You know I gotta call you on this one. The “liberal system”? Created, molded, designed and perpetuated by liberals? Immune to assault by several conservative administrations, it towers above the plain, the invulnerable monolith. Oh, come now.
You are, it would seem, a fervent proponent of education. But to what end, exactly? How much trigonometry does your postal carrier require? The girl who sells you your doughnut, does it matter if she knows a Socratic dialogue from a dirty joke? When I drove cab, I knew the difference between iambic and trocaic pentameter (as I’m sure do you). Didn’t seem to matter much, I still sucked at driving cab.
Education is largely irrlevent to most workplace situations, outside of the professions. Its value is a “liberal” value, its makes for better citizens, better informed and equipped, and thereby more amenable to a sensible agenda.
Your recipe of education and employment to solve poverty is, I fear, pixie dust. If the lowest paid job available will not decently support a person, how is it worth having? By what hypocrisy do we insist that someone prove thier value before we deem them worthy of our aid? If we could magicly transform every poor person in America, such that they were instantly transformed into high school grads, by what magic do we make the jobs appear for them to qualify for? Having educated all these people, what do we do with them?
We have never had full employment, and some of the best minds of our times are busily creating gadgets to “save labor”. It would seem, then, that the sanctity and merit bestowed by “having a job” is not solely a matter of will and character, but circumstance. Somebody must lose in a zero sum game.
Poverty may be the only serious social problem that can actually be assuaged, if not solved, by throwing money at it. It is entirely true that some undeserving people will get some of it. It is equally true that some equally undeserving people already have it.
You’re absolutely correct when you say that education by itself is useless. Someone whose motivation drives them to achieve all the power and prestige of Lead Fry Cook is going to find precisely zero benefit in being Master of the Pentameter. However, most people aren’t like that. At least, I hope they aren’t. If they are, than the world is a profoundly depressing place, and I think I would rather bury my nose in the wonderfully absurd world of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, and leave reality to the cynics.
Most people, I believe, when given the chance, possess the determination and drive to dig themselves out of the muck, when pressed hard enough. They won’t sit there in their spiffy McDonald’s hat and complacently serve fries if the possibility exists that maybe - just maybe - they can make something more for themselves. For their children. For the simple pride that comes with improving their lot in life.
However, complacency is a stealthy beast, and it can take hold of you if you don’t see it coming. It’s too easy to live in the moment, and forget about the big picture. The system as it currently exists grants those in the grip of poverty just barely enough to keep them from wanting more. Not just wishing for more, in a “gee-I-wish-I-had-a-pony” sort of way, but wanting it, desiring it enough to run out there and grab it. What Scylla appears to be saying - and I agree with him 100% - is that our current system is inadequate - no, flat-out, inhumanly cruel - in that it breeds complacency like a pen full of horny rabbits on Viagra.
So what do we do? We educate these people as best we can. Then we yank the training wheels. Take care to keep them from abject misery, but don’t make things easy on them. Hardship builds character, you know? And some people just need to hit rock-bottom before they’re willing to claw their way back to the top.
Will some of them fail? Of course. Some will always fail. And some will fail so spectacularly that you could make a new Fox reality series based on the carnage - “When Poverty Attacks”. But some already do. We should at least have the common decency to give the rest every chance to get out of it. The trick lies in making sure that no matter how far down a person sinks, there is always a chance to get out. And that may be the hardest part.
Sez who? Just where, exactly, did you pick up that nugget of Calvinistic mythology? I recommend you return it at once, as it is one of the purest bits of utter hogwash as you’re ever likely to hear.
That was rather elegantly said. Thanks. I’m sure you’ve clarified things for 'Luce and others. It’s great to see a second perspective on what I’m saying here.
Elucidator:
Ummm. Yeah. That’s pretty much it. To break it down into basics, it’s you lousy liberals who are so generous with other people’s money, that you want to spend it by giving entitlements to everybody, so that noone in America is to poor to not have basic cable, a six pack, and a carton of smokes.
To be fair, the other side of the coin, is it’s us conservatives that want to throw everybody in the water in a sink or swim exercise, no matter that some people have 200 pounds of chains wrapped around them.
