That’s as stupid an argument as it gets. That’s because the content of the 3.8 million number is constantly changing, and so is the content of the 12.5 million number. So you can’t just fit one into the other as if they are something concrete and unchanging.
Then please provide proof that it’s so different that our already incredibly huge and growing wage gap would somehow self correct.
I’m sorry, but since you have nothing to back up any of your arguments, my argument is far less ignorant than your own.
So you’re complaining that the minimum wage is already pretty low and doesn’t affect many people, and so we desperately need to repeal this tyrannical law?
The fact is, the minimum wage is a marginal issue. If the minimum wage were $20 an hour then you’d be justified in worrying about how people are out of work. But it isn’t $20, it’s much lower than that.
So what’s the point of complaining about it?
The point is that you think minimum wage laws of any sort are Soviet-style tyranny. It’s not the employers who want to hire people but can’t, it’s not the workers who want low-wage jobs but can’t find them that you’re concerned about, it’s the mere fact that we’ve given the government the authority to regulate this economic activity.
See, this is where most libertarian activism is counterproductive. Even if your ideal hypothetical utopia would be anarcho-capitalism, to get from here to there you have to show people that they’d be better off with slightly less government regulation, or at least not increasing government regulation. And you have to do that, not by appealing to the premise that any such regulation is intrinsically wrong, but by showing that such regulations are unwise since they will lead to undesirable outcomes. Undesirable to the actually existing populace, not a hypothetical libertarian majority populace that might one day exist.
If we don’t agree with the premise that government regulation of wages is tyranny, where does that leave you? Are you trying to convince people or not? What’s the point of all of it? If the point is to live in a world where your policies are actually enacted, you have to actually convince actually existing people.
So if every actually existing developed country has all sorts of regulations governing wages, and actually existing places with weak governments that don’t are shitholes, then how can you do that? Freedom? Thing is, people don’t want freedom as a thing in itself. They want freedom because freedom gets them what they want out of life. If you can’t show people how a more free marketplace in wages will make them better off, then they won’t agree with you.
You seriously want proof that our economy, our times, and our mores are completely different from 100 years ago?
I want proof that your plan would work.
Again, there is a gigantic gap between what I actually said and how you’re interpreting it.
So you’re arguing that the minimum wage doesn’t affect almost anyone and is a “marginal issue” and that is why it absolutely MUST be legislated?
Not. Most people are happy to be little cogs in the state machine.
Sadly true. Most people would prefer to be a slave with a guaranteed full stomach than a free man who has to provide for himself.
Screw the mindless sloganeering-do you have a cites whatsoever to back up your claims?
You don’t know what slavery is. Slavery is not being taxed by a government when you are being compensated by a third party for your services.
Slavery is working for free in whatever conditions your slave master says you get.
Would someone on this board proudly stating that he is a cog in the machine help?
What the hell are you yammering about?
It took me several months to find work out of college. The first place I found was a serious health hazard, and had I continued working there I would have had long-term health problems.
I had a friend who took several months, and they were willing to work everywhere. If it wasn’t for unemployment, they likely wouldn’t have had money to feed themselves, as they didn’t want to live with their abusive parents, and most of their friends (myself included), barely make enough to get by.
My friend in question also stands a decent chance of being rejected and refused help by “good christian” charities.
Your “solution” is literally to have people die. There is no denying, no getting around that. You want people to starve to death in the name of libertarian ideals, and don’t even have the spine to admit the results of your ideals.
Fantasies.
Prove it by citing some facts.
Gosh, I’m being told what’s true or not by the guy who has previously posted factually incorrect information in GQ and refused to back it up or apologize or in any way admit that he was posting outright, 100% obviously untrue information. Stuff that is painfully, TOTALLY obviously untrue to anybody who’s informed in the slightest.
Yes, let us take his word on what’s true. He is clearly a reliable, trustworthy source.
Minimum wage doesn’t protect you from yourself. It protects you from your desperate neighbor.
It’s game theory. Here’s the game:
Anyone who combines a red chip and a blue chip earns $100. We distribute chips to people: 50 people get red chips, 40 people get blue chips. (to jump ahead, the red chips represent people looking for work; the blue chips represent employers looking for workers to fill jobs). You can strike deals with other players, but you’re required to honor any deal you make.
If everyone plays rationally but talks only on a one-on-one basis–essentially the libertarian system–what’s the expected value of a red chip? Of a blue chip?
This isn’t an opinion question; it has a mathematical answer. The blue chip players have the scarcer commodity, so they can seek the lowest bidder. The red chip players will compete against one another; they know that if they’re not selected by a bluechipper, the value of their chip is zero.
In a game played by rational players, the expected value of the red chip is $0.01; the expected value of the blue chip is $99.99.
It’s the Tragedy of the Privates: a bunch of rational players will compete against one another to the detriment of every player.
The solution is to add a Commons. Instead of making only individual deals, add in a voting system–make it a democracy. Vote on what a fair split will be. $50.00 for each? Share the wealth equally among all players? What should you do? There are multiple solutions once you add a vote.
In fairness (and to prevent Terr from wriggling off the hook with a blanket denial) I’ll accept that he probably doesn’t actually want people to die. He just refuses to accept what the rest of us see as inevitable consequences of the policies he extols. For if he accepted that, he would necessarily need to abandon his libertarian ‘principles’. Or be revealed as a genuine compassion-less monster whose controlling philosophy is “I got mine, screw you!”. Whether this is posturing, ignorance, or genuine cognitive dysfunction I will not venture to guess.
Since I am taken to task for not being able to show experimental results for experiments that cannot take place, so should you. You cannot “prove” (or “cite”) that those are “inevitable consequences” - in modern world, not 100 years ago.
This is ridiculous. I also can’t cite that if we stop vaccinating children for polio, we’d have massive polio outbreaks, if you forbid me from using evidence from 50 years ago. That’s because we’ve been vaccinating kids for polio in that time and we’ve stopped the epidemic in its tracks.
Similarly, you’re asking us to prove bad things wouldn’t happen if we followed your plan, and then forbidding us from using the only evidence that shows bad things would happen from following your plan, i.e., evidence from when people followed your plan.
The best evidence we have about what would happen if we followed your plan is what happened last time people followed your plan. Well, what happened then was that people died and kept dying until we implemented our plan (i.e., minimum wage). There’s no reason to think anything would happen differently this time around, except for your hand-fluttering cries of, “But it’s DIFFERENT now!”
Fruit Salad!
I almost never follow these types of thread because they give me headaches. I can’t believe that I read this whole thread, but I do have one question:
Why is anyone continuing to engage her? Her answers just seem to go around and around. At this point wouldn’t it be better to just ignore her?