@Kimstu: of course, that model ignores laws/contracts that enforce certain conditions from the employer. At this point, of course, I feel that those laws/contracts are actually fairly negligible, but it is a potential point of contention. Just sayin’. Like, imagine a hypothetical law (I think France has something similar) where you are not allowed to fire certain types of workers for 5 years. That could give reason for employers to go on strike, as the employees have a legal leg up on the employer.
I hire people when i need them. Not hiring someone who i would otherwise hire would mean doing the work myself. Anyone supporting something this stupid clearly has no clue whatsoever how small businesses actually work.
A Process Server business? And her business volume has dropped 70%?
What did President Obama’s policies have to do with that decline? Did they somehow cause lawsuits in the country to decrease (I would think her political bedfellows would consider that a good thing)? Throw so many people out of work that she can’t find them to serve papers on?
Maybe she’s just not very good at her job…
Sure, I can see how the employers in such a case would have good reason to take some action, but I think it still wouldn’t be reasonable to call their action a “strike”. They wouldn’t be trying to change the terms of employment as negotiated between themselves and their workforce; they’d be trying to change legal regulations on employment.
What the Tea Partiers are proposing, of course, is something even less strike-like and, in fact, basically inexplicable except as a deliberate strategy of destruction. An across-the-board resolution not to hire workers even when more workers are needed, specifically in order to prevent any improvement in the economy or employment levels so that voters will blame Obama, is to all intents and purposes mere partisan sabotage.
Red faction: OMG you like hate America and stuff!
Blue faction: no u
Lemme fix that for you.
Red faction: OMG you like hate america and stuff!
Blue faction: Wait, what? You’re the one tying a bomb to the jobs market! Stop that, you’re going to sabotage the nation!
It’s a two way street. Strikes sabotage the employers business, in essence, blackmailing them. Now, I have no problem with people striking, as long as they’re also fine with the employer attempting to replace them. If the strikers are right, the employer will see the value of keeping the original workers and make concessions accordingly. If not, then there demands are unwarranted in the first place, being not so much about what is “right”, “fair”, or “necessary”, but what they “want”, i.e., “MORE”.
The worker has ultimate power. They can decide to take the job or not. If a job is so bad or pays so poorly, no one will do it. If it’s marginal, people will do it for a short time and jump ship at the first opportunity.
Yes. But see my comments above. If the workers are in the right, they will win and gain concessions. If not, someone else will be doing their job.
Keep in mind that any employee can quit at any time. And if a business owner is constantly getting beat up by workers, unions, etc., he has the right to fix his problem. He has the right to fire one guy, ten guy, or ten thousand guys. He has the right to move his company to a more favorable labor market in the next town, next state, or country. Keep in mind, that I arguing here for the right for the owner to take whatever steps he deems helpful in fixing the equation between himself and his workers. Whether they be small moves or big moves. I have the same position concerning workers. It don’t see why you think its okay for one to act int their own self interest and not the other.
This is always a nice story to hear again, but has no bearing on what we’re talking about.
Even if I accept your characterization, why shouldn’t they be able to seek to effect change in their own self-interest? Whether it’s productive or a dumb idea is another matter. But why is only one side allowed to stop workage in order to change things? And why is workers involved in a work stoppage “striking” and en employer who closes shop for a time “sabotaging”?
Oh, come now. Are you seriously saying that our government SHOULD continue to spend like a drunken sailor? And you have the gall to call me stupid?
Go sit in the corner and shut the fuck up. When come back, bring brain.
You know what the most common objection to Obama’s stimulus package was among economists? Not republicans, not politicians, economists. You know, the people who went to college for this crap?
It wasn’t big enough, and it was watered down with tax breaks, which we know to be ineffective.
When the government is in a demand-based recession like this, cutting taxes on the rich and upping supply is not going to help. When that fails, all the government really can do to help fix up the economy is to spend on infrastructure and jobs; pump money into the country in the hopes that things like construction firms, mining industries, and the like keep hiring people.
The other option for increasing hiring is to raise the corporate income tax. Yes, you heard me right. Give such businesses a big-ass incentive to reinvest and hire more people rather than just pocket the profits.
Don’t get me wrong, $14T in debt is, while not unsustainable, really not the ideal situation for our country to be in, regardless of how cheap credit is. But at the moment, cutting spending would only hurt our chances of an economic recovery by pulling more demand out of the system. We need to spend now so that when we do recover, we can apply austerity measures without sending the country’s economy into a nosedive.
This actually bothers me, because you’ve clearly come into this discussion with either as much honesty or the same level of knowledge in regards to the economy as the republican party–neither reflects well on you as a person, I gotta say. And then you claim that we have no idea what we’re talking about? No. No, that’s not okay. You are wrong, and lack even a basic understanding of supply and demand economics.
Just to make this plainly obvious: when the problem in a market is the lack of demand, cutting demand is a bad idea. When you cut government spending, you are cutting demand. See also: Germany '29-'34, Germany '06-'08 (where we, you know, learned from our mistakes), The USA '29-'45 (if you want to claim that it was anything other than massive government spending that got us out of the recession, I’m really wondering what you think that is).
