So does the board skew left?

[I_don_t_care_about_your_cat]

@John Mace

All you did was say I contradicted myself.

John, that is utterly false. That is in no way, shape, or form “all I did”. I in fact quoted the exact two statements you made that were contradictory. Please read post #383 again.

Surely you can be more clear than just making the statement. What is it about those two quotes that is contradictory?

For Christ’s sake, John - are you just fucking with me now? I mean, seriously - are you just fucking around with me trying to get a reaction? You’re really going to sit there and tell me that you don’t understand what is contractory about saying, first:

That “gun” is exclusion from the political process.

and later,

Yes, a literal gun.

In the first sentence, you’re telling us that you’re using “gun” figuratively. You put it in goddamm QUOTES, John. Quotes - you know what quotes are, don’t you? They are marks we use to indicate that the word we are writing is being used figuratively. You’re honestly going to sit there and tell me that not what you meant? When you say

That “gun” is exclusion from the political process.

it means that you are using the word “gun” figuratively to mean “the political process”. At least that’s what it means in standard English, as used by English-speaking human beings.

Then in the second sentence, you say it’s a LITERAL gun.

John - figurative and literal are OPPOSITES. Honestly, if you don’t understand my point, then we are simply not speaking the same language. I generally hesitate to accuse people of being deliberately obtuse, but I’m really having a hard time believing that a person obviously as intelligent as yourself really wasn’t able to grasp my point the first time.

Let’s drop the “that’s just radical right-wing rhetoric” stuff. That isn’t an argument.

No, I will not drop it. You are using jargon to color your arguments. Stop calling the minimum wage “wealth redistribution”. That’s not what it is. Virtually EVERY law on the planet has some sort of economic impact for someone. Calling perfectly ordinary regulatory laws “wealth redistribution” is just silly. It’s just a cheap way to try to emotionally charge your argument. MW doesn’t take money away from employers, we’re preventing them from taking advantage of employees. To imply that, just because a regulatory law may result in less profit for a business, that the government is somehow playing “Robin Hood”, is bullshit. Maybe you Libertarians are hanging out together so much that your radical jargon is starting to sound like standard nomenclature. I don’t know.

[furt]

@I don't care about your cat

No, I will not drop it. You are using jargon to color your arguments. Stop calling the minimum wage “wealth redistribution”. That’s not what it is.

Why is “wealth redistribution” jargon? Isn’t the whole point of MW laws to ensure that wealth doesn’t become concentrated in a few people and is instead distributed more equitably?

Do you think MW laws shouldn’t help poor people? Or are you just objecting to an accurate term because some people have demogoued that word in the past?

[John_Mace]

@I don't care about your cat

John, that is utterly false. That is in no way, shape, or form “all I did”. I in fact quoted the exact two statements you made that were contradictory. Please read post #383 again.

For Christ’s sake, John - are you just fucking with me now? I mean, seriously - are you just fucking around with me trying to get a reaction? You’re really going to sit there and tell me that you don’t understand what is contractory about saying, first:

That “gun” is exclusion from the political process.

and later,

Yes, a literal gun.

In the first sentence, you’re telling us that you’re using “gun” figuratively. You put it in goddamm QUOTES, John. Quotes - you know what quotes are, don’t you? They are marks we use to indicate that the word we are writing is being used figuratively. You’re honestly going to sit there and tell me that not what you meant? When you say

That “gun” is exclusion from the political process.

it means that you are using the word “gun” figuratively to mean “the political process”. At least that’s what it means in standard English, as used by English-speaking human beings.

Then in the second sentence, you say it’s a LITERAL gun.

John - figurative and literal are OPPOSITES. Honestly, if you don’t understand my point, then we are simply not speaking the same language. I generally hesitate to accuse people of being deliberately obtuse, but I’m really having a hard time believing that a person obviously as intelligent as yourself really wasn’t able to grasp my point the first time

See, you could explain it more clearly. Earlier you said you couldn’t. So, are you contradicting yourself?

Seriously, go back to my post#392 . You’re nitpicking about a semantic device, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll retract the “” . The state will come and arrest me, with guns, if I refuse to obey a law.

Do you deny the fact that the state could not enforce laws without the use of force (ie, coercion, ie, guns)?

No, I will not drop it. You are using jargon to color your arguments.

Me??? What do you call “right wing rhetoric”, if not an attempt to color an argument.

Stop calling the minimum wage “wealth redistribution”.

No.

That’s not what it is.

Then answer my question-- what is the purpose of min wage laws?

Virtually EVERY law on the planet has some sort of economic impact for someone.

