All that is fine and well. We are telling you that protectionist measures backfire and do not work. We are telling you that changes in attitude and training are what works. We agree something can be done but you have a different idea, that’s all.
Well I mean c’mon this is silly.
Youre acting like periods of unemployment or bad economic times are somehow unhealthy, and relating them to a disease that people catch.
Change your disease analogy to smokers who get lung cancer or gays practicing unsafe sex who get aids. Then it is primarily an individual problem brought about by ones individual choices.
Bad economic times are not a ‘social problem’, any more than droughts are or famines are. I would certainly say protectionism is a social problem though.
I offer a different analogy. Youre like a doctor who has a patient going through heroin withdralls. Even though he needs to go through it in order to get off it, you cant reign in your pity; you keep letting his cries get to you and you give him more heroin, just making it even harder for him to get off it in the future and worsening his health even more.
I take the opportunity to recommend two works by Nobel Prize winner Freidrich Hayek: The Road to Serfdom and The Use of Knowledge in Society. He gives a veery good explanation of why there is nothing better than the free market to make the best use of labor and goods and subsidies or other distortions only result in inefficiency.
Above are the unemployment rates going back to the year 1920. It seems to me that all this doomsday stuff is a bit ridiculous when you see that today’s unemployment is fairly mild. Back in the 40’s and 50’s the low unemployment rates were during a time when women were mostly staying home. Today most households have two wage earners, which requires many more jobs to keep unemployment levels down in comparison. I’m not saying that globalization, out sourcing, etc. aren’t problems, but let’s get a grip. Things aren’t near as bad as during the depression and better than several periods since then.
Not only that but the 50s and 60s were years after WWII when the USA was in an exceptional position with respect to the rest of the world which had seen all of its infrastructure and industry destroyed. It is not beginning with the 70s Europe and Japan were again able to copete with America. I hope nobody is advocating destroying the rest of the world so it will not compete with the USA.
The world changes and trying to oppose that is an exercise in futility. One can predict that America’s overall weight in the world economy will diminish as other countries in Asia (mainly China) develop. This is definitely a good thing because it means other countries are developing.
you know, I think you and some of the others must have concatenated my position on unemployment, et. al. with those of the OP. For the record, I have read a fair amount about economics over time. I understand economics. I also understand that, irrelevant to economic cycles or their causes is the response that societies have to the personal disruptions and losses that economic cycles cause in human lives.
Because something I know about the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace that you guys apparently don’t care to know is that one of its historic functions is to shove people – often good, decent, hard-working people – into homeless shelters or even the grave.
I see ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with society organizing itself to minimize this particular effect of the Invisible Black Hand of the Marketplace.
I’m not “cool” about it but at least I understand the cause of many of the problems. You are under the assumption that the world (substitute “government” or “big business”) owes you a job with health benefits and a high salary. I am under no such illusion.
I dunno where you got that opinion of my opinion, but it’s completely full of shit. What the world owes me is nothing. What we owe ourselves and one another as a soceity is a matter for negotiation.
1) The economy is cyclical. 5 years ago everyone thought the boom would last forever. Now people can’t imagine the recession ever ending.
I agree. The economy is cyclical. But if you have the least shred of honesty you must admit that the length and intensity of its oscillations is a matter of some debate.
2) You can’t compete with cost or quality. Complaining about workers overseas working for less money just sounds silly. If you were running a company, would you hire 50 foreigners who quietly did their job at a fraction of the cost or 50 high-priced unionized Americans who constantly give attitude?
I think you have me confused with another poster.
3) People managed to survive before pension funds, health plans and all the other stuff we think is “critical”.
Actually, a lot of people died during the Great Depression, which is to say, they DID NOT SURVIVE. This is why we need safety nets.
4) Shit happens - People lose their jobs, their homes, etc.
This a very old and very poor excuse for an argument. I am sure it was something cavemen used to say when people froze to death. Then fire came along. People used to say it when people died of cholera epidemics. Then modern sanitation came along. Now you are saying it, but the sad thing is, we already know how to build social safety nets, you’re just against them. Sad, really.
Maybe instead of wishing for the government to step in or big business to grow compassion, time would be better spent analysing the choices one made in life and planning for the future.
OK, I’m going to repeat this one more time without pointing out that you are Reading Without Comprehension. I think what you’ve suggested is a fine response on an individual basis for unemployment. How you respond to unemployment as an individual, and how society responds to the phenomenon of unemployment are two separate issues. They can both happen at the same time. In tandem, as it were. Your notion that an unemployed person can either hope for government intervention or go out and look for a job but not both is ludicrously, er … wrong. How do you think people get off unemployment insurance rolls (government intervention). Answer: they look for a job while they’re getting it.