The reason we call you stupid is because that’s become a synonym for a loudmouth who feels justified in spouting his incredibly uneducated opinion on the topic yet has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Perhaps “Ignoramus” would be a more fitting term. I’m sorry, there’s no nicer way of putting this: in regards to basic economics, you have the understanding of a 5-year-old, and the willingness to speak out despite this ignorance of an arrogant redneck. You’re like one of those creationists who insists that they’re right and then can’t figure out why people call them stupid when they demand to know why monkeys still exist.
Holy shit, you actually responded to a post instead of running away like a bitch like you always do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though; my post was pretty insubstantial and easy to respond to. I doubt you’re ever going to honestly engage BPC, who smacked you down far more capably than I could.
I’ve been working on my verbal bitchslap for the better part of two years. Expect it to fucking sting.
Hmmm. I’m called an idiot because I understand the basic economic concepts better than most. No wonder the SDMB has gone downhill over the last several years; clowns like you abound.
You got one thing almost right:
Except it’s not the government that needs to be doing the spending, it’s the private sector that needs to spend. Government spending does not create wealth. Government gets its money by taking it away from the public or by running the printing presses; neither of those is indicated to stop a depression.
What is needed is for private businesses to hire and individuals to spend their salaries. And business is not going to hire because with the current pack of inmates running the asylum in Washington, business has no confidence in future predictions. Until business gains confidence in government, they won’t open the pocketbooks because things look too glum.
We’ve seen this already:
But every day in every way, we prove George Santayana to be a prophet extraordinaire:
Actually, those who refuse to remember the past condemn the rest of us to repeat it.
Wow, what a groundbreaking paper! That should certainly shut those liberals weenies up! But, seven years ago? Where’s all the hoopla? Must be that liberal media, huh?
You don’t understand it at all. You’re an inept, misinformed stooge.
You’re factually incorrect.
The recession causes a reduced amount of demand. Say it with me, demand. This means that the widget factory can produce 100 widgets a day, but only 70 are selling. So they lay off people so they can meet the *demand *of 70 a day.
If this is happening all over, no business is going to hire people. Even a stupid yokel like you should be able to understand this. Didn’t you used to be a cop? Don’t cops have to think in Texas?
If businesses have capacity they aren’t using (remember, the widget factory can produce 100 a day, but it’s only selling 70), then the government can stimulate the economy. They can create a few jobs, which means people are working. Working people buy stuff. This increases demand. When the widget factory starts selling 80 widgets a day, they hire more people. Then those people increase demand further. And so on.
The trouble with people on the right, is they think that Dems are saying that stimulus always works. No, it works when there is low demand. It worked in the depression and it will work now. Except stupid yokels like you are pushing your party to block attempts to fix things.
No, that’s nonsense.
Thank you for maintaining the respecting tone in conversations! :rolleyes:
Lemme ask you a question… Do you believe that the government can create demand?
Do me a favor and compare Obama’s record against Bush’s, in terms of financial stability. Can we agree that the problem is probably not things like exhorbitantly high taxes and ridiculously privileges among the employees (in case you’re wondering why I’m so sure, it’s because these things don’t exist)? I’m really wondering what you think “those inmates” would do to upset businesses. Taxes are still at an all-time low. Regulations haven’t been ramped up by any meaningful way, and it doesn’t seem to be happening. So… what could’ve happened to scare the businesses?
Hmm…
“More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011,”
Now I wonder what that was all about… Certainly it had nothing to do with the republicans… Nah, those holy angels can do no wrong. :rolleyes:
Seriously, what exactly did the government do to scare business? Can you cite it to me? Anything? Or is it just that they all hate the democrats? Yeah, that’s it, they all hate democrats, because we were doing so horribly under Clinton…
Completely different situation.
Sorry, that last comment was too funny to let go by. The sad thing is that you probably think that it really is a different situation.
It’s not. It was an economic meltdown then, it’s an economic meltdown now. Government spending screwed up the recovery then, government spending is screwing up the recovery now. The only difference is that we should have learned from our mistakes then instead of repeating them now.
The only mistake I see is relying on misleading right wing reports.
Christ, talk about idiotic reasoning; They want to show that government programs do not reduce unemployment, so they simply don’t count jobs created by government programs!
Voila! They have just proved their point!
The fact is employers ARE able and allowed to destroy the local and national economy by work stoppage or not hiring or moving within the country or moving companies overseas for their own self interests. What they can’t do is to claim patriotism while they do so because that entails loyalty to a particular people. They also cannot expect those people hurt by their actions to laud thier self serving actions that cause harm to so many for the purpose of benifiting only themselves which is a much smaller number. Are you asking why people who have their ability to feed themselves taken away not happy to starve so that some one person can add a few million more to their personal fortune?
Also the simplest way to concieve of money in the economy is to understand that money does not trickle down but instead gushes up and once up pools at the top. In uncertain times money added to the top by tax cuts for the rich does no good because the rich sit on it until times are more certain as they can afford to wait to invest in business expansion (what is going on now) but money applied to the bottom gets spent because the poor and middle class have to spend it to survive. It moves back through the economy and winds up with the rich anyway but does some good along the way because it spurs growth by the competition to get those dollars by businesses.