Assuming for a moment that this is true (and that it doesn’t simply mean that both the rich and poor are getting richer in the US…the rich are just getting richer fasters), how does this relate to either the thread ( So does the board skew left?) or the last 6 page hijack (i.e. is the Minimum Wage wealth re-distribution)? Or was this just a drive by to point out how evil capitalism in general and the US in particular is? I’m curious how you figure this fits in.
IS there a comparison to the ‘Robber Barons’? What is it exactly? Are the laws similar today? Do todays wealthy control more or less of the GNP than they did back then? Do they have more or less political power? Are there more wealthy at the top end today than there were back in the day…and what does this mean one way or the other? Is the middle class larger or smaller today (as a percentage of the total population) than it was then? How about the number of poor (again, as a percentage of the population)…and are todays poor better or worse off in absolute terms than they were in the day? You toss out that its comparable…without actually bothering to make the comparisons. Since you obviously want to hijack the thread on yet another tangent…could you fill in some of those comparisons?
Then how do the corporations afford the payroll expense that you would impose on them? Do you advocate that they fire a portion of their low-wage workforce? Let’s look at this another way. Suppose government imposed upon you that you would pay an arbitrary minimal amount to selected merchants with whom you presently deal and whom it has deemed to be making less money than other merchants. How might that affect your economic lifestyle?
Mexico and South Africa are the only ones with greater wealthy inequality.
And no, it is not because everyone is getting richer.
The average income of the bottom 90% of Americans went down 7% from 1973 to 2000.
Meanwhile, the top 1% average income went up 148%.
Of course, this is also a redistribution of wealth. Just not one that gets talked about.
Furthermore, the fact that the US is more unequal than nearly any other country is in itself harmful.
Studies have shown that things like health, child poverty, and longest work hours are more closely related to vast inequality than to overall wealth. That is why the US lags behind in these areas despite our overall larger wealth.
It is also arguable that it is impossible to have a healthy democracy when all the money is in the hands of a few. I think this is true to an extent, as money inevitably goes hand in hand with power.
The comparison to the robber barons was not made to say that we are living in a new age of robber barons. It was to point out how naive it is to believe robber barons only existed because of exceptionally corrupt government officials.
In fact, the robber barons were far less dependant on government than most people think. To a large extent, they were just better capitalists than others. In some cases, they actually competed with others who were getting government subsidies, and still won. Robber barons are indicative of the flaws in capitalism (the worst system, except for everything else), not the result of a historically unique corrupt government.
“Is minimum wage wealth redistribution” is not an interesting question. Of course it is, indirectly, but all capitalism too is wealth redistribution.
By that same standard, intellectual property laws are indirect wealth redistribution. We restrict people from, for example, making their own cheap copy of a drug, forcing them to give their money to the company with the rights to it.
Since the very existence of a government which regulates the market implies wealth redistribution (and I don’t see anyone advocating eliminating the government altogether), the question is not “should wealth be redistributed” but
“what kind of a system is successful”. We have intellectual property laws because we think they are successsful; they encourage discovery and progress.
But a system which creates nearly the greatest inequality in the world (with all the health and poverty problems that implies) while building up a monumental debt is perhaps not the best. The system needs work.
This is not, by the way, either a “left” or “right” position. It is a success-based analysis, as opposed to the ideal-based analysis most in this thread ascribe to.
Luc, I, more than anyone, appreciate your delightful witticisms. I recall Gaudere’s description of Tris’s posts as “butterflies”. Many of yours are much the same. But in that particular one, you, upon your own volition, I presume, choose to stand upon a pedestal and preach. You declared yourself the purveyor of “common decency”, as you painted a portrait of yourself standing in a poor neighborhood and seeing a little girl lifted from poverty by, one presumes, a benign government that has wrestled filthy loot away from robber barons and put it to a good cause. In fact, you went on to equate advocates of free markets with advocates of robber baronism. I believe that you called me names, only with prettier words and a more shadowy nuance. I do honestly encourage you to put your effort where your fingers are, and work toward your contentment. If Thoreau had written Walden while living in Manhattan, who would have listened to him?
Faulty premise. A government may regulate a market only to the extent that it suppresses the initiation of force and deception, without meddling in the dispensation of its financial transactions. The presumption that government coercion is a metaphysical necessity is audiatur et altera pars — maybe not a fallacy per se, but certainly concealing information that is germane to the argument.
