We’re not going to play the ‘you can’t blame the predecessor’ game? Okay, so we are definitely taking into account the state of the nation prior to the present moment, keeping at least a little bit of sight of what had come before. I think this is entirely reasonable.
FY 2009 was not post-George W. Bush; massive spending was necessary to deal with the utter mess that had been made of the economy (In addition there was spending that may not have been strictly necessary, such as the aforementioned bailout.) The budget for 2009 was obviously dominated by that debacle.
Again using your numbers, every single year for which Obama has submitted a budget (2010+) has been at least 1.5% lower than that of the last budget authored by his predecessor (2009).
I thought we’d agreed that years during which there are two presidents are not solely the responsibility of whoever held the office at the end of the year? GHWB’s average from the three years during which he was the only president (1990-1992) was 35.68%, much less than than the full percentage point difference you claim. The 2013 and 2014 numbers are within a tenth of a percent of the 1991 number. The current numbers are simply not as unusual as you try to imply.
It might also be more relevant if you limited government spending to Federal spending, because I have a hard to seeing how Obama (or Bush for that matter) is responsible for spending at the state or local level. Let me help you:
Looking at this chart, if you ignore the so called “shared” year of 2009 where the budget was set in 2008 before Obama was president, it looks like Obama and Reagan are about the same when it comes to federal spending. Pretty good when you consider that Obama has been fighting a global war on multiple fronts and in multiple theaters with boots on the ground and dealing with the largest downturn since the great depression (which started under his predecessor’s watch).
That’s like saying someone “desires” to have the mobster cut his hands off because it’s preferable to being killed outright.
“Willing because it’s better than nothing at all” is not the same thing as “desires,” as you’d know if you didn’t hate freedom and individual liberty (both of which necessitate a communist mode of socioeconomic organization, and the abolition of the horrifically aggressive and authoritarian institutions known as “private property” and “laissez-faire capitalism” (which is even more authoritarian than the so-called “crony capitalism” that currently dominates throughout much of the West) with every ounce of your being.
You also seem to say a great number of things that aren’t true. I do not hate freedom or individual liberty, but rather am strongly in favor of both. And freedom and individual liberty necessitate capitalism rather than communism, which is why capitalist countries such as the USA, Canada, and Australia have, and have always had, more freedom and individual liberty than communist countries such as North Korea, China Cuba, Venezuela, and the Soviet Union.
In your first post in this thread, you said that the rich plutocrats have enormous control over the political process, and that what they want is to reduce the size of government. I’d agree with the first part, more or less. I’m trying to point out that the second part is obviously wrong. If those who control the political process wanted a small government, then we should have gotten a small government during the past few years. But what we’ve actually gotten is a government that’s bigger than ever (excluding World War 2) by any measure: size of budget, tax burden, costs of regulations, …
You apparently don’t deny that by these measures, the size of government is at or near a historic high point. We both agree that rich plutocrats influence the decisions of the government. Combining these two statements, does it not follow logically that the rich plutocrats have used their influence to increase the size of government?
Yes, you do, as evidenced by your advocacy of capitalism.
No, capitalism is a thoroughly authoritarian mode of socioeconomic organization. By making to each individual an unconditional and absolute guarantee of an equal share of social wealth, communism frees the individual to live zir life in whatever way ze pleases without having to subordinate zirself to, and avoid doing anything that might offend, someone else (be it the boss, the state, the customers, or the shareholders) simply in order to secure the material requirements of survival.
I don’t see a single communist society on your list. Perhaps you’d like to try again once you actually know what you’re talking about?
There may be a few issues on which the Republicans have veered to the right in recent decades, but I see no reason to believe they’ve done so generally. Santorum hasn’t held office for eight years so he’s not a great representative of today’s Republicans. But laying that aside, what position does he have that’s “way to the right” of Republicans in prior decades? Do you recall the speeches given by Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican convention? No prominent Republican is going to give such a speech at the 2016 convention. Santorum may be far to the right of you, but there’s no justification for saying that he’s far to the right of previous Republicans.
On economic issues, there may again be a few issues where the Republicans have moved to the right, but plainly they haven’t done so in total. To take the example of the Farm Bill and SNAP, just because it’s come up in this thread already, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans offered up a Farm Bill in 2013 that had a far bigger budget for food stamps than any previous farm bill had ever had.
You asked for me to cite my claim that you should vote progressive Democrat if you were interested in this issue. Then you accused me of not being able to provide a cite. Then I provided 2 cites of Democrats working on this issue, and you completely ignore those cites to give a history lesson. I backed up my statement, and instead of actually responding to my cites, you attempt a derail. I’m not going to respond to all of this, because it’s not responsive to my post.
