Dude, you can’t read a three paragraph article off of WorldNewsDaily without utterly failing to understand the story on its most fundamental level, and you honestly think you have a decent grasp on something as byzantinely complicated as economic theory?
Just as there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, there are those who know they are not real smart, and there are those who aren’t smart enough to know that they are not real smart.
Some day I hope I have the intestinal fortitude to submarine the economy in a hissy fit for the betterment of society, like these brave, brave employers.
What employers? The OP links to some blogger calling for a campaign. I doubt any significant number of employers (probably none) would do anything other than hoot and laugh at the idea the blogger proposes. Well, OK, some may pay the idea lip service. But I don’t believe any would actually refrain from hiring someone they otherwise would because of this blogger’s suggestion.
Or, if you want to be fancy, you could call it the Dunning-Kruger effect: “a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.”
Your lack of answer or substantive rebuttal is noted.
The ones magellan is talking about.
Just to clarify, I was posing a philosophical question.
So why is it always your job to make them look intelligent by comparison?
[shrug] That’s the history. Sometimes, strikes and unions make society better. Political action by employers-qua-employers never does.
Your oft repeated retardedry of “SO I GUESS I WIN, DERPDY-DERPDY-DO,” also noted.
Thanks - now I’ll have Derpdy-derpdy-do running through my head for my entire walk. :mad:
God, you’re lame. I get a accused of a lot on this board, but you’re the first to try to tar me with such nonsense. It does, though, highlight that you were unable to offer up anything that might even slightly resemble an answer or rebuttal.
And here’s a free logic lesson for you. You’re lameness doesn’t mean that I won anything. Only that you don’t have the \intellectual chops nor backbone to even play on the field.
Thanks for the opportunity to point that out.
Case in point. Yes, because cutting spending during a depression has always worked so well. :rolleyes: You in fact need to spend your way out of a depression. That said, I suppose you’re also against raising the (almost criminally low) tax rate and fixing the ridiculously broken tax code… Yes, you provide a perfect case study of someone who has not even a basic understanding of economic policy nor how the market works.
I’ll get back to this.
Well, could be worse; I could be you. That’s a pretty big step down from moron.
Exactly. I’m not bringing this up because it’s likely to happen. I’m bringing this up because it shows exactly the attitude of the people we’re dealing with. The goal is not to fix the economy, not to create jobs (in fact, this last point shows: the Republican Party has not proposed a single law at the federal level designed to create jobs that wasn’t evidently incapable of doing so), not even fix our social ills. It’s to screw Obama. In short, instead of applying bipartisan political solutions to incredible, global problems, we have politicians deciding that having their side “win” next year is more important that the unemployment rate. This is ludicrous and should not be tolerable. Even if we believe that if the republicans win both houses and the presidency that they will usher in a new period of financial prosperity, that’s inexcusable. Given the republican party’s track record and understanding of how economics work, and the degree to which they are in the pocket of big business, it’s downright hilarious.
The sad part is, this isn’t even that complex. Correctly applied government spending helps our infrastructure (making businesses more likely to want to act here and people happier), creates permanent jobs, and will get us out of this depression, at which point we can start considering austerity measures. But not now. Cutting demand while demand is low is not going to help us. You can have all the supply in the world (which we do, in fact)–if there’s no demand, nothing is going to move. And to claim “we have to cut spending because we’re in debt” is massively disingenuous; debt never mattered in the past and it hardly matters now. We could spend recklessly on stimulus bills and welfare for 10 years (more than enough to get us out of this recession) and still not have any problems on that front.
This whole “creating demand” thing was seen most starkly in 1929-1934 in Germany: the person in charge decided that borrowing money to get us out of a depression was a bad idea, so instead he cut spending, which further lowered demand, which further lowered government revenue… Then in 1934, Hitler came to power, passed what is essentially at its core a stimulus bill, and turned the economy around, one of the few positive things you can attribute to him. Makes the “Obama = Hitler” nonsense kind of ironic in hindsight.
My family actually did move to France over that. Well, not entirely because of that, but it played a role. 
No, not really. Ya see, I actually don’t live in America (I live in Germany), and I still don’t want to see it fail. Why? Because the economies of most western countries are heavily linked. When the housing market in the USA collapsed in '06, it also brought down a lot of European banks, and to an extent, entire countries. Greece is still feeling the burn from that in ways (although with them out-of-control spending really is partially the problem), Iceland was bankrupted, and most countries got thrown into economic turmoil. Germany got back up on its feet very fast, mostly through stimulus spending (HMM, WHY DOES THIS KEEP WORKING?), but it still hit us. And this is the problem: when retards in congress fuck up the USA economy, it can have wide-reaching consequences not just for the USA but for Europe and Asia. When they deregulate the financial market, they’re not just boning American banks who bought into the toxic assets scams, they’re also fucking over any other banks who want in on that market. To claim that this is a national problem is ridiculous; it’s not unless other countries just all decide not to trade with the USA, which I don’t see happening. At the same time though, non-Americans have very little influence over the situation. It’s a lot like global warming, just with slightly more control on our side–ever so slightly more.
