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  1. #21
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    >Slaves were employed the way a miner employs a pick to break rock. But the choice of word is a mere matter of semantics.

    We shouldn't strive for some precision in language?

    >Slaves were assets whose acquisition involved some overhead but very little ongoing cost once acquired.

    Well, yes . . . that's what defined them as "slaves"! I mean, the reason there was "very little ongoing cost" once they were purchased was that *they weren't paid a wage*. That's the definition of a "slave".

    And — to return to semantics — to "employ a slave" is not the same as to "employ a cashier", because the first usage implies ownership and use of a non-human tool — the way you "employ a pick to break rock."

    You're not acknowledging the profound *moral* difference between voluntary actions and coercive ones. Volunteering for the armed forces is voluntary; being drafted under penalty of a prison sentence is coercive. Choosing to live with a romantic/sex partner is voluntary; arranged marriages under penalty of having one's ears or nose cut off are coercive. Contributing to charity is voluntary; paying income tax under penalty of wage garnishment and penalties is coercive. Buying marijuana from a dealer on the street corner is voluntary; being mugged by a heroin addict for your wallet is coercive.

    None of this says anything about "happiness". The guy who volunteers for the service might end up hating it, while the guy who had been drafted might have found it a great coming-of-age experience. I'm merely saying that the essence of the moral issue involves whether the exchange came about from the free will of the parties involved, or whether one of the wills — or the will of a third party — used force, or threatened force, to complete the transaction.

    So that means the old-left slogan of "wage-slave" is an absurdity. If you're getting a wage, you're not a slave.

    > They are the limiting case of what happens as wages go to zero relative to the cost of living.

    Except that under conditions of unfettered capitalism and individual freedom, wages never approach zero; they go in the other direction. For over a thousand years of feudalism in Europe, the highest GDP that an individual ever earned was less than $3.00/day. Then in the 18th century, with the tearing down of privilege and the spread of property rights, free trade, enforcement of contracts in law courts, recognition of intellectual property (e.g., technical inventions) and the rise of the Factory System — when labor was free to move around and accept any wage that factory owners bid for it — and when capital was free to move around freely, too (e.g., moving from places of high taxes to low taxes; moving from places of bad farming weather to good farming weather, etc.) — when all these things started happening simultaneously, wages began to rise. Today, the average wage in the west, stated in terms of GDP per person, is over $100/day.

    The capitalist west did not go from a $3/day per person economy to a $100/day per person economy because of legislation. You cannot legislate wealth into existence.

    Under British governance until 1997, Hong Kong had no labor legislation at all; none. No minimum wage laws, no laws requiring anyone to join a union or hire union workers. Guess how much unemployment they had? Zero. None. Additionally, wages were not "subsistence", because the way free markets form, there were always slightly more jobs available than there were potential employees to fill them, so employers — if they wanted "quality labor" — had to bid talented people away from competitors. And since there were no prescribed minimums, those who were not "quality labor" from the employers point of view — the least skilled — could still find employment because no laws prevented them from accepting a low, entry-level wage.

    Today, under Chinese rule, though Hong Kong is still robust, a lot of new labor laws have been implemented since 1997. Result? Unemployment of the least skilled workers, between 4% and 7%.

    It's not coincidence, global warming, or George Bush's fault. It's strictly labor policy.

    >So when did this become a discussion of Obama.

    For that matter, when did it become a discussion of slavery? I mentioned BHO because you previously criticized "corporate interests" and "robber barons" while lauding minimum wage — unaware of the fact that one of the most vocal supporters of the minimum wage, BHO, is a lackey of the first and a patron of the second.


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  2. #22
    Senior Member Platinum Poster Prospero's Avatar
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    a groan is indeed not an argument Mr Clifford - it was a gut response to the poison of Rand's ideas and the notion of unregulated freedom for big business. Capitalism needs constraints. Business needs rules and regulations. Government plays this role.

