A similar question to the one I asked you in the oil thread…what would convince you? I mean, if the unbroken string of failed communist states is not enough, what could possibly convince you? If the fact that every working socialist state in the world has had to adopt a free(er) market capitalist approach just to function doesn’t convince you, what exactly will? What exactly ARE the good parts of communism that you think are positive and useful? Of socialism? Which parts of capitalism do you like (besides the parts that actually allow failing socialist/communist states to actually work)?
Why do these threads so often degenerate into appeals to emotion?
What’s wrong with it is that there will just be a new, higher median, and a new, higher “living wage” needed. And the people you’re trying to help aren’t any better off. Prices will go up, in part because of increased labor costs, but also because people will be willing to pay more since they are earning more. Jobs will be lost, because new technology will become more cost effective. The lucky ones will end up with no change in their living conditions.
Businesses will never pay more for labor than they have to, so the only way to guarantee full-time workers a living wage is for it to be government mandated. The same hourly wage would have to be mandated for part-time workers, or else there will just be a shift to more part-time employees.
Minimum wage in NY is right now about $6.75/ hr ( it’s going up to $7.15). Let’s say that $12/hr is a living wage (and it won’t be in NYC if it’s supposed to allow for retirement and college savings-my husband and I make a lot more than that and the only reason we can afford retirement and college savings is because we bought our house at a relatively young age ), so that all jobs must pay at least $12/hr. The lowest paid clerical jobs where I work currently pay $11.16/hr. They will get a raise. But how much of an increase will it take to keep these jobs filled? They don’t require much in the way of skills (literacy and keyboarding at 35 wpm), but why bother acquiring those skills if McDonald’s pays just as much? It will require a higher wage than $12/hr to keep those jobs filled. That will then affect the next level job, which currently pays $12.82/hr. Why acquire the additional skills / take on additional responsibility for less than a dollar an hour? The bumping will continue all the way up the line where I work, and it will affect industries which don’t currently have minimum wage jobs.
Kinda dealing from a cold deck, aren’t you? I didn’t notice anything particularly evocative about Least’s post, he wasn’t slobbering about Mother Russia. On the other hand, I’ve heard the “Free Market” spoken of in tones of hushed reverence more appropriate to a church. Or a bank, I suppose, depending. The free market heals the sick, raise the dead, make the little girls talk outa their head.
When has there ever been a “free market”? The privileged and powerful always have their thumb on the scale, regardless of which brand of political piety they pretend. Unfettered capitalism invariably mutates to controlled capitalism as wealth/power clumps, clusters and clots. The miracle of compounded interest. How is a market controlled by white guys in suits, for their own interest, any more efficient and effective than one mismanaged by Marxist MBAs?
American history is replete with examples of corporatism gone batshit. Everyone here is a middle school graduate, we’ve all heard.
Did the free market set aside child labor for education? Did the free market extend the 8-hour day from its boundless generosity? Has the free market ever broken a chain if there were not a dollar in it?
A capitalist believes in the free market, the communist in History, they are both phantoms.
[aside to XT: I trust my adopted nephew is well, please extend etc…)
With socialism, I think there are some things that government does or can do that is better than others. I would say that it’s especially true for the United States because of its deep pockets and its ability to generete revenue.
Contrary to belief, I’m not a communist. I have some topics that I think would be filed best under “socialist”, but for the most part, a free market inside some borders seems to be best.
People do fear what they don’t understand, and I couldn’t agree more. I can easily point that statement towards you as well. I think that being in this country with our recent history and belief about evil communists and filthy socialists has been part character assassination and part truth. From the things I see in government and society, I get leery of giving more “freedoms” (in quotes because I’m not coming up with the best word at the second) to some businesses whose only goal is to get as much money as fast as they can. I’ve got nothing against success and successful people. Without them, we wouldn’t have anything to shoot for, right?
I find that with these debates, people are entrenched in their beliefs and don’t see the other arguments, aren’t exposed to the other arguments, or have a pretty well informed opinion. When it comes to matters of politics and government and such matters, I see grounds for haggling and striking a deal. Very rarely is any answer strictly “Yes” or “No”. It’s almost always some shade of grey.
If you want more people to attend higher education, you have a funny way of showing it. Your proposal would lead to far fewer people going to college, because they would have much less to gain for going. Unless, of course, we simply wind up with wage inflation which keeps the relative distances between wages constant, but man, will that hurt poor people. Their cost of living will increase, jobs will be lost, and the economic shock to the economy could easily trigger a deep recession. And recessions screw over poor people the most. They don’t have funds to see them between jobs, and their jobs would be the ones lost.
In the meantime, the increased cost of American labor would immediately make American exports less competitive. Even at home. Labor intensive businesses would travel overseas, or perhaps not even be able to sell their products domestically. Businesses would go under. More people out of work.
