Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 April 12

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April 12

What does these Symbols of tattoos mean?

Here are some hindu tattoos I curious about: https://web.archive.org/web/20101002045232/http://mikes-images.com/mirror/pages/gabrielle_mqmd_2092.htm tbnid=4oDCm2wupUHodM%3A&w=260&h=155&ei=oIxJU4C2I8KsyAGW2oCQAQ&ved=0CAIQxiAwAA&iact=c https://www.google.ca/search?q=gabrielle+xena+mehndi+tattoos&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=lIxJU9HUH4KiyAGH2IHYBQ&ved=0CDYQ7Ak&biw=1360&bih=629#facrc=_&imgdii=_&https://web.archive.org/web/20101002045232/http://mikes-images.com/mirror/pages/gabrielle_mqmd_2092.htm http://www.xtwt.com/quill/makeup/ma_gab2.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20030204111552/http://warriorprincess.com/seasonfour/s4_offimages/ep84_images/theway_07.jpg And what about this Asian-looking tattoos: http://tattooremovalpictures.blogspot.ca/2011/10/holly-marie-combss-tattoos.html http://tattooremovalpictures.blogspot.ca/2011/10/holly-marie-combss-tattoos.html http://www.hollymcombs.com/tattoo2.jpg http://www.hollymcombs.com/tattoo4.jpg

Thanks! Venustar84 (talk) 19:30, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

It seems an assorted set of Maori tattoos, stylized David stars, and Indian Mehndi tattoos. Some pictures are too blurry. OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:48, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Each symbol means, 'The wearer of this tattoo is stupid and vulgar', unless they are a Polynesian (including Maori) or a sailor, in which case they have a valid excuse. 82.214.243.38 (talk) 10:58, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Does it make sense to pay your employees more, so that they can afford your products?

As it is claimed that Henry Ford did. Wouldn't any company always be better off paying as little as it can get away with. Otherwise, it would be like to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. Obviously, if the government or other companies pay more, you have more clients, but this doesn't change the fact that you still want the cheapest possible work-force for yourself. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Yea, I always thought paying more solely to get employees to buy your products makes little sense. On the other hand, paying more so the best workers want to work for you, and they have high morale, and retention is high, now that does make sense. And even better yet, pay based on performance, so the high performers are happy and stay, and the low performers go somewhere where they are paid the same no matter how they perform. And if you happen to make a product or provide a service that your employees could use (so no Boeing 747's), then giving some away or selling them at cost to your employees makes sense, as an incentive.

I just heard an absurd story that many of the migrant workers who pick fruit are going hungry, which makes me wonder why on Earth their employers don't pay them, at least in part, with food. They could give them ugly, but still edible, food, that won't sell, so costs them essentially nothing, and pay them slightly less, so both parties would make out well in the deal. StuRat (talk) 20:11, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Pay based on performance can be a very subjective thing. HiLo48 (talk) 22:16, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

In some cases yes, like computer programmers. (Please somebody pay me based on number of lines of code, and see just how inefficient I can make my code !) But for other jobs, like salespeople, there's a built-in way to gauge their performance (their sales). StuRat (talk) 00:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

That's true. I have worked in sales. Had a lot of trouble with the concept that the customer is always right. But these days I'm a teacher, and we have plenty of politicians in Australia who think teachers should be paid on performance. It would be nice, because there are great and some crappy teachers, but I've never seen a system that could fairly and objectively measure it. I've worked with some pretty disadvantaged and disengaged kids, and I'd like to be rewarded for keeping a kid out a jail for the next ten years. HiLo48 (talk) 02:57, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Yea, "the customer is always right" seems a bit strong, as a customer claiming he just handed you a million dollar bill is obviously lying (since no such bill exists). However, when a dispute could go either way, seeing it the customer's way is usually the wise way to go, if you want repeat customers, want to avoid negative online reviews, etc.

As for education, you might have a good method there, although measuring how much your students learned, by comparing pretest and final exam results, with how much students at a similar starting point learned elsewhere, seems like a good way to gauge the performance of special needs teachers. StuRat (talk) 13:24, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Only if the kids, and their families, actually care about their test results themselves. HiLo48 (talk) 17:32, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of bribery when it comes to kids' education. If they get some little prizes for taking a test, and say you let the highest scorers choose from the prizes first, that should encourage them, especially the younger ones, to do the best they can. And this is a good prep for real life, where doing better on the job brings tangible rewards, too. StuRat (talk) 17:42, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

One of the first things teachers learn about on any sort of evidence-based training programme is intrinsic motivation and the problems of using simple extrinsic rewards. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Given a student who lacks intrinsic motivation, providing extrinsic rewards to motivate them is surely better than leaving them completely unmotivated to learn. StuRat (talk) 13:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