Nonsense. Laws agains murder or rape have an economic impact on people?

Calling perfectly ordinary regulatory laws “wealth redistribution” is just silly. It’s just a cheap way to try to emotionally charge your argument. MW doesn’t take money away from employers, we’re preventing them from taking advantage of employees. To imply that, just because a regulatory law may result in less profit for a business, that the government is somehow playing “Robin Hood”, is bullshit. Maybe you Libertarians are hanging out together so much that your radical jargon is starting to sound like standard nomenclature. I don’t know.

Start a GD thread on the subject. Min Wage laws are designed specifically to give more money to low skilled workers. Would you also deny that welfare is a form of wealth redistribution?

[XT]

You guys have the patients of Job. My two cents will just be a things I dug up with a quick search on the subject. I don’t really expect them to have any effect on IDCAYC or other mininum wage proponents…just an excersize in futility. Maybe its time for another minimum wage debate in GD…its been over a week now after all.

From The Minimum Wage:
Washingtons Perennial Myth
by Matthew B. Kibbe

To increase wage rates without either an increase in productivity or a shift in consumer preferences requires coercion. It is quite possible to raise certain wages by excluding competing labor from the relevant markets. This distinction between voluntary and coercive methods of increasing wages is essentially a difference between creating wealth and redistributing wealth.

The Economic Effects of Minimum-Wage Laws

Simply stated, if the government coercively raises the price of some good (such as labor) above its market value, the demand for that good will fall, and some of the supply will become “disemployed.” Unfortunately, in the case of minimum wages, the disemployed goods are human beings. The worker who is not quite worth the newly imposed price loses out. Typically, the losers include young workers who have too little experience to be worth the new minimum and marginal workers who, for whatever reason, cannot produce very much. First and foremost, minimum-wage legislation hurts the least employable by making them unemployable, in effect pricing them out of the market.

The damage done to minority teenagers is far worse. By establishing an arbitrary minimum, government reduces the costs of discrimination. In The State against Blacks, economist Walter Williams described how minimum-wage legislation alters the incentives of employers:

Suppose that an employer has a preference for white employees over black employees. And for expository simplicity, assume the employees from which he chooses are identical in terms of productivity. If there is a law, such as the minimum wage law, that requires that employers pay the same wage no matter who is hired, what are his incentives? His incentives are [those] of preference indulgence. He must pay the black $3.35 an hour and he must pay the white $3.35 an hour. He must find some basis for choice. The minimum wage law says that his choice will not be based on economic criteria. Therefore, it must be based on noneconomic criteria. If he wishes, the employer can discriminate against the black worker at zero cost.[6]

Because no one is allowed to work for less than a set minimum, those who can command only the minimum and are discriminated against have no way to fight the problem. If wages were not fixed at a certain minimum, those who were discriminated against could compensate by offering their labor at a cheaper price. This would effectively increase the costs of discrimination for those employers who wished to practice it.

From Plain Facts about the Minimum Wage

The Minimum Wage
There are kind hearted souls who believe that a raise in the minimum wage will actually benefit the working poor; they support it adamantly. The theory goes that poor persons should have a wage sufficient for a comfortable living. Indeed, in a perfect world every person would make 50 dollars an hour. The problem is that the minimum wage is not the way to see that this happens.

It is a fundamental law of economics that when you increase the cost of production of an item its price shall also rise. Thus, every rise in the minimum wage creates an equivalent inflation in the economy that effectively destroys the intended positive effect of the raise. This inflationary tendency then stimulates another call for a raise in the minimum wage. The result is a wage/price spiral. Some have stated that this did not happen as a result of the last minimum wage rise. They site the consumer price index. What they fail to note is that the prices that are increased by a raise in the minimum wage are not those big ticket items but the goods or services actually created by those on minimum wage. The irony here is that those are the very goods most consumed by those on a minimum wage: food, fast food and small consumer goods. Any one who has visited the grocery store for the last several years will note that the cost of many food products has increased steadily and dramatically.

A raise in the minimum wage, then, does absolutely nothing for those it is initially designed to help. It is a sad fact that this rise in the minimum wage actually does harm. It has a crippling effect upon anyone on a fixed income. This would be the elderly, other persons on social security, and any number of people who have low wage jobs - only not low enough to “benefit” from the projected raise. The wage/price spiral mentioned above degrades their income and makes living day to day more difficult than before. Others will say that many of the persons in this category have an income tied to the consumer price index. That is all well and good, but besides the time lag between inflation and a cost of living adjustment (COLA), there is also the fact that the consumer price index takes into account a myriad of items that these people would be unlikely to purchase (goods whose prices are kept down by technology). Thus the COLA raise will not reflect the true inflation for these individuals. **The redistribution of wealth for minimum wage ** workers is then being taken out of the pockets of those least able to afford it. Grandmothers will not get their weekly breakfast at Denny’s. The disabled will find a financial barrier placed in their path, and low income workers will find it even more difficult to put bread on the table.

