Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 March 5

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March 5

Single transferable vote example

Using the Irish Dáil elections. Say there are 13 candidates in an election. 6 of the candidates get 100 votes each, 6 candidates get 1 vote each and the last candidate gets 95 votes. This makes the quota 101 votes. Which candidates get eleminated on count 1 and why? I think the six candidates on 1 vote each can be elemininated as a group, but I've been told that you actually have to eleminate them one at a time by drawing lots, as their transfed vote could elect one of the candidates on 100 votes. Thank you, 93.107.224.16 (talk) 14:42, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi, the official Irish rules for how to count are available at irishstatuebook.ie . Scroll to Part XIX, Rules for the Counting of the Votes. Hope that helps. (As single transferable vote explains, the system be will be different in different jurisdictions, so I have only provided a reference for your example of Ireland.) 70.67.193.176 (talk) 18:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

USA corporations question.

Would a big corporation like Target store all it's money in multiple bank accounts, 1 in each state that it has stores in, rather than 1 big centralized account? Each state has different minimum wage laws, policies, etc., so would all the employees paychecks come from a bank from that state, rather than a centralized account? 67.175.224.138 (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC).

A large corporation would probably have a centralized department that handles paying employees (which would keep track of all those differing wage laws and tax policies)... or it would use a payment service such as ADT (also centralized). Blueboar (talk) 17:05, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Most large corporations aren't storing their wealth in simple savings or checking accounts in retail banks. The financial implements used by such entities is a bit complex, but for the specific issue of payroll, most companies will obtain such funds through Commercial paper, i.e. very short term investment vehicles in the money market, the idea being that the company issues a short-term bond which is bought on the open money market (usually by a large securities investment banks), which the company will pay out later. In simpler terms, instead of storing money in a bank for payroll, it is more efficient to take out a small, short-term loan to meet payroll and then just pay that back later. --Jayron32 19:50, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

It was turbulence in normally extremely boring corporate money-market or "commercial paper" transactions in September 2008 which signalled that the financial crisis was going to be severe... AnonMoos (talk) 05:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

This is like Fidelity right? Would money stored for a payroll be separate for the rest of the money stored? 67.175.224.138 (talk) 05:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC).

Payrolls are paid out of normal checking accounts. The point is just that big companies don't have all that much of their overall financial holdings sitting in bank accounts. They keep enough in the payroll accounts to pay the workers. They usually wouldn't have a lot in something like Fidelity either, but would manage it themselves or work with higher end management companies like Blackrock that give more customized service.

As for payroll companies like ADT: it's usual for smaller companies to use them but I don't know whether a big operation like Target would do so. The big companies I worked for did that stuff themselves, since at a certain point it's cheaper to do it in-house than pay fees to some other company. Part of what you get from an outside service is their expertise at computing all the different payroll taxes and taking the liability if they make a mistake. But once you're big enough, you have accountants on staff anyway, and enough assets to eat mistakes yourself instead of paying someone a risk premium. Sort of like self-insurance at a smaller scale. 2602:24A:DE47:B270:A096:24F4:F986:C62A (talk) 06:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, to clarify, once the commercial paper is sold on the open market, the funds from those sales are placed in bank accounts (often a dedicated account just for payroll). Most companies don't keep enough cash on hand to make payroll; just leaving that much money dormant in a bank account when it only needs to be spent once or twice a month is less efficient for most large corporations when that money could spend the rest of the month doing something else that could make more money for it, but THOSE investments tend to be illiquid. For large companies, it is less expensive to just sell a bunch of short-term bonds to make payroll and then pay those back out of income over the course of the next month. The basic principle is that the more liquid (i.e. available for immediate use) money is, the less ROI it will make you. If you lock up money in long-term investments, it will give you much greater returns than, for example, leaving it lying around in large stacks under your mattress, where it is easily accessible, but making you no return. Large corporations don't want to do the equivalent of "leaving money lying around under their mattress" all month, so they just use the commercial paper market to make payroll. --Jayron32 16:06, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• I think Blueboar meant ADP, not ADT. 73.156.246.142 (talk) 00:43, 13 March 2020 (UTC)