It’s not rocket science.
You misunderstand me, xtisme. I think you are responding to my post about “being called socialism on.” My point there was that just calling an idea or a position ‘socialist’ doesn’t really constitute an argument. For the record, I think there is much that can be learned from some of the European socialist democracies. Although their economies don’t always perform as well as ours does, you can be unemployed in some European countries and still have a place to live, food to eat, and the opportunity to go to school and learn new job skills. This is a Very Good Thing in my book, and I wish America were like that. I suspect that you do not.
Voodoochile, msmith537, D_Odds, John Mace are all making good, rational points. My feeling is you are speaking from emotion, not from facts.
Your FEELING is that I am speaking from emotion? Talk about your Freudian slip! My rational opinion is that you think that just because you are advocating something that involves suffering for others, you are being logical. For the record, you are not being logical, only cruel and indifferent.
As I said earlier, my suggestion is to try and do some independant research to try and better understand the underlieing issues here (actually my suggestion was for Grim714, but you need the same thing).
I’m assuming you wouldn’t recommend ANYTHING by John Kenneth Galbraith. Howzabout Milton Freidman then? Fact is, economists disagree all the time. Fact is, the “facts” behind economic theory are kinda slippery.
For the record, I haven’t advocated any protectionist measures here. The only program I have specifically advocated is a public works program for the jobless. That’s not the same thing as a tariff.
I did make one reference to a tariff, “Smoot-Hawley”. But careful reading will show that I was not advocating it, but saying that if considerable portions of the middle class (i.e., the voting class) continue to suffer from unemployment, in a tight election it could lead politicians to try tariffs because they sound good. And that is why more constructive remedies should be on hand.
For the record, I think tariffs are something that should be approached with extreme caution. I don’t categorically oppose them, but I tend to view them with a certain amount of cynicism.
>> The only program I have specifically advocated is a public works program for the jobless.
I have several objections to this:
Government programs with the purpose of making work are not a good idea. If the work is needed then the government should be doing it and if it not needed it should not be done as it is a waste of money. These programs tend to create bureaucracies which favor friends etc. Bad idea.
Suppose with the aim of creating jobs the government decides to build a road which is not really needed. A few people find jobs, and a few jobs are filled by immigrants beause Americans won’t do them. All of it is paid by the rest of Americans through their taxes so now they have less money to spend on things they really want. Maybe less money to help cousin Joe who is unemployed.
During the depression you could create a public works program because the people were truly deperate and because any job digging ditches would be taken and because the unemployed were majorly people without qualifications. Today you have people with much higher qualifications and you cannot create jobs for peoples in many different fields. The market does this much betetr.
Public works are being done anyway and I see many of the workers digging ditches are Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants because Americans are not willing to do those jobs for what they pay. So what we have is not desperately unemployed who will take any job but spoiled unemployed who have very specific requirements as to what job and what pay they will accept.
People should learn to think ahead and save for when times get bad.I also favor relying on family and friends and local charities because they are much better able to judge who is in real need and are able to put pressure on the unemployed to get a job.
I just do not think it is the government’s job to assure people a job. It is up to each individual to find himself a job, find some activity which is in demand and fill it. There are labor shortages in various fields but Americans want the cushy jobs with good pay and I don’t think other Americans have any obligation to provide that.
My appologies. I was attempting to address a number of ideas that I disagreed with, not to single your posts out in particular.
Let me add to that point that even Keynes did not believe that the free market was best method of distributing every good and service.
The role of government, while not to provide people with jobs, is to care for the wellbeing of it’s citizens. Part of that is managing the economy in order to lessen the effect of economic fluctuations (the common analogy I have heard is the diference between steering a truck down a windy highway and allowing it to “steer” itself by wildly careening back and forth using the Jersey barriers as a guide.
In the end, it comes down to an issue of the good of society vs the good of the individual. Neither can be ignored. If I am unemployed with a family to feed, I care little for the economic efficiencies that will be gained by farming my job overseas, even though in the long run, I’ll eventually work again everyone’s standard of living will be improved.
Huh? While many mondern thinkers claim that Keynes was not really a “Keynsian” (if you follow the meaning), he was never the leading crusader of free trade thinking. In fact, he and Hayek were in an intense intellectual battle over the role of gov’t interfernce in the marketplace. Hayek was the free market guy, not Keynes.
Anyway, maybe I’m misreading your intent, but it sounded like you were holding up Keynes as the epitome of free market thinking.