IDCAYC, its clear that you are a proponent of minimum wage and don’t see it as a ‘wealth redistribution’ program because of the good things you feel it does. While I completely disagree with your position I can understand that you hold it. What you should take out of this is that not everyone agrees with your position, most folks (even proponents of minimum wage btw) acknowledge it IS a wealth redistribution program (proponents feel its justified of course). So…asking John Mace to retract that bit is silly…he really DOES think its a wealth redistribution system. Its not rhetoric…he and others (including me) DO think that.

As to the gun thing…Well John is using the word ‘gun’ in multiple ways. Its a common phrase for coersion by the government and, were I to guess, he’s using it as it was used by Ayn Rand in several of her books…in other words both the physical ‘gun in your hand’ description of a cop or soldier pointing a gun at you, as well as the analogy of the government forcing you to do something.

Probably won’t help but I’ve been lurking in this thread for a while and seems to be nearly dead so thought I’d chime in at the end.

-XT

[XT]

Oh, and as a nod to the actual OP…the board certainly skews left by American standards.

-XT

[BobLibDem]

By American standards, yes it is left of center. By world standards, probably not. However, the Libertarians are grossly overrepresented by several orders of magnitude.

[XT]

@BobLibDem

By American standards, yes it is left of center. By world standards, probably not. However, the Libertarians are grossly overrepresented by several orders of magnitude.

I agree with all three of your statements Bob. Bit of a shock to me when the Libertarians didn’t manage higher than 1% of the vote in the last election.

-XT

[elucidator]

Because the board favors intellectualism, and Libertarianism is an intellectual conttruct, born of the fancy that political science has some actual bearing on how people are governed. It has the main advantage of such constructs, being pristine and incorruptible, and incorruptible due to its utter lack of any actual political power.

It shares that weakness with Marxism (in the orignal frorm), being dreamed up out of whole cloth, politically speaking. As well as Marxism, it has a jargon that retains validity only within its context: the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is nonsense, of course, but then so is a governance wholly free of coercion. If men were angels, libertarianism would work, but then, if they were angels, no governance would be necessary.

Our own “system” of governance arises from compromises made by the Founding Fuckups, who fashioned a system to protect themselves from thier fellow FF’s, few of whom they would trust any futher than they could be thrown. It is weak in that progess can be thwarted by the privileged few, it is strong in that such progress can ultimately prevail once a sufficient mass of the people are convinced.

It is, as is often quoted, a very poor form of government, but that all the others are so very much worse. Libertarianism will thrive in Mensa meetings, and offer a platform for debate amongst intellectuals who find the dirty facts of governance distressing and untidy. Given time, it might very well rise to 3% of the voting populace.

And then it will schism.

[Liberal]

The government of the founding fathers doesn’t exist anymore. Federalism is dead.

[John_Mace]

@BobLibDem

By American standards, yes it is left of center. By world standards, probably not. However, the Libertarians are grossly overrepresented by several orders of magnitude.

Several orders of magitude? That would make them more than, or at least close to, 100% of the poster on this board. One order of magitude would be more accurate.

I pretty much agree with what 'luci said, although I am genuinely curious about what he meant by this statement:

@elucidator

…the fancy that political science has some actual bearing on how people are governed.

It sounds like you are claiming that political science does not influence actual governmental policies, but that clearly isn’t so.

The difference between the large “L” type and the samll “l” type, IMO, is that we small “l” types are willing to alter policy when theory clashes with reality. I look at pure Libertarianism as a useful construct against which to weigh competing policy choices, not a doctrine to be followed blindly.

[elucidator]

Well, that certainly settles that! Whatever was I thinking?

[BobLibDem]

@John Mace

Several orders of magitude? That would make them more than, or at least close to, 100% of the poster on this board. One order of magitude would be more accurate.

Mathematically, you’re absolutely right. My apologies for misuse of a mathematical term. For someone that had the adult dose of calculus, I feel ashamed. My wild guess is that perhaps 0.1 % of the population is Libertarian, yet they seem to comprise say 10% of the board.

[John_Mace]

@BobLibDem

Mathematically, you’re absolutely right. My apologies for misuse of a mathematical term. For someone that had the adult dose of calculus, I feel ashamed. My wild guess is that perhaps 0.1 % of the population is Libertarian, yet they seem to comprise say 10% of the board.

