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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (8088)	4/18/2006 1:43:53 PM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24758

Abba Lerner asserted that socialists should deliberately apply whatever policy best served the social interest, whether that policy was based upon collective ownership and administration, or private enterprise. We could presume that Lerner would advocate laissez faire if it were shown to serve the public interest to a greater degree than a controlled economy. Would you agree that even in this hypothetical circumstance Lerner is still a socialist?

To: ahhaha who wrote (8088)	4/18/2006 6:04:40 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

False assumption. There's no value add in what the employees there do. They're just soda jerks. They are salespeople. Not very advanced ones - mostly what they do is take orders - but there is the upsell to consider - that's the value added for SBUX. What SBUX is selling is a nice experience, and good product with a lot of sizzle - ventes, grandes, mochacinos, crapucinos, yadayada, and most especially, an experience women customers will like. SBUX has nice looking stores but they aren't really stylish like a really good Italian coffee bar. What really counts is the kind of employee participation that leads to good atmosphere and customers' uncritical acceptance of the ephemeral quality of the higher priced products. The value added for the customer is luxury and "excitement" and the employees have to transmit it. If restaurant employees don't do that then the business will be either mediocre or, more likely, go bust. One of the best ways to get them is to make working at Starbucks better quality employment than working for the competitors. Get who? Better jerks? Yes! When I ran my own service business that's exactly what I wanted - somebody who would be slightly "underemployed" given their abilities - someone who, without being prompted, could do a bit more than than the minimum requirement, and who was "nice". I didn't need rocket scientists I needed a little bit better than mediocre. Rocket scientists move on and I would have had to train another person which was extra cost. Jerks know all about health care, so they know how to judge whether SBUX's healthcare program is better than XYZ's? They think they know it's better than XYZ's if XYZ doesn't offer one, or if they think XYZ doesn't offer one, or if their friends tell them it's a better one. If you want better than mediocre workers you must make working for you more attractive than working for the competitor. Since when can prospective employees do what securities analysts have a hard time doing? Most jobs, especially entry level, are found through talking with with family, friends and aquaintances. Working at SBUX they may be told, or may see from the own observation, is better then the counter at KFC, Chock Full of Nuts, or Bill's Coffee Shop. Entry level jobs (and that's what SBUX counter jobs are) are usually plentiful and if a person finds one unsatisfactory they move around the corner to another one. Prospective SBUX employees have the advantage of not being securities analysts. Are you saying that a company presumes the prospective employees know how to fairly evaluate their healthcare component of compensation? No. I do know that if a coffee shop operator is paying pretty close to a minimum wage then any health plan they offer makes them attractive because minimum wage + health plan = better real wage. That's their thinking and that's the employee's thinking. I'm willing to bet that not 1 in 10,000 prospects knows how to do that accurately, and further doesn't and can't know whether if given a choice of providers would get the superior one at some company allowed cost. Not relevant. It looks like you're a wobbly boy. Specifically, "adaptive capitalism" is socialism. The idea is that one can modify capitalism to admit social preferences. The idea is to get the employees that will do you the most good. In the case of Northern Alberta right now the idea is to find an employee with a heart beat. A DQ operator there is offering prospective employees bursaries for their future post secondary education not out of the goodness of his heart but because he needs 70 seasonal employees every summer and there's a lot of competition for them. SBUX doesn't have the DQ guy's problem but it does have competition in hiring employees who are a bit better than mediocre. So here's my question. Are you saying that if an employer offers an employee compensation in any form other than direct money payment, then that employer is socialist? Gotta get some operational definitions here.