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Re: Simplicity and uniformity:
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-conten...a-Hub-7-17.pdf
Download the above-linked PDF.
Scroll to Appendix I on pages 9-11. Study the diagrams and ask yourself if the schematic of the Affordable Care Act serves your values of "simplicity" and "uniformity."
Regular care and maintenance of one's car is preventative medicine. But if I lose a windshield because it caught a stone on the highway and cracked, my insurance covers it. People who can't afford cars don't buy car insurance because they don't have a car to insure. People with bodies don't have the cost saving strategy available to them. If you're making $12000 a year and your teenage daughter is in pain because she broke a tooth on a fast food burger, the dentist's bill will break you.
What you're talking about is moral hazard, that people who are insured overuse those services for which they're insured. Those with car insurance might drive more recklessly, and those with health insurance might overuse medical care. However, there is a screening function performed by both doctors and insurance companies.Quote:
Originally Posted by paulclifford
I have no idea why anyone should put off an appointment to go to the doctor. Someone in their 50's with chest pain should assume it's heartburn and not something worse? Someone with a torn ligament should assume that it's a minor strain? This is callous nonsense.
Do me a favor. Next time you think you need to see a doctor, ask yourself whether you would like to put it off.
I also love what you did with the demand function for healthcare. You are correct that if poor people are not served by doctors and not insured by their employers, and cannot afford healthcare, the price of healthcare in this country might be cheaper. Afterall, less demand for services does mean a lower equilibrium price. Some of us don't actually think that those in the lower income strata should be denied healthcare to lower the average cost of healthcare, or that access to healthcare should be limited to an elite segment of society. What you're describing works with filet mignon but is unacceptable to people of conscience when discussing cancer treatment or cardiograms.
Once you have one distortion in the market, and you have a number of built-in distortions in the market for both healthcare and health insurance, the de-regulation argument falls apart. Even the patent system is a distortion, given that it gives an innovator a monopoly for a length of time, allowing him to collect surplus profits for his innovation. I'm not saying there isn't a reasonable trade-off involved, but this argument about price wars and intense competition is something you simply don't see in a field characterized by strict licensure of providers, patents on drugs and technology, and insurance which almost by definition can't be left unregulated. When you leave insurance un-regulated, insurance companies end up forfeiting their obligations. Why? Because they have an incentive to invest premiums and not hold sufficient reserves. You just don't get anything like intense competition in either the delivery of healthcare services or the insurance markets.
Is medical school an artificial barrier to entry? I can't open up a medical practice because I haven't gone to medical school. Do you know what this does to the supply function for medical services? With a lower supply of healthcare providers, the price of healthcare is now much greater than it would be if every third person were a doctor.
Just ask yourselves this question: are YOU willing to work for less that $7.25 an hour...no matter the job? I'm pretty sure that with no restrictions on minimum wage, there'll be no restrictions on what fields can implement that.
Can you imagine a policemen or EMT making that?
>People come to the Mayo Clinic because they can afford care that most people cannot.
I never mentioned the Mayo Clinic, but in any case, you're repeating leftist-pop-mythology.
The Mayo Clinic has a high reputation for providing charity medical care for those unable to pay. It does this by using differential pricing: wealthy patients pay much more than middle-class patients; middle-class patients pay more than the poor. Thus, the Mayo Clinic uses payments from the wealthy to subsidize charity care for the poor. Most importantly, the OUTCOMES of the poor are better than they are at "free" clinics in the UK, Canada, and other countries that have socialized healthcare.
Additionally, since the clinic has long practiced "integrative care" i.e., all specialists, all diagnostic facilities, all appointment-setting, etc., are integrated into one unit, under one "tent" care in general can be provided at lower cost and in a timelier manner than at many other clinics or hospitals, even in the US. Recent studies, for example, even show that Medicare spent about 50% less-per-patient at the Mayo Clinic than at other places. So the Medicare Unit at the Mayo Clinic is easier on taxpayers than other hospitals and clinics.
Not sure why anyone would complain about this. Obviously, what we need, therefore, are MORE Mayo Clinic-type organizations (i.e., private, voluntary, integrative, and run by the doctors themselves).
See:
http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/10/what-makes-the.html
"What Makes the Mayo Clinic Different?"
> This is not evidence that our healthcare system provides better care on average to the average person.