Here is the Wikipedia entry for “minimum wage.” Again note that minimum wages are not referred to in terms of wealth redistribution programs. The wiki article does, however, briefly touch upon the subject of wage subsidies, i.e., the idea of supplementing low-income earnings with a government bonus. That would be a wealth redistribution program as it is classically defined.
Then I tried Googling +wealth+redistribution+program. Not much help, but I did stumble across this Wikipedia discussion of wealth distribution, which provides a standard list redistribution programs:
Progressive taxation, disaster relief, social security, public education, and public works are generally recognized as redistributive programs (not war, though). On the other hand, the paragraph fails to mention welfare payments, the prototype of wealth redistribution.
Unfortunately, none of this really proves much either way.
Is there an economics professor in the house? xt:
I hope my last response to you didn’t come off sounding harsh or snarky. That was absolutely not my intention. Please take it in the spirit it was meant – as good-natured ribbing.
– S.
That I would impose on them? You are aware that there is a minimum wage in effect right now in the U.S., and that companies routinely meet their payroll expenses quite satisfactorily, aren’t you?
Some do; some don’t. Mine didn’t. But those that are most profitable and powerful get the welfare that you say you wouldn’t give them. When Ralph Nader and the Cato Institute agree about something, then it might give you pause to think. Or, who knows, it might not.
No worries and no offense taken. I always enjoy your posts, even when I disagree.
I think I’m going to bow out of the MW re-distribution/not re-distribution debate at this point (with a few final thoughts…listens to the groans) instead of following up on your cites, unless someone wants to start a new thread on this in GD. 11 pages is enough. My one comment is that while your cites don’t say MW is a wealth re-distribution system, they don’t (afaict with a quick skim) say the opposite either. And from your last cite, I think this could be interpereted that MW COULD easily be looked at as a wealth re-distribution system:
They go into several examples, but I don’t think its an exhaustive list. And MW certainly IS ‘the result of government policies and programs’…its the government setting and enforcing a minimum wage level.
To me if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…its probably a duck. MW LOOKS like a wealth re-distribution system to me based on my own world view. I respect that YMMV on this (as appearently does I don’t care about your cat’s). And of course none of this gets into how good or bad MW as a system IS in the US…we have only been talking about if it is or is not wealth re-distribution.
The Board doesn’t skew Right or Left. Instead it gyrates about Right-Left axis at the frequency of a whole bunch of revolutions per any arbitrary time unit one can imagine, thus creating its own elective affinity field in which diversely endowed intellects of its members are suspended while also subjected to perpetual itinerant fluctuations between opposite polarities.
Well I’m sure it feels good for you to blame your business failure on those evil lib’rals and their evil minimum-wage, but did you ever consider that maybe there was another reason? If your business model was based on having to pay folks shitty wages, then maybe you needed a better model. MILLIONS of folks run successful business EVERY DAY, and they manage just fine while paying employees a decent wage. I’m sorry yours failed, but y’know - shit happens. What do you want, a guarantee against business failure?
So you think that dropping the minimum wage would rectify the situation of the most profitable and powerful companies getting handouts from the government? How would that work exactly? Wouldn’t a more direct solution be to, oh…I don’t know, stop giving handouts to the most profitable and powerful companies? You do realize that the “liberals” are every bit as much against corporate welfare as you are, right?
Um, I think you misunderstood my remark. It was not a company I owned. My company, as in the company I worked for. It did not have the political clout to secure corporate welfare, and it was forced to hire workers full time at minimum wage even though they were only needed for part time work. A meddling bureaucrat determined that those flunkies deserved full benefits.
Both should be dropped: the minimum wage and the welfare.
Once you have figured out that you’re a socialist rather than a liberal, would you mind answering some of the questions I’ve asked you?
Oh, don’t be like that, sweetie. You asked me to explain something that I had already addressed numerous times, and I happily did so.
I don’t get the question. Why would you hire someone to do nothing? Isn’t “hiring someone to do nothing” the equivalent of giving him money? Kind of skews the question, doesn’t it?
(1) No, there are things you can’t spend your money on. As I pointed out earlier, I cannot buy a nuclear bomb. (2) You own your money, but you don’t own your workers. You are not free to do as you please with your workers. For example, you can’t whip them to make them work faster (in fact, not even if they “agree” to allow themselves to be whipped).