Not quite what you are trying to achieve. Your plan would do more to hurt the poor than you can imagine. That’s the problem with substituting your feelings and moral values for cold reason - you wind up hurting the people you are trying to help.
Have you actually looked at the U.S. budget to see where all the money goes, and how much of it there is? The defense budget is about 439 billion dollars, out of a total GDP of about 12 trillion. That’s about 3.5% of the economy. Let’s say you cut half of it, which would really be ill-advised, but whatever. Let’s say you cut 200 billion. Now, don’t forget that a lot of that 200 billion is creating jobs. When the military downsized in the 1990’s, something like 1.3 million civilian jobs were lost. And you’re going to pay them all $15/hr.
That’s not going to leave much money to pay everyone $15/hr.
I have a problem with mandating that ALL two income homes making the current median two-household income. I have a problem with an idea that flies in the face of reality - the notion that if we just pass a law that forces employers to pay employees more than they are worth to the company, that they’ll all just shrug and pony up out of some mystical fountain of endless wealth. It’s the same logic that causes well-intentioned but ignorant people to demand that foreign ‘sweatshops’ raise their labor costs to the point where it is higher than the productivity of the local people, which means jobs are priced out of existence and the poor lose a source of income and a market for their labor. This, suprisingly enough, does not help the poor.
Made up numbers illustrate nothing. I can always make up numbers of my own to refute yours.
You can never have monetary equality when people have varying levels of productivity, unless you start passing laws forcing employers to hire people, and then passing laws forbidding them to fire people, then bailing them out when they start to fail, and hey presto you’ve got a de-facto communist country. Force is your only choice, because if you leave the people free to choose, they will choose to hire people only when they can profit from the hiring, and the will choose to fire them when the people are no longer productive enough to be an asset to the company.
This may conflict with your moral sensibilities, but that doesn’t matter. It’s reality. Mess with it at your peril.
Have a look at France. Their attempts to socially engineer the work force by preventing employers from firing employees and other such interventions. The result is double-digit unemployment, a disaffected youth culture with an unemployment rate over 20%, and economic stagnation. This is not helping the poor.
See? There’s that force coming out. Now we have ‘rigid penalties’ for people just trying to negotiate with others so they can build products and be productive. Nice. And you might want to look into the history of black markets before you so cavalierly toss off the problem with, “we just need stiff penalties”. They’re trying that with the drug war. How’s that working out?
There are black markets in places like North Korea. You want stiffer penalties than them?
And what does opening the borders have to do with anything? Are you saying you WANT to price Americans out of the labor market, then allow foreigners to enter the country and take the jobs at lower prices? What kind of sense does that make? And increasing the size of the labor pool is a pretty good way to drive down wages. In fact, illegal foreign labor has been cited as one of the main reasons for the economic stagnation of the lower middle class in the last 20 years. Increase the labor pool by millions of people willing to take lower paying jobs, and you eliminate many, many minimum wage jobs.
Now we’re putting barriers up and punishing people who want to use their wealth most efficiently. Your recession just became a depression. Ask Smoot and Hawley.
Well that’s not what your link says, but yes, I would agree that, assuming the rest of it is correct, we spend way to much money on the military compared to education and other expenditures.
They also feel compelled to argue strongly about what they don’t really understand. Most of the people in these threads lack a formal education in economics or business. So not having the ability to make a logical arguement because they don’t understand the mechanics of the system, they create good (downtrodden workers) and evil (greedy capitalist) strawmen and make emotional appeals. Then because they can point to actual flaws, coruption and innefficiencies in the system, they assume the lends credibility to their argument. Something like “Enron is an example of how capitalist economies are run by corrupt and greedy men, therefore we should force all companies to pay a living wage”.
I grow weary of trying to explain the concept of unintended consequences. Yes, unions and their corresponding wage hikes have done wonders for the working man. That is to say, those working men who still have manufacturing jobs that haven’t been outsourced to more competetive nations.
For 8 pages now, this conversation has gone around in circles. I think I would understand the pro-living wage side better if I understood the thinking about labor as a commodity. I am no expert on economics, but I remember learning (in 8th grade) the principle that scarceness drives value. So, if a commodity is abundant, it will be cheap. The less abundant it is, the more the price is driven up. The need or desire for this commodity is also part of the effect…commodities that are very necessary or desirable AND rare will be of the highest value, whereas commodities that are not necessary or desireable AND abundant will be of the least value. As I said, I don’t know too much about economics, but this principle seems pretty easy to understand (as I said, part of the 8th grade curriculum in my school).