My evidence was empirical/statistical, not anecdotal. If you remove suicides and high-speed automobile deaths (i.e., accidents in which the driver dies immediately upon crashing), the U.S. has the longest life-spans for its citizens; it has the highest survival rate of cancers and heart disease; it has the highest patient satisfaction with special surgeries like back surgery, hip-replacements, knee-replacements, heart-valve and bypass surgeries, etc. It also has the highest rates of colonoscopies and mammographies in the world two reasons that Americans spend a higher percentage of their incomes on healthcare than citizens of other countries. It has the most access to new drugs, new medical devices, and new kinds of therapies (stem-cell, nano-technologies, prostheses, etc.). It has the lowest infant mortality. It's not just at the Mayo Clinic. It's a general characteristic of US healthcare. It can certainly be improvised, but not by following the European model of having the government pay for more things. When government pays for things, prices always go up and quality always goes down. Government can "mask" the price increases because it can always cover losses between the cost of something and its selling price with tax revenue. That doesn't change the fact that the REAL costs of something have risen.
>>>Insurance has always been regulated.
And marriage has "always" been one man and one woman. So? That's not an argument. We could also say, "There has always been slavery. Why abolish an institution that has existed for thousands of years?" So what if it has always existed?
Additionally, regulation of insurance only began in the 20th century correlating strongly with things going awry for patients' easy access to high quality medical care.
>>>As a system it is almost unworkable if there are no regulations.
Says who? Might as well assert the same thing about the dairy industry or the consumer electronics industry or the bicycle industry or the shoe industry. It's all self-interested nonsense. The only two groups of people who believe such a thing are members of the insurance industry themselves (who benefit from regulation because it protects them from competition) and politicians (who also benefit from regulation because it allows them to buy votes). Consumers of medical care (patients) don't benefit, and neither do providers of medical care (doctors and nurses).
See:
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/f...9/hb111-15.pdf
You'll find most of the arguments for freedom of choice in healthcare in the above-linked PDF from the Cato Institute, a thinktank that analyzes policy from a free-market perspective.
>>>You don't have a good system of healthcare if most people can't afford necessary procedures or are made bankrupt by illness.
You also don't have a good system of healthcare if most people spend most of their time waiting to get an appointment, are then given a 5-minute examination, and then have to wait months for their "free" necessary procedure. You don't have a good system of healthcare if most people cannot get the latest, most effective drugs, devices, and treatments because some "cost-efficiency" panel says, "It's too expensive. Our job is to keep the cost of medical care down, and we're doing that by DENYING you the latest, expensive treatment. Don't like it? Go to some other country and seek treatment there." Which is pretty much arrangement in the UK and Canada, to name but two single-payer systems that supposedly cater to the poor.
>>>I don't care how many wealthy people flock to our best institutions.
You also don't care how many poor people die waiting in lines in other countries' socialized institutions, or who die for lack of access to the latest drugs, devices, and treatments, or who die waiting months sometimes years for simple procedures like a hernia operation. You only seem to care about the rhetoric the sales pitch by the politicians who run these programs, that the system is "for the benefit of the poor", even though it guarantees the poor only two things: long waiting times and crappy care.
Are you really going to say, "But at least they get FREE crappy care!"?
>>>Is medical school an artificial barrier to entry?
No. But using government to close many medical schools throughout the US for the purpose of intentionally graduating fewer doctors in order to keep the supply of doctors low and, thus, their rates and incomes high IS an artificial barrier to entry. Doctors did precisely that through their lobby, the AMA, and something called "the Flexner Report", back in the 1920s or 1930s.
Additionally, state licensing of only "approved" doctors, with "approved" training, at "approved" medical schools, are all examples of artificial barriers to entry imposed by government and its special-interest lobby: the AMA.
State licensing of physicians with only a narrow, specific kind of training (which would NOT include age-old techniques such as homeopathy, naturopathy, etc.) was sold to the public with the rhetoric that it would "protect people from quackery". It has no such effect, and no studies have ever been done that show such regulation has such an effect. Ordinary laws against fraud and misrepresentation which have long been in place in all states can protect the public against that. The AMA/Flexner regulations on state licensure do nothing but artificially make the supply of physicians scarce in relation to the great demand for their skills. Obviously, this drives up their rates, and thus their incomes.
Prior to the AMA and the Flexner Report, most Americans preferred to see non-invasive homeopaths or naturopaths for their chronic conditions. Allopathic medicine allied itself with the chemical industries and the pharmaceutical industries with the discovery of anesthesia and asepsis, indispensable for surgeries. To force Americans away from their traditional therapies of choices, the AMA, the Flexner Report, and, of course, government, closed many medical schools, and instituted the state-licensing regulations.
Government licensure requirements also have the perverse effect of keeping older, less sophisticated doctors in practice, who should have perhaps retired long ago. Instead of keeping up with the breathless pace of medical advancements including lots of new knowledge regarding "complementary" medical practices incorporating food supplements, vitamins, minerals, herbs, exercise, etc. it tends to keep doctors in practice who know nothing about any of these, because "they have their licenses" and are thus "legit" practitioners of medicine, even if their knowledge and their treatments are 40 years out of date. Under a truly free market-driven system, the "branding" of such out-of-touch physicians would decline, as would their rates and practices.
