because wages are determined by the most desperate supply rather than by productivity. Although this mechanism drives up the personal riches of a few owners, it greatly reduces the overall wealth of our society for the exact same reasons that slavery impoverished the American South, the exact same reasons child labor impoverished the city dweller in the industrial revolution, and exactly why outsourcing impoverishes STEM labor. And because these people then have less money to spend on goods and services, the consequences spread to everyone else.

Dan8267 says

If wages are determined by the supply and demand of labor than a high potential supply means low wages REGARDLESS of how productive the job is.

You are saying a job can be very productive but be paid little. If this is the case then someone is making a lot of money from that worker. If this is the case someone else could start doing the same and offer a better pay to attract the rare worker, increasing the bargaining power of that worker.

It follows that the jobs that represent the most constraining bottleneck in the value chain are the most productive and therefore command the best bargaining power and highest wage.

Dan8267 says

No, this is empirically false. Look at the graph below. It clearly contradicts your statement.

The graph you showed represent several distortions that were deliberately setup to destroy the value at the bottom of the spectrum:
- a very large addition to the labor force through free trade and immigration (hundreds of millions). And in China in particular, this is compounded by the constant migration to cities. (so we are talking an almost infinite labor pool).
- the commodization of almost all trades, so workers are all alike and replaceable. (for example a worker in a coffee shop like starbuck is deliberately totally deprived of anything original that would add value to himself compared to others)
- the destruction of end-demand: because wages are down, demand is down, and so the equilibrium point is down. This is a race to zero that is compensated only by huge debt creation in developed countries.
- all this creates a winner take all where the few people who setup the winning value chain rip the benefit from the work of the entire planet.

And so, what didn't you prove here:
- This is not saying capitalism would not work in a single homogeneous country like the US taken in isolation.
- This is not saying capitalism will not work in the long term: indeed wages in places like China are going up at double digits rate, meaning their values while initially crushed are increasingly recognized, and this also means they will sooner or later start consuming and adding to the end demand. So what you are showing may "just" be a multi decades distortion created by the development of several high-populations countries.
- This is not saying that individual value is not recognized, for example there are high end coffee shops selling better coffee than Starbucks and offering better jobs.
- So all this doesn't prove that value doesn't follow scarcity and skills. All it means is by default people near the bottom are *made* low value by extra competition and extra commoditization. But people having original ideas can profit disproportionally (in particular if they are smart enough to control the value chain). all this just accentuate the difference between the low value people and the high value people.