I think we’ll generally agree that neither of these is the best course, but because we disagree on degree we’ve become polarized in that we tend to represent the extremes.
Surely you would agree that the preponderance of social entitlement is of liberal origin, from Social Security, to medicare, to medicaid to Welfare to housing programs, to methadone.
And, assuming you do want to quibble about origins, isn’t safe to say that liberals generally favor entitlements and conservatives do not?
From a political standpoint, these things are a third rail. Touch them and die. Voters do not want their entitlements taken away. They get stuff, they like it. It is theirs. It’s the big problem with Democracy. Voters will vote themselves everything. What they don’t understand, are unwilling to accept, or simply don’t care about is that all these things must come from the tax base.
For every dollar that comes out of the government tit, a dollar has to go in. Every time somebody goes from being a net contributor in terms of taxes to being a net consumer in terms of entitlements, the tax base gets smaller, and the load it bears gets heavier. It is in everybody’s best interests that contributors contribute, and that people receiving entitlements are encouraged to become contributors. The bigger that base becomes the more it can do.
And, if that was all there was to it, it would be a worthy end in and of itself, would it not.
Fortunately, there’s a lot more to it.
Let’s make a simplistic model to illustrate the point:
Let’s say we have ten jobs with #1 being the most specialized, professional and lucrative. It is also the most difficult and important. #10 is the suckiest job. Just like a small company, how well these 10 jobs get done is a large determiner in the success of the economy. For example, if all the jobs get done very well, the size of the economy might be 100 Scyllabucks in size. If all the jobs get screwed up, and nothing is produced the economy may go into arrears and owe 100 Scyllabucks.
Now, let’s say we have 12 people.
We’ll divide them into two groups. The Fonzies and the Potsies. The Fonzies are the guys with the top 6 jobs, the Potsies have the bottom four and the two layabouts.
Let’s also say that jobs basically go by merit.
However, the Fonzies control the best jobs, they have the most resources, they effectively control the economy. If you’re a child of a Fonzie you go to Fonzy school which teaches Fonzy jobs. If you are the child of a Potsy, you go to Potsy school and learn Potsy trades.
Even though it’s a meritocracy, when the time comes for a new generation to get jobs, guess who ends up with Fonzy jobs and guess who gets the Potsy jobs?
Mobility from Potsy to Fonzy is almost impossible.
Obviously there’s a problem. First there’s the problem of inequality, but more importantly from the economical standpoint is that we no longer have the best person in the best job. The most talented and driven person, who would most benefit the economy in the #1 spot may very well be a Potsy. That Potsy is smart enough to come to terms and be discouraged by his lack of mobility, so he’s done the smart thing for him and given up. He’s become one of the layabouts.
The Fonzies on the other hand feel very secure in their positions. Since nothing can bring them down they also don’t have an incentive to produce.
Now, there are two basic ways to solve this problem. One is to suggest that the whole system is unfair and sucks (which it does.) Because it is unfair and sucks and because person #1 is no better that #12, we should take some assets and privileges away from the top half and distribute it to the bottom half. Give everybody an equal share in the economy as it were.
This would cause more problems. If being number 12 is just as good as being #1 with less work who wants to be #1? If you’re number four why bust your balls and try to becom #3 if you’re not going to be rewarded for it? If you’re #9, let’s face it, the whole thing sucks. The best positions in this economy are now numbers 11 and 12. Do nothing, and get stuff. There is no incentive behind the whole economy any more, and it’s production rapidly drops. There is less to spread around. This creates and increasing disincentive.
A better idea is to make sure that the next generation is educated according to the drives and abilities displayed by the individuals regardless of whether they are Potsies or Fonzies. That way, in a meritocracy you have full mobility.
#1 Fonzy may still use his influence to pass his job onto his son even if his son is really only best suited for the #7 job. It’s still not fair.