>>>Just ask yourselves this question: are YOU willing to work for less that $7.25 an hour...no matter the job? I'm pretty sure that with no restrictions on minimum wage, there'll be no restrictions on what fields can implement that.
>>>Can you imagine a policemen or EMT making that?
Can you imagine a policemen or EMT making that?
No. Which is why in a free market with employers bidding against one another competitively for the skills and experiences of potential employees wages RISE, not fall.
You have a basic misunderstanding of how prices and wages are set on a free market. They are not "set" or determined by only one side of the economic transaction (the seller of a good, or the employer of labor). Prices and wages are always co-determined by both buyers and sellers, and both employers and employees . . . assuming, of course, the existence of competition.
Regarding minimum wage, here's another hypothetical that might make you think about it differently:
Suppose you're earning a $50,000/year salary. Your skill-set and your experience-level are worth $50,000/year both to you and to your employer. Then (God forbid!), you lose your job because of some sudden economic downturn. You are now unemployed, but you immediately start looking for another job: contacting friends, connections, head-hunting firms, etc.
Then the government enters the scene with the following regulation:
Although it's very happy to see you be proactive in your search for employment, it mandates that you can only accept new employment IF it offers a salary that is 23% higher than your previous salary of $50,000; i.e., you can only accept a new job on condition that the minimum salary offered to you is $61,500/year.
Even if you were to agree to an offer of $50,000/year or less, you would legally not be permitted to accept it. You can legally accept only an offer of $61,500/year or higher.
Question:
Would such a regulation implemented for your benefit, don't forget increase your chances of finding new employment? Or would it decrease them? Or would it not affect your chances of finding new employment at all?
Ever hear of a buyer's market? Since the Great Bush Recession, here's been an over supply of labor. So how does the market respond? By lowering wages, contrary to something someone said recently.what was it...oh yes...Quote:
You have a basic misunderstanding of how prices and wages are set on a free market. They are not "set" or determined by only one side of the economic transaction (the seller of a good, or the employer of labor). Prices and wages are always co-determined by both buyers and sellers, and both employers and employees . . . assuming, of course, the existence of competition.
In an unregulated market there is nothing to prevent a full time job from paying less than a living wage. At least in the U.S. we are beginning to recover. It would have been a stronger recovery had we had a more serious stimulus program. Europe's austerity strategy is failing miserably.Quote:
...in a free market... wages RISE, not fall.
>>>So how does the market respond? By lowering wages, contrary to something someone said recently.what was it...oh yes...
But we don't have a free market, at least not in the entry-level labor market. We have minimum wage laws that make the market the opposite of free, remember?
We also have an unfree market in many skilled labor markets which demand that employers only hire union labor. Unemployment is highest in those states all of them "blue" Democratic controlled that have union-hire laws, and which do not have "right-to-work" laws.
It's an old story, all well understood in Econ-101 classes and textbooks.
As for everyone else:
When the left cries that "wages have not kept pace with productivity", they speak only of the nominal wage the number printed on the paycheck and not all those benefits workers get today: paid vacation (technically part of one's wage); paid sick-leave (technically part of one's wage); paid personal days (technically part of one's wage); paid health insurance (a benefit, not a "right", and technically part of one's wage); additional benefits like reductions in health club memberships (technically part of one's wage); etc.
Add all of these up, and it represents a big increase in wages.
Additionally and more to the point the way capitalism works to raise wages for everyone is not, necessarily, by guaranteeing them a larger "nominal" wage (that is, a larger number printed on their paychecks so that they have more money); but, rather, by lowering prices of everyday goods and services, so that the purchasing power of the paycheck increases: lower prices for food, clothing, transportation, communication, etc. This is true even today in spite of government-caused inflation and erosion of the dollar's purchasing power. Measured in terms of the number of hours one must labor in order to buy a mid-priced item such as a phone, a television, a washing machine, a new suit, a winter coat, a pound of beef, etc., prices have actually radically declined: in other words, most workers today spend a much smaller percentage of their incomes on these items than workers in the 1970s because they only have to labor for a few minutes to earn the requisite amount of money to make these purchases; whereas 30+ years ago, they had to labor several hours or several days to earn enough money for these kinds of purchases. Additionally, the quality of today's products is far, far higher than what was available back then. Televisions are better, coffee-brewers are better, and some things like a MacBook Pro, for example cannot even really be compared to an IBM electric typewriter, since the former does things that were simply impossible for the latter.
So I dismiss the claim that "wages have declined". They most certainly have not.