    Regarding the Koch Brothers their role in helping fund and create the so-called grassroots Tea Party is evidence enough of their pernicious influence on US politics and thus by extension global politics.



  3. #23
    Platinum Poster robertlouis's Avatar
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    As I recall this thread was started to question Koch's motivation for seeking the abolition of the minimum wage. It's now gone off on an extended tangent about the limits and scope of unfettered capitalism.

    Fine. But to return to the original post, if anyone thinks that the Koch brothers are pursuing the aim of abolishing the minimum wage out of any altruistic philosophical principles, they are simply fucking crazy.

    I don't think that's our new man Mr Clifford's intention either, but maybe if we could get back to the point, please?

    In terms of the Kochs' intentions, and this is merely yet another manifestation, all they want to do is destroy workers rights and get as close to slavery as the laws will allow.

    OK everyone?

    Sheesh!


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  4. #24
    Senior Member Platinum Poster Prospero's Avatar
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    Quote Originally Posted by robertlouis View Post
    As I recall this thread was started to question Koch's motivation for seeking the abolition of the minimum wage. It's now gone off on an extended tangent about the limits and scope of unfettered capitalism.

    Fine. But to return to the original post, if anyone thinks that the Koch brothers are pursuing the aim of abolishing the minimum wage out of any altruistic philosophical principles, they are simply fucking crazy.

    I don't think that's our new man Mr Clifford's intention either, but maybe if we could get back to the point, please?

    In terms of the Kochs' intentions, and this is merely yet another manifestation, all they want to do is destroy workers rights and get as close to slavery as the laws will allow.

    OK everyone?

    Sheesh!



  5. #25
    Senior Member Platinum Poster Prospero's Avatar
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    But the argument about unfettered capitalism is a recurring one here RL... given the huge swathe of support for "government of our backs" among otherwise intelligent people



  6. #26
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    >What makes your support of not raising the minimum wage "critical" and those in opposition of your view "uncritical"?

    Years of studying the subject and debating it, as opposed to repeating what pop media journalists (and even a few, odd, pop Nobel Laureate economists like Paul Krugman) might opine about the matter. (You don't do that, but most supporters of the policy I've met do.)

    By the way, I don't "support not raising the minimum wage." I support freedom of contract for the wage receiver and freedom of contract for the wage payer. I don't accept that one group has special rights that the other group doesn't have. We all have the same rights. I support *abolishing* minimum wages altogether as a violation of that basic moral principle, as well as for the usual economic reasons: it creates a glut of unskilled labor (mainly young, and often minority) who cannot find employment at that wage. Their unemployment then becomes chronic. Youth unemployment in the US is now over 16%, yet the recession supposedly ended a few years ago. I haven't the slightest doubt most of that 16% is caused by minimum wage laws.*

    You won't be happy to learn that the original purpose of minimum wages in the US was to help labor unions — which were uniformly white and male at the time — stop blacks and women from offering their labor at competitive rates. The unions feared competition from these two new groups of unskilled labor entering the work force and found a way they could get congress to help price the newcomers out of the market: forbid them from accepting a low wage when it was offered. Though it was couched in "progressive" slogans of the day ("helping the poor live a dignified life", "preventing exploitation of the worker by the employer", etc.) the real aim of the minimum wage legislation was to make the more experienced and more expensive union man look more competitive by comparison. Think of it this way:

    The minimum wage does the same to cheap unskilled labor as an import tariff does to cheap imported goods. It artificially raises the price others have to pay for it, in the hopes that people will buy the higher-priced domestic good (or the higher-priced, "higher quality" labor).

    So if you want to think about minimum wage in an economically realistic way, without starry-eyed romanticism, think of it as a tariff imposed on cheap, unskilled labor.

