You’re kidding us, right?
How is asking people who have the money to give out more than they’d freely choose, wealth redistribution? No idea…
Guess we’ll have to wait for someone who can handle an actual discussion. :rolleyes:
You’re right.
Anybody else want to take this guy’s spot?
Doubtful…I think s/he managed to pretty much alienate everyone who tried to engage him/her on this hijack (IIRC John Mace and Bricker both tried but gave up in frustration). The amount of ignorance about what Libertarians are/are not in IDCAYC’s last ‘substantial’ post is staggering. In addition, why would anyone want to ‘debate’ with an obviously hostile poster in the Pit for gods sake? IDCAYC is perfectly capable of creating a new thread on this subject in GD instead of trying to keep a hijack going on the 6th page after most posters have bowed out.
Maybe Shodan will try to engage her/him…it actually is an intersting debate, though its been done several times in GD already. I’m just kicking back and watching the hands flail about. ‘Now that I’ve pissed everyone off by throwing tantrums, won’t someone debate this with me??’. Its to laugh.
-XT
Er, make that the 9th(!!) page of this thread. Gods and devils.
-XT
Well, Shodan - in answer to your question, “Are we past that point?”, it would appear that we are. I’ll still wait, though…
Finn:
Well, after the money has been made, before wages have been paid….who’s money is it? Does it belong to the boss, or to the workers? At that point the money hasn’t even been “distributed” yet, let alone “re-“ distributed.
A welfare program is rightly considered wealth redistribution because the money used to pay it comes from the pockets of people who pay taxes. The economic system (market) distributes the money; the government then intervenes and redistributes some of that wealth from upper to lower class. Hence the term redistribution.
You might be able to argue that minimum wage laws are wealth distribution programs, because they insure that low skill labor is guaranteed a certain percentage of the company earnings, but I have a hard time seeing it as a redistribution scheme. Labelling it as such would seem to imply that, by default, all company earnings belong to the company’s legal owners. But that doesn’t make any sense, because the owners wouldn’t earn money in the first place without workers. Your default assumption stacks the deck.
It’s almost as if you’re arguing that wages are themselves an example of wealth redistribution, a notion which makes the concept of wealth redistribution so broad as to be meaningless.
That’s all just bullshit.
Well, that certainly settles that!
If the labor costs for a certain good/service are X without any government intervention (decided by the dreaded market and mutually agreed upon by employeer and employee), but are set artificially at Y due to an attempt to regulate minimum labor costs by fiat (without reguard to the market value of that labor with reguard to the good or service being provided), and if setting said cost to Y costs consummers of that good or service extra…then doesn’t that mean you’ve ‘re-distributed’ money from those buying said service?
True. MW is more a backdoor tax, where consummers pay the added cost for the labor. Its a hidden way to re-distribute wealth from consummers to laborers by setting artificial minimums on the cost of labor.
Not the wages themselves, but the artificial setting of a minimum which causes the price of the good or service being offered to rise, thus costing consummers more. Now, you can certainly argue that this is a good thing and that consummers should be willing to pay more to privide those laborers with more money (and to a certain point I might even agree, though I think there are down sides to this also…such as actually preventing more folks from working at the low end), but its hard for me to see how you could argue that this isn’t wealth redistribution.
-XT
Well, actually I was going to express my gratitude for your substantive response.
However -
This is the Pit, not Great Debates, and it does sometimes happen that the expected snarkiness will derail a genuine discussion. And I am on my way out the door, unfortunately, and also the ninth page of a thread.
How would it be if I started a thread in Great Debates? If you are willing to participate, I can do so later this evening.
I can be just as big an asshole as anyone else hereabouts, but I don’t have to be.
Regards,
Shodan
Thanks, Mr. S, for another great explanation of why MW is not wealth redistribution. Still waiting for someone on the other side to explain why it is. I guess I’m still optimistic that someone will do something other than snipe here.
I wouldn’t call it a tax either. A tax is a fee levied by the government. Not really an accurate description of MW. And I think Mr. S made a very good case for why it’s not re-distribution.