However, let’s say the son of #8 is really the best man in the group. Right away, he’s going to move to the best Potsy job position (#6.) This guy though is ten times the man of the Fonzy above him. He’s going to start putting pressure on that Fonzy. That Fonzy isn’t going to feel so secure in his job anymore and he’s going to have to produce like hell to keep it or be replaced. That puts pressure on the guy above him, all the way up the ladder.
Regardless of how much resistance to mobility we place in the model we now have the pressure moving in the right direction. We have upward mobility, a reason to achieve, and the economy as a whole starts moving efficiently towards production. There are incentives. There is the carrot and the whip. The best people are moving towards the best jobs. Entrenched mediocrity is facing competition and pressure.
Let’s say the system is too strong and our hero, the son of lowly number 8 Potsy is only able to move to the number four spot. The economy is still tremendously better because of all the pressure he generated as he strove to increase his position. The next generation has an even better shot at achieving a true meritocracy where everybody is in the best jobs.
But, there’s more to it than just that simple explanation. We’ve been dealing with a fixed pool of jobs. A fixed economy. Our economy is open. There’s no reason all 12 people can’t have jobs. Conversely there’s also no reason why we have to have any jobs. There is no limit to the amount of work that can get done. The economy’s size is potentially infinite. It is limited only by the production of its members.
You talk about automation as if it were a bad thing. It is a good thing if the garbageman and postalworkers can be replaced by automation. That means more productive tasks are potentially available for the members of our economy.
When we went from plowing with sticks to using tractors, a lot of workers got displaced. A lot of plowing jobs were lost for each tractor. With education though, those former plow drivers can now seek out the next level of jobs. It meant increased food production. More and easier food meant that less time had to be spent on subsistence and more could be spent on growth.
There is no limit to the size of the economy.
It’s not. The operative question though is “Why is it the lowest paid job?”
If the lowest paid job is easy fun and hardly takes any time, that makes it somewhat desirable.
If the lowest paid job is hard, backbreaking demanding depressing and time consuming than that is another matter.
There are two basic reasons why a job would be these things and still not pay.
The job is not an important job to the economy as a whole. Sure it benefits the economy, but not enough to make it attractive.
There are a lot of people willing to do the job.
There are couple of possibilites as to why #2 might exist.
A. There are a lot of people who are unqualified to do anything else (education solves this)
B. There are not a lot of jobs available so even people who are extremely qualified for better jobs are competing for this one.
In an open-ended economy, B would represent an inneficiency in the economy. It might be a normal degree of inneficiency. Any healthy economy faces a desirable point called full emplyment. People are transitioning between jobs, doing temporary things generally seeking their level based on skills motivation and aptitude. Or, it might mean a greater more serious inneficiency with the economy. It might be at the bottom of an economic cycle, suffering from corruption or any number of things.
In all these circumstances the economy and the people in it do best if there is as large a number as possible highly qualified and motivated people seeking the best employment they can find.
You must not have read my first post. Deserve has nothing to do with anything. How does one give out help based on “deserve?”
Desrve and fair are moot. Aid should be given based on where it will do the most good, where it will have the most effect. It’s triage.
This is where being a commie pinko fails you
You don’t do anything with them. They do for themselves. You turn them loose on the economy, and watch it grow. If they are smart and educated and motivated they are going to create new jobs for themselves. They’re going to take jobs away from people who are less qualified. They are going to expand the economy. This isn’t theory. This is the way it works.
Untrue. We’ve had more than full employment in several instances, including just recently. More importantly we tend to have full emplooyment in sectors that rotate rather than across the economy. For example, at any given point in time our economy may need more, let’s say, chemical engineers than it has due to an inneficiency. The more highly educated and motivated people you have in that economy the faster that need can be filled, and the faster that economy can reap the production that drives that need, growing theconomy as a whole.
Absolutely false. You don’t need to be an economics major to see the fallacy of this.
Throwing money at poverty increases poverty, it assuages it only momentarily.
Poverty is a bear. You don’t make it go away by feeding it. It just comes back for another feeding and it brings more bears next time.
What bear in his right mind would go out digging grups and catching fish when it can just go to the campground and get fed by well-meaning but naive campers?