Where purchasing power really has declined is in precisely those areas that have the most government meddling: the housing market, public education, school loans for private higher education, insurance, and health care. This is obviously not a coincidence.
>>>In an unregulated market there is nothing to prevent a full time job from paying less than a living wage.
Sure there is. Competition. It never fails, and it never has failed. Until 1997, Hong Kong had no minimum wage laws. It had zero unemployment, and everyone who produced a living-wage worth of value earned a living wage or above.
Minimum wage supporters have a fantasy about the so-called "living wage." They think that someone who works as a dish washer in a fast-food restaurant "ought" to earn enough doing low-value work to be able to rent a nice apartment, get married, support a wife, have kids, send them to a nice private school, take 1 or 2 nice relaxing vacations a year, get his teeth capped, buy a car, and retire comfortably. Sorry, but in order to have all those nice things, you have to be in a job where you're producing the equivalent value of those things. From a dish washer's point of view, the purpose of a low-paying job is to get enough experience to become a manager of a fast-food restaurant, and then, perhaps, a franchise owner. The purpose, from his point of view, is simply to gain enough experience to use as a stepping-stone to something better: something that produces higher value, and which therefore is higher paid. That's simply economic reality.
Additionally, as I've already pointed out several times, the great majority of minimum wage earners are teenagers who still live at home with their parents. We don't have to worry about paying them a "living wage" because they are not worried about it either.
The ones we do have to worry about are the extremely low-skilled, inexperienced workers who would like to work at $1, $2, or $3 per hour, but who cannot find work at $9.00 an hour. They were priced out of the labor market. It's not the fault of employers that they are unemployed. It's the fault of minimum wage laws.
I notice, however, that the most vocal supporters of the minimum wage all of whom are upper-middle class and wealthy, including, of course, most politicians believe that unpaid internships where the worker is paid NOTHING are just great. This, despite the fact that the unpaid intern is obviously not getting a "living wage".
So paying someone nothing is apparently OK with minimum wage advocates, as long as that someone is labeled an "intern" and not an "employee", and as long that someone admits that he's really just there to learn a skill and gain experience. Yet paying that same someone $2.00/hour while labeling him an "employee" is suddenly defined as exploitation and morally wrong.
Got news for you. It's pure hypocrisy. If it's OK to pay someone zero in order for them to learn skills and get experience, it's also OK to pay them more than zero e.g., $2.00 hour for the same things. If the former is not exploitation, then neither is the latter
A documentary originally broadcast on PBS in 1982. It's hosted by economist Walter Williams
"Good Intentions"
Walter E. Williams, economist
PBS (1982)
Good Intentions 1of3 Introduction and Public Schools with Walter Williams - YouTube
Part I
Good Intentions 2of3 Minimum Wage, Licensing, and Labor Laws with Walter Williams - YouTube
Part 2
Good Intentions 3of3 The Welfare System and Conclusions with Walter Williams - YouTube
Part 3
No problem there. We have regulations that keep y'all from filling your sweat shops with 5 & 6 year olds.Quote:
The ones we do have to worry about are the extremely low-skilled, inexperienced workers who would like to work at $1, $2, or $3 per hour, but who cannot find work at $9.00 an hour. They were priced out of the labor market. It's not the fault of employers that they are unemployed. It's the fault of minimum wage laws.
Really? Inexperienced workers willing to work for a dollar an hour?! If they worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week they'd earn $6570.00 a year! Subtract the rent or the mortgage and you're very lucky to have $3000 left for groceries. That $8.22 a day to feed your family. Of course I didn't subtract the utilities, but you can live without water, heat and electricity...they're just amenities only the successful deserve. Yeah, you're right! Competition is Kick Ass. Hope no one gets sick.
Greed makes people do strange things.
>>>Really? Inexperienced workers willing to work for a dollar an hour?
Yep. Absolutely.
Because if an inexperienced worker is willing to work for nothing (in an "unpaid internship"), then he's also willing to do the same kind of work for some amount above nothing.
>>>Greed makes people do strange things.
So does envy.
Greed's just an aspect of envy.
I think what you're aiming for is a system where you can maintain your advantage in wealth and at the same time keep the masses at bay. If you overreach, for instance, by recommending a wage so inhumane that people can scarcely survive on it, you may find that the teeming underclasses don't really want to be part of this system and that their disobedience need not be civil.Quote:
Originally Posted by paulclifford
In our case, we have a system where you can become insanely wealthy. In fact, you can aggregate enough wealth that neither you nor your great grandchildren will ever have to work again. This is one of the benefits of a system that rewards entrepreneurial ingenuity, and allows people to reap benefits for intellectual contributions far beyond what they contribute in terms of labor.