In short, Clothahump, it’s not that the door hit me on the way out, it’s that it’s become sentient and is following me around and whacking me over the head with a metal bat. You are an idiot.
Okay, let me explain it to you like you were a 5 year old – because at this point, I don’t know what other way will make it through.
You said: “Strikers and unions can try to change things in a way they think serves society better, right? Why can’t employers?”
Implying that employers *not *giving people jobs when they could - basically, submarining the economy - (at the encouragement of these Tea Party assholes) would somehow be better for society.
To which I replied: “Some day I hope I have the intestinal fortitude to submarine the economy in a hissy fit for the betterment of society, like these brave, brave employers.”
Implying that you’re a fucking idiot – and making fun of your contention. I really didn’t think I needed to explain my comment to you, but apparently you’re an even bigger idiot that I thought.
And look … you did that stupid derpdy-derpdy-do shit again. What a shocker.
You see, here’s your problem. You think making fun of a question is a response to that question. It’s not. You got called on your stupid shit and now you just keep digging. So, let’s try again: why is it okay that bus drivers can strike, nurses can strike, and airline employees can strike, all in an attempt to change the status quo, but business owners can’t do the same thing?
I know you’re probably not able to realize this, but it’s a rather interesting question. I know you think even the notion of this is beyond the pale. But if you can’t answer it, you might want to at least ask yourself why. But even that, I guess, requires that intellectual curiosity.
Oh, I forgot to comment on this strain of sadness. I thought I explained this to in a way that even you could grasp it, but no such luck. Now I know that since since someone chimed in that that thought your derpdy-derpdy was funny you can’t help yourself from using it in hopes that you’ll get more pats on the back. But I explicitly stated that I don’t view your inability to answer the question as any sort of victory of my position. Hell, I haven’t even laid out a position fully and have stated more than once in this thread that I think that it is all nonsense. The position of business owners intentionally not hiring in order to make a point is either a good idea or it is not. I was asking why it was okay for workers to take actions to change things , but not owners. That is another position that one can debate and come out wherever the debate might lead. But regardless of how lame a person or debater you are, your lack of an answer and huffiness in no way indicates that I won the debate or anything else. Now, one could argue that I do receive a small amount of gratification when an emotional, “oh-I-so-know-I’m-right-about-everything” poster such as yourself gets revealed to be the lightweight he is. But again, that has nothing to do with “winning” anything.
The Tea Party maggots don’t care about the wellbeing of their fellow Americans. They would gladly take all of our jobs away and let us starve, if that helped them defeat Obama. :mad:
I think you’re mixing up the concepts of strikes and sabotage. Strikes are (a rather extreme) part of the collective bargaining process between employers and employees to determine conditions of employment (wages, job duties, etc.).
Employers are the ones who, by default, set the conditions of employment. That’s because the average employer, by virtue of having more financial resources and the ability to make decisions on hiring and so on and so forth, has much more effective power and control over the average employee than the average employee has over the average employer. In general, the worker has to do what the boss says, not vice versa, because it’s much more disruptive and devastating for a worker to lose a job than for a boss to lose one worker.
Therefore, if employers set conditions that their employees are dissatisfied with but local labor markets aren’t bullish enough to provide lots of competition for the services of the whole population of local workers, then the only effective way that employees can influence those conditions is by collective action: namely, going on strike. They withhold their labor in order to change the bargain between themselves and their employers.
But if employers are dissatisfied with one or more employees, they don’t need to take any kind of collective action or institute any kind of strike to change the bargain: they have the power to withhold employment from the employees individually, i.e., to fire them. So the concept of a “strike” on the part of employers really doesn’t make much sense.
Sabotage, on the other hand, is attempting to influence the political and/or economic status quo by destroying stuff. (E.g., the actions of the original saboteurs after whom the term was named, who threw their wooden shoes (sabots) into textile manufacturers’ industrial machinery in order to destroy it and force them to re-hire more manual workers.) I don’t think you’re seeing anybody here condoning industrial or political sabotage on the part of dissatisfied workers, so there’s no hypocrisy involved in the criticisms put forth in this thread.
Because what these Tea Partiers are advocating is much more along the lines of sabotage than of a strike. It’s not about business owners bargaining to determine their specific employment conditions: obviously, business owners aren’t employed by anybody and have nobody to bargain with in that regard. Rather, it’s about attempting to do as much damage as possible and hurt other people as much as possible, to prevent the implementation of policies that they happen not to like.
I like this post. I disagree with it almost strongly, but it’s a well thought out position. Thanks. I don’t have time now, but I will get to it either tonight or over the weekend.