Securities industry holds course for children

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Honen at 05:32 PM JST - 30th June

Get 'em while they're young. You start 'em of with JGBs, the "gateway security". Next thing you know, they're selling their bodies for credit default swaps.
TumbleDry at 10:27 PM JST - 30th June

OK. Who is teaching the security firms about social responsibility? Crashing the world's economy for the specific interests of the few...
Fadamor at 02:16 AM JST - 1st July

The number one rule they should be teaching the kids is that "securities" are anything but. It's just glorified gambling and you should never put money into securities that you can't afford to lose.
shinjukuboy at 07:14 AM JST - 1st July

Early indoctrination into capitalism is increasingly necessary we the catastrophic effect on peoples' lives becomes ever increasingly obviious. That is the only way to make them true believers who will not abandon the system that benefits so few no matter how bad their personal situation gets.
shinjukuboy at 07:24 AM JST - 1st July

Early indoctrination into capitalism is increasingly necessary as the catastrophic effect on peoples' lives becomes ever increasingly obvious. That is the only way to make them true believers who will not abandon a system that benefits so few no matter how bad their personal situation gets.
tkoind2 at 09:08 AM JST - 1st July

Shinjukuboy. Well said.

The financial crisis has made the disparity between haves and have nots a lot more clear than it has been in decades. Workers watch their company owners go on with large bonus payments and salaries hundreds of times higher, while they endure pay cuts and live in daily fear of losing their jobs. Others are simply cast off as unnecessary baggage and left to fend for themselves. And then there are the masses of temp workers who are the modern day equal of migrant workers who have zero security.

The system is broken and driven by the greed of the few. We need a revision in how our global economy works. Not only to make it more balanced for the majority of people living on this planet, but to stem the tide of global environmental desolation.

The future should belong to the masses of ordinary people and not to a priviledged few who earn millions while enormous masses of people cannot afford to eat every day and have no hope for a better future. This is a gross humanitarian injustice that should be set straight.

Endoctrinating kids now will not change the fact that they face lives of wage slavery, long unpaid overtime and a lifetime of stress related work inflicted illness. All for the enrichment of a priviledged few who should be brought back to earth and made to be better human beings.
dishdash at 01:40 PM JST - 1st July

Economic education is a great idea but it should be basic stuff e.g. dont spend what you can't afford etc. However I find something slightly machiavellian when this is being conducted by securities firms. You can't help but think that this is an investment for the securities firms in their future and not necessarily the kids. Something conducted like this should be done with no advertising i.e. no Nomura labelled pamphlets, teachers should not speak about their companies and topics should be even handed i.e. not slanted to investing in such things as stock markets only.
bobobolinski at 03:39 PM JST - 1st July

An objective lesson might be to follow up the visit of the securities companies with a viewing of Anne Leonard's "The Story of Stuff" http://www.storyofstuff.com

(unfortunately Japanese subtitles are not available)
Stereofreak at 12:20 AM JST - 2nd July

The full text goes:

"The company (I) made a (huge) profit thanks to your work and I am paying you a (meager) salary. Well, it's almost 10pm now, so when you finish up in a couple of hours you may run along and buy yourself some jeans and a jacket. I will also get myself a little something: perhaps a new rolex or a new gold tub for the bathroom. Keep up the good work - or else!

By the way, I hope to see you at tomorrow's nomikai and for our special Happy Worker's Weekend training this Sunday at 8am. I won't be there, of course, but the SubManager will be thrilled to see you there. Seriously. His job depends on getting you to go."

I wonder if union-breaking and tax-dodging are also in the curriculum? Perhaps they're keeping that for chuugakkou.
TokyoHustla at 04:43 AM JST - 2nd July

I wonder if union-breaking and tax-dodging are also in the curriculum?

No, they are not. These are things we do not want the commoners to learn about.
Klein2 at 06:16 AM JST - 2nd July

Here is the part I don't like. ‘‘The company made a profit thanks to your work and I am paying you a salary,’’ the boy said.

Teaching kids that a salary is a reward for company profits? Uh uh. That is not how it works, kids. A salary is paid for your WORK. Whether the company makes a profit or not is the owners' risk and reward, not the workers'. Did anyone else spot this? Forcing workers to pay for management incompetence is what got us into this mess. Any company should be able to pay its workers whether it makes a profit or not. Salaries are a cost, not a distribution of profits. Can we teach children about responsibilities rather than just characterizing cash as manna, please?

There is also no explanation of what anybody actually produced or did. "Here is some money, go consume!" Well, I guess that is all we need to know about money, YahooTM.

I fail to see what "instruction" is being done here.
yabits at 06:45 AM JST - 2nd July

Teaching kids that a salary is a reward for company profits? Uh uh. That is not how it works, kids. A salary is paid for your WORK.