That’s a little broad, don’t you think? If you’re gonna go with that definition, then ALL wages are wealth redistribution. So isn’t it simply redundant to call the minimum wage “wealth redistribution”? I guess I don’t see the point. It’s like saying “wages are wages”.
True.
No such right exists. You do not have an unlimited right to decide how to spend your money. I don’t have the right to hire a hit man, for example.
True.
Hmmm…you didn’t really need all those intervening points. Couldn’t we pare down your argument to:
Wealth is redistributed whenever it is spent for the benefit of someone else.
ALL wages are wealth redistribution.
Minimum wage is a subset of all wages, and therefore is wealth redistribution.
Of course, you have to assume the definition in (1), which seems over-broad to me.
But MW is not “compelling you to spend your money against your will”; rather it’s setting conditions on how you spend your money, should you decide to spend it on a certain thing. So it doesn’t fit your definition. Taxes and fines do, but not MW.
Funny, I just noticed this, after Libertarian was previously huffing and puffing angrily about how no Libertarian has ever made such an argument.
Um…I agree? Not sure what your point is.
I disagree. I think you’re WAY stretching it. And that was initially my point in this thread. Whether you guys admit it or not, I’ve noticed that Libertarians are constantly pushing the envelope on comparing things to communism. I’m sorry, but not everything that you disagree with is communism. A person can be more liberal than you without being a communist. By the same token, I admit that a person can be more conservative than me without being a fascist.
I don’t really see it that way. I think businesses have a certain amount of work that needs to be done, and need to hire a certain number of workers. The natural inclination of a business is to try to maximize profit and minimize expense - you’re not gonna change that. So to that end, the business is going to get the cheapest possible labor that will successfully do the job that needs to be done. IF there are more workers than there are jobs available (which is usually the case with unskilled menial jobs), a business will be able to TAKE ADVANTAGE of that fact, and will have the leverage to force people to work for an extremely low wage. Actually, the article Mr. S quoted explains it very well, so I’d just be redundant if I go into any more detail.
But with a MW in force, the business STILL must hire workers to do the job. The only difference is that the workers will get a reasonable wage instead of a unreasonable one. How are workers SOL? I don’t see it. And I submit that NOBODY’s labor is worth less than $5.15 per hour. Try living on $5.15 an hour; I guarantee you wouldn’t like it.
I disagree with your assessment that there is a pool of workers worth “less than MW”, who “don’t get hired”. They DO get hired, but they get MW instead of a poor wage. A business can’t just not hire workers; the work wouldn’t get done and they’d go out of business. Contrary to Liberal’s doom & gloom scenario, I’m just not seeing the massive business failures that your theory would predict.
And that’s good. It shows that it’s not set too high. If MW were set too high, a large percentage of workers would be making MW, and it would be intefering with the economy. But as it stands, I don’t see any evidence that it is.
That’s not what I said. Please read it again. I didn’t say Libertarians argue that, I said it’s a FACT - A fact which renders the Libertarian ideal as impossible in the real world. Libertarianism won’t work BECAUSE people don’t have unlimited choices and opportunity.
Right, and I’m saying that will never exist in the real world, and I don’t see any reason why it ought to exist. If an unskilled laborer is being exploited for $1 an hour, that is NOT an uncoerced agreement. Perhaps we could buy widgets for $1.98 by exploiting unskilled labor for $1 an hour, but I think it’s in the greater public good not to do so.
Now THAT’s funny. I know about your username change. You are pretty much all alone in your assessment of what a liberal is. But go ahead and continue to think that you’re right and the entire rest of the world is wrong.
So substitute “company you worked for” in my remarks. No biggie.
Is somebody cooking? I smell red herring. Since when, exactly, were we talking about benefits? Or having to hire full time? You’re really confusing your subjects.
Yeah, great argument - “Yer a commie”. :rolleyes: I can see why so many people are complaining about your posting style, and why they devote entire threads to it. I guess it’s a step up from quoting my entire post and writing “bullshit”, but not much…
You are aware that there is a minimum wage in effect right now in the U.S., and that companies routinely meet their payroll expenses quite satisfactorily, aren’t you?
But if you and Sam Stone agree on something, then I will take notice.
I always enjoy your posts, even when I disagree.