I say we have never had full employment. You say “Did too!” You can, of course, show me the Dept of Labor stats for the year when unemployment was at a thrilling 0.0%?
And again, you wave the magic wand of “education”, how it “qualifies” people. How many years of community college do you think goes into making a cubicle dwelling prairie dog? I want people to be educated simply because it makes better people. Smarter people. More lib…no, lets just leave it at smarter.
For instance: I make most of my money dishonestly, gouging people who are baffled by PC’s. I’m not as bad as a vendor, but still… When I went to college, there were no PC’s. There was no education available that would “qualify” me to bamboozle middle management chucklewits.
The only education which is directly applicable to “productivity” is trade education, and that is a very risky gambit. My folks wasted several thousand dollars so I would know the Edict of Nancy from the Diet of Worms, but what if I had taken up typewriter repair?
So, ok, maybe a compromise? The Fozzie Bears let the Putz’s live, we don’t go Bolshevik on thier asses and send all Platinum card bearing to the wall. And poor folks are guaranteed the decency of life: your kids sick, he gets a doctor, that sort of thing.
Then the rich folks can buy all the loud, shiny plastic crap they want. He who dies with the most toys deserves it. That’ll be our agenda, we’ll go forth and grassroots our way.
President Elucidator. Has a nice ring to it. Of course, theres a place for you on the ticket, I need you to carry the Curmudgeon vote.
[Monty Python]
“Pretty nice little army base you’ve got here, Gov’nr. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
[/Monty Python]
So what if I am? Better than they deserve. If all those swine at Goldman Sachs and Citibank (who just recently bought off the Feds for a cool 1.5 B) spend the rest of thier lives asking if you want fries with that…yeah, sounds about right to me. How about you?
In an out and out plutocracy, I’d say yeah. This is only a half-assed plutocracy, so scorn, derision. and a brutally confiscatory tax scheme seems more reasonable.
(When I was mixed with “natural foods” freaks, we would switch off taking the more radical positions. We called it playing “good co-op, bad co-op”. That’s actually pretty funny if you’re stoned and eating brown rice.)
I think you’ve confused a term. Full employment is not 0.0% unemployment. “Full employment” is a specific economic term.
What it means is that there is always a hypothetical percentage of people who are unemployed yet looking for a job even when the economy is booming, as both they and the businesses that provide jobs go about normal transitions. When jobs and jobseekers are in balance you have full employment. Generally the full employment figure is in the mid single digits of unemployment.
I’m all for smarter for smarter’s sake. As for how much training it takes to make that Prairie dog, it depends on what he’s doing in that cubicle. Of course education helps the bottom tier of workers in the most undesirable jobs, because it increases scarcity for workers in that job. For example, my tennis buddy is a plumber who never graduated high school. He just worked for a plumber for a few years and then opened shop on his own. He makes fantastic money and belongs to the country club, because their is a scarcity of plumbers for the residential market in this area. There are lots of “better” jobs available. My friend is a nice guy and a good plumber but at least a certain degree of his outstanding success arises from the fact that he doesn’t have a lot of competition from out of work actuaries forced into the plumbing sector.
I know another guy that makes over 200k a year. He has a truck with a hose and a pump on it, and he empties septic tanks. Everybody wants to be a Doctor or a lawyer or a CEO. Doctors and lawyers and Ceos need people to pump septic tanks for them. If there’s a labor pool of unemployed uneducated workers who will do it by hand with a shovel and a wheeelbarrow for minimum wage, they don’t have to pay Benny the straw $175 to show up with his truck for 15 minutes. There isn’t, so they do. Benny performs a valuable and scarce (if unskilled and boring) service and is rewarded handsomely for it.
He makes money with a low end job specifically because there are a lot of niches to fill with high end jobs, and qualified people to fill them. Little does Joe lawyer know that Benny’s grossing more per annum than he is.
Leave the economics to me, and I’ll leave the tech support to you. This statement of your is patently untrue. While a good manager produces nothing whatsoever himself he contributes to production by increasing the effectiveness of those he manages. He performs a service which increases the bottom line.