Your comparison of a one dollar per hour wage to internships is nearly offensive. The fair labor standards act has standards that prevents internships from being unduly exploitative, and even if these standards are not always enforced stringently, the purpose of an internship is that the employer provides it primarily for the benefit of the intern. Internships are not supposed to keep mature workers in a chronic state of underemployment or poverty nor do they generally provide employers with much of a work product. There is a big difference between interning at a financial services firm over the summer while attending school and working full time in a factory to barely earn enough to subsist.
Your vision of America is not a very charitable one. I hope you don't think I come from a place of envy, but moral disapproval.
Edit: Regulatory guidance from Department of Labor on unpaid internships
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
>>>If you overreach, for instance, by recommending a wage so inhumane that people can scarcely survive on it, you may find that the teeming underclasses don't really want to be part of this system and that their disobedience need not be civil.
"Pay me $50/hour for washing dishes or I'll bash your brains in"? Sounds to me as if you're the one with the very uncharitable view of America. "Support me . . . or else!"
>>>In our case, we have a system where you can become insanely wealthy. In fact, you can aggregate enough wealth that neither you nor your great grandchildren will ever have to work again. This is one of the benefits of a system that rewards entrepreneurial ingenuity, and allows people to reap benefits for intellectual contributions far beyond what they contribute in terms of labor.
Most of what you said was true and correct up to the last part of the last sentence. Labor qua labor contributes very little to any sort of productive activity without "brain power" behind it. Conversely, brain power greatly enhances the value of labor. That's why someone in a non-capitalist country can labor for hours and hours, scratching the soil, pushing it into the shape of an elongated cube, firing it in a hand-built oven, and 12 hours later, creating a beautiful hand-crafted product called "1 brick"; while someone in a western capitalist economy can push a button, and 1,000 perfectly formed identical bricks come streaming out on a conveyer belt in some production line, and all of this can be done in one hour.
Who expended more labor: the guy scratching the soil who produced 1 brick in 12 hours, or the guy who pushed a button and produced 1,000 bricks in one hour? Obviously, the first guy expended more actual labor. His wage, however, will be much lower than the second guy's wage, because despite all that labor he's expending, he only produced 1 brick in 12 hours. The 2nd guy who expends a lot less labor can produce 12,000 bricks in the same amount of time. It wasn't labor that made the 2nd guy so much more productive. It was other people's brain power invested in his labor. Another word for "brain power invested in pure labor" is: capital.
Because the 2nd guy can produce more than the 1st guy in the same amount of time, the 2nd guy's wages will be a lot higher.
>>>Your comparison of a one dollar per hour wage to internships is nearly offensive. The fair labor standards act has standards that prevents internships from being unduly exploitative,
"Unduly" exploitative? You mean, it's OK by you and the Department of Labor to be "duly" exploitative (in the opinion of some bureaucrat)?
In other words, in your view, if a person accepts a job in the summer for a wage of $0.00/hour, then she's only being "duly exploited", and that's OK by you and the DoL, because we have a pretty name for such an employment relation: we call it an "internship" instead of a "job". But if the same person were to accept the same job from the same employer in the summer for $1.00/hour, then she's being "unduly exploited" by her employer, and it's not OK by you and the DoL, because the jump from $0.00/hour to $1.00/hour semantically changed what was previously an "internship" into some other DoL category called a "job".
In your opinion, she may not legally accept any offer below $9.00/hour if her relation to her employer is semantically called a "job".
In other words, in your view, she can legally accept $0.00/hour and call it an "internship"; or she can accept $9.00/hour (or more), and call it a "job" even if it's exactly the same work, same employer, same expectations, same hours, etc. But she is legally forbidden from accepting an offer to perform exactly the same work for any amount between $0.01 and $8.99.
Bizarre. Only the mind of a bureaucrat from a government bureaucracy like the Department of Labor could twist itself into a pretzel and come up with an argument like that.
Anyway, as I've pointed out before, the majority of those working in minimum wage jobs are teens still living at home with mom and dad, or still being supported by mom and dad. In fact, the majority of minimum wage job holders are white teenagers who come from families with median incomes of over $50,000.
The narrative about the "great masses of destitute, working, blue-collar, poor folk", each with a "Tiny Tim Cratchit" on crutches at home, is a myth.
The fact is this:
Most of those "great masses of destitute, blue-collar, poor folks, with Tiny Tim Cratchit on crutches" are simply unemployed. Period. Their problem is not "low wages"; their problem is "no wages", as in "no jobs." And simply increasing the hourly wage of white teenagers living in middle-class homes will not get them any.
Your minimum wage laws help the wrong group of people.