    >The purpose of flipping hamburgers is to grill them evenly on both sides,

    From the consumer's point of view, because that's what he's paying for. From the viewpoint of the flipper with even the smallest amount of ambition who wants someday NOT to be a flipper, he needs to learn some things about arising at 7:00 a.m., donning a uniform, showing up on time, and saying "Yes Sir, Madam Boss Woman! What needs to be done today?" As well as, perhaps, learning some things about supervising a kitchen and, maybe eventually, running a restaurant. Those are all things one can learn as a burger flipper if one wants to, especially if one has even an ounce of ambition — as, I believe, most young people who hold minimum wage jobs do have.

    >By flipping those burgers the employee provides the product that the waiter shills to the customers.

    No he doesn't. The product the waiter brings to a customer is called "a cooked burger"; the flipper only provides the "cooked" part to the final product. He doesn't provide the beef; he doesn't provide the grill; he doesn't provide the utensils; he doesn't bring the food to the table (the service ingredient); he didn't build or rent the space in which the restaurant is located (the mood or ambience ingredient); he doesn't provide the lighting or the A/C; etc. He provides one element in the final product.

    And in the opinion of the consumer of that final product — the gal eating the burger — she might not agree with Washington, DC that the value of "cooked" is worth the additional $x.xx the law will make her pay in order to support the higher wage. She might go elsewhere. She might do her own cooking. She might order the burger and pay the higher price, but order no fries, or no Coke, or no dessert, etc. The extra spending power the flipper might enjoy clearly has to equal the lowered spending power the customer will suffer. Add the two together and they equal: no net increase in spending in the economy.

    Lastly, if the consumer is unwilling to pay the higher price to make the higher wage sustainable, the employer — who is ultimately relying on the consumer for this support — will soon find that for each additional cooked burger she sells to each additional new customer, she is actually losing, or "leaking" a little bit of money to the minimum wage flipper, that she has to pay for personally, rather than out of gross revenues. Will this knowledge make an employer more likely to keep this worker (as well as eager to hire more)? Less likely? Or will she say, "Meh. So I'm losing a little bit of my own money to the flipper with each burger a customer buys. Not to worry. I'LL MAKE IT UP ON VOLUME!"?


    *(youth unemployment in Greece, with much higher minimum wages laws and much more intrusion into workplace arrangements between employer, employees, and customers is over 62%. In Spain, it's over 56%. Yet what do you think the left in those countries want to do about it? You guessed it: "We need to raise the minimum wage more! Greek and Spanish youth must be able to earn a living wage!" They never learn.)


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  7. #27
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    >groan is indeed not an argument Mr Clifford - it was a gut response to the poison of Rand's ideas and the notion of unregulated freedom for big business.

    I know all about gut responses; I've had many myself.

    First of all, I never mentioned Rand, nor is it fair to lump all ideas regarding individual freedom with her particular ideas on the matter. We could all play the guilt by association game, right? For example, if you support minimum wage, I could point out that Benito Mussolini did, too, and that special rights for workers, special obligations for employers, and a special panel of "Wise Ones" — chosen by Mussolini (who, of course, was the "Wisest One of All") would decide and arbitrate all matters between them regarding wages, prices, benefits, retirement, so that everything was "fair" and nothing left to the capriciousness and anarchy of the market. Now, would it be fair if I said, "Groan! You're an Italian Fascist Corporatist!"

    >Capitalism needs constraints.

    Any social system needs constraints, but the point made by free market people like me is that there are different kinds of constraints and different sources for them, not just coercive constraints from government. Free markets already have a very powerful "self-emergent" property that functions as a constraint without necessarily meaning to, but which does so anyway: competition. Competition — even the possibility or threat of competition — is a very powerful constraining force on a firm's behavior, especially its behavior regarding innovation, quality controls, pricing of products, and yes, wage rates and hiring practices. What ultimately keeps Apple honest is the existence of Microsoft; what keeps Microsoft honest is the existence of Hewlett Packard; and what keeps them all sweating bricks is the fear — felt in the back of the neck most strongly by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — that somewhere out there among 315 million Americans, is another young Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who have dropped out of college, said "fuck off!" to authority (including, established Big Businesses), and are busy inventing the next technological and social revolution in their garages; because those are the kinds of people who incite these kinds of upheavals.