As long as computer systems will fail you and your tech support brethren are heros of productivity. You recapture lost productivity in terms of downtime. You increase efficiency by outsourcing.
Some jobs like do not increase productivity, but perform a valuable service nonetheless. An arbitrage job actually drains productivity but does so by feeding off imbalances and correcting them.
A salesman produces nothing but is often highly compensated because his job increases productivity, by finding and opening markets for products increasing demand. Those products in turn may be productice.
It’s all good (or mostly good. There are counterproducitve jobs.)
Critical thinking is a valuable skill.
If you’re guarranteed a decency of life in poverty why would you bother working hard? It would be counterproductive. Why work your ass off at a shitty job making minimum wage, when the government will support you if you don’t?
All children should be guarranteed health care, as well as whatever level of education they can achieve.
actually Eliot Spitzer is and evil, evil, swine. Go check out your latest Forbes. He’s a scumbag costing people billions of dollars and fucking up the economy even worse than it is, so that he can make a name for himself and get voted to higher office.
He’s amoral and he’s explicitly broken the law by eliciting settlements by threatening action under the Martin Act.
Worse than his slimy blackmail and political intriguing, he’s also fucking stupid.
Merrill doesn’t have to pay a penny because he fucked up.
This is ironic justice because Merrill didn’t really do anything wrong in the first place.
Hawthorne, I am not about to get into a technical discussion based on economics. I’m not entirely convinced that economics, as a science, entirely exists. I am far more concerned with a decent social morality as regards work. If we are to foist off some half-assed Calvinism like the “work ethic” we ought to at least have the decency to hold up our end of the bargain: be willing to work and we will do our level best to ensure that it is a humane bargain.
You’re coercive approach is, as you know, based on the conservative/cynics approach to humanity: why, you ask, would anyone submit to the indignity of work if a decent life can be had without it? Because he wants to? Because it affords him a sense of esteem and worth that is deposited in his character? In many instances of tribal society, people work harder than they must for the sheer pleasure of giving it away.
Your coercive approach is based on a pre-judgement of human motive, even, dare I say, a prejudice: if there are not dreadful consequences, people will not work, therefore we must ensure that those dreadful consequences are not tampered with by fuzzy-thinking do-gooders. That is Bushwa. You know as well as I that you cannot prove that, it is a dogma, an article of faith. As the quaint notions of a curmudgeonly Scrooge, it is harmless enough. As social policy, as governance, it is a cruel scourge for the powerless. I have it on Good Authority that that man is my brother, and I am his shelter. Failing that, I’m just another brick in the wall, aren’t we?
Scylla, one is moved by your ringing defense of those poor innocent lambs, cruelly assailed by dat ol’ Debbil Liberal Media. As Oscar Wilde said about Dickens’ The Little Matchstick Girl “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell and not burst out laughing.”
Economics is simply the construction of a model for market behavior. Understanding the model gives us insight into market behavior. Some of it is pure science, or pure math. Some of it is well-documented and supported theory. Some of it is hypothetical theory. It is most assuredly a science.
Your decency and your morality may be at disparity with other valid viewpoints. To arbitrarily impose your artificial notions of what is fair or deserving, is to maginalize those other valid viewpoints.
People are moral. Laws are not moral. You can’t legislate morality. The job of the government is not to impose morality.
If you consider the work ethic to be half-assed, I’m pretty sure we don’t have much hope for a resolution here. Again. the job of government is not to insure success for everybody that tries. That’s socialism, and it doesn’t work either in theory or in practice because it punishes incentive.
There’s absolutely nothing coercive about my approach. It doesn’t take away, and it doesn’t punish, nor does it reward. Your approach rewards failure.
There’s no cynicism or political ideology in it. It’s a basic fact. If you reward failure, you encourage it. You have simply listed reasons why a person with a given morality might work when he need not. The assumption is that everybody shares your morality. Everybody does not.
[quote]
In many instances of tribal society, people work harder than they must for the sheer pleasure of giving it away.