Great post, Klein2.

Think about it another way, however: Without the work, the company could not have made a profit. This is really the way things work. "Thanks to your work, the company made $500. And so we are giving you $30 for your part in it." (Only it's rarely so generous.)

I learned the lesson on my first job after I left the US Navy in the late 70s. I was working for a company that repaired Boeing passenger aircraft, and my job was to repair the various electronic modules that were sent to us. My wage was $7.25/hour.

At first it would take me from 1 to 2 hours to finish a module, which meant I could get through four or five in an 8-hour day. After a few months, thanks to an innate ability to improve processes and master my work, I managed to cut my time per module to 30 to 45 minutes, essentially doubling my productivity.

One day, I had to check on the history of a module that had been sent back to us from a previous repair. While doing so, I ran across the invoices that my company had sent out for the repairs for that and other modules. The average invoice amount exceeded $400.00. So, if I was doing 8 modules per day, the company was making at least $3200 and paying me less than $60 for that contribution.

Got your attention, children?

Needless to say, I slowed myself down and started searching for a new place to work.
Klein2 at 12:23 PM JST - 2nd July

yabits Nice story, but I think it ignores my point. Oh, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, but refrain from telling me the way things work in the real world. Believe me, I know how it goes. I am just saying it is wrong. I think we agree. Sorry to be bristly there. Let's get past that.

The profit goes to the owners. So does the risk. Did you walk out the door because you were only getting 60 bucks? Fair enough. They hired some less productive person at the same rate. Did you start working for the customer at 200 an hour? Did you ask for a raise to 200 an hour? You should have. Couldn't? Well, too bad. Take the risk and be an entrepreneur, or be labor and forget the risk/reward calculation.

In my book, if they can get 400 from the customer, they deserve it. Personally, I am not too sure what you were upset about. Flatly, after a similar experience, I will never again take a job that does not directly reward my productivity. "They" wanted to give me a 20% pay cut, and I walked. They found someone who was less experienced, older, 30% less productive and 20% more expensive after a 3 month search. And I got rich instead.

What I would be upset about is if Boeing said "gee Yabits, we have not been profitable, so we are cutting your agreed upon salary." That is just plain wrong by all of my rules. Profit, schmofit, even if they are selling below cost, I have a right to get paid my agreed upon salary. I practice what I preach too. I know exactly what my employees are worth, and I pay them a little bit more. If I ever have to let someone go, it will not be because of "profits", but because they are not worth what I am paying them.

Viewed another way, if the company fails, I get a workman's lein. If it does not fail, I get paid whether it is profitable for them to do so or not. I do the work, they pay my salary. No buts.

"Capitalists" failure to meet their basic responsibilities to pay their workers is reprehensible. Teaching that doctrine of placement of corporate risk on the shoulders of labor is lower than low.
Klein2 at 01:46 PM JST - 2nd July

To make a long story short: You pay the workers FIRST, always. Anything else is a dishonest cheat, and I mean in a deep karma sense. You do not count up the profits and then decide to pay the workers or not.

Bonuses, profit sharing, stock options... those are all suspicious obfuscations. Salary is salary. I believe deep down that labor and management can work together in earnest, but if the cheating starts, it never stops. What Yabits did by slowing down, for instance, destroys trust and poisons the environment.

It sad and does not have to be that way. The securities industry should not teach kids to make this mistake.
yabits at 10:11 PM JST - 2nd July

Klein2, I don't see anyplace where we disagree, at least not yet.

Personally, I am not too sure what you were upset about.

I didn't say I was upset. I was quite shocked that an employer would be stupid enough to not have increased incentives for productivity gains built into the salary plan.

There are at least three different perspectives on what "work" is worth. The employer's perspective, the worker's perspective, and the customer's perspective. We can agree that the customer thought the work was worth $400, but it did not matter to the customer whether I finished a module in 15 minutes or two days. Well, not unless they wanted it back in one day, that is -- something for which they were prepared to pay extra.

One problem is that few workers get the perspective that I got on what their work is worth to customers. As a worker, I had to come to view my work as how my employer viewed it. Since the previous production was 4 modules or $1200 a day, and my salary was around $60, I concluded that the employer was very satisfied with the profit returned on the work at that rate. Every additional module completed per day via my initiative and mastery of the job added (nearly) another $400 in pure profit to the employer's daily bottom line.

You say that my slowing down is what destroyed the trust and poisoned the environment. But just as you claim that the employer is obligated to pay me my salary, I am just as obligated to give them what they consider a fair day's work. If I do more than a fair day's work, and get nothing in return for it, I am not poisoning the environment by going back to what was considered normal, but returning the system to a state of fairness.

Cutting salary overtly is one thing. But any fixed salary is subject to inflation and so will have the impact as a cut would have over time.