I’m still buried in work, so I may not get to the CBO report this weekend. But, I will note that I did provide a response to your NBER report (which again, you demanded a response for), and on a quick perusal of this thread, you seem to have ignored this as well.
You ask for responses, and then when people respond, you pull a Gish Gallop and try and move to something else.
One more thing, ITR Champion, I’m not going to discuss new issues with you (outside of the MW issue) until you do the following:
Admit that the CBO report does not conclude a minimum wage raise would “at a minimum, throw hundreds of thousands of poor people into unemployment (underlining added)” which is what you initially claimed.
Admit that your Kucinich sites do not support the proposition that he is in favor of tariffs generally, but that your cites only support that Kucicinich is in favor of tariffs in the context of unfair trade practices such as dumping, and that you will need to provide additional cites to establish the proposition that he is in favor of tariffs generally.
Admit that I provided you with 2 cites in favor of the notion that progressive Democrats support the elimination of ag subsidies and that they support the elimination of the sugar tariff.
I want to come back to this, for other people in the thread, since it was glossed over. But this here is, in my view, exactly what is wrong with the way conservatives and libertarians approach capitalist economic theory. Note: All my use of the word “you” in the following is a general “you.”
Now, on a surface level, it’s very logical to think that as the price of something goes up, the demand for that thing goes down. And there are a lot of goods and services in the real world that function this way. But then you run across goods and services that don’t function this way (such as gasoline). So, what do you do?
Well, you can double-down on your initial assumption and pretend that everything in the real world does function this way. That’s not going to help you determine government policy or anything, and that’s not going to teach you anything about economics and that’s not going to help you model the real world. But, hey, you get to cling to ideology.
Or, you can try to figure out what’s going on and model it, so you gain an actual understanding of how markets work in the real world. And that’s when you start looking at things like inelasticity, or Veblen goods or monopoly/oligopoly supply-demand curves or behavioral economics or information asymmetry problems or market friction.
But, when you completely ignore all this real-world evidence, and all of these things that economists have been looking at for decades, sometimes hundreds of years, then there’s no point in discussing economics. You are simply an idealogue, with the same irrational zeal of a Soviet central planner, and you’re not interested in how markets actually work. And this is what conservatives and libertarians do over and over again. They arrive with economics 101 arguments that often don’t hold true in the real world and that ignore countless other areas of economics, and then expect people to take them seriously. Well, my advice is don’t. Because people who are this intellectually incurious shouldn’t be listened to.
If you look at the history of minimum wage increases against the history of the unemployment rate, there really is no apparent discernible pattern. Sometimes we’ve increased the MW without any change in unemployment. Sometimes we’ve raised it and seen unemployment go up. And sometimes we’ve raised it an seen unemployment go down. And further to this, when we have seen changes in the unemployment rate, the amount of lag time varies after the increase in the MW. This is what I meant when I said there’s no evidence that the MW affects the unemployment rate. Now, I will admit that this phrasing is skewy, and it technically incorrect. What I should have said is that there is no evidence that an increase in the MW must increase the unemployment rate. That is a completely correct statement.
But, we still have times where the MW was raised and unemployment subsequently increased. So, how do we figure out what is going on? Well, you have to propose a model, and see if the data lines up with your model. And NBER and the CBO both are using their own models. And these models make certain subjective assumptions. First, they weight different studies of MW increase differently (and in the case of NBER, they published before additional studies were released, so they actually missed some studies). There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but that’s a subjective decision. It’s not a made-up decision, because they both have plausible criteria as to why they chose their weighting the way the did. Similarly, with the model, they’ve made certain judgments as to how to weight other economic factors or government policies. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. And these decisions aren’t out of left-field. But they at the end of the day, they are judgment calls.
But the only way to know for sure if the CBO model is correct is to actually raise the MW and see what happens. And my feeling is that the CBO would have to adjust their models. But pointing to the CBO study and claiming that a MW wage must throw people out of work is not doing economics.
Now, of course, when we’re dealing with government policy, we can’t just ignore the CBO. They have their model and they were working with two specific MW increase scenarios. Now, if you wanted to be cautious, you’d go back to the CBO and present them alternate scenarios (such as a lower MW increase or phasing in over a longer period) and see how their model shakes out. And if the model shakes out better, you could then proceed with the different scenarios.
Or, you could do other things which we know increase demand, and thereby increase employment, such as unconventional monetary policy or Keynesian stimulus at the same time you do your MW increase to ameliorate the effects. And if we weren’t at the zero-lower bound right now, the Fed could also just use plain old-fashion monetary policy if unemployment did actually start to go up.