[quote]
Absolutely false. You refer to a gifting economy. It’s an economy that comes from a different perspective than ours, but it follows the same priciples. They don’ give things away “for the sheer pleasure of it” unless you mean the pleasure they receive from the economic advantage this gains them. The man who gives away all his property to everybody else in his village is the wealthiest man in the village, because by the rules of the economy each of those people is going to have to give him a gift of greater value back at some point in the future. He cannot want becuase the rest of the village is indebted to him.
Surely you understand the concept. If I have done you a generous favor it is hard for you to turn me down.
Bullshit. It’s simply the principle of efficiency, and for large systems it’s a universal truth. Water follows the path of least resistance. People make purchases where they believe they derive value. They rarely show a deliberate ethic of paying more than is necessary for something unless they are receiving added value.
Similarly, productivity is the economic coin of the worker. He exchanges his work for capitol. The principle of efficiency says that he tries to get a favorable exchange. This is super basic stuff, and it’s not ideological dogma, it’s demonstrable fact.
I’ve addressed this several times. Folks like El Jeffe seem to understand what I’m saying. You’re simply judging without understanding.
It’s very simple. If you are rewarding unproductivity, than it will increase.
That’s a religious beleif not an economic principle.
I am extraordinarily familiar with the specifics of the case on both sides and would be happy to discuss it.
Merrill Lynch lost close to half it’s value because of Spitzer’s utterly fraudulent accusations.
Merrill Lynch is a very widely held stock.
I recall you lamenting the poor individual investors that got screwed because of Harken even though it went up.
Merrill Lynch isn’t just held by fat cats. It’s a major component of many mutual funds. Doubtless you have some in your 401k. Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and several others all went down when Spitzer turned his eye on them. We’re talking 10s of billions of dollars of people’s money here lost to Spitzer’s blackmail and grandstanding.
Until recently these low PE value stocks have held up well in the current market storm. They’d become a safe harbor. Spitzer’s attack destroyed that and is likely instrumental for the huge general dropoff we saw in the market in August and September.
elucidator, why on earth would you think I’m a conservative?
cite?
I’m against the dreadful consequences, but I do think people respond to incentives. For most people, work is unpleasant. To make it worthwhile for them to do it they require payment. And firms can subsitute one type of labour for another (or capital or whatever) to some degree and will do so if the prices they face for inputs chnages. Taking this into consideration is a good idea if you’re interested in helping the poor. Deciding you don’t want to know about what will be effective because it might endorse a view of human nature you don’t care for is no help at all.
Well, of course it is! What the heck are laws otherwise? It is immoral for me to stick a gun in someones face and take his money. The law says so. I fear you have been carried away by the sweep and majesty of your own rhetoric. You consistently phrase your own personal beliefs as Timeless Truth, without so much as a shred of proof beyond Scylla says so As in:
Because Scylla says so.
Because Scylla says so.
As above.
A universal truth? Shouldn’t something that grand be capitalized?
Well, that is definitely a step down. Rather disappointing, from a universal truth to a mere, shopworn demonstrable truth.
Which is to say, he agrees with you, and I do not.
Because Scylla says so. I say nothing human is ever that simple. I offer no proof of that, but then, niether do you.
Well, I grant you it is a moral principle, but I wont go so far as to make it out to be religious. I lack the clarity of thought that is given to those who can rely on dogma and the certainty of recieved wisdom, I have only the poor and uncertain light in my heart to guide me.
On the other hand, you state the Conservative Catechism as though it were universally acknowledged Truth, not to be denied by the likes of me. But here, Sportin’ Life and I sing our little duet, It Ain’t Necessarily So
Hawthorne how can anyone take you seriously if you cannot even spell “labor” without dragging in an utterly needless “u”? Oh, wait, one notes “Melbourne”. Poor bugger is an Aussie! I am remorseful, having been so ungenerous to one so burdened by fate. From my reading, you inhabit an ecology made up of two kinds of animals: the ones that kill you, and the ones that kill you and eat you. I really should simply congratulate you for sobering up long enough to type, and offer the hope and consolation that that is the first step to sobriety, and hence to emigration.
[sub]Having a bit of fun with you, haw I rather like Aussies, they are the Texans of the Pacific.[/sub]