    >Business needs rules and regulations. Government plays this role.

    Granted. But government needs rules and regulations, too. Who plays that role? The reason I'm for small, minimally-intrusive government, is that every time government becomes Big and Intrusive, it's always commandeered by Big Business (and other organized special interests, like Big Labor) for its own purposes. So government is not impartially establishing rules for everyone as you might think; it's implementing rules in a partisan way that benefits some groups (usually the lobbies) at the expense of everyone else.

    Big Business, for example, usually lobbies government FOR many kinds of regulation in its own industries! Not against it! Though business will issue press releases and Public Service Announcements bragging of how public-spirited it is, that's just the sales pitch. From an economics perspective, the reason Big Business supports regulation in its own industries is obvious: most small startups trying to compete in that industry cannot afford to comply with the new set of regulations: it requires hiring compliance officers, doing additional paperwork, filing fees, etc. But a big established business has no problem absorbing these costs. Thus, Big Business uses lobbying in favor of regulating itself as an anti-competitive measure; basically, as a socially approved way of lousing up potential competition.

    So, though you're sincere in your belief that government plays the role of "neutral rule-giver and regulator" in economic matters, I think it's naive. Government is a kind of sharp tool: it's necessary, it performs an important function, but it's dangerous, especially when it falls into one set of hands to serve one set of interests. Since there's no way to stop that from happening in a democracy — especially in one whose constitution permits lobbying ("the people shall have the right to PETITION congress . . .") I see the only effective method as severely limiting the size, scope, and influence of that sharp tool in all sphere's of the individual's life: economic and social.

    >Regarding the Koch Brothers their role in helping fund and create the so-called grassroots Tea Party is evidence enough of their pernicious influence on US politics and thus by extension global politics.

    But this is precisely what I mean! In fact, who cares if he funded the Tea Party or didn't fund it? The only power the Tea Party could have over you would be the power it wielded from *government*. Shrink government, and the influence of the Tea Party shrinks, too!

    In the 1950s, a free market economist once wrote, "I used to have nightmares over the fear that there might be communists in the Department of Agriculture!!! Then I realized, hey, wait! Just abolish the damn Department of Agriculture! Do we need it? No. Does it actually grow more food for more people? No. Does it add valuable things to the economy and to people's lives? No. In fact, it hinders the growing of more food for more people! So if you abolish the whole thing, you get rid of a useless bureaucracy AND you neutralize any supposed power some communists might be able to wield over you by means if it!"

    I agree with him. And you should consider his words in relation to any concerns you might have regarding the nefarious Tea Party and its potential power over individual decision making. There's nothing you can do to stop people from voluntarily associating with one another and calling themselves "Tea Party Patriots"; and there's nothing you can do to stop a private individual like Koch, or anyone else, from saying, "Here's some money! Now go demonstrate and march up to Capitol Hill and make your cause known!" But you can make the Sharp Tool of government small enough and blunt enough that it can't do you or your interests any harm. If a special interest you dislike gains controls of a big sharp tool like a machete, beware; but if you do away with the machete and replace it with a nail-clipper, who cares if this or that special interest temporarily gains access to it?

    You're afraid of nail-clippers?


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  8. #28
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    >As I recall this thread was started to question Koch's motivation for seeking the abolition of the minimum wage. It's now gone off on an extended tangent about the limits and scope of unfettered capitalism.

    Apologies. My own fault. This reply will be my final post on the matter!

    >if anyone thinks that the Koch brothers are pursuing the aim of abolishing the minimum wage out of any altruistic philosophical principles, they are simply fucking crazy.