How about the laborers who built the machine that outputs those bricks at a rate of one thousand per hour? How about the laborers who built the factory? The electrician who wired the factory for power and the plumbers who hooked it to the municipal water supply? The laborers who built the damn that powers the factory? Those who drilled for the oil and natural gas that heat the factory? How about the architects and engineers who drafted the blueprints? One can go on. There's a lot more energy being consumed and a lot more labor involved in producing one brick than you might imagine. So which brick, the one made in America, or the one made in a single oven by a single worker, took more effort and energy to produce? And who gets the credit for those bricks? Well in your eyes it's the CEO who told his executive committee on the phone between hole 8 and hole 9 that he wants to build a brick factory outside Phoenix. Capitalism is wonderful, I agree. It has made it possible for humankind to grow its populations and live a high quality life. But powerful tools are dangerous, including capitalism. In your little parable capitalism shifted the ownership of the brick from the craftsmen to the corporation. Indeed it eliminated craftsmen and craftsmanship entirely. Brickyards that were once proudly producing high quality clay products now lie dormant all through the American Midwest. Profits are now collected by the corporation and distributed to the CEOs and stockholders. It's a very nice arrangement for CEOs and stockholders. Not so nice for the thousands of workers it took to actually produce a brick. Yes, if it weren't for minimum wage laws it could be even more wonderful for the CEOs and the stockholders.Quote:
Who expended more labor: the guy scratching the soil who produced 1 brick in 12 hours, or the guy who pushed a button and produced 1,000 bricks in one hour?
BTW the Koch brothers are now making billions of dollars by creating an artificial aluminum scarcity, buying it up and warehousing it. Very productive, don't you think? Isn't capitalism operating with very little restraint wonderful? Wouldn't it be more wonderful if there were no restraints?
If you're holding down two or three crummy jobs and still can make a living wage (have you seen McDonald's insulting budget advice?), that's no better than no wage. It's still not living. One's time might be better put to use raising your kids, selling your own "wares", running drugs, or protesting for a higher minimum wage. Capitalism is a big idea. Big ideas solve big problems. They cause big problems too. That's why it needs to be regulated.
>>>How about the laborers who built the machine that outputs those bricks at a rate of one thousand per hour?
Well how about them. Their labor would be useless unless directed by the engineer who designed the machine and told them what to do. Same for the rest of the examples you cited.
And what if the same laborers expended the same amount of labor-hours, or burned the same number of calories, or whatever unit you want to measure labor in, but misplaced all of the machine parts, using the wrong wiring, the wrong connectors, etc.? They have expended exactly the SAME labor, the SAME hours, the SAME calories, as workers who followed the engineer's plans and blueprints, but the first group of workers produced nothing of value: a useless machine is a pile of junk regardless of how many hours of labor went into producing it.
What makes something valuable is not something inherent in the thing; it's whether or not it satisfies some sort of want or need in the subjective opinion of someone else.
Economic value is subjective, not objective.
>>>If you're holding down two or three crummy jobs and still can make a living wage . . . , that's no better than no wage.
Obviously untrue. If "no wage" were just as good as "a low wage," then no one would accept a job for a "low wage". The reason they do so, is that from their point of view theirs, not yours a low wage is preferable to no wage.
Perhaps your efforts would be more productively spent if you demonstrated outside of a local McDonald's to convince the employees to quit their jobs and accept a wage of $0.00/hour instead of a low wage of whatever it is they're making. I'd like to see how many employees throw down their french-fries and follow you.
In any case, it would be an interesting empirical test of your statement.
>>>Koch brothers are now making billions of dollars by creating an artificial aluminum scarcity, buying it up and warehousing it.
I've heard that Goldman Sachs (not the Koch Brothers) is warehousing aluminum, and that some unions are complaining that it makes the price of a can of beer "artificially" high (that's actually a riot! Unionized labor bears more blame than anything else for making their products artificially high, yet here they are blaming the commodities markets).
Sorry, but if something is deemed "artificially too high" by manufactures, they would switch to some other material e.g., glass or plastic in the case of beer and other beverages. The reason they don't switch at present is that consumers of beer and other beverages are perfectly willing to pay the current price for their beverages in aluminum cans.
This is simply another example of "commodities speculation" and "arbitrage", and is not only perfectly legitimate legally, but it performs a very important function economically: allocating a scarce resource (aluminum) efficiently meaning, directing it to those producers and, ultimately, consumers, who value the resource the most over different geographical areas, and over different time periods.
The socialist/Marxian notion that resources are "fixed" and need to be owned by a panel of "resource experts" in the government is a sure way of guaranteeing that there really will be a shortage of that resource; "shortage" meaning: no matter how much a consumer is willing to pay for it, he simply cannot buy it because it's just unavailable.