That argument is certainly made for those most deprived and abused students (generally looked after children) approaching their GCSE exams with no time left to develop their motivations, but in general it is considered a dangerous approach because using it further saps any remaining intrinsic motivation , and doesn't help them develop it for themselves. It is considered more useful and productive to work on other ways of developing motivation, that won't simply teach them to pull the single lever in the Skinner box for as long as a reward is guarenteed. Motivation is a huge and complex topic: "just give them sweets" is the way to deal with children that you only see once, and then never again. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 13:33, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think intrinsic and extrinsic are distinct here. Ideally everyone would want to learn solely for learning's sake, with no thought of ever being rewarded. But, realistically, just about everyone learns for some future extrinsic reward, whether it be showing off to their friends, impressing their parents, getting good grades, or getting a good job or into a good college. It's more a question of short-term extrinsic rewards versus longer term. Also note that some parents reward their kids for getting good grades, either financial or in some other way, like a trip to their favorite restaurant. StuRat (talk) 14:26, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, giving food to farm workers makes sense. Farm products are almost worthless at the source, and that would turn them away from stealing any of it.

However, Boeing employees do use, although indirectly, Boeings. Buying a ticket is their way of buying the product.OsmanRF34 (talk) 20:42, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but presumably Boeing doesn't have the ability to give away airline tickets at little costs to themselves, unlike the farm example. StuRat (talk) 20:48, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

That's the airline's call, not the plane's. I used to get a very sweet family discount on one, through a stepdad. Food, unlike money, does grow on trees (vines, whatever). When you buy a bunch of bananas, you're really paying for the labour, storage, transportation and such. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:00, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• You get what you pay for. μηδείς (talk) 22:09, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• The theory is to pay them just enough so that they won't leave en masse. Individuals leaving because they're not happy doesn't really affect anything. Individuals organizing and striking does affect things. For one thing, if you pay the workers more, in order to keep profitability the same you might have to cut wages of the executives. That would be bad. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:36, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

That's assuming laborers are a uniform mass of undiscriminating thugs who won't notice or give their loyalty to an employer who pays more; and that the employer can't attract the better of the crop, because they are a mass of indistinguishable thugs. Ford required able and loyal workers, not just warm bodies, and he paid for it. Plus, I have given the reference already. μηδείς (talk) 00:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

First, Ford's doubling of wages increased productivity and reduced turnover. Second it did make it's employees richer, some might have been able to save up to buy a car, but it also force other businesses who competed for labour to raise their wages, which meant employees of other companies might also be able to afford a Ford. Today, if a very large company had the ability to massively raise its starting wage without increasing its product's price, it would force others to also raise wages. If this will also raise sales for the company depends on how rich it's buyers were before and after and whether the company produces Inferior goods, normal goods, or superior goods. A company like Walmart would see its sales plummet as its employees would be able to buy normal goods at 'normal' stores. A luxury goods store would only see change if the productivity of the middle class rose. 50.101.153.127 (talk) 00:31, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

There's also the concept of co-operatives, where the employees actually own a part of the business. See, for example, Fletcher Jones: He structured his business such that all the employees owned shares in the company. Initially the Jones family had a two-thirds interest and the staff one-third, but the balance gradually swung so that by the 1970s the staff held over 50 per cent of the shares. If you actually own a part of the company you're working for, you have a vested interest in making it work as well as possible and maximising profits, which go into your pocket. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

50.101 makes a very interesting point about the effect on other companies - they may have to raise their wages, then there is more money for the cars. However, this strikes me as needing a reference, because one company can't usually affect the economy that greatly. Under ordinary circumstances, with no company having such power, paying more money so employees can afford the cars is exactly the same as giving an employee discount, if they do in fact buy the cars. If they don't, it is definitely worse. If they don't buy the cars, and it takes $1000 in wages to produce one car, then what if you pay 10% more? Now it takes $1100 in wages to make the car. Everyone else just has to pay $100 more. But now fewer people will buy the cars, so you have to increase the cost of the cars to make the same profit, so maybe each car costs $120 more. And if the employees just spend their $100 on clothes or something, Henry Ford is worse off.

There is a kind of fallacy here that assumes the cars are made, and then have to find buyers. Actually the market tells you there will be buyers. For a new market, like cars in the time of Henry Ford, this might not apply, so you might be right all the same, because Ford was trying to kickstart an industry. Under normal circumstances, however, you make the product for the market. If people can't afford it, it makes no sense giving them money so they can. You just make a different product. IBE (talk) 05:13, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, they do often give people money so they will buy cars, in the form of rebates. They obviously try to not give away so much money that they no longer make a profit, but they might even do that, if they have an inventory they can't get rid of otherwise. Returning to my example of farmers giving ugly fruit to their workers, similarly car makers might want to be more generous with employee discounts on models that aren't selling or that have a higher profit margin to start with. There could also be some special cases, like hybrid vehicles, where they need a large group to test them out, so give employees a nice discount provided they give regular feedback on the vehicles. StuRat (talk) 13:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)