The CBO, of course, can’t just make assumptions about ameliorative policies, though. For example, one of the assumptions embedded in the report is that the economy will be stronger in 2016, so the Federal Reserve will be in the process of raising rates. And that is very traditional assumption. However, if the unemployment rate is too high, the Federal Reserve may just well not raise or may cut rates. That would be somewhat unconventional in a stronger economy, but we’ve had a lot of unconventional policy out of the Fed lately. The CBO is being cautious here and not making assumptions about Fed behavior, which is a cautious way to do this, but it also doesn’t really tell us how Fed policy could be used to ameliorate the CBO’s worst case scenarios.
So, what we have is a report that weights historical data subjectively, that weights other economic factors subjectively and that assumes certain behaviors by various government agencies. It’s a very cautious model in some ways, and there isn’t anything wrong with that, but it’s not proof. So, anyone pointing at this paper and saying “TADA! A MW increase must increase unemployment” doesn’t understand the paper.
From my view, I would keep going back to the CBO with the original scenarios and with other scenarios until I found a MW increase that would have the median scenario at being more or less neutral. But then, I tend to be fairly cautious when it comes to changes in economic policy, so I’m not willing to dismiss the CBO model entirely. But, the ideologues are happy to dismiss completely plausible models which contradict the CBO, because they aren’t actually interested in improving people’s lives. They just don’t like the minimum wage.
I’ve not followed the “debate” but we here see a clear demarcation between rational thinkers and right-wing idealogues.
Rational observers deal with quantitative facts: Demand is related to cost by elasticity (E[sub]d[/sub]).
[ul]
[li]E[sub]d[/sub] = 0 ⇒⇒ demand is inelastic; consumers will buy the product at any price. (Of course, elasticity can vary with price, but simplest is to consider only smallish price changes; i.e. marginal elasticity.)[/li][li] E[sub]d[/sub] = -1 ⇒⇒ purchases will fall 5% if price increases 5%, rise 5% if prices decrease 5% and so on. Right-wing thinkers like simple thought and seem to assume this is the universal elasticity. :smack:[/li][li] E[sub]d[/sub] > 0 ⇒⇒ Veblen goods (certain very expensive goods) and Giffen goods (certain very cheap goods) have the paradoxical property that demand rices as prices rise![/ul][/li]So the question at hand is not, as ITR champion and the dullest thinkers on the right would have it, whether gravity has been repealed or whether E[sub]d[/sub] < 0. No one has claimed that cheap labor is a Giffen good!
A question is instead: What is E[sub]d[/sub] for lowest-wage labor? The right-wing, of course, would like to pull an E[sub]d[/sub] out of their nose to suit whatever their present screed is. Rational thinkers use scientific studies, for example Sara Lemos’ 2008 study that concluded E[sub]d[/sub] ~= .1. (No, I won’t link to the Lemos’ study – I’ve already done so twice; at some point the adage Horse-Water-Cannot-Force-Drink comes to mind.)
The opening graph catches the eye. Present minimum wage is about the same as 40 years ago in current dollars. Low-wage workers were hit hard in the Reagan Administration, but recovered nicely in the Clinton Administration.
We go on to read that about 1.5% of the 33 million workers with wages less than $10.10 would be laid off, while the other 98.5% would see wage increases of up to 39%, say 12% on average. … or call it 15% to account for those in the $10-$11 who would also see small wage increases. Plug this in crudely and derive E[sub]d[/sub] ~= .1, in accord with other studies.
So about 500,000 would lose their jobs while 20 million or so would get significant wage hikes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, right-wing economists would be delighted by this result of “creative destruction” – the 500,000 layoffs would tend to be the least productive.
But now, instead, they pretend to have compassion for the layees-off. They were happy to sacrifice several thousand Americans in Halliburton’s War against Gog and Magog, happy to sacrifice millions of homeowners to Wall Street’s war against monetary sanity; why do they turn about here?
Yes, you did indeed provide a cite showing that some Democrats attempted to repeal the sugar tariff. I did not know that beforehand. Thank you for informing me.
That does not change the general fact that there are a vast number of government programs, tariffs, taxes, mandates, price supports, rules, regulations, and restrictions which drive up the prices of a vast number of things. Generally these hurt the poor and middle class. And in the great majority of these cases, there is little indication that either major party has any interest in removing these programs, tariffs, taxes, mandates, price supports, rules, regulations, and restrictions. But what little indication there is, comes more often from Republicans than Democrats.
septimus, I am unaware that all rational people have gathered to appoint you to speak on their behalf. Asserting that all rational people think like you do is always a lame tactic.