That was the common, everyday buying experience of consumers in the socialist Soviet Union, the socialist Maoist China, the socialist Communist Cuba, the socialist Marxist North Korea, the national socialist economy of Hitler Germany, etc.
Constant shortages of many goods, and all for the same reason: the resources were socialized, nationalized, and owned by the government.
>>>Very productive, don't you think? Isn't capitalism operating with very little restraint wonderful? Wouldn't it be more wonderful if there were no restraints?
But there are always restraints. The choice is between what kinds of restraints: natural economic restraints (competition), or artificial political ones (regulation). The second usually undercuts the first, and is far less effective at doing what it is intended to do.
Actually I included the engineer as one of those examples. So according to you the engineer's work would be useless if not for the engineer! Look do you want the brick or not? If you do somebody will have to make it, 'cause they don't make themselves.Quote:
Well how about them. Their labor would be useless unless directed by the engineer who designed the machine and told them what to do. Same for the rest of the examples you cited.
The example you gave with the brick workers is probably a better counterexample. A company with a method of producing one thousand bricks per hour may be able to pay a worker more than the company whose workers can only make one. That does not mean they necessarily will. The workers do not receive the profits, but are paid based on the supply and demand of labor.
Therefore, if it is easy to push a button and produce a thousand bricks, then there will be many workers who can do this job and the wage will be low. As a result, the company will make larger profits. We can see that at some level, since workers have a great deal of trouble systematically withholding their labor to drive up wages, that higher wages should be mandated. These workers have a collective action problem and are in a specific position of vulnerability that is not faced by those owning the means of production.
The point I was making is not that workers who use violence are justified in doing so. It is that if you exploit people without limit then you end up with people who will refuse to cooperate. You may protect yourself from them by hiring police officers and security guards at the same dollar an hour wage but they might not be too eager to protect you. Eventually you have shortages in demand because you've starved your own customer base.
As I said, workers tend not to be able to aggregate their interests effectively. So they have very little opportunity to bargain for wages, and employers have great opportunity to play their interests against one another. When you have such abuses, it calls for government regulation through a body of laws that prevents that kind of exploitation. You don't like it but it has won out through the democratic process.
Trish brings up an interesting point about the intellectual property that is used to make a thousand bricks. Many companies force their engineers to sign agreements that assign any invention they create to the company. As a result, the company has provided nothing but a breeding ground where smart people with no capital can create things for them but retain no property right in their own creations. This is another example of people who own property having a disproportionate amount of bargaining power. Do you really think that someone who was not facing a relatively higher degree of duress would bargain away the entire product of their own ingenuity?
The company who buys the machine then does not have to share even the smallest proportion of the profits with the employees because these people need money now. So they cannot effectively withhold labor in order to barter for a fair share of the profits that their work enables. That is where the government comes in. They do not mandate equity sharing or anything close to that, but they don't permit you to systematically take advantage of a broad class of people. We should have a system that allows for upward mobility and does not fix people into a state where they are constantly having to choose between starvation and near starvation.
Factually incorrect:Quote:
Originally Posted by paulclifford
As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of bothnot the servant or master of either."In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."
King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he was undecided as to whether he would vote for Adlai Stevensn or Dwight Eisenhower, but that "In the past I always voted the Democratic ticket." In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying "Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_...g,_Jr#Politics
Rubbish, as usual from PC.Quote:
Originally Posted by paulclifford
Labour law in Hong Kong can be dated back to the impact of immigration on a place that was populated by 23,817 people in 1845, growin to 300,000 by 1901, and 878,947 by 1931.
Labour laws were introduced because of the growth in HK of craft guilds which had secret rituals (as did the Guilds in Europe) and the criminal Triad Societies -all were obliged to register under the Triad and Unlawful Societies Ordinance of 1887 until merchant associations were exempted under an update of the Ordinance in 1911.
Following the Versailles Treaty and the May 1919 Movement, the growth of Sun Yat-Sen's Guomingdang Party led to labour unrest culminating in the General Strike-Boycott of 1925 which almost broke Hong Kong's eminence as a trading port of significance for China and the British Empire.
Labour unrest continued after the Japanese Occupation with the Tramway Strike of 1949 which itself followed the 1948 Trades Union and Trades Disputes Ordinance, which restricted the right of Honk Kong residents to form trade unions and banned any affiliation with overseas unions.
After a relatively peaceful decade in the 1950s the 1960s was a decade of unrest, from the Kowloon Riots of 1966 to disturbances related to the Cultural Revolution which in fact reduced labour participation as most HK Chinese were anti-Communist and dropped out of union membership.