No, no - Shodan. My comment was directed at FinnAgain’s completely un-helpful snipe. I was still waiting for your response, which I was hoping would be geniune. I was hoping you’d respond in this thread, especially after your entreaty for me to address the issue, which I went to considerable effort to do. If you feel you must start a new thread, I hope that you will include an explanation of why MW is wealth redistribution as part of your initial post.
It belongs to the owners of the company. They have expenses that they must pay: electricity, supplies, taxes, leases, and salaries. But each of those are debts. The money received as income is not some sort of shared pool, owned equally by the workers and the owner.
Indeed, if the company loses money, are the workers out of luck? No - they must be paid their agreed-upon salary even if the company has a losing week.
I agree.
That’s exactly how it is: all the company earnings belong to the owners. They couldn’t earn money without the electricity being turned on, either, but that doesn’t give the electric company some sort of participatory share in the company’s earnings. The electric company gets paid their fee regardless of how well the company does. If it earns a huge amount one month, and loses money the next month, the electric company gets paid only what’s on the meter. So, too, with the employees: if the company is wildly successful one month, are the employees entitled to a raise? If the company loses money one month, can they refuse to pay the employees?
No. The comapny earnings all belong to the owner. The owner has debts he must satisfy. Employee salaries are among those debts. But the earnings and the debt are unrelated.
No. “Redistribution” implies a third party. Wages are wealth distribution: an employee adds value to the company in exchange for his salary. As long as it’s the employee and the employer entering into an agreement, there’s no re-distribution. When the government forces an employer to pay more than he wishes, that’s the government taking money from the employer and giving it to the employee.
Come on. The money belongs to the owners of the company the instant it is paid to the company. The owners then pay the bills they owe, to suppliers, contractors and workers, etc. Are you seriously implying that the money is up for grabs until somebody happens to grab it?
Nope. Wages are contractually agreed upon payments from one person to another.
What’s wrong with calling the MW wealth redistribution, btw? The government redistributes wealth all the time. If we said wealth redistribution = bad, then you’d have to argue to end wealfare, which I for one am not doing. Farnkly, I think there are better ways to redistribute wealth than the Min Wage, but that’s another issue altogether.
Imagine the country the day before and the day after min wage laws were enacted. What was the net result? Some people had more money, and others had less. There is one and only one purpose of Min Wage laws-- to put more money in the hands of low skilled workers. Other laws have economic impacts, too, but few can be said to have solely an economic impact, by design, as do Min Wage laws.
No it’s not; it’s the government making regulations for how employers do business. To borrow Libertarian logic, nobody is forcing anyone to be an employer. But if you are an employer, you must pay at least minimum wage. The government did not take your money away, you paid it to your employee. The government did make a regulation that prohibits you from paying a less-than-fair wage, but then let’s call it what it is.
Again, if you want to say welfare is wealth redistribution, I would agree. But minimum wage - no. You are confusing the net effect with the process.
Well sure they can. Anti-theft, anti-fraud, anti-trust, etc. laws certainly are designed solely to have an economic impact. (Remember that I’m not saying that’s analogous in every way; only refuting your statement.) But that’s not the point anyway. The point is, as I said to Bricker, that the net result is not the equivalent of the process. It may very well be designed to result in workers having more money, but that doesn’t mean you can call it wealth redistribution. Traffic laws are designed to prevent people from causing automobile accidents - that doesn’t mean the government is driving my car. The net result is that my car is driven differently, but it doesn’t mean the government is driving it. Honestly, I really really do understand what you’re trying to get at; I just disagree with your nomenclature.
You may find it a subtle distiction between taking my money away and giving it to someone else, and creating a regulation that partially controls how much money I can pay employees, but then if the distinction is meaningless, why are all of you so insistent on maintaining the nomenclature that you’re using?
Let’s suppose the following law is passed:
Instead of welfare paid from the government, funded by tax revenue, every employer must hire one additional person for every fifteen people they already employ, and pay them just to sit around and do nothing for eight hours per day.
Is that wealth redistribution, or not?
The United States has the third greatest wealth disparity of any developed nation.
Only South Africa and Mexico have more.
Personally, I think we can top them.
But we LEAD THE WORLD in mental illness! It’s all a matter of keeping our priorities straight.