The Libertarian Party usually gets between .4% and 1% of the popular vote for president (more often closer to the former than the latter), but it’s reasonable to assume that some libertarians don’t vote for that party because of the “throwing your vote away” factor. At any rate, .5% of the US population would be a conservative esitmate. 5-10% of the regular posters in GD is probably about right.

[BobLibDem]

@John Mace

The Libertarian Party usually gets between .4% and 1% of the popular vote for president (more often closer to the former than the latter), but it’s reasonable to assume that some libertarians don’t vote for that party because of the “throwing your vote away” factor. At any rate, .5% of the US population would be a conservative esitmate. 5-10% of the regular posters in GD is probably about right.

I guess in fairness, there may be more Libertarians than what vote for their presidential candidate. There may be some Libs that vote for the major party candidates just to get the lesser of two evils voted in. And there may be some that are voting for the LP candidate as a protest as opposed to a genuine belief in their philosophy. I don’t know if I’d go much above 0.5% but it would be interesting to see any polling results that give more accurate estimates.

[ElvisL1ves]

@John Mace

It sounds like you are claiming that political science does not influence actual governmental policies, but that clearly isn’t so.

I read that as “Political science is not derived from studies of how government actually works or how people actually interact, but from ivory-tower intellectual masturbation”, or perhaps “Poli sci is prescriptive, not descriptive”. Still overbroad, perhaps, but not entirely wrong.

I’ve always suspected that a large part of the vote the Libs do get, on the rare occasions when they get organized enough to try to get any, is simply the “The Reps and Dems are both corrupt - get 'em all out” faction, and another large part is the “I’ll vote for whoever will cut my taxes the most” faction. The true ideological believers? Seems like they all spend their time posting on the Net, and could probably hold a convention of the entire party in a McDonald’s. Hell, they’re almost all here on this board for all we know.

[John_Mace]

@BobLibDem

I don’t know if I’d go much above 0.5% but it would be interesting to see any polling results that give more accurate estimates.

Working back from the '04 election to '80, the Libertarian party recieved these percentages of the popular vote for president:

.32, .4, .5, .28, .5, .3, 1.1

[I_don_t_care_about_your_cat]

This thread has become surreal.

@xtisme

You guys have the patients of Job. My two cents will just be a things I dug up with a quick search on the subject. I don’t really expect them to have any effect on IDCAYC or other mininum wage proponents…just an excersize in futility. Maybe its time for another minimum wage debate in GD…its been over a week now after all.

Oh you have GOT to be kidding. THEY have the “patients (sic) of Job”? Dude, you just dug up a bunch of stuff off of Libertarian blogs and tried to pass it off as impartial info about economics. The lot of you (and it’s quite obvious which of the posters in this thread are vehement Libertarians) are so mired in your own ideology that you don’t even seem to realize when you’re using Party buzzwords. And you, xtisme, don’t even seem to understand when you’re quoting a biased source. You’re right that this is an exercise in futily, but on MY part.

its clear that you are a proponent of minimum wage and don’t see it as a ‘wealth redistribution’ program because of the good things you feel it does.

No, incorrect. When did I make ANY argument that used any phrase even remotely similar to “because of the good things it does”? That’s just a blatant mischaracterization. I may as well say, “Xtisme calls MW ‘wealth redistribution’ because puppies are cute and cuddly”. It has nothing to do with what I was saying.

And please go back and re-read where I explained John’s contradicting of himself. You aren’t understanding it. At least John finally got what I’m saying. I think if you read it again you will understand it also. Just put a little more effort into comprehending. I think you guys are making a bigger deal about it than what was there. He just used a word figuratively, but then said it was literal in a subsequent post. It’s just confusing that way - that’s all I was saying; nothing more. I’m not sure why this is so difficult for you guys, it’s extremely straightforward. Perhaps your emotions are clouding your ability to grasp a simple comment? I don’t know.

[I_don_t_care_about_your_cat]

@elucidator

It shares that weakness with Marxism (in the orignal frorm), being dreamed up out of whole cloth, politically speaking. As well as Marxism, it has a jargon that retains validity only within its context: the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is nonsense, of course, but then so is a governance wholly free of coercion. If men were angels, libertarianism would work, but then, if they were angels, no governance would be necessary.

Just wanted to say that was a great post. I agree wholeheartedly; I just lack the eloquence to state it as well as you did.

[Liberal]

If men were angels, libertarians would advocate anarchy.

[I_don_t_care_about_your_cat]

@Liberal

If men were angels, libertarians would advocate anarchy.

You mean you don’t advocate anarchy?