Far from lax labour law and private enterprise making HK a paradise of free market economics, it was the British Empire in its governance of Hong Kong which created the public housing sector, which invested in the physical infrastructure of HK, and which financed most of the education which resulted in the spectacular literacy rates which have been an important feature of HK's economic success; rather in the way that literacy rates soared in the USSR as the state financed education; and indeed, improved noticeably in Afghanistan under the guidance of the USSR in the 1980s.
The problems of the HK economy did not follow the withdrawal of the British in 1997 but have been shaped by the demands of capitalism before and since -the Open Door policy promoted by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 led to the relocation of most of the small textile manufacturing companies from HK to Guandong province, indeed, by 1997 80% of the foreign direct investment in Guandong came from Hong Kong capitalists who abandoned their workers for the cheaper labour market in the PRC -hardly surprising that the 1970s was for a time characterised by sit-ins, occupations, strikes and disputes over redundancy payments.
If it is rubbish to argue there were no labour laws in HK before 1997, it is also rubbish to argue there was no unemployment, as if HK was immune from the Oil Price shocks of the 1970s, and the Asian Economic crisis of 1997.
Unemployment in HK has fluctuated over the decades: 5% in 1983 dropping to barely 1% in 1989, rising to 3.9% in 1997, falling to about 2.1% in 1998; rising to 9% in 2004, falling to 3% in 2008 where it appears to have stabilised.
None of this is solely the consequence of HK being a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China; it has a lot to do with HK reinventing itself as a financial and service economy while losing its manufacturing base, yet retaining its entrepot status; while changing modes of labour that have affected all economies -self-employment increasing, seasonal labour, part-time contracts and so on make up the formula.
In Hong Kong, growth, historically is intricately linked to state investment in the physical and social infrastructure, as well as entrepreneurial capitalism; private enterprise would not have housed the population or educated them en masse, but selected a few for 'the privilege'. Just as large segments of the populations of the British Empire between 1880 and 1960 were educated by Christian Missionaries not by private enterprise.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/schenk.hongkong
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/hong...mployment-rate
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O...istory&f=false
Southern strategy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PaulClifford, this should explain what happened to the African-American vote and why they have by and large avoided your party like the bubonic plague since LBJ signed the civil rights act into law.
PaulClifford is so opposed to collective bargaining but it is just one tool workers have to negotiate. You ask whether a worker would prefer to make $1 rather than $0 and I assume you know that the answer is that something is preferred to nothing.
By allowing workers to collectively bargain they are allowed to ask the company an analogous question. If a person produces goods that are worth $20 per hour of work, would the company be willing to pay $15 an hour in order to receive that work? The answer should be that any time the marginal cost of labor is less than the marginal revenue produced by it, an employer should accept the offer.
You also say that goods do not have an objective value. But capital assets can be valued by adding up their cash streams and discounting back to present value. When such assets are sold the difference in valuation between buyer and seller is presumed to be a difference in the discount rate chosen. Labor might be valued in the same way. And if buyers and sellers of labor were on equal footing you would presume that workers would be paid wages that are somewhat commensurate with the value of what they produce.
The only reason they are not paid more is because as I said, their only means of negotiating on an equal footing is to try to minimize collective action problems. They must be in a position to bleed companies in the same way companies bleed them. It turns out that owners of companies are able to hold-out for their profits better than workers can for wages.
PC,
another thing if you don't mind. I know sometimes it's helpful to break someone's post into sentences and offer rebuttals to each sentence, but I think doing it as often as you do hurts the readability of your posts. You quote one sentence and then offer a three paragraph rebuttal to that one sentence. Everyone does this from time to time by isolating parts of a post but I feel like you splice each post to an extreme degree.
"One of the worst mistakes our beleaguered nation has made was the Constitutional Amendment giving females the right to vote. Lowering the voting age to 18 did not help. These mistakes caused us to endure both Obama and Slick Willie Clinton. Hillary will be the last straw"
I know first that this is a thread about the minimum wage but it seems to have slowed a bit. But I wanted to show this post to PaulClifford since he lamented the loss of the African-American vote for the Republican party. This comment above was posted on U.S News, and it had 117 votes in its favor.
I know people say all kinds of crazy shit on comment boards, but this one had a voting function so we can see how many right wingers agreed with the sentiment. It sort of gives us a fresh perspective on the voter suppression scandals.
The next comment was about homosexuals being inherently perverted, ringing in with 80 votes.
Your party has lost the minority vote because it has become a place of refuge for rank bigots. Not every Republican, but it's becoming more and more difficult to call oneself respectable and a GOP member.
African-Americans, Homosexuals, young Americans...wrong side of history. You have very little reason to wonder why most minorities are wary of your crackpot political affiliation.
Someone tweeted this link on Twitter...typical responses in the comments section.
http://www.businessinsider.com/compa...le-more-2013-8