    I don't understand what possible difference it makes what anyone's intentions are. Economics is a science. And while it doesn't have the same precision as the exact sciences like physics and chemistry, it's still a science, and you can still, broadly, make confident predictions regarding outcomes of policies. Whether anyone is well-intentioned or ill-intentioned, it doesn't change the fact that raising wages above what the employer and the employee would have privately agreed to between themselves WILL cause other potential employees NOT to be hired. Those "could-have-been-hired-at-a-lower-wage-but-now-cannot" potential employees most likely will be 1) young, and 2) black. Many supporters of the minimum wage didn't take them into account because they are a tacit, unseen effect of minimum wage policies — a bit like radioactive "fallout": you see the rain, but you don't see the radiation. You see the lucky employee who gets a 23% increase from 7.25/hr to $9.00/hr, but you don't see the unlucky, less skilled, less experienced kid who *could* have been hired at the original $7.25/hr rate, or perhaps *might* have been hired at $8.00/hr, but now sits home unemployed because no one thinks his particular skills and experience are worth that 23% increase to $9.00/hr.

    It's a real effect touching real people, but it generally stays *unseen*, which is why it generally remains *unconsidered* by many when they think about the minimum wage issue.

    Whether Alan Krueger (Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors) has wonderfully Christian, big-hearted altruistic intentions in supporting the minimum wage or not, it doesn't change the facts about the fallout of higher and higher minimum wages. And whether the Brothers Koch have mean, narrow, callous, and self-interested intentions in not supporting minimum wage increases, it also doesn't change any facts about the fallout of higher and higher minimum wages. In other words — as in any science — the effect is independent of the intentions of the cause.

    Are you really telling us that an injurious policy becomes a beneficial policy as long as it is implemented with good intentions? Don't you remember that line about "the road to hell"?

    >all they want to do is destroy workers rights and get as close to slavery as the laws will allow

    Do workers have "special rights" that others don't have? I thought there were only universal rights we each have as *individuals*, not special rights we get if we're a worker, and which we lose if we change from being a worker to being an employer. You mean each special interest group has its own special rights?

    Regarding slavery:

    Slavery in the US (and in all other countries at all other times, I believe) was not a product of the market. It was a *legally sanctioned* institution, sustained by a network of laws, conceived, passed, implemented, and enforced, by government. The smaller and less intrusive government is, the less it can implement and sustain slavery.


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  9. #29
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    Slavery in the US (and in all other countries at all other times, I believe) was not a product of the market.
    In the past slaves were utilized by both governments and private businesses (to build pyramids, hoist sails and pick cotton). In the Southern states of the U.S. the slave market flourished in part because it was unfettered by government strictures. Southern growers lobbied Washington to keep slavery legal and bring more slave states into the union. I say, "in part" because the other important factor was the market for cotton. If a significant number of plantations cut their costs by the employment of slave labor, then to survive financially the other plantations must too. It's the same argument being used today to pay workers less than the worth of their labor.


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  10. #30
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    Default Re: Charles Koch wants to eliminate minimum wage

    Koch and his Buddies know the Bush Party that lasted eight years is O-ver,
    and they know Obama and Hillary need them, it's just a question of how much. There is a legitimate question of who steers the ship, Team Koch or Team Obama. The American Dream is a dream with TEETH, and the Koch Bros are living that dream. That's the way it works. You can't ask the Kochs to give up their Championship belt, you've got to take it from them. That's how you spread the money around.

    The American dream is sketchy on if you can step on the hands of the people below you on the ladder. I think the real action will happen when Hillary steps in, she's got like a 20 year head start on these guys with their smirking lawyers. Obama will be remembered for Obamacare, he's the Black Jesus. Hillary's going to have an operation to attach Elephant Balls to her Vagina. Obama has to be a Saint because he's black. Clinton is going to have to be a Prize-Fighter because she's a woman. It really takes eight years to figure out what's going on, and Hilary Clinton has been prepping for President since '92.
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