Studies already mentioned in this thread and others, including those cited by minimum wage supporters, have shown a wide range of estimates for the elasticity coefficient. That includes many estimates that are substantially larger (more negative) than -.1
But broadly your analysis is exactly correct: if minimum wage goes up, some poor people will lose their jobs, while others will earn higher wages. If advocates of higher minimum wage believe that it’s okay to knock a few hundred thousand people poor out of their jobs in order to raise the wages of a larger group, that’s a respectable position, though I happen to not agree with it. But they should acknowledge that they are, in fact, proposing to knock hundreds of thousands of poor people out of their jobs. They should not claim or imply that everybody who opposes a minimum wage increase is crazy or stupid or hates the poor.
In any case, it’s been a long time since any post in this thread had anything to do with the topic of the OP. I’m not too interested in rehashing a debate about minimum wage that this board has already had dozens of times.
Hysterical. You didn’t even know about elasticity earlier in the thread. If you did know about it, you would have never made this statement: “Debating whether minimum wage drives employment downwards or upwards is like debating whether heavy objects fall downwards or upwards. If the government increases the cost of cigarettes, people will buy fewer cigarettes. If the government increases the cost of gasoline, people will buy less gasoline. If the government increases the cost of labor, employers will buy less labor, and that means that poor people will lose their jobs.”
Now that you’ve been called on your ignorance, you want to pretend that you actually have some expertise on elasticity coefficients. Since you don’t know what elasticity is, you aren’t qualified to deal with topics such as the minimum wage.
This is an unsupportable opinion. If you want to hold it, know yourself out. I’ve backed up my statement that progressive Democrats are working to eliminate ag subsidies and ag tarrifs, and nothing you have posted contradicts me.
The one that the New York times described (as per the second link above) as:
“It’s hard to imagine a more widely reviled piece of legislation than the nearly $1 trillion farm bill. Its widely ridiculed handouts to wealthy farmers and perverse incentives have long united liberals concerned about the environment, conservatives upset about the deficit and market-distorting subsidies, and just about everyone concerned about basic fairness.”
I almost feel bad to be doing this after you’ve been beaten up on the minimum wage thing, but let me go a little further about Ryan and get back to the Romney-Ryan budget that I alluded to before but didn’t go into detail, because this implication of yours that Ryan is some kind of advocate for the poor is so utterly ludicrous and logic-defying that it numbs and boggles the mind. My cite here is David Stockman’s recent book The Great Deformation, and specifically Chapter 27, Willard M. Romney and the Truman Show of Bubble Finance from which I’ve briefly quoted and paraphrased a few things below (direct quotes in quotation marks).
Even as Stockman laments what he calls the loss of true conservatism, he is appalled both by the profligate spending of the Romney-Ryan budget proposal and at the same time its heartless assault on the most needy. In short, Romney began by proposing a 20% reduction on top of the Bush tax cuts “which had already added trillions to the national debt”, promising to recoup the loss “by closing ‘tax loopholes’, [with K Street] duly noting that the candidate did not name a single one of them out loud.”
But Stockman then goes on to eviscerate the spending side of the budget. The budget left completely unscathed every single recipient of Social Security and Medicare for the next decade, amounting to some $19 trillion, or about 55 percent of all domestic spending over that period – “notwithstanding,” as Stockman puts it, “that trillions of this huge expenditure would go to upper-income and wealthy retirees who hadn’t earned it and didn’t need it.”
Let me quote him fully on this next bit:
“By contrast, means-tested programs including food stamps, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, and the earned-income tax credit account for just $7 trillion, or 22%, of projected domestic spending under current law. Upon being slammed by Ryan’s fiscal meat ax, however, the current law figure would have been cut by 30% over the next ten years. This meant that citizens who had (mostly) proved they deserved help from the state and were by definition on the ragged edge of financial survival would take a $2 trillion punch in the chops.”
This is maybe best summarized by Stockman’s observation that “… what passed for the GOP anti-spending agenda was** a brutal, unprincipled attack on the means-tested safety net**, a position that candidate Romney famously and perhaps inadvertently crystallized in his lament about the 47 percent.”
There you have Reagan conservatism vs. the contemporary lunatics, and there you have their tremendous concern for the poor, their food stamps, their health care, and the entirety of their safety net.
I missed the studies you mention. Care to give at least a post number?
20 million get an average 20% wage hike in an overall improved economy, and you cry crocodile tears over 500,000 who lose their jobs. “500,000” with all those zeros may seem psychologically a bigger number than 20 mllion, so let’s go down the slippery slope. What if only 50,000 were laid? How about 5,000?
I am absolutely certain and so are you that if the cause were one that appealed to you, you would have no trouble grasping the concept of tradeoff and that it was good.
I’ve no idea if you can come up with a cite that Democratic politicians have claimed no jobs will be lost in a wage hike but, again, I’ve no doubt that you’re aware that such oversimplifications and omissions are standard practice by politicians on both sides of the river.
(I got tired of “other side of the aisle” – it implies a path of communication. Maybe “other side of the abyss” would be best.)