Typically, when this natural principle is manipulated, it is in the interests of keeping the cost of a commodity down. For example, rent control or anti-gouging laws. It has been shown time and time again that these types of price controls cause shortages, because people adjust their idea of what their “needs” are based on what they can afford. As an example, the anti-gouging laws. In an emergency such as Hurricane Katrina, oftentimes hotels are not allowed to raise their rates according to demand. If the rates are kept low, I might decide that my husband & I, our daughter, and my sister can all afford our own hotel rooms to wait out the storm. If the prices were allowed to raise to meet demand, then we might all squeeze into the one room we can afford, leaving 2 rooms available for other folks who also are in need of them. Perfect example of how supply & demand should work.
So, it makes sense to me that it would work in reverse, too…if artificially holding prices low creates shortages, why wouldn’t artificially holding prices high create a glut?
So, my questions for the pro-LW folks are:
Do you agree that human labor is a commodity, just as a hard good is, and that there is a “market price” for that commodity?
If so, why would it not be equally subject to this basic principle of economics?
If not, how is it different?
If it IS equally subject to the principle, how do you propose that we artificially control the worth of that commodity without adversely affecting the “trading” of that commodity?
There is responsibility for the uncaring capitalists concept to be put where it belongs. On their shoulders. An example. The bankrupsy bill,written by Finance Companies. When the vote occurred ,the Dems proposed a few amendments. One…exempt the elderly from parts of it two protect soldiers on active duty from bankrupsy three …protect those with catastrophic illness from it four… Limit the interest rate to 30 % or less . All were rejected by approximately the same vote. The Repubs majority repaid their campaign contributors.
Economics is not an exact science. To suggest that you have a wordly understanding of it is absurd. Every admin brings in a new group of economists with new ideas. Todays econ genius is tomorrows discredited hack.
I posit there is something new. If not in fact but in degree. We have never had our government at the knee of international capitalism than we do now. The rules are changing and if nothing is done ,America will be just another market. There is no capitalistic nationalism.
Well, I’d say that labor isn’t a commodity. It certainly does get treated as a commodity, but I’m not down with that.
How is labor different from other commodities? Well, unlike…let’s say…copper…poeple have to pay bills and provide for other people. If we can prove that copper can create other little coppers and have little copper societies and make statues out of that inferior metal, tungsten, then we can change how we treat copper as well. The fact that a number can be put on a person doesn’t make it a good thing.
The fourth question, if that can be properly answered, then all these nutty socialist vs. psycho libertarian threads would be over because we’ve found some sort of golden compromise. Feel free to correct me if my interpretation of your question is wrong or if you need to rephrase it.
I didn’t say I had a “worldly” understanding of it. I laid out what my understanding of it is, in as clear of language as I could, and ask people who disagree with me what THEIR understanding of it is. Fighting ingnorance and all that, you know?
My point is to NOT put a value judgment on whether or not it is a “good thing” for labor to be a commodity. But as far as I can see, it is something that is worth something to someone else, that they are willing to pay for. In this way, purely objectively and not taking into account human need, I don’t see how it differs from other commodities. The point being that natural forces of economics don’t care a hill of beans about human need…it’s like saying that evolution should be equally sympathetic…how can it be if it is simply a law of nature?
I think you understand the question, but I can’t tell here if you agree that there is some way of getting around these economic principles in order to reach some kind of compromise, or not? And, in fact, CAN economic principles be subject to compromise?
Someone upthread said it best regarding that type of argument:
Well, we had a textbook example just a few decades ago. We had the US (with an economy controled by white guys in suits) and the USSR (an economy mismanaged by Marxist MBAs). Which was more efficient and effective? I’ll give you extra credit for pointing out which one had to force people to stay in and which one had millions of people banging on the door pleading to be let in.
Economists know that the “free market” is an idealized abstraction just as physicists know that a “point particle” is an idealized abstraction. But both are a close approximation to the real thing, and work reasonably well when you are trying to explain the phenoma you observe. “The market” is nothing more than people buying and selling stuff. If you want to see “the free market” in action, just log onto eBay.
“Batshit”? Is that a technical term? We eliminated child labor once we became wealthy enough to afford that luxury. And it is a luxury-- child labor has been the norm throught history. But it wasn’t evil capitalists that we had to save the children from. It was parents who chose to send their kids to work instead of sending them to school.
I agree. But like HMO’s have shown, it’s a failure in slow motion. I would get much more bang for the buck if I insured privately but that is not easy to do. A whole subject unto itself.
I think the entire subject is a matter of perspective. Earning an income is just that. Individuals should take it upon themselves to prepare for the job market. Personal need is not a justification for the value of one’s labor.
One of the benefits of living in a free society is the tremendous opportunity it affords to build personal wealth. I honestly don’t know why someone would stick his/her nose up at 12 years of tax funded education and expect to be rewarded with a wage based on need. I can’t make someone succeed and I can’t stop a person from failing.
And my thanks for asking.